latest news headlines
DiGiCo’s Demon Days
It wasn’t too many years ago that the concept of a ‘virtual band’ taking the music world by storm seemed about as likely as Slayer teaming up with Dolly Parton.
Stranger things have happened, however, and cartoon creations The Gorillaz - featuring just the right amount of attitude and horror film imagery to guarantee parental despisal (and therefore a vast teenage fan base) - have gone from strength to strength.
Nowhere was proof of this more apparent than at Manchester Opera House, where The Gorillaz - or more accurately the ‘guest musicians’ on the band’s ‘Demon Days’ album - performed five completely sold out shows.
The performers included Shaun Ryder, Bootie Brown/Pharcyde, Roots Manuva, Martina Topley Bird, Ike Turner, Nenah Cherry and, of course, Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn. Sound for the shows was provided by Wigwam Acoustics, with DiGiCo D5 Live consoles at both front of house and monitors the perfect complement to the cutting edge Gorillaz concept.
The loudspeaker system featured a combination of flown and ground stacked d&b enclosures. A huge amount of input sources - including an eight-piece band, 15-piece string section and two choirs - meant that the D5 was the ideal console for the show.
”Even at the first meetings we were looking at over 70 channels,” says Wigwam’s Geoff Muir. “At that point - with a sold out event and space considerations in both positions, we realised that the D5 was the only realistic way to go.”
One of the many advantages of the D5 is that you can easily reconfigure the 32 internal processing channels to provide extra input channels. Working with Gorillaz FOH engineer Matt Butcher, Wigwam’s Basil Ferneley rapidly realised that the desk’s 96 inputs ultimately weren’t going to be enough.
“It’s a very useful feature and a doddle to do,” says Basil. “We ditched the processing channels, which means you can have 128 input channels. We ended up using around 110.”
The number of available input channels on the D5 meant that the mixing was a lot more flexible - no sub mixers, as you’d need with a console with less inputs. This, combined with the D5’s small footprint was very useful in a venue with a capacity of just 2,000.
“The biggest problem we had was that there were a lot of people and a lot going on, much of it in a relatively small space,” says Basil. It’s not a big theatre. You would have needed to put two analogue boards in there, which would have been impractical in an auditorium of that size.”
Another advantage of the D5 was that Basil could do a lot of preliminary work in the comfort of his own home. “I did a lot of pre-programming on a PC,” he says. “I set up the routing, the channel labelling, all the basics. Then when we got into the venue, I loaded it up and it was all there.”
Indeed, such was the D5s suitability to the task that what could have been a real challenge was relatively straightforward for the FOH team. “As it was five shows on the trot, it was worth setting up snapshots for every song. That saved a lot of faffing around and it worked very well,” says Basil.
10th January 2006
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
