Mid-July saw health & lifestyle products company Herbalife hold four day Extravaganzas in Italy and Sweden, with up to 13,000 enthusiastic delegates at each. Featuring high production values, Yamaha digital mixing consoles ensured that the audio side of both events went according to plan.
With the motto ‘We Make It Happen’, the Avesco Group is a group of production service companies with a common culture, each an expert in its field and trusted completely by its clients. One of Avesco’s key global components is Creative Technology, whose UK audio arm, Dimension Audio, naturally shares the same philosophy of innovation, flair and technical excellence as the rest of the Avesco companies. Little wonder, then, that Dimension relies on an inventory of Yamaha digital consoles to deliver perfect sound at every event it works on.
Taking place in Belfort, eastern France, the Festival International de Musique Universitaire (FIMU) is a family-orientated event that takes place right across the city. This year, for the first time, the festival’s amplified stages all exclusively featured Yamaha digital mixing consoles.
Children’s television favourite Peppa Pig is currently on a major UK tour, bringing a first experience of theatre to thousands of toddlers and pre-school children. Coping with an inherently noisy audience without having volume levels too high is a tricky balancing act, but one which front of house engineer Colin Allen and a Yamaha LS9 console are well in command of.
Established in 1992, the German Phonographic Academy’s Echo Awards has become one of Europe’s most prestigious recording industry events. The winners of the pop music categories are announced in March and, this year, four Yamaha digital mixing consoles were on hand to bring the speeches and live performances to an international television audience.
The UK summer festival season is nearly upon us and, as always, there will be literally hundreds of Yamaha digital mixing consoles on duty in fields, parks and old airfields up and down the country. To ensure as many visiting band engineers as possible are up to speed with Yamaha technology, the company is running a series of technical training sessions in early June.
In amongst all the hype that surrounded singer Susan Boyle, it’s sometimes overlooked that she didn’t actually win the 2009 series of televised talent show Britain’s Got Talent. That honour went to dance troupe Diversity, which has just completed a highly successful UK tour with a Yamaha LS9 mixing both front of house and monitors.
SSE Audio Group will, as always, provide equipment and crew to many of the UK and Ireland’s highest profile festivals this year. But this is the first year the company is going ‘all digital’ at festival monitor positions, a decision made possible by the acquisition of additional Yamaha PM5D-RH consoles.
Early 2010 saw some of rock music’s brightest new talents take to the road around the UK and Ireland on Kerrang! magazine’s Relentless Energy tour. Comprising 11 shows in two weeks, with four bands playing each night, it was a tight schedule for the production crew. But with Yamaha M7CL and LS9 consoles on duty, it was a straightforward job for the tour’s monitor engineers.
The Dante-MY16-AUD card is now shipping, offering seamless integration of the latest audio networking technology with a wide range of Yamaha digital audio products. And the new interface is already proving its worth to Britannia Row, one of the UK’s leading audio production companies, whether it’s in touring, festival or club systems.
Take one very successful comedian who happens to be a highly proficient musician; add a number of the UK’s best regional orchestras; an Oscar-winning conductor and two Yamaha mixing consoles, put them all in a touring package and the result is something remarkable. Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, in fact.
Traditional music is at the very heart of Scottish culture, so the Scots Trad Music Awards is a significant annual event, highlighting the very best of the genre. Recorded for transmission by BBC Alba, a major Yamaha and Nexo rig provided the best in audio quality for the large invited audience.
Manchester-based sound company Audio Alliance has a solid reputation for providing high-end systems and staff to events for the UK and European corporate market. Whether it’s AGMs, shareholder meetings, awards ceremonies, seminars or fashion shows, Audio Alliance is renowned for delivering a high quality, discreet and consistently reliable service. These are all key reasons why the company puts its trust in Yamaha equipment.
‘Comedy is the new rock’n’roll’ is a much over-used cliché but, in the case of Michael McIntyre’s latest tour, it might just be true. Currently playing a remarkable 54 mainly sold-out dates in arenas from Aberdeen and Belfast to Bournemouth and London, it is undoubtedly one of the biggest grossing UK tours for several years. What better platform for Yamaha’s LS9 small format digital mixing console to really show what it’s capable of?
Late 2009 and early 2010 are giving many thousands of fans of Cliff Richard and The Shadows the very last chance to see both acts performing together, as their last joint tour swings through Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. While Cliff will continue to tour as a solo artist, two Yamaha PM5D mixing consoles are helping the (not-so) Young Ones to Move It on the same stage together for the very last time.
Summer outdoor concerts, featuring classical music and fireworks, have become so prevalent in recent years that nowadays it seems every town and village has its own version. So it takes something unusual for such concerts to stand out from the crowd. One series of events that does exactly that is Battle Proms - and with a Yamaha LS9 console at the helm, audiences can be sure that the shows sound as impressive as they look.
Attracting nearly 9,000 worshippers from across the south of the USA, the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has long featured Yamaha mixing consoles. However, this year the event’s audio system saw the use of 24 of Yamaha’s new TX6n amplifiers, which produced a notable improvement in overall audio quality.
When the Evangelical Lutheran Youth of America held its annual gathering in the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans in July, audio company Gand Concert Sound installed the largest ever flown Nexo rig in the USA. And with Yamaha amplifiers powering a significant part of the system - not to mention three mixing consoles at front of house - it was a truly special event.
2009 has seen Razorlight circumnavigate the world three times, playing to many thousands of fans both indoors and outdoors. The band has been a significant presence on the global festival scene this summer but, before the festival season began, the band’s front of house engineer Ian Laughton decided to change his mixing console of choice - to a Yamaha PM5D.
The introduction of the M7CL and LS9 small format digital consoles has seen a literal explosion in the numbers of Yamaha audio consoles in use at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the past few years. ‘Found space’ is the key theme for Fringe venues, which range in size from toilets and taxis to drill halls and sports arenas. Consoles which can handle an equally diverse array of spaces are ideal - hence the massive popularity of the Yamaha products. With this in mind, this year Yamaha Commercial Audio despatched two of its most experienced trainers to help users get the most out of the products.
Often maligned as the guys who hang around with musicians, nearly 600 drummers got their chance to be in the global spotlight on 13th July 2009, as they raised funds for a leading UK multiple sclerosis charity, setting a new world record into the bargain. And helping to keep them all in time was a Yamaha M7CL console.
Part burlesque, part cabaret, part performance art, part music hall, part backstreet German club - Camille O’Sullivan’s live shows are like nothing you have ever seen before. From suspense so profound that you forget to blink to laugh-out-loud humour, from swaggering, good time jazz to emotion so raw that you feel as if you’re intruding on someone’s private grief, it’s a remarkably varied gig. Add to that a diverse array of UK provincial venues and an entire touring production shoehorned into a long wheelbase Transit - and you have the perfect scenario for the Yamaha LS9 and new SB168-ES stage box.
Despite early rain, much of the 2009 Glastonbury Festival was spent basking in uncharacteristic sunshine. And contributing significantly to the quality of a weekend already being touted as the best Glasto ever, this year the familiar presence of Yamaha digital mixing consoles had grown to an unprecedented high number.
The buzz created by internet video sharing is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool for companies across the globe. And when you can arrange something spectacular, so much the better! So when mobile phone giant T-Mobile brought together over 13,000 members of the public in London to sing along to a variety of famously iconic songs, video of the event rapidly became a hit on the internet. And with five Yamaha digital consoles there to mix the massed voices - some tuneful, some rather less so! - the footage sounds just as good as it looks.
American songstress P!nk has recently embarked on a high profile world arena tour to promote her latest album Funhouse. And to make sure all the musicians and dancers have the best foldback sound, monitor engineer Horst Hartmann is manning a Yamaha PM1D.
The fourth edition of the Festival of Science was held at Rome’s Parco della Musica from January 15th to 18th 2009. In the four days of the event, 28,000 spectators took part in the fascinating program of meetings, exhibitions, shows, lectio magistralis and conferences, with the participation of scientists, philosophers and intellectuals.
Stadium Arena, a brand new 3000-capacity sports and entertainment complex in the Swedish city of Norrköping, is bringing previously undreamed of opportunities for sport and entertainment to the country’s 10th biggest city. But for a state of the art facility you need state of the art sound - which is why a comprehensive Yamaha distributed audio system is at the heart of the project.
February 2009 has seen 21 venues across the UK packed to the rafters with fans eager to see Errol Brown perform live for one last time. Fitting in all those that wanted to see the former Hot Chocolate frontman’s farewell tour was always going to be something of a challenge but, fortunately, with engineer Ralph ‘Rej’ Jane manning a Yamaha LS9-32 console at front of house, no compromises had to be made with either audio quality or seating capacity.
With the global appetite for energy continually increasing, in only its second year the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) has already established itself as a leading forum for change that is becoming more urgent by the year.
BUENA Park, Calif.─ The 51st Annual GRAMMY® Awards (CBS) held on February 8th at the Staple Center in Los Angeles had a performance line up and duets by the likes of Coldplay and Jay-Z; Al Green, Keith Urban, Justin Timberlake and Boyz II Men performing ‘Let’s Stay Together’; the Jonas Brothers pairing with Stevie Wonder; Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus;, Paul McCartney and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl; as well as performances by Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood, and many others. ATK Audiotek (Valencia, Ca.) once again provided live audio production and, once again, chose four Yamaha PM1D digital audio consoles, two at front of house and two for the monitor mix.
BUENA PARK, Calif.─February marks three notable TV broadcasts watched around the globe: Super Bowl XLIII won by the Pittsburgh Steelers who defeated the Arizona Cardinals held Sunday, February 1 at the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Raymond James Stadium, in Tampa, Florida (NBC); the 51st Annual GRAMMY® Awards (CBS) on February 8 at the Staple Center in Los Angeles; and the 81st Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater on Sunday, February 22 (ABC).
With 50 years in the industry under his belt, the professionalism and attention to detail that Cliff Richard pays to his live shows are well-known. In November he did a three-week UK arena tour to celebrate the anniversary, with a pair of Yamaha PM5D consoles wired for sound at the front of house and monitor positions.
As Barack Obama took the oath of office, becoming the first African-American President of the United States, Yamaha digital consoles were specified for many of the high profile and historic events held in Washington, Los Angeles and New York.
Despite a general atmosphere of doom and gloom currently surrounding the British economy, the determination of some media commentators to talk ourselves into a recession is proving, in some cases, to be rather wide of the mark. Unfounded stories of theatre productions closing ‘due to the credit crunch’ are one example of this, which are doing the live production industry no favours whatsoever.
It has long been recognised that, while language, culture and physical distance divide the people of different nations, music has the power to universally unite them. And when Austrian artist Matthias Loibner devised the complex Timeproject to bring together artists from north, south, east and west Europe, a Yamaha PM1D was the console chosen to tie the entire project together.
Snoop Dogg performing at the Winter Palace of Sport, Sofia on 18th September. Yamaha PM5D at FOH and monitors.
The Orchestra may only feature three former members of seven-strong 1970s icons The Electric Light Orchestra, but that doesn’t stop live audiences from continuing to be enthralled by the band’s live versions of ELO’s many classic songs, including Mr Blue Sky, Don’t Bring Me Down and Sweet Talkin’ Woman. And with two Yamaha digital consoles on the show, the sonic intricacies of these iconic songs can be reproduced with no compromises.
Yamaha consoles and networking systems in Umbria Jazz theatres.
Performers in Poland, Italy and Germany enjoy ultimate onstage sound, thanks to Yamaha consoles.
While the heavyweight likes of Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, The Killers, the Manic Street Preachers and The Cribs were rocking out on the Main and NME stages at this year’s Reading and Leeds festivals, three other stages at the twin events featured considerably longer daily line-ups of talent. And a vital element were Yamaha digital consoles.
Self-styled ‘odd pop’ band The Hoosiers are playing an extensive array of festivals this summer and their front of house sound engineer Trevor Gilligan is taking his Yamaha LS9 console along to every show as well.
How a front of house and monitor sound engineer, very fond of analogue, switches to digital and in two years explores the entire Yamaha range from the DM1000 to the PM1D… Florent Bergerot’s journey is very interesting; it proves that anybody can move over to a digital console, and challenges lots of the clichés still floating around about the sound engineer personality and the reliability of this new equipment.
The sun shone signalling the start of summer’s arrival and a May heat wave for London. The perfect weather for the Global Day of Prayer held outdoors at London’s Millwall Football Club, New Den Stadium. The event aims to help people of any age apply the gospel and biblical teachings to their every day life. And with a little help from Yamaha, some lightning quick technicians and not to mention a 200-piece choir backed by an orchestra and band that is exactly what some 15.000 happy worshipers encountered.
The Deutsche Phono-Akademie e.V. (German Phono Academy) has been celebrating this year's Echo Award ceremony with a major TV show production. The event took place in mid-February at Berlin's congress centre, the ICC. Echo has been around since 1992 and is the second biggest music prize in the world, after the Grammys. It is awarded annually to the most successful national and international pop artist. The audio technology of the "live on tape" event is a particular challenge for everyone involved, as the TV show, star-studded with lots of top international acts, has to be broadcast with a time shift of 70 minutes. Production is faced with the challenge of providing each and every artist with an environment for their performance that is identical to that of their own concerts.
14 years after the public was first introduced to the Irish dancing of Riverdance, there are still usually at least two touring companies on the road at any one time performing a full theatre production of the show. This year has so far seen tours in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, China and Taiwan, with a tour in the production’s native Ireland also in full swing. And at the heart of them all are Yamaha PM5D audio consoles.
All Starr tour is currently bringing its lineup to 31 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
This spring, the Eurovision Song Contest took place for the 53rd time. 43 countries took part and 25 made it to the final on May 24th in Belgrade. A huge technical and logistical effort was put into the grand finale of the Eurovision show, which has been run every year since 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), making it the largest live production TV event in Europe. Just the rehearsals for the entire production took two weeks...
Taking place in the legendary Somerset fields of Worthy Farm from 27th-29th June, the 2008 Glastonbury Festival will see a major ‘first’ taking place, thanks to Yamaha and South West Audio. It will be the first time a major stage at a major UK festival has enjoyed the benefits of 24-bit 96KHz, digital audio from microphone right through to power amp.
Irish vocalists Celtic Woman currently on tour in the U.S. promoting their latest cd.
Having been conspicuous only by their general low profile since the tour to promote their second, eponymously-titled, album in 1997, the avant-garde Portishead have finally hit the road again to support their third major recording… appropriately titled Third.
Talent contests - in a wide variety of different types - are currently one of the most globally successful television formats. And one of the highest profile - the X Factor - has just begun a UK tour with, for the first time, Yamaha digital consoles at both the front of house and monitor positions.
Taking in a wide variety of venues, including five consecutive nights at London’s Shaw Theatre, Boy George spent most of February wowing UK venues on his Songs That Make You Dance And Cry tour.
Accompanying front of house engineer Jimmy Sarikas throughout has been a Yamaha LS9 -32 console, which was not only mixing the auditorium sound, but also doing two completely separate sets of recordings of every show.
Clair/Showco Provides Production for Band's It Won't Be Soon Before Long Tour.
Even festivals equipped with the more conventional analogue mixing desks are gradually moving into the digital
age. This also applies to the W.O.A. Wacken Open Air, popularised by the movie “Full Metal Village” by
director Sung-Hyung Cho.
Fast-rising indie rockers The Pigeon Detectives spent much of 2007 tirelessly touring to promote their debut album Wait For Me. With slots at many of the UK’s major festivals followed by a headlining tour in the winter and another tour booked for May 2008, the band’s following is rapidly increasing, drawn by a unique sound which is mixed in the live environment on a Yamaha LS9 console.
"See What's Driving the Future" was the motto of the 62nd International Motor Show (IAA) at the Exhibition Centre in Frankfurt am Main. The show ran between 13 and 23 September 2007, with the largest automobile manufacturers in the world presenting their latest models and many technical innovations. Around one million visitors came to view the spectacle beneath the gigantic, 257-meter exhibition centre tower.
August 25th 2007 saw 1.2 million people turn the city centre of Essen, in Germany’s Ruhr region, into a giant party as the Love Parade filled the city’s streets with a procession of floats, all with loud PA systems playing the latest dance music.
In Paris, the Fête de la Musique has long been associated with a free Ricard SA Live Music concert. This evening entertainment featuring several groups takes place at Place Denfert-Rochereau in cooperation with Fonds d’Action and Initiative Rock. This year's event sees some major technical novelties - two PM5D, six AD8HR and an EtherSound system!
With an ever-increasing workload, Mansfield-based Entertainment Sound Specialists (ESS) is now one of the UK’s major concert sound providers.
BUENA PARK, Calif. - Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc. announces that the first live use of the new DSP5D expander for the Yamaha PM5D console is taking place on the Dream Theater tour. Hired by Dream Theater, independent engineer Randy Lane is mixing front-of-house. He selected Clair Brothers to handle production for the tour in the U.S. and internationally. Lane's vast live credits include Spin Doctors, Collective Soul, Bush, Fuel, Three Doors Down, Alter Bridge, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai, as well as John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater on their G3 Tour.
Christophe Génix is one of the pioneers of in-ear monitors. The aural precision allowed by these personal wireless monitors has led him to constantly refine his mixing equipment – switching from analogical to digital a few years ago. Now, he will only work with a PM1D, especially with Indochine concerts…
Yamaha’s large format consoles have been a regular feature of the world famous Glastonbury festival for many years, with a selection of PM5Ds continuing that fine tradition on the Pyramid and John Peel Stages this year.
It’s no exaggeration to say that if a piece of audio equipment can survive the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, one the world’s most popular and critically acclaimed cultural events it can survive pretty much anything.
Two of the UK’s highest profile live events of 2007 took place at London’s brand new Wembley Stadium at the beginning of July - and a Yamaha DME64N digital mix engine was a fundamental part of both events.
For all their technological features, there are some applications where using a digital console in a very straightforward manner is most appropriate. Mixing monitors for Elton John is one, as the Rocket Man’s monitor engineer Alan Richardson confirms.
When Sony Ericsson launched its latest Walkman range, it wanted to ensure the launch was as high profile as possible. And ‘high’ turned out to be the operative word - with a record breaking live gig by Jamiroquai, taking place at 35,000 feet in a chartered aircraft!
There’s a certain irony in that, for all the logistics of massive, high profile live music tours, it’s often live shows designed for a very young audience that prove just as gruelling and technically challenging for production crews.
Marquee Audio has supplied Surrey-based PA rental company Kinetic with a pair of super-compact Yamaha LS9 digital consoles which have been deployed on a 30-date tour of the UK by Barbara Dickson. The larger of the two desks, a LS9-32, has been used by Kinetic's Gareth Fox-Williams to mix front-of-house sound, provide eight monitor mixes, and multi-track the shows for future possibilities as a live album.
It’s often the case that the most influential musicians, and those most loved by their peers, are those who never become the highest profile, household names.
Jim Capaldi was one such example. The drummer and lyricist was not only a key member of the highly influential Traffic, but he also had significant solo success and enjoyed collaborations with many of the world’s greatest musicians - Hendrix, Santana, Clapton, George Harrison and Paul Kossoff to name just a few.
Now becoming an annual fixture on the UK’s ever-expanding festival calendar, the Camden Crawl brings a brand new approach to the genre. Instead of multiple stages in the countryside, the Crawl has brought together 15 different indoor venues - pubs, clubs and restaurants - to put on a wide array of different acts and styles of music, from the famous to the unknown, mainstream to the esoteric.
Texen and PM5000/M7CL on the bridge!
Razorlight seems to be a band that enjoys incredibly hard work. Hardly off the road since July last year, the band has been relentlessly touring Europe, Japan, the USA and Canada, their extraordinary popularity meaning that they undertook two UK arena tours in just five months!
Sunday 11th February saw the great and the good of the British film industry assemble at the Royal Opera House, as the annual BAFTA Film Awards enjoyed its 60th anniversary.
It’s a very special type of birthday party that is spectacular enough for an international superstar to be flown in to give a private performance at London’s luxurious Dorchester Hotel.
In a year that included a unique blend of the old and the new, Yamaha Commercial Audio led the pack once again on 2006 US tours using PM1D, PM5D and M7CL digital consoles, as well as PM5000 and PM4000 analog consoles for front-of-house, monitors or both.
1Live Krone 2006 brought a new concept to a new venue. A set consisting of four interconnected stages was built in Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle. The idea was for the sound on each stage to be clearly location-specific – the sound design made use of a large range of systems in order to be able to provide optimum directional reference in every given position where someone would be listening.
With the solo career of Mancunian legend Morrissey continuing to go from strength to strength, the former Smiths vocalist spent most of 2006 touring the world to promote his UK chart-topping album ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’, including playing two major sets of UK dates and many of Europe’s leading summer festivals.
When sound engineer Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Sargeant first set eyes on a digital console, he admits that his first reaction was fear. The incident took place in the USA, as he was preparing for a tour with Snow Patrol in his capacity as the band’s monitor engineer.
In just one day in October 2006, Marco Borsato confirmed his status as the most popular artist in the Netherlands and Belgium by selling out all 320,000 tickets for his concert series. The ten concerts were staged in the Gelredome stadium in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and the event’s production company, The Entertainment Group, hired Netherlands audio production company Peak Audio to take care of the audio system.
Monitor engineer Eddie Mulrainey recently took Yamaha’s M7CL out on tour with The Beautiful South to promote the band’s new album, ‘Superbi’ (www.beautifulsouth.co.uk). It’s his first time on the road with a digital console - what made him ditch analogue?
The success of the French Tour Âge tendre et tête de bois, between March and June 2006, surprised even its producers! It could not have been organised without the latest Yamaha digital solutions: two M7CL-48 consoles, 4 AD8HR preamps, one DME 64, and everything connected by an Ethersound network on Cat5 cables.
Two Yamaha PM1Ds were used for the opening ceremony of the World Cup 2006 on Friday, June 9th before the first match at Munich’s Allianz Arena. In the event, in which about 1800 people took part on the pitch, 52 wireless microphones and various audio players had to be controlled. The complete processing was achieved by the PM1Ds with no additional external 19” devices.
8 Yamaha M7CL were operating continuously for four weeks at the four biggest fan festivals of the FIFA World Cup in Germany - and there were 0 failures!
The 6th of June 2006 saw an exceptional concert take place in the Olympic stadium in Munich. Featuring works from Wagner to Bernstein performed by Placido Domingo, soprano Diana Damrau, pianist Lang Lang, the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and choir, the Bavarian Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra and choir and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra all together on stage, with an interlude from the German band “die Söhne Mannheims” featuring Xavier Naidoo, the event can only be described as truly spectacular.
First published in 1952, the New Musical Express or NME, has always based its success around being the champion of new and emerging rock music. It was the first organisation to publish a British singles chart some 54 years ago and since 1953 has organised regular awards and poll winners concerts across the UK with the aim of promoting tomorrows big stars in front of an ever demanding audience.
Holiday On Ice is a part of Joop van den Ende's Stage Entertainment Group, Europe's leading live-entertainment production company and with five shows performing in over 20 countries each year. “Holiday On Ice” is by far the most international and long-running quality entertainment show around.
"I first became acquainted with a Yamaha PM5D in July last year just before I was due to tour with David Gray," said freelance sound engineer Mark Jones who mixed front of house for the highly acclaimed artist. "I wanted to use a digital desk on the tour to get the right sound quality so I took a PM5D along to David Gray's Church Studio’s in London where I put it through its paces for a few days. It didn't take long to get to grips with it and I found it intuitive and straightforward to use."
Another resounding Brit Awards at Earls Court was confirmation ‐ if confirmation were needed - that all things within the British music business are in remarkably good health; including the application of the latest audio technology and it’s leading adherents.
Equipment on monitor, recording and communications duty at the huge event. On the live event scene in Italy (and at European level), 2005 will without doubt be remembered as the year of the mega-concert by raunchy Italian rocker Luciano Ligabue at Reggio Emilia’s Campovolo.
A PM1D and a PM5D at Piazza del Quirinale for the New Year’s Eve concert.
When a confirmed analogue man like Status Quo’s sound engineer, Andy May, admits to being a convert to digital mixing desks, particularly Yamaha digital desks, it makes one wonder if the days of analogue mixing are numbered!
For their recent UK tour, The Coral’s sound was mixed using Yamaha digital mixing desks. Leading Liverpool based pro audio specialists, Ad Lib Audio, supplied a PM5D for Front of House and the latest edition to their stable, one of Yamaha’s new M7CL desks for monitors.
The fourth International Circus Festival took place at the Palais des Sports in Grenoble between 25th and 28th November 2005. After three days of rehearsals, the greatest circus artists faced a jury The final performances, presented by the famous television presenter Jean-Pierre Foucault, were broadcast on French national television. The audio system design had to overcome many technical difficulties, but, Auvitran, Izo [service provider], Nexo, Palais des Sports [production and accommodation] and Yamaha joined together to make this Festival a real technical success. The solution involved setting up one of the first French “totally digital” systems, using Ethersound technology over the entire signal path.
Ian Wheaton is a veteran of touring theatrical comedy. After eighteen years, many of them spent happily mixing front of house for Victoria Wood, he finds himself at a quite different mixing juncture. Providing sound for the sensational new stage hit Little Britain does present some changes to what he’d have experienced with Wood. It is a show composed of TV sketches, and transferring those to the stage presents its own peculiar challenges - but it’s the rather alien looking desk he has out front that first catches the attention.
Umbria Jazz is one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious festivals. Every summer, Perugia is peacefully invaded by thousands of fans from all over the world, for a full-immersion of jazz and other related genres – seen and heard in the town’s theatres, restaurants, bars, parks and squares. Of all the locations, without doubt one of the most fascinating and picturesque is the central Piazza IV Novembre, which is transformed from a busy crossroads surrounded by monumental buildings during the day into a suggestive open-air theatre at dusk.
“Luglio suona bene” (July sounds good) was the name chosen by the Musica per Roma Foundation for its month-long calendar of concerts with a wide variety of music, staged in the Cavea, the outdoor amphitheatre of the Parco della Musica Auditorium, designed by world-famous architect Renzo Piano for the Eternal City.
Most readers will be well aware that His Holiness the Pope addressed a huge audience of over one million young people during the World Youth Day event staged the weekend of Aug 20/21 on Marienfeld aerodrome near Köln.
The Point Arena in Dublin was recently host to a Thin Lizzy concert, held on Phil Lynott’s birthday, the 20th August, to commemorate his life. Called ‘The Boy is back in Town’, the gig also celebrated the unveiling of his statue in Grafton Street.
A recent convert to Yamaha digital mixing desks is Alistair Artingstall, a freelance monitor engineer working with leading Reading based rental company SKAN PA Hire. Artingstall was the monitor engineer with top piano band Keane on a recent US tour when SKAN PA’s Ant Carr, the tour’s system technician, who had previously introduced him to Yamaha’s DM2000 desk, introduced him to a Yamaha PM5D digital desk.
The world’s largest concert, staged in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Russia – an enormous media event - Live 8 “The Long Walk to Justice” was part of aworldwide initiative to calls on the leaders of the world’s richest countries to for the complete debt cancellation, more and better aid and trade justice for the world’s poorest people.
The fifteenth edition of the Primo Maggio (May Day) concert, the traditional music marathon organized by Italy’s CGIL, CISL and UIL trade unions in Piazza San Giovanni in the centre of Rome, before an estimated crowd of over half a million youngsters, also had wide media coverage. In fact, the concert, during which comedian/TV personality Claudio Bisio presented 27 artists and bands, was aired live nationwide by state broadcaster RAI’s channel 3 and by RAI International sat channel the day after too.
After more than thirty years on the road with Neil Diamond, sound engineer Stanley Miller is now approaching one of his long targeted goals, “Putting as much of the signal path as possible into the digital domain is ‐ for live sound ‐ one of the best ways of ensuring signal integrity. Besides which, in the digital domain there’s no buzz, no hums.” He said this back in the early nineties, at the time he was experimenting with multiple Yamaha ProMix 01s and 02Rs for front of house control ‐ he’s come a long way since then and life in some ways has become easier.
“For a band who’s sold eight million records and just received a Grammy I have to have the best.” Monitor man Billy Flores talking excitedly after a recent TV appearance by the Black-eyed Peas.
“This was the first time I’d used a PM5D on tour,” said Andrew Thornton, the sound engineer for Daniel Bedingfield’s recent highly successful UK and European tour during March and April. Yamaha PM5D digital mixing desk was used on monitors throughout the tour which took in over 20 venues. “The desk stood up very well throughout the tour and managed to keep up with Daniel’s monitor needs,” he said. “Daniel knows exactly what he wants and requires different mixes for every song. No analogue desk could have kept up with him”
While the remaining members of Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor, were pleasantly surprised to find that - twenty-one years after their last tour - Clair Brothers Audio is still the biggest PA rental company in the world, some things had changed, and in a subtle, quite ephemeral way.
There’s no need to add hyperbole to this story, the tragedy in the Indian Ocean touched everyone; the fact that members of the music industry took it upon themselves to raise funds with a giant concert at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium is no more or less noble than the countless thousands of school children, some just infants, who willingly surrendered their Christmas bounty to help others less fortunate.
On Sunday 12 December, the successful musical ‘We Will Rock You’, featuring the songs of Queen, opened in Köln, Germany. To celebrate this event, a short preview was broadcast the day before by ZDF during the popular show ‘Wetten Dass’.
Stewart Chaney, the man who is Plus 4 Audio, was already a convert to Yamaha digital mixing desks before he considered his latest purchase of a PM5D. “We already own a couple of DM2000s and a DM1000, and frankly they’ve been fantastic, they never stop working.”
The fifth Eins Live Krone awards ceremony was held in December 2004. This is the most important German radio award and consists of the following categories: best band, best comedy, best album, best female artist, best male artist, best newcomer, best live act, best single and a lifetime achievement award.
2005/02 - PUR klassisch 2004 was undoubtedly one of the largest and most complex events of 2004. The show, which included the 40 members of the German Pops Orchestra, was possibly also one of the largest in the history of German rock music.
2005/02 - PM1D consoles on FOH and monitor chores on the i-TIM Tour
2005/02 - “We’re shifting anything up to a 1000 CDs a night”, said John Fredericks out on the latest Wet, Wet, Wet tour. If more evidence were needed that Clear Channel’s latest concept for enhancing the live experience of concertgoers is a success, this is it. “This is the first time this has ever been tried in an arena touring situation, but the appetite for the live recordings is definitely there.”
2005/02 - Following an agreement inked by Yamaha and the Proel Group, that enables the Sant’Omero based manufacturer to offer its clients a prestigious audio package consisting in its array and line array systems (Edge and Axiom) and Yamaha PC9500N power amps, a sound reinforcement system was supplied for “Sol Music”, one of the leading events for the music world in Sicily.
The recent tour by McFly has seen them break conventions, eschewing the quick and easy route to Arenas, McFly and their management have determined that some useful experience can be gained from touring the theatres and town halls of the UK. It’s experience that will stand them in good stead as their star rises further in the pop firmament.
For some artists a quick spin round the US and Europe, with a brief visit to Japan and Australia constitutes a ‘World Tour’. Sarah Brightman it would seem is made of sterner stuff.
Following a demonstration at their warehouse earlier in the year Adlib Audio had no hesitation in ordering the new Yamaha PM5D. Adlib are growing force in the Pro Audio touring industry, their recent acclaimed outing with David Bowie confirming their rightful position in the market place; Director Dave Kay, out with the PM5D on the current Scissor Sisters tour, explained the background to this significant purchase.
From a floating stage on the romantic waters of the so called Weimarhallenpark, the orchestra “Staatskapelle des Deutschen Nationaltheaters” enchanted its highbrow audience on a warm July summer night with a fascinating musical performance of works by Russian composers from the late 19th and 20th century.
11/2004 - Madonna’s current ‘Invention’ tour is a presentation of quite staggering complexity; flanked, backed and crowned by huge LED screens which track around the stage with almost equal energy to the Queen of rock herself, the technology employed to make this all work seamlessly is needless to say, state of the art.
11/2004 - At least seven Yamaha PM1D’s are currently in use on major London West End Musicals according to theatre sound specialist Orbital who have supplied the consoles from their rental stock.
The Broadway extravaganza Bombay Dreams, the story of a slum boy who rises to fame and fortune making "Bollywood" movies, features a score combining traditional Indian rhythms, pop music, hard rock, soft ballads, lots of ethnic percussion and surround sound. Show sound designer Mick Potter is responsible for making sure these sounds – foreign to the majority of western audiences – are music to the ears of the patrons at New York’s Broadway Theatre.
„Tabaluga und das verschenkte Glück““ on Tour 2003/2004: FoH sound engineer Bernd Buthe reports on the planning, rehearsals and shows for the mega production.
The enormous success of this year's concerts have proven that The Ten Tenors know how to captivate their audiences with their Australian charm and outstanding voices.
Yamaha mixing desks were much in evidence at the recent Soul Divas concerts in Germany...
07/2004 - More used to the cries of ‘Toro, Toro’ from the crowd as fearless macho matadors pit themselves against enraged Spanish fighting bulls, Madrid’s famous amphitheatre, the Plaza de Toro De Las Ventas became the scene of MTV day Spain 2004 for one day only on the 22nd of June.
07/2004 - Europe’s most prestigious music awards, the DMA ECHO Awards, has taken place on June 6, 2004 in Berlin’s International Congress Centre (ICC). About 5.8 million viewers watched the ceremony – time delayed – on TV.
07/2004 - Whilst the US celebrated Independence Day and Greece celebrated their Euro 2004 win, engineer Clive Franks commemorated the 30th anniversary of an album he recorded with Elton John (Caribou) hitting the #1 spot with a live show.
07/2004 - The highly acclaimed, 70-piece Performing Arts Symphony Orchestra will be touring with a Yamaha DM2000 digital mixer as it embarks on a hectic schedule of 30 outdoor concerts at stately houses throughout the UK this Summer. The console was supplied by leading audio supplier System Sound who purchased the mixer from Marquee Audio.
07/2004 - One of the most important sporting events on the African continent took place from 24 January to 14 February 2004 in Tunisia: the African Cup of Nations.
06/2004 - The 19th Victoires de la Musique award ceremony took place on 28 February at the Zénith arena in Paris. The French company Silence, which was responsible for the sound, collaborated with Yamaha for the event and set up an impressive array of consoles for FOH, monitors and the outside broadcast sound truck. These included two PM1Ds, six DM2000s, one DM1000 and the first PM5000 ever used "officially" in France…
06/2004 - The live show “50 Jahre Rock”, aired on April 17th 2004 by Germany’s leading broadcaster ZDF, attracted an audience of over 5,67 million TV viewers and approximately 10.000 fans at the Preussag Arena in Hannover.
06/2004 - The Blue Man Group is a phenomenon not dissimilar to that created by River Dance and it’s imitators, in that it contains no dialogue, only action, but the comparisons end there. In the US where it originated the New York show has been running for twelve years, while shows in Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas continue to draw the crowds. Now the production is making its first tentative dip of a Blue toe into the chilly waters of Europe, Blue Man opened at the Potsdammer Theatre, Berlin on May 15th.
06/2004 - The 450,000-strong crowd that flocked to Rome’s historical Circus Maximum on May 16th hear a star-studded cast of artists perform at Quincy Jones' humanitarian concert "We Are the Future" was part of multi-media event in the true sense of the word. MTV Italy broadcast the concert live and aired edited versions of the event in the UK, USA and other countries.
06/2004 - Following their triumphant appearance at the Brits, where they received a lifetime award for their “Outstanding contribution to Music”, there’s been no escaping Duran Duran of late. Since the current tour was first announced the bookings have continued to grow and grow ‐ they’ve had to visit Wembley three times to satisfy the demand for over 100,000 tickets.
04/2004 - Following their triumphant appearance at the Brits, where they received a lifetime award for their “Outstanding contribution to Music”, there’s been no escaping Duran Duran of late. Since the current tour was first announced the bookings have continued to grow and grow - they’ve had to visit Wembley three times to satisfy the demand for over 100,000 tickets.
03/2004 - As The Darkness, Busted, and a host of others received their accolades at the recent Brit Awards, Yamaha digital mixing desks and Britannia Row Productions were once again contributing to the highly effective sound in the award venue, Earls Court 2.
03/2004 - Yamaha’s award winning digital consoles look set to further consolidate their marketing leading position with the introduction of the PM5D which combines the best of the DM2000 feature set with the operating style of the PM1D.
02/2004 - While the current fashion for bringing rock stars’ work into a stage musical often sees the lyrics of specific songs woven into the narrative, the latest big hit on a London stage, Tonight’s the Night, uses a more engaging device.
11/2003 - The current David Bowie tour is turning heads and hearts all over Europe, confirming what the critics have said about his latest album ‘Reality’; Bowie is back on top form.
11/2003 - Since April of this year sound engineer Ian Nelson has been out touring the world with Placebo, using a Yamaha PM1D to mix.
07/2003 - Troy Staton has worked with Eminem for just over three years now, using a V-dosc and d&b combination PA system supplied by Eighth Day Sound, and mixing on a Yamaha PM1D, a desk he loves.
07/2003 - 'If I Were a Rich Man' is probably one of the best-known songs from the musical 'Fiddler on the Roof'. Moreover, there was no doubt about the richness of the sound provided by a Yamaha DM2000 digital mixing desk in the latest production starring Paul Nicholas in the role of dairyman Tevye.
06/2003 - Peter Gabriel’s all too brief foray through the arenas of the UK has been turning heads, raising eyebrows, and generally creating much excitement with it’s impressive blend of theatre and concert touring technology.
06/2003 - King Crimson is about to embark on a labyrinthine tour of Europe, embracing such far-flung locations as Moscow, Naples, Warsaw, Montreaux, Prague and Stockholm; sounds like the route for a James Bond movie, doesn’t it?
04/2003 - "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" - Live. Who'd have thought it? Even in the fantasy world of Thomas the Tank Engine trains don't always run to schedule.
03/2003 - "The feeling was this was nothing less than a positive move forward." Said Derrick Zieba, head of sound for the Brit Awards talking about the switch from analogue to Yamaha PM1D digital consoles.
03/2003 - Hamamatsu is the home of Yamaha, but being a small city in between Tokyo and Nagoya, it does not often host big name concerts. On 17th November 2002, however, Japanese leg of Prince’s ‘One Nite Alone 2002’ world tour stopped over in Hamamatsu with two PM1D’s in tow.
