I used to DJ a lot when I was a kid and I got sick of going into clubs and listening to really crap sound systems. So I went and bought my own and I’ve never looked back.

Nothing makes me happier than driving a great sound system and getting the best sound I can out of it. It brings a massive smile to my face. I remember when I did Earls Court a few years ago; we had 17,000 people in there and it sounded amazing. We had an EV X-Line out front and L-Acoustics V-Dosc delays. There wasn’t a seat in the house that couldn’t hear it crystal clear and to be in control of that sort of large format system and make it sound good is an incredible feeling.

I don’t mind doing studio work, but to be honest it kind of bores me. I’m not really interested in spending two days listening to the same snare drum and changing the reverb by milliseconds. I’m much more inclined to think: “let’s just do this on the fly and go for it and nail it first time”.

Half the time, I find that when I’m in the studio, I’m never quite as happy as I should be with something. There’s always a niggling thing that makes me wonder if I can make it sound a little bit better. There’s nothing wrong with that but you always walk away thinking “I could have done this” or “I could have changed that”. When you’re doing it live it’s more like: “right, let’s just fucking go for it and get in there and make it the best we can for the moment that we’re doing it.”

This is one of the reasons why I love analog desks. Don’t get me wrong, the Midas XL8 is awesome, but the way I look at it is the same way I look at the Yamaha PM1D. You’ve got this huge desk and loads of racks just to make the thing work and I find that kind of defeats the object of a digital board. I mean it sounds lovely and it is an amazing board, but in terms of setting it up, it’s almost pointless. It’s a little bit boring to tour with. You might as well go back to analog because you’re not really gaining anything. Especially when it comes to the way I like to mix or the way [Brit Row FOH engineer] Ian Laughton likes to mix. He’s an old-school man and actually likes to mix a band rather than do scene recalls and so on.

I’m not a fan of doing scene recalls either. If you’ve got something really complicated with massive changes going on in between the songs then it’s useful – we had to do it for the Pussycat Dolls – but how many times do you really do that when you’re mixing a rock band? You don’t, you get on the desk and you’re flying the effects and dialling it in as you go along. That to me is how mixing should be. It should be fun, it shouldn’t be a chore; it should be hands on. Personally, that’s how I love to mix bands, you know, putting some technique into it, rather than just hitting a button that says ‘next’ and then ‘recall’. There’s nothing more satisfying than whipping that delay in and getting the repeats bang on first time.

As far as the digital world goes though, the Digidesign boards are my favourite to mix on, mainly because the plugins on them are amazing, especially if you’ve got a few quid and you can get the pro pack on there with all the waves stuff. The echo farm delay is superb. This for me is just the most fun I’ve had mixing a band on a digital board. Every amazing hardware outboard or effect you can get, you can get it as a plugin for this desk – all the Fairchild stuff, all the Bombfactory gear, Pultec eqs for the kick drum and the snare.

Most of the time, I don’t bother with the onboard eqs, I just put Pultecs on every channel. I sometimes use the Waves seven-band eq, but I tend not to use the desk eqs that much. If you’ve got good mic placement and the pultecs, you don’t really need them. If you’ve eq’d the room well enough, then its surprising how little you need to do – a bit of high-passing here and there, but if the room and the system are good enough, it should sound great.

No time to process
I’m a big fan of using as little processing as possible, because nearly every time you use it, you’re adding something unnecessary to the chain.

When I start – with drums – I’ll find the drum tech and, as much as it probably annoys them, I’ll just sit there for a good hour until I’ve got them sounding right acoustically, even before I’ve turned the system on. If you’ve got the drums sitting right, everything else should just fall into place really. Everyone starts with drums, but I spend a little bit more time on them than anything else. Some drum kits can sound really shit. If the toms aren’t tuned properly it’s horrible.

What I tend to do is get my rack tom and pan it in, centre the first floor tom, pan in the second, then send that to a stereo group, pan that and put a Summit compressor over it; you’ve never heard a tom sound like it, it’s amazing. I know it’s an old school trick but so many people have forgotten how to do things like that. I still think it’s wicked if you can get the eighties rock drum sound on the drums.

I always get people coming up to me and asking me how I get that sound. I tell them to spend a bit of time and learn from the older boys. I didn’t get to where I am today by doing it all by myself. I’ve learnt from more experienced people by really paying attention to what they are doing.

Brit Row has been a massive support to me. I have to say that it definitely gave me a lot of the tools I’ve needed to do my job and it continues to support me and help and train me alongside different engineers, including Ian, of course. He is a really good mate of mine and when he goes out on mixes I almost kind of co-engineer it with him. We work really closely together to get a good sound, rather than him just diving on and me just tuning a system for him. I’ll be in there with him saying: “why don’t we try this”, and he’ll ask me what I think of something and if I can suggest anything to improve it, I will. We just vibe off each other and try to get the best sound we can.

Youth of today
I’m only 26, but already it’s good to see the youngsters getting through. There are even younger lads than me there now that are going out and doing smaller gigs and training days. The way it works is that they’ll go into the warehouse and work on a casual basis and if Brit Row can see potential in them, then it’ll employ them as an apprentice and they might go out on a five-man tour.
The company is really keen on bringing in the younger people and getting them out there. In ten years time, a lot of the older guys aren’t going to be doing this anymore, so it’s investing in the future as well. And it will interesting to see where tour companies that don’t do this will be in a few years time.

After working with guys like Ian for some time now, I really need to get my own band. I love system teching, but I’m just gagging to get behind a desk and mix everyday – it’s such good fun.

I want to get out there as much as possible, work with as many different people as possible, get mixing more because I can incorporate that with my system knowledge and hopefully get the best sound ever. That’s my goal really. It would be nice to get some of the younger lads under me and train them up as well. There are a couple of guys there that I think have got a really good attitude and are coming on. It would be great to get my own band with Brit Row and take a younger lad out with me, just like Ian did.
www.britanniarow.com