Having recorded his latest album A Different Hat with the RPO, Carrack squeezed the entire ensemble into the confines of the Royal College of Music's 400-capacity Britten Theatre. Playing three such intimate shows meant that space was at an absolute premium, so a pair of Yamaha M7CL48-ES consoles handled front of house and monitor sound, while an 02R96VCM was used to track the show for a DVD recording.
Using three Yamaha SB168-ES stage boxes, the house system was extremely compact but maximised the show's all-important sound quality. With the orchestra generating plenty of acoustic sound, the key to mixing the show was ensuring that Carrack's vocals could be heard, highlighting instrument solos, a good monitor mix and getting a good balance for the recordings.
"It'san unusual gig, a very small venue that's not looking for a lot of amplification. Very rarely do you do amplified orchestral work in a nice little theatre like this." says system technician Charlie Brown.
"It's about mixing Paul's voice on top of the orchestra and pulling other instruments out just enough to make it sound acoustic, but still live and full," adds Keith Birtwhistle, Carrack's long-term front of house engineer. "These are prestigious shows for him, the kind of unusual gigs that he really enjoys doing. And it's been going down a storm, the audience is loving it and it's sounding great."
Microphone placement comprised ambient condenser mics, to get an overall sound of the show, plus spot mics to pull out the solos and particular parts where necessary.
"It has been quite a journey from Paul's normal nine piece band to thissays monitor engineer Andy Parker. "He's a big fan of in-ear monitors, so my biggest challenge is trying to give his mix a high quality of sound and not sounding like a lot of very ambient mics on a very open stage.
"Thedifficulty in this environment is, if you are not careful, the orchestra can sound as if they're miles away from him, so it's been a challenge to mix but the M7CLis a great desk for the job. The shows have sounded fantastic, both Paul and I have been very happy with it."
In the Royal College of Music's in-house studio, engineer Steven Harrington was using the resident 02R96VCM console to track all three shows to ProTools for a future DVD release.
"We use the console for a lot of things, mainly studio recordings for students and live recordings from the College's various venues," says Harrington. "Permanent tie lines link the console with the live performance spaces so, for this show,32 channels of both digital and analogue feed are being tracked on the Yamaha console. That recording will then be taken and mixed for the DVD.
He continues, "Some of the original mics hung in the Britten theatre are fed via analogue ties, so we've got them on a separate layer, using the preamps on the desk. It's a pretty versatile console for every scenario we have and we frequently use every layer. It's got all the facilities we need in a compact footprint."
(Jim Evans)
