Article - Dermot Kennedy: ‘Some Summer Night’ - issue #255 of TPi
TPi Magazine Showcased the Dermot Kennedy livestream production from July.
Audio extract below:
The audio package for the Natural History Museum livestream was larger than the team’s typical touring package. FOH Engineer, Will Donbavand explained: “Monitor Engineer, Simon Lawson and I have used a DiGiCo packing in some form or other from January 2018. Normally, we share one DiGiCo SD rack with an SD12-96 each, but the channel count for this, given the string section, backing vocalists, Paul Mescal’s mics and ambient mics, an expanded solution was called for.”
Firstly, due to the additional channels and different sounding rooms that A and B stage were in, Donbavand needed to be able to access everything quickly, so a bigger work surface was required. In the same respect, Monitor Engineer, Alex Cerutti, who was covering for Simon Lawson, who was self-isolating in the US, had to deal with a lot more mixes than the touring show, both for musicians and technical crew.
Dermot had requested that Lawson be involved in the project as much as possible regardless of geographical restrictions, which led the audio team to discover and utilise the Audiomovers application. “Audiomovers is a high-quality, lossless, low-latency internet transmission plugin for your DAW, enabling transmission of audio back and forth over the internet from one location to another,” Lawson explained.
Utilising Audiomovers, Cerutti and Lawson were able to talk to each other in real time during rehearsals, as well as Lawson having a talkback mic to Dermot and the band and being able to listen in on the PFL bus and Dermot’s mix. “This was a great tool for smoothing the transition between engineers, allowing the artist to feel comfortable and for Alex to have a real time sounding board for any questions he might have. I would certainly recommend this to anyone in a similar situation,” Lawson said.
“This was my first show with Dermot,” Cerutti said, joining the conversation. “I have worked with a number of artists on the same management company as Dermot and, having known Simon and Will for a long time, it worked out well,” he added. “Like everyone in the touring industry, I have been missing work a lot and was incredibly grateful to be involved. What was particularly gratifying about this post was working with talented people that I have known for a long time and an artist and band who were easy to work with.”
Both monitors and FOH used DiGiCo SD5s with an analogue split into two SD racks each, loaded with 32-bit cards. A third desk and SD11i was used by Andy Scarth, who mixed Paul Mescal’s spoken word mics, sound effects and the final mastering chain. “My mix went to Andy and then he sent out a mastered mix, for which he used a Smart C2, a Manley Massive Passive and a TC Electronic M6000 for limiting and metering. Taking these extra elements out of my hands took additional pressure off me, and it undoubtedly improved the final sound of the show,” Donbavand explained.
“Bringing in someone that I trusted with my mix meant I didn’t need to stress if my mix was being EQ’d or compressed in a way I didn’t like. Andy is a great person to ask for advice as his experience and knowledge in a live broadcast environment is vast.”
Cerutti chimed in: “Thankfully, there was a good amount of room at the Natural History Museum. On the camera left side of the main room there were a number of rooms and corridors where we split up the monitor and broadcast systems relying on longer than average cable lengths to tie everything together.”
Donbavand’s FOH rig featured a UAD Live Rack, which was used on Dermot and Paul’s vocals, on a “music bus” and the final mix bus – supplied by Tom Waterman and Universal Audio, who the engineer said had both been “super supportive” over the past few years.
Cerutti and Donbavand harnessed ProTools rigs to record rehearsals and the show multi tracks for backup. The IEMs were Shure PSM1000, vocal mics used Sennheiser 6000 series transmitters and receivers. While the strings players all played Bridge Instruments with Shure Axient Digital.
Two-thirds of the performance took place in the museum’s main hall, which has a natural reverb of just under seven seconds – something the engineer said was “not the best for live drums”, but managed to work around this using room mics more for some sections, such as the acapella songs and the less reverberant B stage area. “During the main band performances, the ambient mics were quite tucked, however, during the gaps of silence, you could hear this reverb tail sang out,” the engineer added. “Despite being so long, it sounded quite musical.”
As the internal walls of the museum are so thick, not to mention dealing with many areas needing RF coverage, the venue added additional problems. Donbavand praised RF Tech, Sapna Patel and Rob Cook, who deployed a “faultless” package. Rounding up a positive return to work, the engineer said: “I hope when we’re able to, the DK team can reunite to put on the shows that have been postponed this year. It really is a wonderful bunch of people to experience life with. Until then, I’ll be mixing whatever I can, running and sleeping for eight hours a night while I still can.”
A key player in getting the livestream off the ground, Donbavand was involved in the early technical planning stages, working with SSE Audio to help overcome the obstacles presented by the venue and COVID-19.
“Massive thanks to Jamie Tinsley for additional recording and tech during the rehearsals and show. As well as Dan Bennett at SSE Audio along with Phil Collins, Stef Phillips and Keith Sujeen, who helped Rob prepare the show in very little time and while much of the workforce was furloughed,” he added. “Also, thanks to Marcus Blight for the extra RF assistance. None of this could have happened without them, and it goes without saying that there were so many more people outside of the audio team that made this show.”
Lawson concluded: “Over the past two-and-a-half years, it’s been a real pleasure to work with everyone in the Dermot camp. It feels like a real touring family sharing milestone experiences all along the way with talented people who thoroughly deserve all the credit and recognition coming their way. Hearing everyone’s voices and chatting to people during rehearsals was well needed relief from the isolation of lockdown.”
This article originally appeared in issue #255 of TPi, which you can read here.