Behind the controls at monitor world for the past seven months has been Fabian Quiroga, back on his DiGiCo SD8 desk since his departure earlier in the year from a lengthy stint with The Black Keys. The SD8 was provided by Eighth Day Sound's UK shop.
"After doing a few small tours with the band's previous console, I knew I had to go back to my DiGiCo board," he muses. "When I came into this camp, management wanted the transition of a new monitor engineer to be as smooth as possible and they asked if I could use the former board. Ugh, no. So for this European leg of the tour, I've gotten my SD8 back out with me and it has already made a huge difference. Mixing monitors on a SD console is just so easy and enjoyable. With this band, I have to be quite heavy with snapshots since there are so many electronic and acoustic elements and each of the six the guys play different instruments all through the set."
For this run, MGMT's Andrew handles vocals in addition to guitar, keyboards, and even a huge 70 lbs cowbell! Other frontman Ben does double duty on keys, plus some additional samplers and effects units. Both are complimented by guitar, bass, drums, and another player on guitar and keys-all of which sing, with the exception of the bassist.
"I believe we have a total of 46 inputs," he sums, "not including my stage talk backs. Plus, the whole band is on ears with the new Ultimate Ears UE Personal Reference Monitors and Sennheiser G3 belt packs, with the exception of the bass player, who is on a d&b audiotechnik M2 system (sometimes two if the stage space allows it). I also give the drummer a d&b Q-sub to give him a little more feel."
Being heavily entrenched with snapshots, and coming from an Avid world on my last two tours, Quiroga admits he was a bit scared about the change, "but after getting back on my SD8, it was like riding a bike... a very powerful, modern and awesome bike! I love that I could make global changes just by choosing the parameters I wanted the changes to ripple to. I always try to be very minimal when it comes to my monitor mixing; I tend to stay away from outside plug-ins, unless the band and the gig really require it. I have been in too many cases where the show was held off and sometimes stopped due to the use of outside plug-ins."
(Jim Evans)
