Live Mix: Melissa Etheridge
Abstract (summary)
Front-of-house
engineer Dan Wise and production manager/monitor engineer Jon Schimke discuss mixing live sound for Melissa
Etheridge and her band on her 2006 summer tour. Sound Image, of Escondido,
California supplied the crew with a JBL VerTec VT 4889 rig with VT 4880 subs,
which cover the main hall. Wise discusses his monitors, mixing board, microphones and monitor
placement for the tour.
Full Text
Melissa
Etheridge is standing center stage at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, Calif.,
in late June (the third show of her 20-plus-date tour), belting out a series of
favorites that fans have been waiting to hear since she stopped touring in 2004
after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Given her zip and the audience's
fervent response, it's clear that the evening was a marked success for both.
Etheridge's
tour kicked off in the middle of June and will run through the summer,
including dates in New York, Montreal and Chicago. The Oakland show came just
four days into the tour and front-of-house engineer Dan Wise (who has mixed for
Jason Mraz for the past three or so years) and production manager/monitor
engineer Jon Schimke have already hit a pace where Etheridge and her band -
bassist Mark Browne, drummer Fritz Lewak and guitarist Philip Sayce - cut
through the audience's ardor. Schimke has been with Etheridge since 1994, and
this is Wise's first long run with her.
Sound
Image (Escondido, Calif.) supplied the crew with a JBL VerTec VT 4889 rig with
VT 4880 subs, which cover the main hall. While the line array covers the orchestra and balcony seating,
the crew brought in a pair of Sound Image 1160s and a pair of Sound Image CF
boxes to cover the premium seats upfront. "I use those down front on every
tour that I do," Schimke says. "The 1160s have a 160-degree horn and
an 8-inch speaker. The CF boxes are single 12s with two inches. I also have
sidefills onstage, which helps fill out the stage and gives it more beef."
The sidefills came in handy, as the entire band is on personal monitors and
there are only two speakers onstage: a double 12-inch sub behind Browne and an 18-inch
sub and a Thumper behind Lewak.
For the
most part, the crew places four subs per side, although there is the
possibility of using five. "We use four because of the sight lines,"
Schimke explains. "Being the production manager, I lean into Dan for that
reason. I know what [the subs] can do and I won't put [Dan] in a bad spot, but
you gotta look at the whole picture." Wise answers that he isn't missing
the extra sub. Crown I-Tech 8000 amplifiers power the P.A.
For
checking system performance during the show, Wise uses Metric Halo's SpectraFoo
for reference. "I don't rely on it too much when I'm tuning the P.A., but
I do have it sitting there in case anything pops out during the show," he
explains.
STRAIGHT-AHEAD
MIXING
At FOH,
Wise is using a Midas Heritage 2000. "When this tour came around, I was
looking for small, easy and simple," he explains. "I'm happy with
it." In terms of outboard gear, Wise carries an ADL 1500 tube compressor
on Etheridge's vocals and dbx 160A compressor/limiters on the guitars and bass
to keep things even. The goal, he says, is to keep Etheridge's vocal on top.
"That's pretty much the whole thing," Wise says with a smile.
"Her band is really good, so it's pretty easy to mix. They mix
themselves for the most part. As long as her vocal is on top, I'm happy."
Miking
the band is straightforward, although Lewak's drum kit came in bigger than they
anticipated. "We were expecting three toms, but he came in with four and
he added a bunch of overhead stuff," Schimke says. "I laughed at some
of that stuff when I saw it, but it sounds good, so I can't complain." The
kick drum is miked with a Beyer M88 and a Shure Beta 91, the snare gets a Shure
57, Sennheiser 421s are used on the toms and hi-hat, and Shure KSM 32s mike the
overheads.
"We
went with the 421s because they sounded good," Schimke reports. "I
had been working with Dennis DeYoung and getting [Shure] 98s every day. One
day, they didn't have enough of them, so I asked if they had anything else.
They had [421s] and I thought, 'This is what drums sound like.' So I called
[Dan] up and asked if he had a problem if we tried 421s, and he didn't. Then I
called up the drummer to check with him, but he could care less. It just sounds
good."
Browne's
bass rig is taken DI with a 160A on top with slight compression. Sayce's 4×12
guitar cabinet and Etheridge's Bad Cat 2×12 amplifier are miked with Sennheiser
409s.
In terms
of vocals, the band sings through Shure 58s and Etheridge uses a Crown CM-311 headset
mic run through a Shure wireless. "We went to it four or five years ago
because she runs around [onstage] so much," Schimke says. "She liked
it, so it stuck."
Lewak and
his drum tech trigger a handful of drum loops from Ableton Live running on an Apple
PowerBook G4.
RECLUSIVE
MONITORS
As for
monitors, Schimke mixes
through a Ramsa SX-1 console. "It's been my favorite console the last 10
years. It sounds as good as the Midas stuff and it works better," he says.
"I use all the outputs - the bottom four are set up in stereo, which is
perfect because I have four stereo in-ear mixes. The rest are sidefill sends, the wedge send and four
reverb sends, so it adds up pretty fast. It's got 22 outputs and I use 19 of
them."
The band
went to personal monitors about 10 years ago, although Sayce pulls the right
ear out to listen to the sidefills. Schimke upgraded to Shure PSM 700s for this
tour. "So far, so good," he says of the new additions. "I kept
the 600s in the rack just in case [the PSM 700s] sounded different, but they
sound exactly the same. There are just more frequency choices. We started
having trouble on the last tour with just two frequency choices - sometimes it
would be a little dirty, so we have the option of more and it's nice."
Schimke
gives Etheridge a full mix,
while Browne receives a lot of overheads and the drummer gets most of the rest
of the band. "The guitar player is mostly guitar," Schimke says with
a laugh. "Imagine that."
At
monitor central, Schimke has an AMS Neve RMX 16 reverb for drums, a pair of
Yamaha SPX-990s for vocals and acoustic guitar, 10 channels of Amek CL01
compressor/limiters and a Yamaha PRO R3 reverb on Etheridge's voice. "It
fattens up her voice," Schimke says. "As soon as I turn it off, it
distracts her, so I leave all the effects on all the time.
"I
won the Ameks in a coin flip against Gary Hartung, who was mixing Pat Benatar," Schimke
continues with a laugh. "I was doing a Los Lonely Boys show and the owner
of the company [Sound Image's Dave Shadoan] called me up and asked if I really
needed 'em. I said I'd like to have them; it was on my list. He said, 'Gary
wants 'em, too.' I said, 'Well, let's flip for 'em.' They went outside, and I
won two out of three."
Schimke
says the job is pretty straight-ahead. "She comes out and plays, and
that's really the extent of it. She's as easy as it gets as far as mixing monitors. She doesn't even
look at me. Her wife sits behind me sometimes and she looks at her, so I try to
get in between 'em. It's become the running gag on our side of the stage."
David
John Farinella is a San Francisco - based writer.
Word
count: 1264
Indexing (details)
Narrow
subject
Pop
Musicians, Concert
Tours, Live
Sound Engineering, Live
Sound Engineers, Public
Address Systems, Mixers
(Audio Equipment), Microphones
Broad
subject
People
Title
Live Mix: Melissa Etheridge
Author
Publication
title
Volume
Issue
Pages
70, 72
Publication
year
2006
Publication
date
Aug 2006
Year
2006
Publisher
Penton
Media, Inc
Place of
publication
Berkeley,
Calif.
Country
of publication
United
States
Journal
subject
ISSN
0164-9957
Source
type
Magazines
Language
of publication
English
Document
type
Biography
Document
feature
Photographs
ProQuest
document ID
1295426
Document
URL
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1295426?accountid=144516
Last
updated
2012-09-17
Database
International
Index to Music Periodicals Full Text
No comments:
Post a Comment