Audio Pro

Some may question what a 65 year-old man is doing performing at a pop industry awards show.

But if nothing else you’ve got to take your hat off to Sir Paul McCartney for setting an example. It would have been easy for him to say, “I’ve got something rather important happening in my life at the moment; maybe next year?” Instead he showed a characteristic that’s often overlooked, the toughness and resilience that this industry demands.

Then there was Premier Brown’s favourite group the Arctic Monkeys keeping up the quintessential British rock act of surly insouciance, Alex Turner gently lampooning the Brit School whilst feigning a drunken loucheness that wouldn’t shame a member of the RSC. Bless him, and just when the show was in danger of becoming a Sharon Osbourne rantathon.

Much of what transpires at The Brits does so under the watchful eye of production manager Mick Kluczynski, of MJK Productions, who for many years has run a tight and successful ship, annually calling upon the bankable services of Britannia Row Productions (Sound), PRG (Lights) and XL Video.

It is such regularity and familiarity with the requisite production values that poses the greatest danger; it would be all too easy to implement a formulaic solution for every show. But as Bryan Grant director of Britannia Row (Britrow) stated:

“That is exactly what it’s not. Every year presents new demands; artists want ever more ambitious stage sets so myself and Derrick Zieba (sound supervisor) have at the very least, to finesse the sound system design.

“And there’s the inevitable onward march of technology; we’re always implementing new ideas and equipment into the mix, this year it was desks. Challenging yes, of course, but it definitely keeps us on our toes.”

In simple terms Britrow installed an EV X-line system, LCR at the stage end, with a muscular delay system down the cavernous Earls Court One (EC1) in London. The rig is onerous for two reasons, exhibition scheduling at EC1, and the very necessary installation of a raked floor for the actual Awards Show, required total PA system pre-rigging seven days before production load in. The other is sight-lines; camera shots dictate that the PA be rigged exceptionally high, certainly much higher than would be the norm for a concert here.

Chris Peters supervised PA system control, using the new EV NetMax software in which Britrow invested last year for the Foo Fighters tour. “From a system tech point of view I wouldn’t work without it now, it just makes the whole job much simpler.

“For this show we had multiple zones of delay and under-balcony fills, so a complex set-up and tricky to tune when you consider the unusually high trim of the line arrays. The user NetMax interface sits above the IRISnet so when you’re tuning the system, especially when you’re away from front of house, with Iris it wasn’t always obvious what you should do in response to tuning need; you had to dig through all the detail. NetMax as a matrix controller is far more intuitive and makes that whole process clearer.”

Desks saw the inclusion of Digidesign Venue, DiGiCo D5, and Yamaha PM5D and PM1D.

“Despite our decision to allow some variety of desks this year no increase in space was needed front of house or beside the stages,” explained Bryan Grant. “We’ve always had two desks flip flopping mix duties since we implemented a digital desk policy for this show some years ago.”

But the desk variety was one of the major challenges Zieba identified. “Having for years made the move and set the benchmark for producing these kind of shows with digital mix technology, we’ve now reached the point where we’re in a new digital environment with so many digital consoles available.

“Curiously that has benefited us. Here the ‘Glam’ stage where Mika performed had a complicated sound set up predicated on his astonishing stage set, all five tons of it. Mika had recently been touring with two D5s running the V4 software, so that desk rather took precedence by default. But in reality that proved an advantage, Amy Winehouse’s mixer, Robbie McGrath had no real problem shifting to that console for her band, and weren’t they a great bunch of musicians?”

Grant added: “We were lucky on the desk preferences, generally the artists designated to each of the two stages pretty much fell into the right camps to get the desk their engineers preferred.”

“On the other stage Pablo (Paul Boothroyd) had been using a Digidesign Venue for McCartney,” continued Zieba. “Likewise Davey Kirkwood for Rihanna; but for the other artists this was a completely different environment.

“Grubby (John Callis), who does Macca’s monitors had never operated any digital console before but we persuaded him to use the PM1D. A complete digital virgin for the top bill act, huge pressure for him, but he did a fantastic job, so much so he walked away with my flashcard so he has all his settings stored for possible future use. Stories like that vindicate what Britrow and I have been advocating all along. It’s the only sensible way to do these shows. We decided wherever possible to provide desk of choice initially because of McCartney; he was the highlight of the show and we wanted to give them as much as possible.”

So, front of house saw D5 and D-Show share duties, but what about effects? “Just three effects racks full of the more up market stuff,” said Grant. “A variety of quality tube compressors and a few M6000’s; that was it. It made me reminisce, ten years ago there used to be a small street of analogue desks out front, I recall us at a maximum with eight Midas consoles FoH, each with at least two racks; now we have a little cul de sac digital world, even if it is 100 m from the stage. Remarkable, really.”

Not the ideal distance to mix, engineers were in fact mixing to the delays, but inevitably a show of this dimension throws up other challenges, as Grant explained. “The challenges of the show are largely of their own making. What I mean by that is this: because this is not all that we do – we do a large variety of shows and tours – that means the people we involve, people like Derrick, John Gibbons, Pete McGlyn, Chris Coxhead, and the many others: All those various people go off and do other things, so none of them get in a rut, and they come back to this with new things and new ideas.

“Plus of course it’s not always entirely the same team, Derrick and John Gibbon have been together for the last few years, but the others rotate. There is no point in having a crack team of 12 core guys for a show like this, and then one getting sick and you’re stuck. We have built a strength in depth; that’s why we repeatedly get asked to do things like Live Earth, Live 8, Diana; those shows take at least 40 people, so we have a huge core team who all know what they’re doing and are not overwhelmed by doing it.

“Producing the sound element for a show like the Brits is huge if you’ve not seen it before, the sheer scale and all the machinery can be intimidating. Every year I put one or two new guys into the team; that keeps everyone fresh. Obviously we do a number of these shows during the year, maybe one a month, so the team rotates and grows. Just simple things like the electric string, the mic stands; they’re the things that can trip you up when you’ve got 200-300 mics up there.”

Microphones and In Ear systems and the whole issue of RF is a world unto itself for a show like this; apocryphal stories circulated EC1 pre-show of appalling interference from a remote fed autocue device, but it was alright on the night.

“It was brilliant,” said Zieba. “Sennheiser come in each year and calm the radio waves. Andrew Lillywhite and his team does an outstanding job, tweaking much of the transmit/receive electronics in performers personalised mics.
“This year of course has seen the inexorable rise of the Bling microphone and we had a few on this show; the Osbournes, Kylie, Fern Britton at the backstage interview; and Rihanna. Ironically hers was the only problem and that was down to lighting; it was so intense for her performance that on screen she appeared to be singing into a light-bulb, so she was obliged to use something more demure.”

“I would endorse what Derrick said,” chipped in Grant. “Sennheiser came on board as they do each year and did a great job. The relationship we’ve built over the years is such that we work seamlessly together. There’s no substitute for that when you’re flip-flopping world class acts every eight minutes, everyone knows what each other is doing, and is secure in the knowledge that it will be done. Stand at the side of stage and see stage manager supreme Steve Jones marshall the change over; it’s something to watch.”

One other challenge of the show was the huge amount of pyrotechnics. “Some of which they wanted to place in the monitor trough,” said Zieba with a wry smile. “But as I pointed out it’s called a monitor trough for a good reason and that’s how it stayed. But, interestingly, they were using #2 charges and naturally the local borough licensing authority tested the impact; 140 dB peak at the front of stage. For the show generally we had to adhere to one min LEQ 97 dB so a solution was required to make this achievable and maintain a real concert level show.

“The mitigation we used was to issue all the standing audience at the front with earplugs, and for those special audience members from the BRIT School who were allowed in front of the barrier and up to the front of stage, the wearing of the earplugs was mandatory.

“To the licensing authority’s credit they measured continuously throughout rehearsals and dress rehearsals, and took the very practical and sensible decision, that because of the minus 35 dB the plugs afforded this was all perfectly acceptable. Of course we did tell them our proposed solution in advance, and we explained that this was to ensure a proper live experience for the major part of the audience sat further back.

“They saw we had made appropriate arrangements and then confirmed them to themselves by testing exhaustively. The other saving grace in that equation was side fills. The only artist who needed them was Amy and in truth her stage sound was not overpowering. Obviously Kylie’s show and Rihanna’s need side-fills for the dancers to keep time, but levels required are much lower.”

Both Zieba and Grant were delighted with the night. “The great thing is there’s something for the kids, and something for our generation,” offered Zieba. “Musically I thought the performances by McCartney and Kaiser Chiefs were the high points of the evening, perfect and very exciting to hear.

“I’m so glad that McCartney had the time and opportunity to display what he’s all about, not just someone ‘who used to be in the Beatles’, he’s actually a bloody good performer. I’d never seen any of the Beatles together or solo, and I was surprised by the energy of what he did, and how fresh his songs sounded.”

Grant was equally impressed, “everyone in the house was on their feet for McCartney and yes, it was a hair on the back of the neck experience. So too the performance by Winehouse, you could feel the whole audience were behind her, willing her to pull it off. That’s why it’s so important that they have brought this show back to being broadcast live.”

For Zieba, “this was possibly the most enjoyable show I’ve done in a number of years. And that goes for my marvellous team from Britrow as well; from that point of view it was very smooth, no cock-ups, everyone felt they gave their best, and that enabled the bands to give of their best. That’s a good feeling.

“So many different and complex stage sets; extraordinary. For us we’re producing the best live environment we can, but it was interesting this year to see – from the excellent press reports - just how powerfully that translated into the broadcast shows as well.”