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Concert Sound Scout Around at Hylands Park
“It’s only a scout camp” was the general reaction when one of the UK’s leading sound rental companies, Concert Sound, announced their involvement in EuroJam. But this was far from the traditional rounds of ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ around the campfire.
Held on the V Festival site at Hylands Park, Essex EuroJam was a two-week camp for over 10,000 Scout members from 40 different countries across the length and breadth of Europe, and 12 countries from the rest of the world. The idea was that during the 12-day camp, Scouts would learn about each other’s differences and similarities and that, by working together, they can make a positive impact on local communities and even the world.
But there was also a lot of fun to be had. The V main stage was put to good use for the opening ceremony on 29th July, a day of events entitled Celebrate Europe, a show for the two days of day visitors and the closing ceremony on 9th August. This last event saw a variety of acts from the Scouts and a surprise headline act from rising UK soul star, Nate James. There were also a variety of events somewhere on site every other night.
To accommodate this, the main arena used an EAW long-throw loudspeaker system controlled by five XTA DP226s and three XTA GQ600s. “We didn’t need too much processing here because the EAW system easily fills the bowl and we don’t have to install extra delays,” explains Concert Sound’s Assistant Hire Manager, Andy Davies. Andy was on site for the duration, along with Simon Wooler at the front of house position, Tim Peeling on monitors and Dave Ryan as System Tech for main arena. Apart from a small crew from PSL, who provided screen and lighting requirements, the rest of the crew as made up of Scout volunteers, including Production Manager Mike Bryan, who was in charge of booking all technical aspects of all the staged events across the site.
“We had eight small stages called sub-camp stages around the site each one of which has a DP226 controlling EAW KF300s. These areas were used for daily activities, to organise the Scouts and for little parties and concerts of their own including Sub-Camp Idol, which was pretty much as it sounds with its grand final on the main stage on the last night.
“There were two other small stages, both of which were of a similar spec to the sub camps and also the Plaza stage, which was an eight box JBL Vertec system with EAW BH760 subs, again processed with DP226s and a DP428 running monitors. Elsewhere the site featured an outdoor bandstand, a circus tent, an outdoor stage for staff entertainment and a dance venue.”
Microphone requirements for Nate James’s headlining performance were satisfied by a compliment of Audix mics supplied by their UK distributor, Stirling Audio. “Dave West at Stirling provided the new OM7 headed UHF radio mic, additional OM7 vocal mics, an OM6 on saxophone and a D Series drum kit of mics beefed up with a D6 kick mic and SCX1 overheads,” says Davies. “They all have incredibly high feedback rejection and we think the Audix are probably about the best out there at the moment. We’ve been experimenting with the OM7 over the past couple of weeks on a variety of different singers and they seem to work extremely well with both male and female voices.
“This event has been a masterpiece in mic’ing of all sorts of events: from very standard close mic’ing of bands, to very open PZM mic’ing of an entire stage for a stomp number. We had to mic up a choir who were also trying to do a dance number across stage at the same time, and all this with kids who have varying degrees of microphone experience. There’s been a lot of patient teaching of children on how to use hand held radio mics.”
And this teaching ethos from Concert Sound has applied to the entire event. “There was a lot of working with volunteers all round,” continues Davies. “We had to teach them not only what we were doing, but also how to behave on a big stage. A lot of people have never done anything other than put on a local Scout’s gang show, so to walk onto the V Festival stage has been a bit of an eye opener. It’s been volunteers all the way through to the production manager. A lot of these people have not only given their time, but have paid to be here as well and they’ve made this event a great success.
“This has been nothing like a normal gig, but we have a bit of a reputation as a company for putting on unusual events. I think that’s because we treat everything as being equally important. We had 10,000 11 to 18 year olds there who know what music they like and are very clued up about the music industry, and we’re very conscious of that.
“Our brief was to deliver a quality product that felt like a full scale event by any one of our major artists. So it may have been a scout camp in a field in Essex, but every ceremony and everything that happened in the main arena should have been like going to a gig, it should have been like a festival site. And we think we delivered.”
5th September 2005
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