Sound Company
House-supplied
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
- FOH Engineer: Waynne Smart
- Monitor Engineer: Damien Low
- Tour & Production Manager: Dave Cobby
- Backline Techs: Dave Cobby and Joel White (Guitars, Bass, Drums, Percussion, Keys)
Gear
FOH
- Consoles: Various (house-supplied)
- Speakers: Various (house-supplied)
MON
- Console: DiGiCo SD11i
- In-Console Effects/Plugins: A room verb
- Outboard Rack Effects/Plugins: T Verb, Valhalla Vintage Verb, Relab LX480, Waves PSE
- Vocal Mics: Austrian Audio OD505, SE V7
- IEMs & Transmitters: JH11, UE11, Cosmic CEP6
Tour Details
On Aug. 17, FRONT of HOUSE caught the final show of 10cc’s 20-date Greatest Hits Tour, the band’s first trek across the U.S. in 46 years! The British art rock band originally consisted of Graham Goulding, Eric Stewart, Keven Godley and Lol Creme who all shared in the writing and production. With classic 70’s hits like “I’m Not In Love”, “The Things We Do For Love”, “Art For Art’s Sake”, Dreadlock Holiday”… For those who missed the boat, this band is SO much more than those songs. Every album put out (11 in total from ’73-95) was a unique experience of progressive, quirky, pop-art rock, where every song stood out on its own as they played by their own rules. The current tour led by vocalist and bassist Graham Goulding, also included Rick Fenn (guitars), Paul Burgess (drums), both who have been with the band more than 40 years, along with multi-instrumentalists / singers Andy Park and Keith Hayman.
10cc’s FOH Engineer is Wayne Smart. This was his first tour mixing the band- the first show’s sound check being the first time he heard the band through a PA as there was no preproduction rehearsals, although he did get sent audio files for virtual sound check from the previous engineer. “My good friend Johnny Haskett sent detailed mix notes, which meant I was able to get time before the tour started to build a show file on a DiGiCo SD12 and to run a few mix passes thanks to Aaron Miller’s (who actually did the work of building the show file) generosity in giving me the use of his facility.”
[Wayne] Smart also had in depth chats with Damian Low [Monitor Engineer] on what to expect. “As for the mixing console, we did not tour FOH control, only monitor control. I used all in-house mixing consoles which consisted of; Midas Pro2, Yamaha Rivage PM7, CL5, Avid S6L, S6L 24, Profile and SC48, Digico SD12 and a Quantum 338, Allen & Heath dLive 3500, and the final show you saw was mixed on a Yamaha DM7. My favorite desk is the Avid S6L.”
Smart has been mixing FOH sound for over 30 years now, and he has also been studio mixing for the same amount of time. He first stepped into audio after acquiring a Tascam 388, making demos for local bands in the 90’s, and he now has a hybrid digital/analog mixing suite (recently in storage as he’s just moved to the U.S. in February).
Smart’s mixing techniques for live sound are very close to his mixing techniques for the studio he notes. “In the studio I mix into analog Tube Tech PE 1C’s (their version of the Pultec EQP 1A’s) and an SSL G384 Bus Comp that are strapped across Left and Right…
Live, depending on the desk (as you can see from above I am comfortable mixing on any desk put in front of me) and depending on what is available from the EQ plugin package I will put a version of the EQP 1A across Left/Right which then runs into a compressor, sometimes it will only be a compressor if there is no EQP 1A style eq, but I will always have a comp on L/R, which will typically be a 2:1 ratio, around 40ms attack (this will depend on how the on board/plug-in comp is reacting) with a 100ms release and soft knee, I’ll be looking at getting a -3 to -4 gain reduction on the metering. The big difference from my studio mix technique to live and the real ’secret magic’…ha-ha, is what I am doing with the FOH graphic, this is where I am creating the bulk of my sound. In the studio I don’t use one on L/R, live I most definitely do. This is where I’ll be tuning the PA to the room to how I want it to sound, knowing what I’ll be doing eq wise (which isn’t much) to the source sounds, more often than not I am mixing through quality PA’s so I am not looking to ‘fix’ the sound of the PA using the graphic, but to be ‘artistically creative’ with the PA.
Then my treatment of the individual source sounds are reasonably minimal, kick and tom’s require the most eq and whatever eq I use on the kick I’ll tend to use on the tom’s, especially if the kit is tuned well I find this works great in keeping consistency across multiple tom’s.”
“For all the other source sounds it will be a case of some filtering down the bottom when needed, a touch of cutting in the low mids at certain points and some slight boosting if required in the high mids/top end and obviously the eq I apply is dependent on mic selection as that is also EQing the source. Normally every source sound channel will have compression applied after the EQ, the amount of compression depends on what the source is, how I want it to sound and if it needs controlling or not. Sometimes I’ll sub group with some eq and compression, but for 10cc everything went direct to L/R. And I will create VCA/DVA groups to help with mixing, I like to have movement in my mixing as opposed to a static mix- example I will group Kick/Snare/Hat to a VCA/DCA and do lifts for chorus and drop back down for verses, etc, I will have 8 VCA/DVA’s, 1-K/S/H, 2-Tom’s/OH, 3-Perc, 4-Bass, 5-Gtr’s, 6-Keys/track, 7-Vocals, 8-FX.
“Following on from above and regarding my overall audio goals, I approach the mixing desk as being my instrument to be creative as possible and then at the same time to represent the sounds that are coming off stage as close as possible to what they actually are on stage, as I often like to say ‘I just make it louder and bigger’….;-)”
Smart says he is a big fan of effects, especially on the vocals. “But I am definitely a ‘less is more’ engineer. I’ll have a Pultec style EQ and a comp on L/R and EQ/Comps on sub groups if I am using them but normally no plugin’s on direct source sounds, unless there is a good reason to do so or there is something specific I am looking to do. Effects wise, I will normally have a room verb for the drums and a snare plate, no pre delay. I do not tend to put effects on the instruments unless something specific is required. For 10cc wherever possible I have a stereo chorus and a stereo slap delay or tape slap delay to get that 70’s vocal sound, some songs this was every evident, others subtle. And I will always be riding what vocal effects I am using to compliment the dynamics of the vocals.”
“I’d like to thank Damian Low for all his audio help, Joel White (backline), Dave Cobby (TM/PM), Johnny Haskett for recommending me… to Graham Goldman, Paul Burgess, Rick Fenn, Keith Hayman and Andy Park collectively known as 10cc. It was an absolute pleasure. And to my wife Victoria for tolerating my long periods of absence.”
Monitor Engineer Damian Low is using a DiGiCo SD11i with an MQ rack for this tour. As a long time DigiCo user he normally mixes on a Quantum 225. “This was a pretty easy conversion to get the show onto a smaller format console for some of the interesting stages we had to fit into for the guys without sacrificing too much of what they have gotten used to in Europe in the bigger venues with space for me to spread out. They work the most like a DAW kind of workflow to me. I can patch anything to anything else and out to any devices I want to use with relative ease. They’ve always been reliable consoles in my experience as long as they have been maintained by the hire company and the software has been kept up to date.”
One big selling point that Damian Low notes with this band is how clinical transparent it is when you don’t engage tube gain, etc. “The first time I got the band onto a DiGiCo they loved it. There wasn’t much I had to scratch my head about when the obscure ‘per song’ snapshot requests started coming in. So the choice was more or less made for me. I don’t think they realize just how snapshot heavy the show has become. But that’s how it should be.”
“The band have been great to work for,” Low adds. “I’ve been on the crew in one form or another for a long time now so it’s a nice atmosphere up on stage.” Low took over Monitors from Alan Bradshaw when he retired, which Low says was a huge honor and set a pretty high bar quality wise. “I’ve enforced making sure stage volumes are pretty consistent. So once we got a monitor file dialed in we try to just hit the meters the same every day to keep things easy day in day out. I’ve got a good feel for how each member of the band expects the songs to sound. So most of the time the requests are pretty minimal once the show is up.” Low added notes that the Austrian audio OC7 is a brilliant if somewhat large Tom mic for Paul Burgess’ drum kit but worth using. “I also run Live Professor for a handful of digital inserts and FX. I use about 10 plugins across a few chains doing everything and it’s never skipped a beat.”