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Digidesign Venue Manages Damon Albarn’s Unique Myspace Recording

Seasoned sound engineer Matt Butcher took Digidesign’s Venue D-Show system on an excursion to one of London’s less likely venues, when Damon Albarn selected the run-down Wilton’s Music Hall for a pioneering MySpace recording of his new band, ‘The Good The Bad and The Queen’, in front of 300 members of his fan club.

Butcher has piloted Albarn’s sound mix for the past 13 years — since the heady days of his chart-topping band Blur, via his world music excursions in West Africa and through to his latest, uniquely English manifestation.

The engineer started working with Blur just before Parklife — introduced to them by their LD Dave Byars. “Since that time I have maintained a good connection with [sound production company] Entec, who are a nice family PA/rental company.”

Having been put off by early digital boards Matt remained rooted in the analogue world until relatively recently when he was eased into the digital domain by Digidesign resellers, Marquee Audio.

His Venue induction took place at the 2005 Montreux Jazz Festival where he was visiting with The Bravery, and D-Show consoles were stationed in both the Stravinski and Miles Davis Halls.

“Although I didn’t have time to get my head around the plug-ins I again arranged some training with Marquee’s Andy Huffer. When I started looking into the Pro Tools capacity I realised how shamelessly easy it all was — the [D-Show] was very easy to navigate and the plug-in support was tremendous. I really liked the control surface and with this generation of digital desks you get a much more tactile feel than the earlier ones.”

And so he commandeered a Digidesign D-Show for a ten-day stint with Christian rock band Delirious? “I was so impressed that I also took it out on some further dates because again we wanted the capability to use Pro Tools, and the onboard effects are so great.”

Matt started out using the D-Show along with the Sidecar expander. “But because of space constraints I wondered if I could handle the mix on just eight faders? I tried it once and found that moving channels around was so easy I haven’t need to use a Sidecar since — it’s all done on the main surface.”

He is also delighted that the operating software enables him to control parts of the desk from an external PC. “It allows the system tech for example to adjust the level of infills and the Personal Q stereo groups out.”

But Matt’s real triumph came at the hugely idiosyncratic, 150-year-old Wilton’s Music Hall — billed as “the world's oldest surviving grand music hall”. His gymnnastics on the D-Show had the audience gasping as he dubbed up David Coulter’s renderings on saw and jews harp, changing the tap times on the Line 6 Echo Farm delay plug-in before panning the sound from left to right (and back) around the venue to deliver an almost techno-effect soundscape.

Featuring escapologists and acrobats the show unravelled “like a living organism”, he said, with comedian Harry Enfield in the role of compere in authentic Victorian music hall style. “I had done a couple of rehearsals and TV shows but this was the first ‘The Good, The Bad and The Queen’ show I had mixed in full, and it went through a number of different tempos. Damon was determined to use an ‘orchestra’ of vintage instruments such as ARP and MS10 synths, Hammond organ and jew’s harp in the Tom Waits style — which was part of the allure.

“Also the band themselves produced interesting textures. Tony Allen plays drums so lightly with amazing control — a mixture of dub, ska and jazz — while Paul Simonon has an aggressive dub bass style, Simon Tong delivering laid back guitar parts and Mike Smith on keyboards. It’s quintessentially English music.”

This set the sound engineer on his voyage of discovery aboard the good ship Venue. “And I discovered some brilliant things about it,” he confirmed. “The plug-ins were fantastic and the compressor from the Rane Serato series dynamics package proved to be the most incredible De-Esser I have used [when in dynamic EQ mode]. In fact it was ridiculously good. I have always had problems with essy vocals and have tried everything in the past — but because this works on a ratio basis it de-esses and it cuts the spill down the mics. Once you get the vocals right it’s half the battle won.”

He also used the Fairchild 660, Bomb Factory BF3A compressor and for reverb the RMX16 emulator on the TL Space. “The choice of plug-ins was just fantastic,” he repeated.

Drawmer plug-in gating was used on the drums — and flanging inserted across the whole mix to dramatic effect a couple of times in the set.

Matt Butcher had upgraded from a Pro Tools LE system once the band announced that they wanted to multitrack the show. He again turned to Marquee Audio to commandeer their demo Pro Tools|HD rig, storing the show on two 60Gb LaCie hard drives for final mixdown.

In fact the band had been the first to broadcast a show via MySpace and Matt Butcher believes the vast variety of soundscapes offered by Venue were largely the reason behind the show’s extraordinary success.

“The patching was so easy that I can’t imagine ever prepping an analogue desk with rigging and cabling again,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, ‘The Good, The Bad And The Queen’, the band’s debut album, was released on January 22.

In picture: the band in action at Wilton’s Music Hall — and Matt Butcher at front-of-house.

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Digidesign Venue Manages Damon Albarn’s Unique Myspace Recording

5th February 2007

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