Headliner USA Issue 11

ISSUE 11 / AUGUST 2022 SUPPORTING THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

MAGAZINE / 11

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BACK TO THE FUTURE

STEVE AOKI SUZANNE VEGA

ON GLASTO MEMORIES AND FILMMAKING

ESTE HAIM

CREATING THE SCORE FOR NETFLIX SERIES MAID

NINA NESBITT

REVEALING THE STORY BEHIND HER LATEST ALBUM

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SUP P

IV E C EAT O CR

ING THE T R O

NITY MU M HEADLINER USA

11 Change, whether you like it or not, can often prove to be a healthy and productive process. While the pandemic served as a catalyst for musical artists of all ages and genres seeking to diversify their art, many have continued in the same vein, realizing new ambitions and no longer feeling restricted to simply making records. One thing’s for sure, it’s interesting to see so many household names in music experimenting with their craft – bringing their sonic knowledge and applying it to ventures new.

Take Suzanne Vega for example.

The folk singer-songwriter – whose successful career spans nearly 40 years – recently returned to the road to deliver a string of spellbinding festival performances. Yet away from the stage, she has been busy tending to an eclectic range of new projects, exploring multiple creative outlets beyond the confines of the studio album. In an exclusive interview, Vega gives us the lowdown on her latest foray into filmmaking.

A more unlikely name you might expect to hear associated with the world of TV and film is that of Este Haim. One third of indie pop icons Haim, she recently found herself working alongside L.Abased songwriter and producer Christopher Stracey on critically acclaimed Netflix series Maid, lauded for its captivating original score since airing in late 2021. The pair’s wide ranging experience and tightly aligned musical sensibilities produced a truly unique soundtrack, setting the foundations

for what could be a fruitful creative partnership.

This month also saw singersongwriter and sister of Beyoncé, Solange Knowles make history with a new musical commission from the New York City Ballet. Her composition, which will debut at the company’s Fall Fashion Gala on 28 September, makes Knowles the third woman ever and the second black woman to be commissioned by the NYC Ballet.

Having developed performative dance pieces in recent years, a ballet score arguably seems like the perfect natural evolution of her multifaceted career.

It begs the question: Are we entering a golden age of mainstream musicians and artists applying their talents to composition for film, TV and other mediums? Only time will reveal if such a pattern is emerging in what is quite clearly a very exciting time for the industry.

Watch this space.

Colby Ramsey Group Editor, Headliner HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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14 / GLEN ROBINSON

30 / ROBERT VENABLE

36 / SUZANNE VEGA

18 / STEVE AOKI 42 / INSIDE KOKO

54 / PRO AUDIO

50 / KONG.

46 / VENUE FOCUS

58 / LIVE SOUND

68 / TRAVIS HARRINGTON 62 / ESTE HAIM 72 / ROB BURRELL

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88 / AUDIO PRODUCTION 94 / SCORING ELVIS

100 / LIGHTING

104 / SPOTLIGHT REVIEWS

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Burn This All Down

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HEADLINER USA

ASPIRING HEADLINER

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BURN THIS ALL DOWN

LOUIS KNIGHT L.A-based singer-songwriter Louis Knight – best recognized from his recent appearances on American Idol – tells Headliner about his experiences on the show, the ways in which he wants to develop his artistry, and his recent release Burn This All Down from his upcoming EP.

What have you been up to lately, and how did you initially weather the pandemic?

I moved to L.A last September, and have just been writing and recording ever since. My new EP will be in two parts and is coming out later this year. Before that I took a year break from releasing music, so now I’m ready to hit it hard with some songs that really mean a lot to me. And we’re also gearing up for my first ever proper tour!

When the pandemic started we were in L.A getting ready for the live shows for American Idol.

As things started shutting down state by state, we were sent home and there was a lot of uncertainty.

Thankfully, they found a way to make the show happen by getting each of us to film our performances using three iPhones and ring lights, all from home. So it was really cool

to be able to finish out the season.

It was after that point that I kind of lost my relationship with songwriting for a while. My song Change that I sang in my audition was about losing one of my brother and I’s best friends, and for me mentally, it felt like every single song that I wrote after that had to be as big of an emotional release as that one, because it ended up doing so well and meant the most to me.

I had this weird thing of, every time I sat down to write, it was never good enough, and I was constantly setting myself up for failure. But then I came to terms with the fact that every song is going to have different emotional attachments – it took me a while to realize that. So I was holding onto some songs and just waited until I moved out here to start working with some new producers and songwriters.

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LOUIS KNIGHT

Burn This All Down

“TO HAVE THESE INTERNATIONAL TOURING MUSICIANS PLAY MY SONG, WAS HONESTLY ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE MOMENTS I’VE EVER EXPERIENCED.”

When did you first get into songwriting, and who are some of your biggest musical influences?

I started writing music when my mom bought me an old piano for Christmas off Craigslist when I was 14. I learned the four chords of pop, and immediately started writing my thoughts and feelings into songs.

Music became an incredible therapy for me. To me, there’s no better feeling than writing a song – it’s like the ultimate dopamine release. I feel really fortunate that I’ve been able to use it as an outlet.

I’ve always been very drawn to emotional songs. I grew up listening to lots of Queen, Coldplay, and Oasis, but then as I got older and started writing I was inspired by Jon Bellion, Lewis Capaldi and Sam Fender.

Sam Fender is one of my absolute favorite artists – I’ve been playing the Seventeen Going Under album and nothing else for the last six months and I can’t even play it in the car anymore because my girlfriend gets so mad!

You made it to the top seven of American Idol season 18 (2020) and then the top 12 as a comeback contestant on season 19 the following year. To what extent has that experience informed your artistry?

The experience was life changing.

They gave me the opportunity to HEADLINER USA

audition and perform my song Change, which is the song I wrote for suicide prevention, and to be able to play an original song was just a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful, because it really gave me a launch pad and made me start thinking that people care enough to listen to my sad love songs. I also wouldn’t have been able to move to L.A if it wasn’t for that experience, which was just one big emotional rollercoaster. When season 18 ended, I put out a couple of songs, and I was trying to figure out my next steps.

Essentially, Idol reached back out to me and nine others to come back and perform again for a comeback show. They said, ‘You guys never got to experience the live stage of American Idol, so we want to give you the opportunity’, and it was amazing.

Again, they let me perform my latest release at the time which was a song called Maybe That. Performing on that stage with the American Idol band led by Kris Pooley, who’s just an absolute genius, and to have these international touring musicians play my song, was honestly one of the most incredible moments I’ve ever experienced.

Tell us about your recent release, Burn This All Down.

It came together amazingly, although I was a little nervous about the

production etc. because the song moves into different spaces as it goes on, reflecting my frustration of losing my relationship with songwriting during the pandemic. Coming off of Idol, I didn’t necessarily handle the pressure very well and it took a bit of a toll, so this song is about me trying to find myself again, and navigating the crazy place that is the music industry. But there’s no other way I’d have it.

For me it was really special, because I wrote it one night when I was just hanging out with one of my good friends Francisco Martin, who was also on Idol with me. I find the best songs come about when things are just natural and easy. He just started randomly playing some guitar chords and I started freestyling. Suddenly all of these pent up feelings started coming out, and we pretty much wrote the song together and finished it within a few hours. It was a massive therapy for what I’d been feeling over the last year.

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Photograph Credit: ABC/Eric McCandless

ASPIRING HEADLINER

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

LOUIS KNIGHT

Burn This All Down

Photographer: Zoe Sher

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We also worked with Wyatt Pike on the track; he was on the previous season of American Idol and is one of the most talented guitar players you could ever meet. So it was just the three of us hanging out and we ended up producing the song together, coming up with melodies and lyrics which we thought best served the song.

We discussed, ‘Would it be crazy if we just put a rock section at the very end of the song?’ At first it felt crazy and very much out of my comfort zone. I went back and forth for a month about that part – I’m really indecisive – but I’m so glad we decided to keep it in because I really think it helps show off a different side of my artistry.

It’s also very poignant in the fact that it represents my anger at losing my relationship with songwriting and my frustration of navigating the industry.

amazing feeling when you’re first falling in love and want to stay in that moment. It’s actually one of my relatively happier songs!

Writing and producing the new EP has opened so many doors for me in thinking how I can make my live show different, and get creative with it, because some of the production of the songs really lends itself to some cool things that we can do in the show. This will be my first tour ever, and I’m so excited to actually do a show in England where I’m from, but where I’ve never played before! It’s going to be a huge coming home event and to have all my closest and extended family and friends there will be really, really nice.

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What’s on the horizon for you?

So the EP is going to be coming out soon! I released another single called Maya in June which will be on there – I wrote that about falling in love in the Netherlands, and it’s just about being with someone and getting to the point where you decide to really jump into the relationship; that HEADLINER USA

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GLEN ROBINSON

HEADLINER USA

Mix Clever

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MIX CLEVER

GLEN ROBINSON New York City-based producer, engineer and mixer Glen Robinson, who honed his production chops in the ‘80s working alongside the likes of Keith Richards and George Martin, reflects on his formative years in the studio, his creative process when it comes to production, and the oeksound plugins that allow him to get the job done.

What does your studio setup look like at the moment, and what kinds of projects have been keeping you busy lately?

A lot of studios have closed in New York City just because of the cost of real estate. I’ve had a 5.1 room set up with a company on 30th Street and 7th Avenue for a while, and then I have a place on the Upper West Side which has a really high ceiling, so I’m pretty lucky. It’s a good sized room which is great for listening and mixing, so I can do vocals and I have a Kemper for guitars, but I’ll do drums at different places. I’ve had the room calibrated with Sonarworks and it’s dead accurate. I’ve got a set of NS10s, a pair of Auratones, some earbuds and some headphones and I’m good to go. Anything I take out of there is pretty much spot on.

I totally come from the analog world.

I loved the 8068 MKII Neve desk in a great control room with some great microphones and a tape machine.

Those were great times, but for mixing, I’ve got to stay in the box, and working on the new Pro Tools with a whole set of plugins is really powerful.

One thing that’s come to my plate a lot recently is re-records from several artists, one being Sean Kingston, who I did four tracks for.

He had Eenie Meenie with Justin Bieber, and we completely redid that song with another singer in South Africa. I did everything in my studio as per the original mix: mastered it, programmed all the beats and put the vocal together, comp’d the vocal, mastered it. That one went out to a movie and they released the record on all digital platforms.

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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GLEN ROBINSON

Mix Clever

“I HAD NEVER WORKED ON AN SSL DESK, SO I WAS READING THE MANUAL THE NIGHT BEFORE UNTIL TWO IN THE MORNING!”

Can you tell us about some of your early studio memories?

Could you describe your creative process for us?

I started really, really young, and they just threw me into the shark tank. I remember getting the job as staff engineer in Le Studio at Morin Heights. It’s a beautiful studio on a beautiful property, and it was so well run by the owner, André Perry. I was told, “This band’s coming in and you’re going to mix the record and do some overdubs for four weeks”. I had never worked on an SSL desk, so I was reading the manual the night before until two in the morning!

I’m working on one project right now with Taylor McCluskey, who’s an actor and musician, and a great artist. We’re working with a phenomenal drummer in L.A called Zak St John, who I flew in to do a couple of sessions. So I’ll do demos with a Kemper with Taylor and send Zak the drums – he’s got a great studio at his house in L.A and he’ll send us back tracks, and then we’ll build on that. It’s mostly in the box, and whether I’m using Omnisphere or a Kemper, it’s pretty much everything I need. Unfortunately I’m steering away from outboard gear more and more. Managers and record label execs just want to hear the end result, and if something digital gets things over the finish line, then I’m going that way.

Keith Richards came in for 10 days.

Being around that energy was incredible. They would just jam, and three days later he would remember at what time a particular part was played on a certain point of the tape, so I’d have to pull out the reels, search them and take notes.

He would remember everything, and he was the nicest guy with so much passion for music. Some of the bigger names in music are just so genuine and passionate about what they’re doing.

George Martin also came in with his wife and his son for two days at Le Studio; a film company had hired him to do some music and they flew him in. The next thing I was sitting at the desk with him, watching him listening. He was the kindest, most humble gentleman. Everybody was walking on eggshells around them and I was just being myself, getting the work done!

HEADLINER USA

For me, oeksound soothe2 is a game changer. Just yesterday I was using it on a vocal, although a lot of times people will send me drum tracks to mix and the overheads are horrid, so it’s also great for just blending everything. There’s so many great presets in it, and it’s quick. It saves you having to filter and notch and de-ess and it’s just so efficient at what it does. Transparent, musical, sounds great, and just does what it’s supposed to do.

There’s a preset I tried on a mix recently; it was something like ‘Ready for the Grammys’, and I just feathered in a bit of that, which was

really cool. Sometimes I’ll use it across the whole mix instead of using a multiband compressor – when you’re just softening some of the top end, soothe can go a long way, and it also works well for knocking and clicking on acoustic guitar.

What’s in the pipeline at the moment?

I’m finishing up some projects that I’m currently working on, including some music for a Netflix sci-fi series that is coming out at the end of next year. I got assigned to do five tracks, and they’re going to be hard-hitting things. In fact I’ve been doing more and more composing for film and TV, and more co-writing.

I’ve always done arrangements in pre-production with artists that I’ve worked with, and a couple of years ago the opportunity arose for me to start doing some more writing, so I’m having a lot of fun with that.

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STEVE AOKI

Back to the Future

STEVE AOKI

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HEADLINER USA

COVER STORY

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BACKTO THEFUTURE The year is 2012; the enigmatic Steve Aoki has been designated the highest grossing electronic dance music artist in North America from tours, solidifying his status as the most in-demand live performer on the planet. Widely known for his acrobatic crowd surfing stunts, spraying champagne bottles, and throwing cake at fans, the superstar DJ quickly gained massive support from his peers through relentless touring, supplemented by a monumental work ethic that put him lightyears ahead of the curve. Fast-forward a decade, and Aoki is still living in the future. Having released several Billboard-charting studio albums since his international breakthrough, established several record labels, and fully immersed himself in the world of NFTs, he remains at the forefront of music, technology, and everything in between. Headliner recently spoke to Aoki during his returning residency run at Ibiza’s iconic Amnesia club to discover the next chapter of the saga – his upcoming five-part album, HiROQUEST.

Aoki’s origins in producing DIY records and running underground gigs out of his college room in Isla Vista, CA are a far cry from where he now finds himself. Joining Headliner on a Zoom call from his hotel room in sunny Ibiza – and having held

down a residency at the party island’s famous Amnesia venue since 2007 (with the exception of Covid) – it’s obvious that he’s buzzing to be back playing shows again.

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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STEVE AOKI

Back to the Future

As was the case with most when the pandemic first hit, the bus tour supporting Aoki’s 2020 album Neon Future IV was canceled mid-run.

During that fateful summer, he realized just how adaptable he is as a music artist, and as a human: “I learned to enjoy not touring, being at home and finding new practices and new ways to get inspired,” Aoki recalls. “I really got into mindfulness, which led me to experimenting with different kinds of music at different frequencies, like for meditation. I also got into making music for NFTs, and thinking about how I can make music for film and TV, not just for club shows and festival grounds. It was an interesting time, and I definitely took advantage of it for sure.”

Picking up the guitar again, Aoki found himself “jamming differently” with more organic instrumentation, a motive which he says birthed the seeds of his new album HiROQUEST, set for a September 16 release.

“HiROQUEST is a lot more guitardriven themed music,” he says. “I start by building a melody or a hook, HEADLINER USA

and then work with a songwriter to develop that and bring in musicians to play it better. Essentially, HiROQUEST was born in the silo of my house, whereas the Neon Future series was constantly being triggered and inspired by my surroundings as I traveled the world; I would pull in different pieces that would end up forming the whole story of the album.

“There’s more songs than bangers on this one, and as much as I like going back to my roots of playing in a band with live instruments, I still am very much involved in all these different worlds that I’ve been building, especially the Latin world.

My relationship with Latin artists is pretty healthy so I have a few of those songs on the album, along with a strong amount of alternative and pop tracks. Of course, I then have my core EDM records like Whole Again, which is a big summer EDM anthem, and my song with Timmy Trumpet, The Whistle, which is a festival slammer.”

HiROQUEST, encompassing a range of genres and impressive artist features, will be split into five chapters, the first being HiROQUEST:

Genesis. Aoki’s vision for the album goes far beyond a simple body of musical work however, as he explains: “The way I look at HiROQUEST is basically opening this whole new world that I created with MetaZoo Games. It’s a TCG company, and they’re experts in developing a world of characters. During Covid I really got into collectibles, especially things like Pokémon, and I ended up cofounding and co-owning this whole world called MetaZoo. We’re building this world of animation, TV shows, video games, and more through limited edition collectible trading cards and HiROQUEST CDs – an extension of the MetaZoo universe.

“HiROQUEST has its own characters that live in this world, called Future Cryptids. It’s based in the future, and there are five different factions that will be introduced in Genesis. They’re named uniquely on the album, but they’re basically robots, zombies, aliens, hybrid mutants, and AI. Under each of these factions are what I call Melodias, which are songs that represent each faction.”

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STEVE AOKI

Back to the Future

Merging physical music with virtual worlds seamlessly is a prospect that has, unsurprisingly, never been done before due to the various complications that come with such a task. With HiROQUEST and MetaZoo, Aoki is combining both into a colorful, dynamic multi-layered story arc, for example using specific songs as attack powers to integrate them with each character. Making an album is one thing, but creating an entirely new IP is certainly another: “I’m trying to connect the dots here in a much bigger way than just myself or the music,” he adds.

“You can’t stop technology, and the ways in which we communicate.

Everyone wants to have IRL [‘in real life’ for you non-millennials], but we all need to have a digital footprint of ourselves. It’s just part of our identity. Having a blue check next to an Instagram name is such a big flex to someone that they’re willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money for that, and it has zero value – you can’t resell it. With Web3 [a new iteration of the internet which incorporates decentralization, blockchain tech, and token-based economics], everything in that space has a value, and you can sell it. That’s the major difference.”

Digressing slightly from virtual worlds, Headliner is curious to find out Aoki’s approach to making music has evolved throughout his storied career: “My approach changes from track to track,” he responds following a brief pause for thought. “Most songs I make are collaborations.

I’ve done a few solo records, mostly through labels that I’ve started like A Good One, which is all house music.

Recently I sampled the voice of my long-time manager Michael Theanne – who passed away in 2020 – on a track. With these passion projects, I don’t care about the streams or online success; I do it just so I can play these records out because they’re not for scalable consumption.

HEADLINER USA

“When I’m thinking about my album, or a big single, I’ll usually bring in a team of songwriters, musicians, producers, and a feature that fits the bill. So it’s very much a team effort, but usually, it always starts in the studio.”

Aoki’s personal studio space – known affectionately as Aoki’s Playhouse, or the Neon Future Cave – is a feast for the senses. Echoing vibes of an alien spaceship rather than that of a traditional recording studio, Aoki has welcomed more than a few “legendary” sessions through the doors of the Nevada-based facility since he built it in 2015.

“When I created the Neon Future Cave, I was working with a lot more rappers on the road to my 2017 hiphop album Kolony,” he recalls. “I was in Atlanta a lot, and in my small studio in L.A – I did a week-long session with Lil Uzi Vert there and we made a tonne of records. I don’t smoke weed, but I was just getting hot-boxed in there [laughs], so when I built my studio, I wanted to make it a big room for big groups. I wanted it to be bright, and I wanted it to feel like the energy never leaves the room, which a lot of the artists I work with like. Vin Diesel came by and we made some songs, which was interesting. He likes a moody vibe, so we lit a

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“I’M LIKE THE CHEF IN THE BACK COOKING AWAY, BUT I ALSO LIKE GOING OUT AND GREETING CUSTOMERS AND WATCHING THEIR FACES AS THEY EAT MY FOOD, THAT I’VE PUT MY HEART AND SOUL INTO.”

bunch of candles and got him into this emotional headspace for him to turn out some vocals. He can actually sing pretty good!”

With regards to the Neon Future Cave’s setup, Aoki is using Ocean Way powered studio monitors along with a set of gargantuan club style speakers for playback. For cutting vocals, he swears by Sony’s famed C800G microphone, and is a fan of adding tone to a wide range of vocal performances with the Neve 1073’s EQ and high pass filter and compressing with the UA 1176.

“I’ve got this Roland synth setup which is great for jamming, and helps me

come up with ideas and rhythms for my solo projects,” Aoki adds.

“Sometimes it’s way more intuitive to be able to create music that way than painting MIDI in the box. I’ve always used some of the most basic plugins like Serum and Sylenth; for me, the simpler the melody, the more likely it’s going to hit and have that scalable factor.”

It’s incredible to think that now that the live music world has made its return, Aoki is back to playing at least five shows a week – often racking up 25 shows in a single month. And as intense as that sounds, it’s clear to Headliner that he is a performer that takes it all in his stride. His true

passion, as he has become famous for, lies in putting on the most bombastic parties for as many dance music fans as possible: “If I was playing by myself, I’d probably get burnt out, but it’s not about me – I am just a vessel,” he says. “The selfish joy that I get is seeing how the music connects with people.

Producers are like chefs; they often don’t get to see directly how their music has affected others. I’m like the chef in the back cooking away, but I also like going out and greeting customers and watching their faces as they eat my food, that I’ve put my heart and soul into.

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STEVE AOKI

Back to the Future

“Sometimes there’s someone in the crowd who’s heard a song that took them out of a bad situation, or brought them to a higher level of consciousness. Once we establish that connection, it’s literally the most powerful way to receive and send love without even speaking a single word. It’s very powerful, and I truly look for that. It doesn’t matter what language they’re speaking or what culture they’re from – that’s the HEADLINER USA

beautiful thing about music. It’s the language that connects the world.

“I want to make music that does that, but I also want to make music that makes people go fucking apeshit, and I want to make music that people can casually listen to as well. But it’s the music that really gets me going as an entertainer and as someone that says, ‘I will be on the road cracking 200 shows a year every year for 15

years straight,’ which is what I did.

That’s what allows me to experience these kinds of moments, and they are so special.”

HiROQUEST: Genesis by Steve Aoki is out on September 16, 2022.

STEVEAOKI.COM Images: YMU Music

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CAESAR EDMUNDS

Bigger & Better

BIGGER & BETTER

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ENGINEER

Engineer, mixer and producer Caesar Edmunds reflects on his start in the industry with Alan Moulder and Flood, reveals his favorite ever studio memories, and shares how Genelec monitors give him the confidence to mix in Dolby Atmos.

How have things been for you during and post-Covid?

I‘ve been pretty well. Last time we spoke I had just been nominated for an MPG Award, which I then managed to win! At first, just like everyone else, I thought that 2020 was going to be my year, but a bat from Wuhan had another plan, allegedly! We were just working along and managed to survive the pandemic, but it was quite uncertain whether I was going to stay in the UK or move back to Singapore, where they had a Covid-free situation.

I am in the Battery Studios Complex at the moment, and since we last

spoke I’ve taken on a room by myself. I’ve been working with Flood and Moulder since 2012 so it was a big jump for me. It got to the point where basically, I had to grow up, and I thought that in the middle of a pandemic was the best time to do that, because if you can get through that when the times are bad, you should be able to survive, right?

When did you first start working with Alan Moulder?

Alan was a patron of LIPA which is the university that I went to. A few of my friends had done work experience with him, and I basically just asked, ‘Hey, can I do work experience?’ And they said yes. That was around 10 years ago now.

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out to be Inhaler – it was just one of those moments of ‘Oh my God, I think this is it’. I loved the music coming out of those speakers, and I’ve been very fortunate to be allowed to carry on doing this for a decade.

Growing up I loved sounds and playing guitar, although I wasn’t into music production. I discovered Nine Inch Nails and just thought that sonic was crazy. Flood and Moulder were producing and mixing all these artists that I loved at the time and it got to the point where I just thought I’d try and get a job there myself, and then it happened. It’s crazy how sonic families can be formed internationally without even meeting each other.

I think it was on my first day in the building, Flood and Moulder were working on Holy Fire by Foals. I was sitting in on the session and when I heard the first track – which turned HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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CAESAR EDMUNDS

Bigger & Better

“I LOVE THE WHOLE CONCENTRIC VIBE OF GENELEC MONITORS – ALL THAT TOP END CLEARLY AND CONCISELY COMING FROM ONE SOURCE; IT’S BEEN KILLER.”

Tell us about your new room at Battery Studios, and why you decided to equip it for Dolby Atmos mixing.

It has been very good, and has allowed me to explore more opportunities. At the end of 2020, I had a conversation with Alan and told him I want to get into Dolby Atmos to see what it’s all about. So I bought the whole kit, the speaker setup, everything – and then had no idea what to do with it! And then a few months later we got an email from Dolby asking us if we’re interested. At that point I had the setup but didn’t know how to use it, so I just started reading forums and looking at graphs and basically trying to figure it all out by myself. Thankfully there was a great team at Dolby that pointed me in the right direction, and since we started those discussions, it seems like the world has been HEADLINER USA

talking about it ever since. I was very lucky that one of the albums that I mixed myself in stereo, I also had the opportunity to mix in Atmos, and that was How Beautiful Life Can Be by The Lathums. It was great, because I already knew the songs, so I was able to get straight to it!

There was a lot of trial and error at first. During the pandemic, I went back to Singapore just for a holiday to see some friends and family over there. I was stuck in a hotel room with my brother for three weeks. Every now and then when I got bored of playing video games or watching films, I started reading up on Dolby Atmos – it was like I was cramming for an exam. It led me to trying different methods, almost like having a mad scientist moment. The fun bit is trying to translate the sound from two

speakers to a 30-speaker setup or whatever it might be, and just trying to gel everything together.

Most of the things that I do in Atmos, I also do with stereo mixing. There’s the conversation to be had with the artists and the producer, like where to pan stuff, where to place certain elements in a mix, so by the time you get to Atmos, you’re just building the world around it. I want it to feel like you’re in a concert; the band’s playing in front of you, but surrounding you as well. I work with many guitar bands who have that big wall of guitar sound, which when it comes to Dolby Atmos, translates to guitars all around you in 360°.

ENGINEER

What’s one of your favorite memories from the studio?

There was this one moment when Jimmy Page was here, and there was a lot of hysteria in the building before introductions were made. When we’d spent some time working in the studio, someone turned round to me and said, ‘Hey man, when you go back to uni, you’re going to tell your friends that you’ve been hanging out with Jimmy Page all summer’. And I just had this moment where I was like, ‘Oh shit, no one’s ever gonna believe me!’

Can you tell us about your new Genelec monitor setup?

I am using Genelec The Ones – the 8341As. I’ve been fortunate to try some of The Ones and just fell in love with them. Combined with the GLM software, they’re absolutely genius. When I went to Singapore, I managed to bring a pair of them with me along with the GLM software. It worked like a charm. The room I was in wasn’t as acoustically treated as the studio, but with the room correction software, it felt like I was in a similar space, so I’m a huge fan of that.

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I started using Genelec in 2020 just after I won the MPG; Andy Bensley got in touch because Genelec had sponsored the award and was just like, ‘Hey, try this’. I love the whole concentric vibe of these monitors – all that top end clearly and concisely coming from one source; it’s been killer.

What releases have you been working on lately?

There’s an album I worked on called GULP! by Sports Team and that was out July 22. I mixed half of it and Alan mixed the other half. Sometimes I still have to turn around and pinch myself and remember I’m working with someone of his status and caliber. Work-wise you have to prove yourself, and it’s been great. I’m really thankful for everything.

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HEADLINER USA

From Megadeth To Kelly Clarkson

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FROM MEGADETH TO KELLY CLARKSON

ROBERT VENABLE An Emmy and Dove Award-winning producer, recording engineer, sound mixer and accomplished rock drummer, there’s not much that Robert Venable hasn’t done. He reflects on getting his gig with Megadeth, mixing The Kelly Clarkson Show, and explains how he uses Audix microphones on a variety of sources, including a lot of D6s in a surprising application…

What was your big break into the world of music?

My school kind of broke their own rules in allowing me to take a job while I was still a student. The president approached me and said, “Would you like to do this big project?” It ended up being the Megadeth record, The System Has Failed. I interned on that and also got to do some background vocals, screaming alongside Dave Mustaine.

They asked if I knew Pro Tools. I looked them straight in the eye and said, “Of course”. Then I went home that night and downloaded the instruction manual. YouTube videos weren’t a thing yet, so I’m studying and memorizing commands like crazy. The next day I went in there and found myself running Pro Tools for Megadeth!

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From Megadeth To Kelly Clarkson

“I WAS SKEPTICAL ABOUT AUDIX BECAUSE OF THE PRICE POINT; I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THEY WERE JUST CHEAP MICS FOR LIVE SHOWS. I WAS SO WRONG!”

When you first used Audix mics; what was your immediate reaction?

How do you use them on The Kelly Clarkson Show?

I was completely surprised and impressed. I was dead skeptical because of the price point, and I was under the impression they were just cheap mics for live shows… I was so wrong!

The Kelly stage is one of the biggest on the lot for shooting a TV show.

But there can be a lot of open mics in small areas, such as for the audience and the huddles and so forth. Lester and I have always paid a lot of attention to our drum sounds. Kelly is a pop singer and she can sing loud, so we want the instruments to stand up to that and not sound muted. At the same time, we don’t want them to bleed into those other mics I mentioned and make them sound boxy or phasey.

The big thing we learned was to use D6 mics on all the toms, from the 10-inchers all the way to 22-inch gong drums.

How did you first discover Audix mics with a lot of bigger brands being much more popular in the studios?

I think it was mainly my friendship with Lester Estelle, who is a real audiophile. One day he was like, “Here, try these.” I kind of looked down my nose at them at first, because I didn’t think anything that affordable could be that good when I was using other mics that might cost two or three times more. But I tried them, and I’ve never doubted Lester since. I think my first Audix purchase was a drum mic pack of some sort.

Now I have a stack of them.

That’s interesting, because a lot of users and even Audix as a manufacturer sees the D6 as mainly a kick drum mic, with the D2 or D4 being more for toms…

I know, but trust me, there’s something about the D6 that just sounds right! Something about the way that capsule vibrates, maybe.

Compared to using anything else, I find I have to do a lot less tweaking on the back end to get the sound I’m looking for. I now carry a backpack of D6s to every session I go to, and I’ll swap them in for the tom mics unless for some reason I’m not allowed to — like if there’s video and the artist endorses another brand.

Do you like Audix mics on sources other than drums?

Absolutely. One of my favorite miking techniques for acoustic guitar is to place a mic about 10 inches off the fretboard at the 12th fret, aimed at the sound hole. I love the SCX25A – the ‘lollipop’ mic – in this application. For a more focused, in-your-face sound, I’ll reach for a small-diaphragm condenser such as the SCX1. I’ve found both these mics more than capable of giving me a full acoustic guitar sound, without the need for a second mic.

How about electric guitar or amp cabinets in general?

I do a lot of pop and rock music, and I’ve been defaulting to the i5 on electric guitar cabs to begin the foundation for a wall of sound. I start with it right on the grille, not touching it, but dang close, centered on the cone of the speaker. To give it a little flavor in the mix, I add SCX25As in spaced pair or X/Y configuration, on the other side of the room for some

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From Megadeth To Kelly Clarkson

space. Then, compress to taste! Also, everyone knows I love the D6 on toms, but it sounds just as punchy and robust on a bass cabinet. It naturally pulls some of the mud out of the sound and opens up the top end to capture that funky slap when the bassist throws it at you.

What is a typical day of work like on The Kelly Clarkson Show?

They’re long days, 10-14 hours, but here’s why: my day is broken into two ‘jobs’ - if you want to call it that. Part one consists of me getting to the lot around 6am, turning on my gear and setting up a session on the console and in Pro Tools, getting familiar with the rundown for the day’s shows (we tape two a day), and wrapping my head around a game plan.

The audio team and I do a line check on all mics (instruments, vocal mics, backups and lavs for interviews), and I make sure everything is hitting the console and Pro Tools properly.

I make sure all mics are placed where I want them, checking that nothing has been bumped. Later in the morning, the band comes down and runs through the music for the day, and I start my mix, getting basic levels, and set tempos for delays, finding appropriate reverbs, etc.

The ‘A-Show’ takes about two hours to tape, we break for lunch, shoot the ‘B-Show’ and wrap at about 4pm. At that point, I switch to remix mode and clean up any spots that my ‘live’ mixes may need.

The most important part happens next: I mix the Kellyoke (the part of every episode where Kelly sings her rendition of a popular song). I polish it up, write in automation and mix the songs to sound clean but still live. I get out of there around 8pm on average… long days, but I love every minute of it.

What is it like to work with Kelly Clarkson?

Kelly is 100% how Kelly seems, if you’ve seen the TV show or any interviews with her. She’s a Texas gal through HEADLINER USA

and through: she loves Mexican food and doesn’t like long hours because she wants to go home and see her kids. She has every right to be a prima donna but she’s absolutely the opposite of that. She’ll hug a stranger or give someone the coat off her back. The best part is, she’s a true musician. She knows what she wants. She’s not going to say “more echo” when she means “more reverb”.

She’s a great communicator and a rare combination of talent and down-to-earthness.

What advice would you give to someone who aspires to your path as a producer?

When you start off, leave your ego at the door. I’m still learning, every day. I’d empty a trash can if I saw it full, even though it technically wasn’t my job. As an assistant, I was the first one in the studio and the last one to leave.

If I thought the band even might do vocals that day, I’d have a few different vocal chains set up and ready to go for the engineer. Again, anticipating needs and being a good hang is how you grow your work. Don’t be too eager to touch faders on your first day in the studio. Wait to be asked.

But once you’ve got some time and reputation in, don’t undervalue your work. I was once about ready to throw in the towel. I couldn’t get any gigs though I kept lowering my prices. A mentor told me, “If you go to a Ferrari dealer and one car there is only $50,000, you’re going to wonder what’s wrong with it. Double your rates and don’t take anything less”. I followed his advice, and they’ve been rising.

Finally, just be humble and listen. You may be the best mixer in the world, but if you have to tell people that, it won’t matter. Let other people talk about you.

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SUZANNE VEGA

HEADLINER USA

Folk Lore

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One of the most celebrated songwriters of the past four decades, multitalented New York storyteller Suzanne Vega has recently been busy treating UK audiences to her sublime blend of pop-infused folk, delivering spellbinding performances at the Cambridge Folk Festival and Glastonbury, to mention just a couple. Here, she tells Headliner about returning to the road, her now legendary debut Worthy Farm headline appearance, and her latest foray into the world of filmmaking…

Every Glastonbury headliner will have their own story about the first time they topped the bill at the world’s most iconic music festival, but few can lay a glove on that of Suzanne Vega.

In 1989, with hits such as Marlene On The Wall, Luka and Tom’s Diner marking her out as one of the world’s most gifted new talents, Vega became not only the first woman to headline Glastonbury, but also the first artist to do so wearing a bulletproof vest.

“It started the morning of the show,” Vega begins, chatting to Headliner over Zoom, a week or so after her much lauded headline performance

on the Acoustic Stage at this year’s Glastonbury. Joining us on the road, she is currently gearing up for a show in Amsterdam following a short bout of Covid from which she has just recovered. “It turned out that my poor bassist, Mikey, who had been stalked by this woman for quite some time, received a death threat that morning, and I didn’t know I was included in that death threat until later in the day.

My manager was with us and he had gotten Scotland Yard in on the whole thing. It was being taken very seriously.

not to go ahead; that they had found the woman but not her partner, and their professional recommendation was that I do not do the show. I said, “what are you talking about? I have to do the show, I’m headlining!”

They said that in that case I would have to wear a bulletproof vest, so I took one of the Scotland Yard men’s vests, which was of course enormous on me, so they had to gaffa tape me into it. I then went on and did the show, which all felt like it was happening in slow motion.”

“Then, about an hour before we were due to go on stage, the police said HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Folk Lore

Having taken the decision to go ahead with the show, Vega and her band found themselves forced into an all too abrupt ending to their set, albeit for entirely separate circumstances to those that had threatened to derail the performance.

“Right at the end of the show, my keyboard player ran over to me and said, ‘Sing Luka and get off stage!’

I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happened?’ and he said he’d tell me later but to just play the song and get off the stage. So, we played Luka and left the stage. No one had mentioned to me that there was a curfew. Glastonbury is a cow farm, and it upsets the cows if you play past 12.30, and they don’t give milk in the morning. This is what had happened and that’s how the evening ended! And there was a whole bunch of mud and traffic, so it took about five hours to get off the site! There are some things I’ll never forget, and that show was one of them. There were helicopters flying overhead and the lights would be trained on the audience. Every time they went on the crowd, I was scanning to see what was going on.”

HEADLINER USA

While other artists may (understandably) have opted to pull the performance, Vega insists that there was never a question about whether or not they would take to the stage. But how did it feel to play what was already set to be a landmark show to such a dramatic and potentially perilous backdrop?

“Once I’d committed to it, I just stuck with it and didn’t allow myself to think about anything other than playing each song,” she recalls with an almost matter of fact indifference. “Each song felt like it was 20 minutes long because time became elastic. And spatially it was weird for me because I was used to seeing Mikey, but he was playing off the stage flanked by two guards. I remember just feeling myself going through each song, probably didn’t talk very much, which I didn’t do much at festivals anyway. And then I had that weird ending [laughs]!

“The situation ended there - I don’t know what happened to the girl or her partner, but they never surfaced again. But Mikey had security for some time when we went on tour, so that lingered for about a year.”

As for her 2022 Worthy Farm set, proceedings were thankfully far less eventful.

“It was great, I always enjoy performing at Glastonbury,” she smiles with a delivery as cool as her unmistakable vocal sounds in song.

“And this year was extra special because my daughter was with me and her father, Mitchell Froom, was playing with Crowded House, so she got to spend the whole weekend with both of us, which hardly ever happens, so it was really great.

“And I’m really looking forward to playing the Cambridge Folk Festival.

I like the folk festivals. I’ll try not to be too abrasive – I’m playing with a guitar player called Gerry Leonard, he was David Bowie’s musical director, so we don’t always stay within the bounds of folk. I only play acoustic guitar, but we sometimes venture into other kinds of music.

We’ll try not to be antagonistic and do all the folky stuff that everybody likes.”

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“THERE ARE SOME THINGS I’LL NEVER FORGET, AND THAT SHOW WAS ONE OF THEM.”

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Away from the stage, Vega has been occupying her time with an eclectic range of new projects and new material.

For much of her career she has explored multiple creative outlets beyond the confines of the studio album, most notably with the 2011 one woman show Carson McCullers Talks About Love, a play written and performed by Vega about the titular American novelist. This was followed in 2016 by her ninth studio record Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers, which was based on the play she had written. In 2019, she also made a film of the show entitled Lover, Beloved, which premiered earlier this year at SXSW to positive reviews.

“We recorded the film in about 10 days, very cheap, and it was a thrill to see it on the big screen,” she enthuses. “I’ve been really happy about that, so we are trying to push it forward and get a release date and distribution. I was just thrilled with the reception that it had.”

Often having to split her time across such extracurricular activities, it’s perhaps unsurprising that new studio albums have been few and far between over the past couple of HEADLINER USA

decades. Which isn’t to say her output hasn’t been prolific.

During that spell she has released several live records as well as a clutch of largely conceptual albums, such as Beauty & Crime (2007) and Tales From The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles (2014). In addition, she has produced four volumes of Close Up – a collection of re-recorded and reworked versions of much of her catalog, divided into separate themes: Love Songs, People & Places, States Of Being and Songs Of Family. Though unable to offer any hints at a release date, Vega does reveal that she has been writing new music.

“I’ve been working on new material, writing lots about the social situation in America, which seems unbelievable to me,” she says with detectable disbelief in her voice. “But I love being able to go between the various artforms. I used to be a dancer. I also worked in clay and I sculpted, so I’m fascinated by all forms of art. It was something I found difficult as a child, how to express emotions. Anything that can help me do that, I try to go after. But in my heart and soul I think that songwriting is what I’m best at and that’s why I think it’s time to return to form (laughs).”

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“IT’S A LOT OF LABOR AND THEN FROM TIME TO TIME IT CATCHES FIRE AND YOUR INSTINCTS TAKE OVER.”

Given the vast array of art forms she has applied her skills to throughout her career, has her approach to songwriting changed much since those childhood years?

“It has changed a lot,” she says. In the beginning, I was thrilled if I wrote anything that was halfway good. And I did have a formula that I would follow, which was that on a Saturday night while my friends were out, I’d stay home and try to write a song. I’d get it to where I liked it and maybe there would be one little piece missing. I would sleep on it then finish it on Sunday morning. Then I’d be thrilled with it for the next week. These days I do it all different kind of ways. I’ve done it using guitar, I’ve done music first, lyrics first, I’ve done it starting from a title or an image in my mind, a name, it changes every time.”

Perhaps given the deceptively effortless nature of her music and the unhurried delivery of her performances, on record and in the studio, Vega observes that from a young age people assumed songwriting came naturally to her.

This, she explains, wasn’t quite the case.

“Here’s the thing,” she considers. “I think people looking at me thought it was a natural gift. But I know how much effort it took. My first song took me three years to write, so to me it seemed endlessly long and tediously boring.

But then I wrote another song within a couple of weeks of that one, and I thought it was really good. It’s like they say, you have this long period of working and working

and working, and then it happens overnight. It really is like that. It’s a lot of labor and then from time to time it catches fire and your instincts take over. And you end up with something you’re really proud of.

Returning to the theme of social and political tensions in the US, does she see herself broaching the subject for another concept album?

“Well, I’d have to start with at least one or two songs,” she laughs. “It’s one thing to have the themes in your mind, but unless you actually sit down and write the individual songs, it’s just not going to happen. But yes, I’d like to.

When I did Beauty & Crime that was like a response to 9/11, and that took six years to finish. There were all these little stories that were in the shadow of 9/11, so maybe something will happen like that. But to some degree I let go of control of it – I don’t know what songs are going to come through. I definitely wrote some songs that were inspired by Covid and the atmosphere during the pandemic, so maybe it’ll all come together. Ask me again in a year and maybe I’ll be able to tell you more.”

Here’s hoping we won’t be waiting quite that long.

SUZANNEVEGA.COM

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

INSIDE KOKO

Return of an Icon

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Photographer: Sam Neil

INSIDE KOKO

HEADLINER USA

VENUE FOCUS

Iconic London venue KOKO has been relaunched following three years of major construction work as a new ‘global music platform’, complete with a fully upgraded audio system in the room, as well as a vast range of new multi-purpose spaces.

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Photographer: Dave Levene

Having overcome challenges including a major fire in January 2020, which melted the venue’s iconic copper dome and caused millions of pounds worth of damage, and of course, the pandemic, the historic venue is now a state-of-the-art live music venue that spans 50,000 square feet.

For founder and CEO Olly Bengough, the aim was to provide a space that offers support and empowerment to the next generation of musicians.

Originally a 19th century theater, KOKO later evolved into a broadcasting center when it became the home of iconic productions such as Peter Sellers’ The Goon Show and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which were transmitted live from the building during 30 years of BBC ownership (1945 -1975). The Rolling Stones also recorded Live At Camden Theatre from the building in 1964, for BBC’s Rhythm and Blues show.

Now, the venue has been transformed into a maze of immersive spaces designed to offer artists visiting KOKO a new platform for their creativity.

With new high-spec broadcasting, recording and live streaming capabilities incorporated throughout the Grade II listed theater and its new four-storey extension, musicians now have access to a venue where they can not only perform live, but also co-produce, stream and distribute their music to a global audience with the newly formed KOKO Studio.

What’s more, a host of meeting rooms, restaurants and late-night live performance/playback areas have been built into the expanded site.

In the main live performance space, the 19th century theater has been fully restored and now features an XSL System from d&b audiotechnik.

And, at the center of its restoration is the immersive new ‘Fly Tower venue’ and gallery (the large volume of space above the stage), which was a surprise discovery during the threeyear development process. Having worked closely with English Heritage to unlock this new space, artists will have the opportunity to perform in the round on a 360 stage or in a more intimate setting, giving music fans a truly unique experience of what the theater would have been like in the early 1900s.

When restoration of the venue began in 2019, Wayne Powell, business development manager, d&b, took the KOKO team to Backnang, Germany for an in-person demonstration of the company’s brand-new SL Series. With flexibility and power two of the key requirements, the decision was taken to go with an XSL System through

d&b’s Subscription Series, which offers an alternative to ownership and ensures d&b’s sound systems are more commercially accessible to an even wider range of venues.

The d&b XSL System is housed in the main venue and fly tower area of KOKO, alongside the DS100 signal engine, making the venue ‘d&b Soundscape ready’ in the future. Furthermore, to cover the VIP balconies housed on the side of the main stage, the team deployed d&b V-Series loudspeakers.

One of the key challenges the team faced was ensuring the neighborhood of Camden would not be impacted by any off-site noise. For KOKO, d&b’s XSL cardioid performance across the full frequency spectrum resulted in reduced audio spill onto open mics on stage, improved clarity and impact of individual instruments and less spill from the main sound system to the stage and backstage.

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INSIDE KOKO

Return of an Icon

“WE ARE ABLE TO CONTROL OFF-SITE NOISE, THUS ENSURING THAT THE RESIDENTS OF CAMDEN CAN SLEEP SOUNDLY.”

“A huge benefit of the XSL System is broadband directivity control,” said Powell. “By using a combination of cabinet geometry and cardioid techniques in the lower range we are able to control off-site noise, thus ensuring that the residents of Camden can sleep soundly, even with a major performance happening just a few meters away.”

Bengough commented: “After three long and epic years of construction and restoration, I’m excited to announce that we will be returning KOKO to the musicians, artists and fans with a beautifully restored theater and live music offering that HEADLINER USA

will hopefully be a truly unique and unparalleled experience for everyone coming through the doors. We are as committed as ever to protect our 120year cultural legacy and to support the next generation of musicians and London’s dynamic and ever growing music scene.”

Elisabeth Murdoch, co-founder and executive chair of SISTER, added: “It’s never been more important to support the next generation of artists and storytellers to collaborate, innovate and share their work. Although we’ve all been eager for the return of live music, we’ve also been discovering new ways to engage with the

artists we love through their creative endeavors in the digital space, keeping us united as a global community.

“It’s this connective power of music and the arts that Olly and his team are harnessing as they develop KOKO into London’s first next generation global entertainment experience. At SISTER we’re really excited to partner with KOKO and to use our collective expertise, networks and shared independence to forge creative collaborations and empower artists and audiences around the world.”

DBAUDIO.COM KOKO.CO.UK

LANCE POWELL ON USING ANUBIS MISSIONS “I’m constantly moving between my personal mix room and various studios and spaces, which means the need to have absolutely pristine quality on-hand all the time is really important. With the Merging Technologies Anubis I have a pair of really powerful mic preamps, brilliant A/D and D/A converters and a perfect monitor controller all in one box. I finally have a centerpiece that I trust completely for both recording and mixing.”

Lance Powell- Engineer / Mixer Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Miguel, Snoop Dogg, Jess Glynne, Blxst.

merging.com/anubis Independent Audio, Portland, Maine.

T (207) 723 2424

E dennis@independentaudio.com

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ROADRUNNER

HEADLINER USA

On The Run

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ON THE RUN

ROADRUNNER Boston venue Roadrunner, the largest general admission venue in New England, has installed L-Acoustics’ K and A Series systems to bring “pristine” sound to the space. Headliner hears from those involved in the project about how the installation came to fruition...

Initially, the 50,000-square-foot space at Allston-Brighton’s Boston Landing development was designed to serve as a Celtics training facility, before the team decided to move across the street. The Bowery Presents (TBP) and AEG then saw the available space as an ideal location for a 3,500-capacity live music venue, with concert promoters looking to NYCbased integrator See Factor to supply the venue with an L-Acoustics K2 loudspeaker system.

“When we got in the building and began incorporating all of the production elements, we decided to make a few changes from the original design based on our desire to keep all of our production elements mobile for multiple room setups and artists’ needs,” says Roadrunner technical director of audio, Morgan ‘Mo’ Russell, who serves alongside Roadrunner production manager Eric Jenson and A2 Reid Calkin as the primary audio crew for TBP’s new venue.

The new $20 million Roadrunner features a scalable stage and room design, with the stage spanning 60 feet to accommodate full arena-sized touring productions. However, its footprint can also be reduced, with a house PA designed to travel on trolleys to deliver more intimate experiences for smaller crowds.

“All of those considerations led us to deploy main hangs of 12 K2 enclosures per side with six flown KS21 subs in cardioid right behind them for true full-range left and right, and these are all flown on custom-beam trolleys that can travel up to 16 feet out into the house when we shrink the venue based on production needs.”

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On The Run

Roadrunner also has eight A15 Wide enclosures hung as under-balcony fills and two A15 Wide as over-balcony fills that “follow left and right accordingly to maintain stunning stereo imaging throughout the venue,” Russell notes.

On the sub feed, the venue has 10 KS28 suspended approximately half an inch off the ground, flown from the front stage decking, allowing the club to move the entire ground sub cluster forward as a unit when it builds the stage out to decrease the room size. Furthermore, eight Kara IIi on the downstage-edge riser decks handle front-fill, and these also move forward with the ground subs.

Onstage, 15 X15 wedges are available for monitoring, plus stereo side-fills consisting of two A15i Focus and two KS28 subs per side. LA12X amplified controllers drive most of the house and monitor systems, with a few additional LA4X. The initial loudspeaker system design was created by TBP/AEG system design engineer Lorne Grabe, working with NYC-based engineer Alex Kehr and L-Acoustics applications engineer Chris ‘Sully’ Sullivan.

“I have been working with L-Acoustics for a long time, so it’s an easy fit for us,” says Grabe, who also serves as the head sound engineer for Manhattan venue Terminal 5, which is home to a K2 system. “Both companies have a great relationship, and L-Acoustics has been amazing with taking care of us HEADLINER USA

for Roadrunner and our NYC builds, including Brooklyn Steel, Terminal 5, and Webster Hall. Plus, when we had to modify Boston’s new design on the fly - first for sightline issues and then for flown sub weight issues - Sully at L-Acoustics was always there for us.”

In addition to DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles at both FOH and monitor mix positions, the venue also features an L-Acoustics P1 processor at FOH paired with five LS10 switches for MilanAVB conversion, system control, and atmospheric adjustment. The entire PA is run via AVB. “Not only do bands come in all shapes, sizes and styles, but engineers have many different approaches and styles,” says Russell. “We are ready to accommodate here. We have the best tools L-Acoustics and DiGiCo have to offer. With the P1 and the M1 measurement tools it is not only easy but a very fast process to make any adjustments to the system. Also, Soundvision allows us to give incoming engineers an extremely accurate picture of what they will be walking into when they arrive at the venue and allows us to play with potential changes to accommodate their show virtually during the advance process.

This affords us the opportunity to be almost completely dialed in before the bands’ buses even pull up.”

Commenting on the biggest challenges faced while working on the project, Russell concludes: “Perhaps our biggest challenge on the install was how

much time we had between getting occupancy of the building and our first show (about one week). I knew what myself and Reid Calkin (A2) wanted to accomplish, and it was a lot for that time frame. Our crew chief Mike Kadomiya ensured we had all the hands and riggers we needed.

“When we got in we saw that Scott Raved (TPB director of operations/ construction) had done such a beautiful job making sure our building infrastructure was flawless, ensuring the room didn’t fight back and felt like a willing partner in our vision of what we wanted this venue to be. Lorne Grabe, Sully Sullivan and Alex Kehr had been trading Soundvision files on this for over a year before I got involved.

They weighed all the different options for deployment and they are just really, really good at what they do.

“See Factor provided us space and resources to prep all the gear before we got into the venue, so when we walked in we almost loaded it in like a tour. Eric Jensen (PM) and Troy Dunphy (APM) made sure we had whatever we needed as soon as we needed it to complete the install. Everyone at Roadrunner, from Allison Finney (GM) and Ashley Lord (BM) to the rest of the team gave their all to this. Despite the challenge, everyone involved stepped up and proved their dedication to making this one of the best venues in the world from day one.”

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PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING

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KONG.

Back With A Bang

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BACK WITH A BANG

KONG.

The incredibly talented, Boston-bred and L.A-based singer-songwriter known as KONG. joins Headliner live from the JBL booth at NAMM 2022 to discuss his musical journey so far…

How were things for you during the pandemic? Were you making music?

I went through some personal stuff actually. I was home in Boston, and right around the time the pandemic hit, my father passed, so it was a very emotional time for me. And at the same time, in sort of this flourishing moment, I got the opportunity to do a lot of work with Fox Network; we did a songwriting camp in the April which was really, really awesome.

And then I started working with a company called Audio Network, and we did a record for them. At the same time, we were writing all these tunes and recording tonnes and tonnes of music. It was a very interesting time, because there was this personal

strategy, but then professionally it gave birth to a lot of things that I’m doing now.

What kind of musical influence was your father?

My dad would give me a lot of shit. He was an Irish Boston guy, a plumber. And one thing that he said that was very true was, ‘You got your voice from me.’ He wasn’t a singer, but he used to walk around the house crooning all the time, making up lyrics and singing with this deep voice. So I really attest a lot of that. When I was growing up, my father was sick at a very young age, so one of the first songs I ever wrote was about that.

He’s been such an influence on the

style and the way that I create music and where I create it from.

I don’t think he really understood what I was doing. My sister had this great voice and when we were growing up, they wanted me to play bass or sax or something else because my sister was the singer.

But I also wanted to be a singer. I eventually connected with a music mentor and someone who has supported me to this day – and who actually is the reason why I’m in L.A today – songwriter and drummer Lisa Pimentel.

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KONG.

Back With A Bang

What were some of your musical influences growing up?

Queen’s Greatest Hits was one of my favorite records; me and my sister would make up dances and stuff.

The Doors were a huge influence growing up. There was a lot of jazz, soul and R&B stuff, and a lot of Latin music as well. I grew up in a very diverse community, so I’ve been to gospel churches, I’ve been to temple, HEADLINER USA

to Christian church, Catholic church – so I think all the musical influences around those cultures have really resonated with me along the way.

What’s your live experience been like since things have opened up?

We played one show in February.

It was the first show in about three years – the one before that I opened up for Fitz and The Tantrums. That

was when Ben and I started really working together again; he’s a main collaborator of mine, and we started bringing in some of these more poppy elements into my songs. For example I started writing this one song and he advised that we stick with the poppier vibe, and then he turned it into this very soulful tune, Make A Change. And then Don Diablo loved it, so we finished writing

EMERGING HEADLINER

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“I’M TRYING TO LEARN TO JUST CONTINUOUSLY TAP INTO MY INTUITION. IF IT KEEPS COMING UP IN MY HEAD, THEN I KNOW I’VE GOTTA DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.”

it up with him and for me it was just about leaning into what feels right, and to not have the perimeter of a genre necessarily.

But with regards to the experience of playing live – it was a four piece and although usually I play different instruments or bass the whole time, I just sang. It was such a good feeling to let loose and just dance and move you know, and get all those people singing along. That call and response thing is so important.

What’s your process when it comes to writing and producing a song?

It used to be: write songs, bring them in to a producer, and then start elaborating on it. But over the last few years, it’s been: take ideas, bring them in to people that you love, and that you want to collaborate with, and let ideas flow from there. It’s been a really amazing experience.

If I have an idea and I’m struggling with it, I know if I bring it to these people and work with them, they’re

gonna help me get that thing out that I’ve been looking to find. I feel like I’m blessed if I can pump out a song completely finished by myself – it almost feels like the universe working through me. Otherwise, it’s about having that feeling and figuring out what to say, and then trying to match the production to say those same things.

One thing I’m trying to learn is just continuously tapping into my intuition.

If it keeps coming up in my head, and I keep thinking of it, then I know I’ve gotta do something about it.

we’re teaming up with the right partners, and we’re gonna really blast this thing off. The whole team is really cool; they continuously bring me back to the Kongregation – this outlaw vibe and this blue collar vibe and this spiritual vibe that they’re not afraid of, and they love it. They’re not trying to make me anything else; they’re trying to take me and bring it to the world. So we’re just figuring out how to roll that out over the next year or so with all these different tunes.

INSTA: @KONGREGATION JBLPRO.COM POWERED BY

What do you have in the pipeline?

I’m in the process of signing a record deal right now, so that’s exciting.

We’ve got six songs for the first EP and the three singles kind of figured out already. And we’re starting to build the visual concepts and the message behind it all. I had a bunch of releases last year, but this is the first time in a while that I feel like HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY

Green Shoots

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INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY HEADLINER USA

PRO AUDIO

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UK pro audio specialist Martin Audio has announced the funding completion for planting 50,000 trees, plus an ongoing commitment to plant another new tree for every line array cabinet sold, as part of its mission to address the climate emergency.

“As a global leader in the pro audio industry, and as part of the wider Focusrite Group, environmental sustainability is a major opportunity for us to demonstrate climate leadership and values, define good environmental practice and benefit from an opportunity to meaningfully engage with our staff, customers and the wider audio community,” explains managing director, Dom Harter.

“Working alongside Andy Land, head of sustainability for Focusrite Group, we have been outlining our approach and commencing the work.”

“Our approach to environmental sustainability extends to our complete operation, aiming to embed us within the circular economy,” furthers Land.

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INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY

Green Shoots

“I THINK OVER TIME FOCUSRITE WILL SOLVE ITS FOOTPRINT AND WILL GET TO A POINT WHERE WE’VE GOT NET ZERO EMISSIONS, BUT THE BIGGER THING IS INFLUENCING AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY.”

“We believe the only way to make sure we’re doing the right thing is to look at our products in detail across the whole lifecycle, starting with production, then logistics, energy consumption and end of life treatment.

“It’s going to take time, but we’re aiming to map the life cycle of every product and through this detailed work, we’re starting to uncover the environmental hot spots in our products, and what we can do about it. The work involved will not only involve holistic sustainable design, but also packaging, energy efficiency and the headquarters building.”

This longer-term work is complemented by today’s announcement of Martin Audio’s funding completion for 50,000 new trees as well as a new tree for every line array cabinet sold moving forward.

“It’s well known that forests are among the most important carbon sinks on the planet, and they also harbor enormous levels of biodiversity,” adds Harter.

“Unfortunately, global forests are continuing to decline, which could HEADLINER USA

lead to entire regions becoming uninhabitable if there isn’t change.

We’re doing what we can to help reverse this by collaborating with the experts at Ecologi and their trusted partners to have already planted 50,000 new native trees.

“This is part of wider afforestation projects that will transform the local landscape, increase biodiversity, improve resilience to climate change, and over time, as these trees mature, they will sequester carbon within the soil to fight global heating.

“Furthermore, we are committing to planting a new tree for every line array cabinet sold moving forward. In other words, it’s a small step in paying it back and paying it forward.”

Speaking to Headliner, Land outlined the work he has been doing across the Focusrite Group to help bring about practical change.

“I’ve been at Focusrite for about 10 years, and over the past three years I’ve been transitioning into this role, which I’ve been doing for about a year

and a half,” he says. “Probably the most significant single piece of work that I’ve been doing is trying to understand everything that goes into our products.

I started with the Focusrite side, and I’ve been doing the same with Adam Audio and Martin Audio. I’ve been doing these life cycle assessments on our products across the whole group, and I think we’ve got maybe 250ish products.”

He continues: “This has been a pretty hands on process. I physically get a product, and I take it apart and weigh every component and find out what it’s made of, and then I build that back up with environmental data. So, it started out as just trying to work out the carbon footprint of a Scarlett 2i2, that has now evolved to the point where I’m starting to redesign the database and how it operates so it can actually do a full lifecycle inventory. That will give me a list of perhaps 200-500 pollutants associated with a product. Some of them will be miniscule quantities, but I can now work out how radioactive a product is! I can go into the kind of detail.

PRO AUDIO

“The Focusrite Scarletts are now made with recycled aluminum, because about half the weight is aluminum anyway, and that is a relatively polluting metal, so we moved to recycled aluminum and that has halved the footprint of making them.

We want to get something into mass production, wherever it is in the group, so we can get some real world data.”

Land also commented that he believes Focusrite can lead the rest of the pro audio and music technology industries in the fight for greater sustainability.

“Broadly I have three steps in what I do. First, it’s about get our house in

order with regards to our electricity consumption, business travel and things like that. The next step is to sort out the products, which is where I have been doing these lifecycle assessments. And the third step is to try and lead the industry.

“I’ve been chatting with a number of other music tech brands, and there are plenty of people who are very passionate about this, but as far as I’m aware, I’m the only person doing this full time. So, if we want to turn the whole industry, we need to be putting our name out there and saying we’re happy to help as well.

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“There is definitely a long way to go.

The likes of Coldplay saying they are going to make their touring as green as possible is good to see, as this type of change will be pushed by customers making these demands. I think over time Focusrite will solve its footprint and will get to a point where we’ve got net zero emissions, but the bigger thing is influencing an entire industry. And I think we can do it.”

FOCUSRITE.COM MARTIN-AUDIO.COM

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

THE MANTIAN ORCHESTRA

Up and Down the Mountain

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THEMANTIAN ORCHESTRA

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LIVE SOUND

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“THE SECOND HALF OF THE PERFORMANCE WAS DESIGNED TO BE STAGED ENTIRELY IN THE DARK, SO THE SONIC DETAIL NEEDED TO BE OUTSTANDING.”

The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing is the largest theater complex in Asia. Known colloquially as ‘The Giant Egg’, the Centre houses an opera hall, music hall, theater and art exhibition halls, as well as restaurants, shops and other ancillary facilities. CODA Audio’s Chinese distributor, production specialist Tongbo, regularly provides systems for key events at the prestigious venue, and having last year supplied a CODA N-RAY system for the Chinese Peking Opera Arts Festival, returned this summer to meet another interesting challenge…

Feng Mantian, a prominent virtuoso on the four-stringed Chinese instrument the zhongruan, delivered

an ambitious performance based on the theme of ‘Up and Down the Mountain’, drawing inspiration from China’s rich cultural heritage.

First conceived in 2018, the show – which featured The Mantian Orchestra – was honed on an extensive world tour before returning to the Beijing stage for this gala evening.

The nature of the eclectic performance, which also featured wind instruments, keyboards, percussion and electronic elements blended with singing and spoken voices, demanded crystal clear audio that could faithfully represent the wide diversity of sounds and styles to be covered.

From jazz and rock to classical and poetry, ‘Up and Down the Mountain’ covered the full spectrum of audio for which Tongbo this time supplied a system based around CODA Audio’s ViRAY line array.

The ground-stacked ViRAY system was supplemented with CODA’s SCP Subwoofers with HOPS5 and HOPS8 point source speakers as fills. CUE ONE and CUE TWO three-way stage monitors completed the system.

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THE MANTIAN ORCHESTRA

David Webster, global marketing director for CODA Audio, commented: “To see CODA Audio systems in use again at one of China’s most highprofile venues is fantastic and is a great testament to the work of our distributor, Tongbo. The second half HEADLINER USA

Up and Down the Mountain

of the performance was designed to be staged entirely in the dark, with Feng Mantian and the other musicians delivering an unscored, unrehearsed improvisation.

“Under those circumstances, the audio system becomes the audience’s only link with the music,

so the sonic detail needed to be outstanding. By every measure the show was a huge success and we’re very proud to have been a part of it.”

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ESTE HAIM & CHRISTOPHER STRACEY

HEADLINER USA

Scoring Netflix’s Maid

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ESTE HAIM & CHRISTOPHER STRACEY Netflix series Maid - which tells the story of a young mother fleeing an abusive relationship and trying to provide for her child - has been the subject of much critical acclaim since airing in late 2021, with one of its most captivating elements being its original score. Composed by first time scorers Este Haim of indie pop icons Haim, alongside L.A-based songwriter and producer Christopher ‘Stray’ Stracey, the pair’s wideranging experience and tightly aligned musical sensibilities produced a truly unique soundtrack and set the foundations for a creative partnership that both are certain will flourish far beyond their maiden voyage together. Headliner caught up with Haim and Stracey to talk about the joys and challenges of making music for TV…

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ESTE HAIM & CHRISTOPHER STRACEY

Scoring Netflix’s Maid

“IT’S AMAZING TO FUNNEL YOUR ABILITIES AND PASSIONS INTO A DIFFERENT WORLD.”

How did you both come to be involved in Maid?

Este: It all started over the pandemic.

Like most musicians, we were all feeling a little depressed about the state of affairs, and as a touring musician, not being able to go out and play shows. Especially as I had just released a record. I was just airing my grievances to a friend of mine named Brett Hedblom, and he took that as a sign that I may have some time on my hands, and maybe I’d be up for watching this pilot episode of a show he’d been working on. He said he was making this show called Maid, that they were getting the music aspect of the show together, and would I be up for watching it and offering some notes or ideas. I watched it and loved it and came back to him with some ideas for the direction the music could go in. And then it became, ‘Hey, would you like to just do the music for the show?’

I jumped at the chance, but I’m self-aware enough to know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I’m not a competent engineer by any stretch of the imagination.

So, I called my friend Tobias Jesso Jr, who is a great songwriter and just a great connector of humans. He said, ‘You have to meet Stray, because you are going to be best friends and you have the same sensibilities’. It was like a blind date. I showed up at Stray’s house with Tobias, who was like the dad of the playdate, making sure we all played nice in the sandbox! For me HEADLINER USA

it felt really instant, like: I love this guy; I love his musical sensibilities. So, we watched the episode and the scenes we were going to score, and we were just so energized about what we were going to do. It was the first time either of us had scored a TV show.

Christopher, what was your background prior to this project?

Christopher: Scoring was something I always wanted to get into. So, for Este to come round and say, ‘I have this possible job, they want us to score these scenes…’ we just had a really fun afternoon. It was like a crash course in getting to know each other’s influences and records that we love.

My background is mostly in making records, a lot of electronic music, songwriting and producing, so to go from that to doing music which is very much playing a supporting role to something else is really different.

When you are making an album, you want to engage the listener straight away, but sometimes with scoring you’re sitting back and gently scoring a scene. You can’t be like, ‘LISTEN TO ME!’ Este: Sometimes it’s the opposite. You almost don’t want people to know there is music in the background.

How did you adapt to that very different style? Did you have to completely rethink your approach?

Este: There were definitely some growing pains but Stray and I are such huge fans of score in general.

And I have always thought about composing and what that would be like, but Stray and I are very used to collaboration. I collaborate with my sisters on everything we do in Haim.

And with Stray, because we share the same sensibilities, we knew when we needed to be more obtrusive than other times. And we were lucky that we had producers, directors and a showrunner who were very much into collaborating with us and trusted us implicitly.

When we would go far with some of the sounds and sonics, they would have to reel us in a bit, but because of that we ended up loving the score so much, as it was a collaborative process. It never felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen. The big difference is that when you’re making a record you are making it for yourself and it’s your vision.

In Haim, we sequester ourselves in the studio for months at a time, we don’t show anything to anyone until it’s entirely finished. Then we hand it to the label, and it’s done, with no ifs, ands or buts about it. So, that is obviously very different to making music for TV and film.

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Ricardo Hubbs / Netflix

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Scoring Netflix’s Maid

“THERE WERE TIMES WHERE I HAD TO TAKE A BREAK AND COLLECT MYSELF. IT’S A VERY EMOTIONAL SHOW.”

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during the process?

Este: The episode where Alex is in public housing and she discovers the mold problem and that her daughter is getting sick because of it. There is a passing of time and it’s just getting exponentially more stressful, and there were a lot of things we had to hit, with the sense of time passing and increasing stress within that scene. And we didn’t want to tell the audience to be stressed out, because it was already so stressful. So, honing in on that stood out.

It was also one of the most heartbreaking parts of the show. Children getting sick is something I just can’t HEADLINER USA

deal with. There were many points within scoring the show where I felt triggered and emotional, like people who watched the show, especially women. There were times where I had to take a break and collect myself. It’s a very emotional show, and that scene in particular was really hard for me to score without it becoming super sad and dramatic, which is the opposite of what we wanted to do.

Is this something you would like to do again?

Este: Forever! I would do it – anyone listening – we’re for hire! I’m done touring so Stray and I would love to do something together again. We had an amazing time.

Christopher: We did have a great time and it’s amazing to funnel your abilities and passions into a different world. I’ve always wanted to find new, weird things I can do with music.

And being part of telling someone else’s story and vision through sound was such a cool opportunity and I definitely want to do more of it, for sure. It’s a job that can be brand new every time you do it.

INSTA: @ESTEHAIM @CHRISTOPHERSTRACEY

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TRAVIS HARRINGTON

HEADLINER USA

The Atlanta Audiophile

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TRAVIS HARRINGTON Drake, Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, John Legend; these are some of the credits Travis Harrington has compiled so far in his career as a producer and engineer. Headliner chats with Harrington about his swift rise from studio intern to working with the world’s all-time biggest artists, how his ongoing work with Florida rapper Rod Wave has been the most special part of his career, and why he’s been using Waves plugins since 2009.

The legendary place within international rap music held by the beloved Fruity Loops music software (one classic example is Dizzee Rascal self-producing his debut and Mercury Prize-winning album, Boy In Da Corner all in Fruity Loops) is bolstered by the fact that Harrington, speaking from a temporary base in Florida, started out using it himself at the beginning of his music journey.

“I started out making my own beats in Fruity Loops when I was trying to rap as a kid,” he says, his Atlanta accent shining through. “People living in the area I grew up in took a liking to my beats. I ended up going to school in Los Angeles, at The Los

Angeles Recording School. I learned a lot about the engineering and the technicalities behind it, but my real foot in the door came when I got my internship at Larrabee Sound Studios.

There were a lot of big name artists, big songs and big records that were getting mixed there at the time.”

Indeed, the studios have quite the curriculum vitae; the likes of Michael Jackson, Usher, Taylor Swift and Madonna – naming only a very small handful – have utilized the services of Larrabee. Harrington actually started out mixing for the King of Pop: “I got a credit on his last album,” he clarifies, “and Justin Bieber; I have a credit on his first album.”

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TRAVIS HARRINGTON

The Atlanta Audiophile

“ALL THE PRODUCERS I KNEW FRESH OUT OF SCHOOL WERE ASKING: HAVE YOU TRIED WAVES?”

Another huge early career highlight was Harrington’s opportunity to help record the Drake track Shut It Down featuring The Dream. These days, however, Harrington has formed a formidable friendship and professional relationship with Florida rapping sensation Rod Wave.

“I had just opened my own studio for the first time, and Rod had never been to a real studio,” he reflects, adding that they continue to work together to this day as Wave’s streaming numbers are hitting the millions, six albums later.

A notable constant in Harrington’s career has been his use of Waves plugins, which he’s used for well over a decade now.

“I started using Waves around 2009,” he says. “There were a few choices of brands back then, not as many as now, but still, all the producers I knew HEADLINER USA

fresh out of school were asking, ‘Have you tried Waves?’ As soon as I really learned the engineering side of things, I started using Waves all the time, more than any other plugin. Most of the templates that I’ve created and that I use still incorporate tonnes of Waves. Their plugins are just really practical.”

And he isn’t exaggerating: “On every session of mine, you’ll find the R-Comp, you’ll find the H-EQ, the Renaissance DeEsser. Also just the straight DeEsser. And then the Sibilance, the CLA-2A, C4 and C6.”

Harrington elaborates on how he uses these plugins in his sessions: “I use the CLA plugins and compressors like glue on my bus tracks,” he says. “That gives you great control. The H-EQ is great because with the graphic equalizer, you can get in there and really manipulate

what you’re trying to do pretty easily.

So that’s just one classic and pretty simple example. I often use Sibilance, the DeEsser and R-DeEsser all on the same track. I may have them do different things, but it’s mostly just to get that sound out, because a lot of the time I’m recording in hotel rooms.

The Clarity VX is really good, too. I’ve recently started using that one to get rid of the background noise when I’m recording in hotels rooms and random places like that.”

Harrington’s story is the kind that would not only inspire budding beatmakers and producers in his native state of Georgia, but around the world too. And that is set to increase as he and his chief collaborator, Rod Wave’s music continues to spread around the globe like wildfire.

INSTA: @TRVOSKI WAVES.COM

Photos: Thomas Peham (background), Alexander Popov, Benjamin Child, Donny Jiang, Hulki Okan Tabak, Marcos Luiz, Pablo Merchan-Montes, Rodan Can, William White (all unsplash)

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The art of creative engineering.

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ROB BURRELL

HEADLINER USA

Playing The Long Game

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Playing The Long Game

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ROB BURRELL Rob Burrell listens to Christmas songs all year round, but don’t hold that against him – he’s engineered and/or mixed four Grammy Award winning and 14 Grammy nominated albums, so he’s more than earned the right to feel festive all year round.

Burrell knew he wanted to be a professional singer when he was just five years old, and pursued that passion all the way up to college where he was a vocal performance major. A self confessed “tech nerd,” he began to mess around with production, which piqued the interest of one of his professors.

“He invited me to go to a vocal session that he was producing for a record he was making, so I went with

him that night,” he recalls, smiling at the memory. “It will always stick in my mind: I walked into Acme Recording Studio in New York and was greeted by platinum albums from Whitney Houston, The Spin Doctors – Pocket Full of Kryptonite was blowing up the radio at the time – and I was completely enamored. I’d never been in a studio in my life. I grew up in a little paper mill town in Maine, so I really had no idea! I realized that night that a blend of musicality and HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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Playing The Long Game

technology is what you need to achieve feeling, emotion and texture on a record. Everything changed for me; after 19 years of wanting to be a singer, I said, ‘I’m going to be a producer’.”

His first Platinum Album came from the first assisting gig he landed (and all while he was still in school), and the first Grammy win arrived in 2000 for his part in a Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir record.

While that achievement (not to mention subsequent Grammy wins alongside multiple Platinum, Gold and Billboard 200 charting albums) certainly flagged him as one to watch, he shares that it made some assume he was too busy to take on new work.

“One of my favorite Hollywood sound designers who won an Oscar said someone said to him, ‘Your phone must be blowing up,’ and he said, ‘Actually, nobody’s calling me for anything because people assume that if you have won an Oscar, you’re either too expensive or too busy!’ Thankfully, that wasn’t the case with me, but I would call my career a slow burn,” he considers.

“I like that because I’ve always been in this for the long game; I wanted it to be a lifelong career. I’ve seen a few people skyrocket to the top

HEADLINER USA

in popularity in terms of volume of work, and I’ve seen them burn out from exhaustion because they were the flavor of the month. But then all of a sudden, what they bring to the table is not as exciting to people and they move on to someone else.

I’ve positioned myself by working in very diverse genres, and by learning and honing my craft continually, and it’s been a steady flow of work – enough to support a family – and I enjoy what I do,” he smiles.

“I don’t want to ever retire. Once a musician, always a musician; this is what I was made to do.”

The number of artists he has worked with is impressive, and includes working with Carrie Underwood, Josh Groban, and he says, “kind of” mixing for Bono.

“I did a Christmas record with an artist named Michael W. Smith, who I’ve made many records with in my career,” he explains. “It was a collaboration with a lot of different artists, and Michael is good friends with Bono. He approached him, but a vocal duet was not on the table for a lot of business reasons, so what Michael and Bono talked about was, what if Michael writes a beautiful underscore and Bono recites a traditional Irish Christmas poem over the top of it? Bono did it and I got to mix it. So I have mixed

Bono’s voice, but it’s not him singing on a record,” he clarifies, laughing – admitting that an added bonus for him was being a part of a Christmas record.

“I listen to Christmas music all year round,” he grins. “Christmas records have altered my career and I love Christmas music. There’s just something about it. I’m kind of like a kid at Christmas every day when I wake up. I just truly love music and love what I do, but Christmas music…” he trails off, “it’s the nostalgia, it’s the production… everything about it just floors me.

So yeah, it is not uncommon for a little Nat King Cole to pop on my speakers some morning in May, just because!”

Burrell has spent 28 years as a professional engineer, and has the home studio to prove it. His Dolby Atmos room is in the basement of his house – “I am pretty pleased with the space and also the commute, since it’s a flight of stairs” – and says this is his favoritesounding home studio he’s ever had. He converted the room to Atmos three years ago after years of keeping his eye on the rapid progress the format was making.

MIXER

“I have always used technology to enhance the musical experience,” he continues, on a roll now. “I don’t want tech to inform my musical soul.

I want tech to help me interpret my musical soul and desires, so it’s very important that technology melts away and lets me create great art. I really do believe that Atmos is here to stay; I think that this is going to be the norm moving forward,” he asserts.

gear, including a Red 16Line Thunderbolt interface with a RedNet R1 desktop remote to control it, an A16R AD/DA converter, a RedNet X2P desktop interface, and a RedNet AM2 monitor and headphone amplifier, all connected to a single Audio-over-IP network via Dante. In terms of mic pres, he’s always got his ISA 828 MkII and ISA Ones handy, which also connect to the Dante network via digital option cards.

Burrell knows a thing or two about the best kit for his studio space, and helping his Atmos mixes sound pristine is an arsenal of Focusrite

“Focusrite has had my heart from the beginning of my career,” he enthuses. “Every engineer has their preferences – they’re crayons in

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the Crayola box of 128, but as a kid, I had three or four colors that were my favorites! Focusrite has always helped me better achieve the sound that was in my head. To me, Focusrite sounds like a record – the way it polishes and shapes, tonally is what’s always captivated me.

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ROB BURRELL

Playing The Long Game

“FOCUSRITE INTERFACES ALLOW ME TO FLUIDLY CREATE WITH SONIC EXCELLENCE WITH ALL THE FLEXIBILITY I NEED, BUT NEVER GET IN MY WAY AND DISTRACT ME.”

“My experience with Focusrite goes back literally 28 years, and you’ll have to pry them from my cold dead hands,” he adds, chuckling.

“Prior to the Atmos upgrade, I didn’t have any Dante gear, but Atmos was exactly the time to do that, so I got the 16Line interface to test on my Pro Tools rig. A couple of things happened immediately: one is I was floored by how great it sounded – both on the D/As for playback and the converters for recording. It was just absolutely stellar-sounding. That was a wonderful treat to put my ears on it and hear it that way. The other thing was how elegantly, smoothly and solidly it integrated with Pro Tools – zero issues as far as communication and set up.”

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He immediately knew that it would become the Dante hub for his new Atmos room, reiterating that he is most creative when the technology doesn’t obstruct the creative process: “As much as I love gear, my requirement is that I can absolutely forget that it exists,” he nods.

“I don’t want it to draw attention to itself. When I’m in the zone creating, I don’t want to be taken out of it. These Focusrite interfaces are an important part of that success to allow me to be able to fluidly create with sonic excellence with all the flexibility I need, but never get in my way and distract me. That was the genesis of it.

“I like big, expensive-sounding records,” he considers. “To me that’s

part of the hugeness of making a record; I like things that are very clear and open, top to bottom and front to back, and the Focusrite units help me get there, unequivocally. That is my love affair with them!”

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Inside PDV Records

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Austria’s PDV Records is a music production and AV services company that specializes in classical music and music for media and motion pictures. Founded in 2007 by Volker Werner, Philipp Treiber and David Menke, the trio’s expertise spans the full audio engineering spectrum, while their two studios – one in Vienna, one in Paris – are kitted out with the most cutting edge technology on the market. Headliner finds out how they have recently upgraded their creative spaces with Merging Technologies’ Horus and Anubis solutions, and why they took the plunge to become a fully certified Dolby Atmos facility.

In PDV’s Paris studio, which is run

by Menke and deals predominantly in music for media and film, Atmos mixing was already up and running.

Menke, however, was keen to do more in the format, while Werner and Treiber, running the Vienna studio, were keen to harness the power of Atmos mixing in musical productions as well.

Crucial to the firm’s Atmos certification is Merging Technologies, with PDV adding a second Horus AD/ DA interface and an Anubis controller to its Vienna facility. The Merging Anubis/Horus combination provides PDV an ideal monitoring solution when using Atmos or any other immersive format on account of its high-end performance audio, easily connected IP networking and costeffective price point. Furthermore, control of the monitoring setup from Anubis is designed to be powerful, convenient and easy to implement.

Indeed, many Atmos recording or mastering facilities already have Merging Hapi or Horus devices.

At the heart of the Vienna studio is a Merging Horus networked audio interface capable of running ultra-

high quality DSD/DXD format audio.

PDVs initial foray into the Merging universe was six years ago, as Werner, who oversees sound design and picture direction, explains: “We needed extremely high-quality preamps for our recordings. We compared a few systems, and Horus was the one we liked the best from a sonic point of view.”

“Initially, some cards needed replacing to integrate it properly within the setup, but those issues were quickly resolved, and since then, the Horus has been functioning really well and is an integral part

of our operations - it’s extremely flexible!” he continues. “We use it for on-site recordings where we have a system with 48 preamps and a few outputs. Our main connections are via RAVENNA but we also use MADI if we’re connecting to OB vans, for example. We use the DirectOut mic cards for splits because sometimes we facilitate simultaneous recording and live broadcast at the same time, so this setup allows us to split audio feeds in-the-box, without having to use additional hardware. Also, the numerous AES inputs add to the versatility of production capabilities.”

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Inside PDV Records

“THE AMOUNT OF BUSINESS THAT HAS COME OUR WAY THANKS TO THE DOLBY ATMOS LABEL IS ASTONISHING.”

When PDV upgraded its studio and moved into new premises in Vienna, the company added a second Horus to its setup. This time it was deployed primarily for monitoring purposes, external effects and preamps for vocal overdubs and voiceovers. A Merging Anubis controller was also added to offer more tactile control over productions. It comes in a compact, desktop AoIP format, with the option to also control it remotely via web or app.

Furthermore, the integration of Dolby Atmos was seamless, partially due to the fact that PDV already had a significant Geithain 7.1 loudspeaker setup, and also because none of Merging’s interfaces is specifically locked to a DAW, be it Pyramix (Merging’s own DAW) or any other, HEADLINER USA

meaning that its hardware can integrate into virtually any workflow.

In the case of PDV, despite owning Pyramix, the trio are historic Pro Tools users and as such opted to stay with it.

However, Merging has specifically pursued the route of compatibility and interoperability, with their widespread adoption of the RAVENNA protocol.

PDV is now one of four music production companies in Vienna that is fully capable of Dolby Atmos. The other companies specialize in pop/ rock, music for media and film music, so they segment the market quite democratically, with PDV receiving a plethora of new clients due to the new purchase, including the Austrian

Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) and the Royal Opera in London.

“The amount of business that has come our way thanks to the Dolby Atmos label is astonishing, including a number of productions that we haven’t done ourselves,” said Werner.

“We receive stems or multitrack sessions in 5.1 and we’re asked to upmix to Atmos. We’re currently doing upmixes for ORF as they are re-releasing numerous productions for different labels, and we’ve even done some work for the Royal Opera House in London! We’re very happy that we decided to invest in Dolby Atmos, and of course Merging is a key part of that setup.”

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NINA NESBITT

HEADLINER USA

A Labor of Love

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A LABOR OF LOVE

NINA NESBITT On September 2, Nina Nesbitt releases her latest album Älskar, a meditation on love in all its beauty and complexity. Four years in the making, its production saw the singer-songwriter explore artistic avenues previously untrodden. Headliner caught up with her to discuss the record’s creation, the power of the album format and why the streaming model may be turning people away from new music…

The story behind Nina Nesbitt’s new album Älskar, the follow-up to 2019’s The Sun Will Come Up, The Seasons Will Change, is both a unique and familiar one. Unique in the way that it forced its creator to make difficult decisions and adopt new approaches to her craft; familiar in as far as virtually every artist who has recorded and released music during the pandemic will have their own similar story of being forcibly removed from their comfort zone. For Nesbitt, the Covid outbreak not only scuppered her initial plans to release a record in early 2020, but also set in motion a chain of events that would dramatically transform the form that body of work would take.

“I started making the album in 2018 and had a lot of poppy, upbeat songs and was ready to get things going in 2020, but obviously the world completely changed,” Nesbitt explains as we speak to her over Zoom. “So, I waited a while, kept writing and then literally started a new album amidst all of what was happening, which was far more stripped back and raw. At that point I thought I had two separate albums, but I found they merge really well together, so I wanted to put the best songs from each onto one record, taking the best of each style.

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A Labor of Love

“But it was a very strange process,” she continues. “I made half of it in Sweden – I’m half Swedish – and so I go and see my gran there a lot. So, when I’m there I write a lot in studios in Stockholm. I wanted to make an album there and explore that side of me and my family, but then lockdown hit and I couldn’t get into the country, so I ended up finishing a lot of it over Zoom, which was quite a different experience. But I got there in the end and it definitely resulted in a record

I wouldn’t have made were it not for those circumstances. It is definitely reflective of the times we were all living in.”

For Nesbitt, the process of selecting tracks from each of the two very different song collections she had amassed was a delicate one. While wanting to simply choose her favorite songs from each, they all had to make sense as a cohesive whole.

“It was tricky,” he recalls. “A lot of the songs I wrote in 2018-19 were more poppy and addressed different subjects. There are a lot of contradictions, but then also you witness the growth of someone in their 20s. And the theme of the album is love in all its different forms, and it is messy, and it isn’t straight forward; you can feel one way one day and feel differently the next. So, it does kind of suit the album. I listened to it as a whole and thought it was the perfect album for me right now, with these different dynamics. It’s unexpected but it works really well.”

Aside from being forced to whittle down two albums into one, Nesbitt found that the various Covid lockdowns dictated that large sections of the album had to be made alone or via Zoom. And in the case of four songs, she took the reins as producer for the first time in her career.

“WHEN YOU’RE WRITING IN THE ROOM WITH OTHER PEOPLE, IT’S QUITE MAGICAL, YOU CAN REALLY CAPTURE A MOMENT.”

“I am an only child so I’ve always been very comfortable in my own company, and I’ve always written on my own,” she says. “I wrote a lot of the songs on my own on the last record. But I was really excited about this one, because I was getting opportunities to work with people I’d always dreamed of working with, but not being able to meet them in person because of Covid was really frustrating. And Zoom is tricky. If you’re set up technically it’s fine, but if not, it can be a bit laggy. When you’re writing in the room with other people, it’s quite magical, you can really capture a moment – that’s hard to do over Zoom.

“But on the other hand, I write all my own lyrics, so it was quite good to be alone without any outside influence.

It also pushed me to get more into production - I produced four songs on this album, which I’m really excited about. I was living in the smallest flat you’ve ever seen during lockdown, so I moved in with my mum and set

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up in her little office and room where all the cats live [laughs]. I set up a mic and put a towel over my head to deaden the sound and make it feel more like a studio, and I recorded the vocals like that. And towards the end I moved into my own studio for the first time, which is so exciting and such a luxury.

I found myself often saying, ‘Why aren’t there more female producers?’ So, I thought, why don’t I become one?”

While determined to make a body of work that was both sonically and thematically dynamic and cohesive, Nesbitt also notes that, in a music industry so heavily centered around a singles-driven streaming model, she is currently listening to fewer albums than before. As she puts it, the sheer volume of music available at one’s fingertips at any given moment is almost overwhelming when trying to discover new music.

“I listen to a lot less music these days,” she notes. “And a lot of other writers I’ve been with recently say the same. I don’t know if it’s because there is just so much. I don’t even know where to start. I do listen to more singles, and if it’s an artist I’m invested in I definitely will listen to the album from start to finish.

But I do listen to fewer albums now, which is interesting as I never thought I’d be saying that.

“I’m also finding music in different ways. Before, it would be through hearing something on the radio or finding it on Spotify, whereas now it’s like hearing something on a TV programme or TikTok. There is so much music out there and it’s hard to find what you want. I feel like I’m discovering tracks in new ways. There is obviously lots of amazing music out there, but I don’t have the time to search for it. Now people are just waiting to be presented with it. Which is kind of sad, but it’s just the way it’s going.”

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A Labor of Love

Since finishing Älskar, Nesbitt has also been writing music for other artists, something she has been doing throughout her career. Before time is up on our time together, she explains how different she finds the process of writing for others compared to creating her own material.

“It’s totally different,” she closes. “It’s a different mindset and I can’t do both at the same time. Now that I’ve handed the record in, I’ve been HEADLINER USA

writing some songs for pitch, which is when you just write a song and pitch it out to artists or DJs, and then I’m doing sessions with other artists in the room. That feels more like a job to me – a job that I love – but it’s like, you’re there to get something done for someone else. Writing for me, it has to be more personal. And I like to create a world and a theme around an album.”

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ERIC VUCELICH

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A Level Playing Field

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ERIC VUCELICH Since 1996, Eric Vucelich has been at the forefront of field production mixing in the greater Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area. You name it, he’s done it: national news, pro and college sports, commercials, presidential campaign ads, corporate video, documentaries – even dog shows. He explains how it could have easily gone another way…

“People are usually surprised at how I got into production being that I had zero field experience! I had a background in music and my options at the time were to either keep installing carpet for my father, or take a risk and jump into video and television production,” he tells Headliner.

“I started looking outside of what I knew audio could be, which at the time was really only – in my mind – music production. At that point, I literally opened up the phone book – yes, a physical book! – and went to the column under ‘production companies’ and started cold calling them. I won’t bore anyone with the full drawn out story, but needless to say, I owe my father so much for trusting in me and my drive to succeed, because he loaned me the money I needed to buy my first field

kit. It was a FP32, Vega VHF wireless and a MKH 416. I paid him back in five years and have been upgrading my kit ever since!”

These upgrades have seen him accumulate a wealth of Lectrosonics wireless kit, including two dualchannel SRc and three SRb Digital Hybrid Wireless receivers. His transmitters comprise four SMWB wideband packs supplemented by six SMQVs, which he uses on every project.

“Here in Ohio, you can’t just focus on one avenue of production,” he notes.

“It’s a mixed bag, so every couple of days there’s a very different job. I’ve recently done spots for CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Sports, and the Ohio Liquor Control commission. Every single bit of it, everybody was wireless or will be wireless. It’s not like the

times where everyone is fine with a boom. So, it’s important to have equipment that’s reliable.”

Vucelich shares that every project that he works on – whether that be a sit-down interview or a scripted scene – almost always requires the subjects to be wired.

“Recently I have had a variety of projects from a focus group with eight subjects doing sit-down interviews, to a second round of commercial productions for Ohio Liquor and the American Kennel Club agility competitions, and in every scenario, everyone was wired. A lot of the work I do requires flexibility and quick response to sometimes unplanned action or camera angles where a boom alone just won’t do.”

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A Level Playing Field

“THE COMPANIES I WORK FOR NEED TO KNOW THEY HAVE ALL THEIR CONTENT AT THE END OF THE DAY AND BE CONFIDENT I GOT THE AUDIO CLEAN.”

He is often the lone sound mixer on set, which sees him working with small and fluid crews. “We have to make the most of our on-set time because these shoots are one day in and out, or every day a new subject or subjects are the focus of the video,” he shares.

“The companies I work for need to know they have all their content at the end of the day and be confident I got the audio clean and I haven’t missed anything. I know that between my SMWB, SMQV and SRB and C receivers, I can accomplish what my clients require of me.”

while they were coming up with strategies for the day. We needed to be discrete during the planning times and also have confidence that during the run I would have rock solid audio. Between my Lectro gear and a good set of antenna, I knew I could achieve our goals, no problem.”

protect the gear, but there are always surprises,” he laughs.

With Vucelich frequently covering sporting events at Ohio State University as well as other highimpact sporting events, this reliability is regularly tested: “I’ve had athletes sweat all over their packs with no issues,” he nods.

He recalls a recent project where Lectrosonics proved essential:

“One time, I had the goalie of the Columbus Blue Jackets [hockey team] pouring water from a bottle all over his face during practice.

Lots of water. It was running down inside his uniform and soaking the transmitter. I don’t recommend trying this intentionally, but the pack didn’t give up and we kept recording! You do your best to

“In Ohio, blocks 22 and 23 are pretty good, but 21 has very few frequencies left,” he explains.

“Block A1 is also crowded though you can still find some decent nooks within it. My going wideband was driven by one experience I had at Ohio State. I got to the stadium and was told the crew covering Penn State [the visiting team] had taken everything available in block 22. There wasn’t much of 21 clear, either. That’s when I decided I needed more options. I use the SMWBs almost exclusively now.”

“Recently for the American Kennel Club event, I had to mic up trainers for their run with their dogs. We needed to hear their commands to their dogs through the whole run – we even had them wired somewhere we could listen in HEADLINER USA

The division of labor between Vucelich’s SMWB and SMQV transmitters roughly tracks what the application of the day requires more: RF flexibility or extended runtime, respectively.

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However, the SMQVs still have their role: “I also grab radio feeds from the home and away teams,” Vucelich continues. “The SMQVs have two batteries instead of one, so I’ll stick one on the radio feed for the home team and one on the away team. We use this to transmit down to the camera operators on the field, who listen to the play-by-play chatter and make decisions on the fly about where to track the action next. These feeds are also used in the final cut of the show. From initial setup before the game to wrap, you’re looking at about eight hours, and with the SMQVs I’m not worried about changing batteries.

“When you’re doing sports and news, turnaround times are very fast and there’s no opportunity to re-engage with the subjects – when they’re gone, they’re gone,” he stresses. “That’s a huge part of why I use Lectro. They seem to put in more research than other companies before they release products. Recently, I just ordered the new digital receiver, the DSR4. I’ve had much better results over the years when I’ve used Lectrosonics, through multiple generations of their products.”

A secondary benefit of the SMQVs is range, as Vucelich notes: “Although I don’t usually have to get too far from the camera and the talent because I do a lot of ‘one man band’ type work, there might be a commercial or HEADLINER USA

something where there’s car-to-car stuff going on. I like knowing that I can push the SMQVs up to a quarter-watt output power in conjunction with a good antenna and get the range required.”

Vucelich is quick to point out that his newer SMWBs are no slouches when it comes to range: “For the Ohio Liquor Control spot, we were on a farm,” he reflects. “The miked talent was driving a tractor. The tractor cab was all windows surrounded by metal. I was standing by the field with just my bag, little bowtie antennas on it, and he got at least a hundred feet away with no degradation in sound quality,” he says, adding that their ability to take a tackle or two on the field hasn’t stopped them yet: “I’ve placed transmitters on hockey goalies, linemen and receivers in American football – I protect these devices the best I can, but they have taken impacts and fortunately I have not needed to have them serviced for damage caused by those incidents. Every day, for every job – these tools are essential to have in my bag,” he smiles.

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ELLIOTT WHEELER

Photograph Credit: Prudence Upton

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HEADLINER USA

Scoring Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis

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ELLIOTT WHEELER Baz Luhrmann movies and soundtracks go together like, well, Romeo and Juliet, so when taking on a biopic of the King of Rock and Roll himself, the music had to knock it out of the hayride. The director’s longtime collaborator Elliott Wheeler tells us how his understated score allowed the film’s musical numbers to shine, and how he helped Austin Butler step into Elvis’ blue suede shoes.

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ELLIOTT WHEELER

Scoring Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis

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We imagine you’ve developed something of a shorthand with Baz after working on The Great Gatsby and The Get Down together; where did you start with Elvis?

There was a huge amount of research, you read all the books, you talk to as many of the experts; Baz went and talked to some of Elvis’ childhood friends to go back to the source with the people who were the closest to him to find out those parts of the story. We started throwing together ideas, like looking at which concert footage was going to be the best; were there rehearsal takes that were going to be better to use rather than the actual live performances? We had to think about how we were going to portray this in a way that would be exciting for young audiences and that would make Elvis’ music as vital, dangerous and as punk as it was in the 1950s, because I think that sometimes with Elvis and his music there’s a little bit of a short circuit that happens with the brain because it’s so in the communal ear and so well known.

How did you set about capturing the hysteria that Elvis inspired while being mindful of not falling into cliché?

When people saw Elvis for the first time…there’s a great quote by Buddy Holly that we actually use in the film, HEADLINER USA

which is, “I can’t express how strange he looked”, and Roy Orbison said, “Once I saw Elvis, nothing was ever the same” – music was never the same for him.

It really was this cataclysmic event when people saw him and tried to work out how to take that music, and to give it that impact and cinematic quality was something that we had to think really hard about. Also, because Elvis has been imitated so many times, how do you approach a subject matter like that without feeling like it’s another imitation?

When Butler came on as Elvis, how did his talents wind their way into the music?

When we found Austin, we were like, “Okay, well, he’s going to be amazing”, so it’s Austin singing on all the material up to 1968. After 1968 it’s usually Elvis’ voice, but with Austin woven into the performances as well. Once we got to filming, that was a whole other thing. Then we had to think about how the score was going to work through all that as well. The wonderful thing about being brought in as executive music producer and composer was that we didn’t really have to delineate where the performance would start and the score would stop;

whatever was going to work for the storytelling was going to be what we’d go to.

Did Butler perform the ‘live’ vocals live in the film, or was he miming to a pre-record?

It was both. We did do prerecordings mainly because often on any one day, he’d be in the chair doing makeup and prosthetics – depending on what period we’re up to – for four to six hours, and then he’d have to record for six to eight hours as well. So partly it was making sure that his voice could be preserved. Having said that, once he got on stage, he sang every single line live as well. We had a wonderful props department that made sure that all of the props were working model props of the microphones that Elvis would have been using so that when we did get to the point where we were blending Elvis and Austin together, if Austin did something on camera, like if he breathed a certain way, or he said something to someone in the audience, we could seamlessly blend those two things together. So it was pre-recorded, but we also recorded everything live.

Photograph Credit: Prudence Upton

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Scoring Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis

“WITH ALL OF BAZ’S FILMS, STORYTELLING IS THE CORE OF EVERYTHING AND THE WAY THAT RELATES TO MUSIC IS WITH THE SCORE.”

You worked with Butler to help him with his vocals to make sure his performance was as authentic and genuine as possible. What did this entail?

I’d love to claim all the credit for Austin’s wonderful performance – the guy’s work ethic is second to none – there wasn’t a performance or rehearsal take that he didn’t already know verbatim by the time he’d come in to actually work on the track – he was incredible. The way I like to think about Austin’s performance is like a classical pianist or a classical musician in that there’s so much technique that he had to get down to get the performance across.

Elvis wasn’t just one ‘voice,’ – there’s about four different Elvis voices, from the head voice from some of the early performances like That’s All Right Mama, to the ‘68 special where there’s quite a lot of gravel in it. The song Trouble at Russwood has a lot of gravel in it, and at the end when he’s singing Unchained Melody, it’s almost operatic, so Austin had to learn all those different styles of singing.

We’d also sit down with the stems and isolate, bar by bar, what Elvis was doing. We could hear where he was breathing, we could hear where he was changing what was happening in his body. We’d go through, particularly when we were recording, and we would sometimes do something line by line and even HEADLINER USA

go in and change word by word. But the wonderful thing about Austin’s performance was that he got that technique down to the point where he could eventually forget about what he was doing – the amount of practice he’d done, man! It was just in his body. I’m still in awe of what Austin did.

Luhrmann strikes me as being incredibly involved with the scores in his films; is this the case?

Yeah, very! The music goes back and forth all the time. Sometimes with Baz we talk about what the idea is and I go away and do something, and he’ll be like, “Yeah, that’s great, but we’re missing this point, or storytelling-wise, it needs to be doing this”. We spend a lot of time talking about what story we’re trying to tell before I actually start writing. I’ve got hours of videos of Baz conducting and going, “And the strings are going [imitates intense string sounds] – so he’s actually singing string lines. He’s incredibly involved. Often with the artists doing contemporary cuts, he briefs them directly. He’s very much a music producer in his own right.

Was there anything that you or Luhrmann wanted to avoid doing with the score?

With all of Baz’s films, storytelling is the core of everything and the way that relates to music is with the score – it always has to support what was going on. I was trying to get out of the way as much as I could with the

score, even though there’s over an hour and a half of score in there. I was trying to not put myself into the film as much as I could, because we had all these Elvis tracks. Normally as a composer, you sit down at the beginning of the process with a blank page and you’re like, “Damn, I gotta write all these different themes and melodies”.

The joy of this project was going through and looking at which Elvis themes should represent each of the characters. Heartbreak Hotel became his theme with Gladys; Unchained Melody became a love affair that Elvis had with his audience; Are You Lonesome Tonight? was the theme for Elvis and the Colonel’s relationship.

It was a blast as a composer to take all of those themes and make that the tapestry for the musical world that we were seeing. Often, you’re hearing five or six themes within the one orchestral cue. It was such a musical feast.

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Crunching the Numbers

Photographer: Ralph Larmann

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EDSHEERAN Ed Sheeran’s current Mathematics (+–=÷x) world tour recently featured the UK star’s ‘most expansive set design yet’, according to his long-term production designer Mark Cunniffe.

With its roofless, in the round multimast presentation, the tour marked the inaugural appearance of 162 GLP XDC1 IP Hybrid fixtures, designed specifically for the Mathematics shows. These were provided by production firm Light Control Rigging (LCR).

The XDC1 is IP65-rated and represents a ‘supercharged’ version of the JDC1 hybrid strobe, offering a brighter, narrower beam and superior color-mixing engine.

Conventional trussing on the tour has been replaced by six groundsupported 32-meter-high masts, each featuring seven concentric

rings, from which all the equipment is suspended. This includes the majority of the XDC1s. There is also a 44-tonne halo on steel works, which carries the balance of the XDC1s, which shoot their beams down onto the stage from the very top.

Cunniffe explained: “I have always wanted to put Ed in the round, but it requires a different discipline. I have a problem with shows with structural pillars, so I went away and looked at how we could avoid the obstructions with a design that had never been done before.”

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“IT’S NOT SO MUCH A COMPLEX FIXTURE BUT IT’S A BRUTE OF A FIXTURE. IT’S GOT SUBTLETY BUT IT’S ALSO GOT IMPACT.”

He explained the idea to Jeremy Lloyd of Wonder Works and Rasti Bartek at engineering consultancy, Cundall. “I asked whether it was feasible for a structure that needed to be put up in two-to-three days and taken down in one; because of the logistics involved in transport, we needed to produce three separate steel systems.”

Sheeran signed off the design once it had been rendered in VR. “He was bowled over,” confirmed the designer, “and even though it represented a sizable investment his management said, ‘let’s do it’.”

When planning his lighting spec, Cunniffe’s first consideration was that everything had to be IP rated.

Seeking a wide, colorful flood he approached Mike Oates and Ryan Hopkins at LCR, so often his go-to Photographer: Ralph Larmann

guys over the years, and they, in turn, approached GLP. “Mark is a dream to work with and if he has a requirement, we either find the correct fixture or as is in this case we approach a manufacturer to build the creative tool for him to use,” Hopkins commented. “The XDC1 was actually built at our request specifically for this tour. Mark gave us a brief for what was required — a mega bright strobe, color changing blinder/wash section and the ability to pixel map through it.

“I knew immediately there was only one company I wanted to build this unit, and who had an excellent and proven track record for delivering fixtures like this. I also knew GLP would be able to turn it around within the unprecedented time and logistic

constraints we were facing. We showed Mark a JDC1 which he loved but wanted something brighter with a tighter and more controlled beam on the pixels. We suggested a solution and Mark loved the idea.”

The fixtures fulfilled the role Cunniffe had in mind. “These are very much part of the signature look and the next generation,” he said. “We run them in multi-DMX mode, which means in individual colors. We can map the colors to it, and if we have a strong video look, the strobe effects have no trouble at all hitting through it.

“The color quantity is great, from soft pastels through saturates. In fact they worked incredibly well at Wembley with the house lights to extend the strobe fill from the masts.

“It’s not so much a complex fixture but it’s a brute of a fixture. It’s got subtlety but it’s also got impact.” He commended LCR and GLP “on being able to deliver the brief.” He also paid tribute to Sheeran’s management for enabling this unique expression of the artform. “If it wasn’t for the fact that [Sheeran] was prepared to pay for it none of this would have happened.”

For their part, such was LCR’s confidence in the XDC1 that they invested in 200 fixtures - the remainder for stock which he predicts fellow creatives will be lining up for.

GLP.DE

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Originals: Epic Choir

REVEAL

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SPITFIRE AUDIO

ORIGINALS: EPICCHOIR Spitfire Audio has confirmed its Epic Choir release as the 17th sample library in its Originals series, designed to make rare and classic instruments accessible and affordable to all in authentic detail.

Epic Choir assembles a 50-piece large-scale ensemble of London’s finest vocalists in the hallowed Lyndhurst Hall at London’s legendary AIR Studios, split into two sections and presented in Spitfire’s in-house (AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3- compatible, NKS-supporting) plugin, with three signals and 12 articulations designed to inspire and ease the scoring journey.

Epic Choir features a familiar, easyto-use GUI with 12 presets: Sopranos

& Altos: Long Ahh; Sopranos & Altos: Long Mmm; Sopranos & Altos: Episodic Combo 1; Sopranos & Altos: Episodic Combo 2; Sopranos & Altos: Short Staccato Syllables; Sopranos & Altos: Short Staccato Syllables; plus Tenors & Basses: Long Ahh; Tenors & Basses: Long Mmm; Tenors & Basses: Episodic Combo 1; Tenors & Basses: Episodic Combo 2; Tenors & Basses: Short Staccato Syllables; and Tenors & Basses: Short Staccato Syllables.

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All 12 presets are available across three signals: Close (all spot mics summed together for a clear and transparent sound); Tree (a Decca Tree spaced microphone array, giving a spacious and enveloping sound); and Ethereal (adds texture, brightness, and width to the vocals for a glistening and shimmering sound, while still retaining an organic feel, thanks to a treated signal of saturation, reverb, and EQ).

Further flexibility for sound control comes courtesy of Reverb — a realistic hall-style impulse response, Release — a release trigger that only applies to long patches, and Tightness — which cuts further into the note to make it tighter, and only applies to short patches.

“Originals: Epic Choir features 50 singers, which is the biggest ensemble of voices that we’ve recorded yet,” says Spitfire Audio HEADLINER USA

in-house composer Homay Schmitz.

“It’s been recorded at AIR Studios’ Lyndhurst Hall, so you get those beautiful acoustics; with it also being a former church, you get the singers in a traditional habitat as well. I think voices are an incredibly human — if not the most human — element you can add to music, so I’m really excited about this one.

“I love it that when you trigger notes at different times they just interweave nicely with one another,” continues Schmitz. “Potentially my favorite patch is Sopranos & Altos: Short Staccato Syllables... the syllables cycle around, but it has also been programmed so that if you play multiple notes at the same time, they each play the same syllable; it also gives me Carl Orff vibes, and I think it has a pretty good dynamic range — pretty good, as the title suggests, for some epic-type stuff.”

Schmitz concludes: “I’m really happy about Epic Choir being part of the Originals series. Having sung in a large choir myself as a kid, I always thought that there was something quite powerful, emotive, and sort of ancient about so many people singing together in the same room.

And it’s also the only form of making music where you don’t need any equipment or tools.”

Spitfire Audio Originals: Epic Choir is available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible plugin supporting Native Instruments’ NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) for Mac (OS X 10.13 - macOS 12) and Windows (7, 8, 10, and II — latest Service Pack) that loads directly into any compatible DAW for an RRP of £29.00 GBP (inc.

VAT)/$29.00 USD/€29.00 EUR (inc. VAT).

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A Little Desk of Biblical Proportions

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QSC TOUCHMIX-30PRO HEADLINER USA

SPOTLIGHT

Preconceived ideas can be a dangerous thing. I never considered myself an audio snob, but with the smallest desks I’ve ever worked on being Allen & Heath’s GLD and DiGiCo’s SD11, then I suppose I am!

So, being asked if I would review a desk from QSC – a desk without actual faders – well, whatever is the world coming to? I’ve been mixing and recording live bands for longer than I’d care to mention(!) and as I prepare to dive into TouchMix-30 Pro, the big question remains: is a small, fader-less desk heaven or hell?

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“THIS REALLY IS A LITTLE DESK OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS.”

First Impressions The first thing you will likely notice about this mixer is its small footprint, and the fact that it comes supplied with its own padded gig bag.

The second thing you’ll notice is that, unless you’re planning on going back to good old fashioned analog multicore, this mixer has to live on the stage next to the talent. This means it requires the use of an iOS or Android device to take control of FOH and other mixing duties. To that end, I employed my trusty iPad and downloaded the QSC TouchMix-30 Control App from the App Store. If, like me, you also keep a MacBook Pro handy, it is certainly good to see M1+ App compatibility.

There is also a very useful rail stand along the top to secure your iPad or tablet. This not only gives you a second working screen, but sheds a little more light on your trim pots in dark stage wings. This, together with a spare router, and all of a sudden you could be mistaken for believing the desk you’re controlling is a somewhat larger mixing package.

So, everything on the TM-30 Pro can now be controlled from your iPad or tablet, bar the odd thing like

phantom power, which you should already have set up from the mixer’s interface before you start any serious work. It also feels that even on a bog standard iPad, fader operation – along with other controls – is really smooth, as good as, (if not slightly better than) the TM-30 Pro’s own touch screen.

Another great discovery, while playing around with the iPad and the TM-30 Pro’s rather impressive 10-inch touch screen, is the scene button, which gives access to a very useful set of Factory Presets, which in real terms represents all, or nearly all, of the kinds of work you might consider pressing the TM-30 Pro into service for. I selected the rock band preset and was pleasantly surprised to see a very standard selection of dynamic

mics, as well as a smattering of condensers in all the usual places, together with their corresponding EQs and dynamics.

Of course, no two engineers will have identical settings, but this was an instantly usable set up and a very good place to start. With tweaking completed, you can then save them in the mixer section and, for added security, to your USB drive.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can connect up to 12 iOS and Android devices at any one time, which allows band members on IEMs to control their own mixes. This really is a little desk of biblical proportions.

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TO HELL WITH MANUALS I hate badly written or badly indexed manuals, and of course, most of us only refer to them when we want to solve a specific problem. The good news here is the manual is available within the mixer by pressing the info button on the front panel, and is clearly indexed from a user’s perspective rather than a software or manual writer’s.

Having said that, this mixer is incredibly easy to set up and use, and after only half an hour of playing about with the

functions and checking that I could control everything I was likely to need at FOH from my iPad, I started to feel confident I could mix a show without being in front of the actual mixer.

In some ways, the lack of physical faders on the TM-30 Pro invites you to take the plunge and sail by the seat of your pants or, in this case, WiFi-enabled external surfaces and other smart devices!

I/O HEAVEN For what is a small, lightweight mixer, there’s a surprising amount of connectivity at your disposal. For starters, there are 24 balanced XLR inputs, four of which have combi TRS/XLR connections, all of which are controllable via a dedicated Trim (gain) pot. There are three further pairs of balanced line level TRS inputs, of which inputs 29/30 have a parallel unbalanced mini stereo jack for iPad/iPod type devices. There is also separate USB stereo playback available, not forgetting the Talkback mic. All XLR inputs including the Talkback mic have individual switchable phantom power.

options for another. Having six FX buses also means you can dedicate a couple to monitor duties so vocalists, for example, could have their preferred large reverb to help them give the best performance, while the engineer could use something room-like for that perfect front and center vocal. All FX buses are switchable via the FX setup page as pre- and post-fader, and can also be assigned to a VCA or Mute Group if desired. FX returns can be assigned to the L/R master or removed if used for IEMs or monitors only, and can be fed to any monitor send simply by selecting the appropriate send from the main screen’s left hand side.

On the output side there’s a main L/R, a monitor L/R and a further 14 channels of aux, all on balanced XLR. It’s unsurprising that more bands are discovering the joys of ear protection and more precise monitoring afforded by IEMs, so it’s really good to see a manufacturer acknowledge this with a product like the TM-30 Pro, which can accommodate seven sets of stereo IEMs if needed.

In addition to the 14 auxes, six FX, eight Mute Groups and eight DCAs, there are eight mono Sub Group buses. So if, for example, you wanted to compress the kick and bass guitar as one, then utilizing this option is very useful and, dare I say, offers a touch of professionalism reserved normally for much more expensive consoles.

It’s also good to see that the six FX buses are in addition to the aux buses, so you’re not compromising one set of bus

THE SIGNAL PATH TO GLORY Every input channel can be explored by touching the name plate at the top from the main screen. This places you in the overview screen for that channel, in which you can see the status of all your processing and assignments. From this screen, you can select any option along the top to go into more detail with regard to your four band parametric EQ, with separate high and low pass filters.

Additional pages are available for Compression, Gate, FX, Auxes, Presets and Setup. Expanding any of these pages gives you options to fully edit any of the available options.

On the presets page there is a selection of categorized channel options (the master setup page is still the quickest way to get an overall mix started) that will give you quick HEADLINER USA

and easy set up, and a great option for quickly editing, adding or adjusting channels. Some of the EQs can be a little over exaggerated, but it’s still a great place to start if you, like me, want to work fast and efficiently.

Expanding the compression and gate options gives you a selection of parameters you’d more closely associate with a professional plugin. And for those who are not fully conversant with such toys, these are really good examples of how you can clearly hear the result the controls have on your audio as you’re setting them up. It’s a real pleasure to find a compact desk in a competitive price bracket that isn’t full of gimmicky or poor quality processing, but has real quality channel processing. A massive thumbs-up for QSC here!

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DIVINE RECORDING AND PLAYBACK There are three modes of recording that, depending on which one you are in, also allow the TM-30 Pro to be used for multi-channel playback as well as a recording interface.

The first mode ‘Multi-Track’ turns your TM-30 Pro into a 32 x 32 recorder that can record and playback straight to a compatible attached USB hard drive.

The second ‘DAW’ mode turns the TM30 Pro into a 32 x 32 Audio interface when connected to your Mac via USB. I also found a compatible ASIO driver for Windows 10, which you can download from the QSC TouchMix software downloads page.

The final mode ‘MP3’ allows stereo recording and playback of tracks via a USB drive. All three modes are selectable from the Record Mode button, which appears in the top right corner of the transport window when you press the Rec/Play button located to the right of the screen.

I have to admit, I found the flexibility of this multiple interface option rather good. It reminds me of when DiGiCo released the UB Madi device and the first time I set up a virtual soundcheck, something which is now standard with most desks and either a USB or Dante interface. So if you want to record your talent for the purposes of video production, content in general, virtual sound checking or just for posterity, all you need is a compatible external hard drive or your laptop.

A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC While I’m not particularly a fan of setup wizards that suggest that clever electronics can replicate or even replace the ears of a good engineer, I can report that the wizard title is less magic, and more the three wise men.

It’s more a question of following logical procedure and the more important decisions of which sounds or routing options are still left in the user’s hands.

HEADLINER USA

Three wizard options are available: FX, Tuning, and Gain. FX is a simple guide to help you make the right decisions about adding FX and whether to include them in your FOH and/or monitor mixes.

The tuning wizard helps you use a reference mic in the Talkback input to analyze either the stage area or auditorium to help you make informed decisions when it comes to EQing. The results are shown on a simple graph similar to the RTA screen. Plus, there’s a guide to room sizes and analytical mic placement. When it comes to digital audio, we all know the importance of setting the input gains correctly, and again, this wizard is a simple checklist for achieving just that.

All output buses, which include the master bus as well as all 14 aux buses, also feature a feedback wizard. Now, I don’t like such devices, but this one can visually aid you in whatever is going on and help you make informed decisions. Or you can just turn it on and let it do its thing, although I have no doubt it will ultimately start to make your mix sound over-processed. It’s worth noting that the RTA, which is also available on every bus, can also aid in identifying problem frequencies in a room or mix, and with a little thought and careful listening, you should have all the tools at your disposal to create beautiful mixes.

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“THIS SMALL CONSOLE PACKS A VERY BIG PUNCH, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT SOUNDS GOOD!”

CONCLUSION This small console packs a very big punch, but perhaps even more importantly, it sounds good. All the facilities and functions in the world won’t compensate for a poor sounding desk, and the QSC TouchMix-30 Pro doesn’t disappoint.

I was a little surprised to find out that it only supports sample rates of 44.1k and 48k as it sounded like it could have been a 96k product.

or just simply makes everything transparently louder if not. I really struggled to find anything I didn’t like, although I’m not a huge fan of feedback destroyers and suppressors. In my day, if it was feeding back, you were doing something wrong; a product that alters EQ to compensate for your mistake is fixing a mistake at the expense of your audio quality. I’m sure others would disagree with me, but as I’ve said before, it’s a question of personal taste.

I love the flexibility of the different record (and subsequent playback) options. All the channel processing works well and adds to the user’s arsenal of creativity if required,

I think the TM-30 Pro is so good I’m surprised they haven’t brought out a version with a Cat5e cable between the desk and the I/O panel; that would make it a truly flexible,

competitor-beating product. Having said that, I have a couple of weeks of rehearsals coming up with my own band and I’ll be taking this desk with me for monitor and IEM duties.

Still a snob, but with a new TouchMix-30 Pro! QSC.COM

HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

SSL X-LIMIT

Hitting A Brick Wall

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REVIEW

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It’s SSL time again, and this time the company has brought out a limiter for increasing loudness for anything from single track to mix buses to master buses. Headliner takes a close look at this very competitively priced new plugin, and checks out its strengths and limitations…

It is no surprise that X-Limit features another beautifully laid out user interface that actually invites you to dive in and start using the plugin. The GUI springs into life the minute it starts passing audio and encompasses every aspect of incoming audio, processes applied, and outgoing audio on one screen. A number of controls are immediately obvious like Gain, Threshold and Ceiling with which to increase loudness, set the point at which the limiter starts to take effect, and set the maximum level of your output signal.

In the top left next to the on/ off (bypass) button is a scroll left or right box with which you can cycle four different flavors of limiting, all of which are subtly

different – although ‘Punch’ adds a more distinct coloration and characteristic to the sound. From its name, I assumed that Punch would naturally help to bring some programmed drums to life, but it was Transparent that actually made them sound larger and more dynamic, while reducing the level of, but clearly maintaining, the all important transients. Auto seemed to do a similar job to Transparent but there was a smoother transition between the threshold and the ceiling, which sounded perfect on synth and orchestral stabs and pad swells.

It was at this point that I stopped reviewing and disappeared for a day, and just played about replacing a number of comps in a couple of mixes – just to check out how much easier it would have been if I’d had X-Limit earlier. I’d like to think that people still leave mastering to mastering engineers; to that end it’s really important to leave headroom and space on your mixes for the mastering engineer to do his or her thing effectively.

Having a musical brick wall limiter that has the character of a high

quality compressor is incredibly useful when it comes to individual tracks and group buses, and can negate the temptation to leave an active limiter across the master bus, which is something I’ve been guilty of.

Without exception, everything I tried this on was a subtle, if not immediately noticeable improvement, whether replacing a comp or simply adding it to the end of my plugin chain. It made me wonder if I hadn’t missed a trick, and should have been more aware of the limiters I already had at my disposal. However it quickly becomes apparent that not all limiters are born equal!

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Fine Tuning As with all SSL plugins, there is more than one way to adjust parameters. For example, with the Threshold and Ceiling controls, you have your rotaries in the bottom row, the sliders to the right of the main window, as well as boxes above the sliders in which values can be set. All are a simple click and drag style, but I also found if you hold down Alt and Cmd on your Mac keyboard you can slow down this change, allowing you to select precise values. This feature also works for any rotary or value box, and so far, all the other SSL plugins I’ve tried.

Other really useful controls are the provision of a release time of 10 to 4000ms, which reacts as the signal is falling below the threshold and can extend how long the limiting continues to affect the audio. Useful if you’re trying to create a pumping style or if you’re trying to reduce transient content. For general use you can use the Auto release button,

which causes the release time to be adjusted on-the-fly, depending on the source audio. In the same section is a Look Ahead button, which while it will introduce a little more latency, is much better at cleanly catching transients without any unwanted distortion.

Another really cool feature which you will want to use, especially if you are using X-Limit as a bus or master bus limiter, is True Peak. Lighting this up will give you an algorithm with a higher sample rate, effectively limiting intersample peaks and reducing aliasing artifacts. This becomes more apparent the harder you drive the Gain.

Stereo V Dual Mono There’s a rotary control that, as it is increased from 0% - 100%, unites channel processing. The processing applied to either left or right is applied to both channels equally: 100%. Left and right channels are processed independently depending on the source audio: 0%. If, for example, you’re limiting a stereo piano, but you don’t want the louder struck notes in the lower register with focus to the left unnecessarily limiting higher notes with their focus to the right, then it would be beneficial to process the channels independently. Alternatively, if you’re limiting a percussion bus with toys placed around you, you want to maintain a clear stereo field and don’t want independent channel processing pushing your instruments back into the center. Then you want HEADINER USA

greater channel linking to maintain the stereo image by processing the channels together.

I have to admit that it’s harder to hear the subtleties of a few percent, so to aid your decision-making X-Limit provides you with two useful visual indicators. The first, Ducking, as the name suggests, is the amount by which the quieter channel is unnecessarily reduced.

The second, Steering, is the direction the signal is being focused or steered as a result of independent processing of left and right channels. Using these as visual aids, it’s possible to strike a balance by selecting the percentage that produces the minimal readings in one, the other, or both - depending on your desired outcome.

SPOTLIGHT

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“I CAN’T NAME ANOTHER BRICK WALL LIMITER THAT RETAINS TRANSIENTS AND PUNCH SO TRANSPARENTLY. I CAN’T THINK OF ANOTHER MAXIMIZER THAT BEHAVES SO IMPECCABLY.”

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“X-LIMIT REPRESENTS REAL VALUE FOR PROBABLY THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE AND MUSICAL LIMITER CURRENTLY AVAILABLE.”

More Control The I/O Diff, Listen button allows you to audition the difference between the input and output, which can be useful for adjusting or checking the channel link setting as well as threshold level and release times.

The smoother your I/O Diff, the smoother and more transparent the audio after limiting.

The Gain Match button is a quick way to check how the limiting choices you have made are affecting your audio.

When it’s engaged it removes any loudness you may have added and just leaves you with the sound of your limiter. You can use the bypass to compare this to the original audio.

As with all SSL plugins, there’s a handy library of factory presets along with the ability to customize and save your own, together with all the usual SSL Copy A/B and B/A for comparing presets, Revert, Delete and Overwrite user presets. The usual Undo and Redo functions are there to compare edits along with the highlightable ‘?’ in the bottom right hand corner, which gives you a brief description of any controls you hover over with your mouse.

Conclusion SSL has really moved forward in its efforts to put great tools in our hands, and with that blend of in-the-box accessibility and traditional high-end audio sound, they have definitely created some noise. X-Limit fits perfectly into that stable and delivers a really great dynamic product.

can be as creative or as subtle as you wish. I also like the ease with which you can change the flavor of your limiting, from a really upfront focus with Transparent, through a more encompassing Glue, to a pumping type effect with Punch, and then a transient-taming Auto setting.

Not to be biased in any way, but I’ve become a bit of a fanboy of late when it comes to SSL plugins. Not for any one specific reason, but because not only do they have a great sound and a great-looking user interface that is simple and intuitive, but because you get a lot more flexibility and control – often cleverly concealed within said interface – which represents real value for money.

SSL X-Limit is available as part of SSL’s ever growing Complete subscription package or for purchase as a separate plugin. It is available in VST, ST3, AU and AAX formats for macOS and Windows and as always, there’s a try before you buy option available from the activation window when you first open the plugin. X-Limit is currently available for £54.99 or $69 (until August 28) which represents, in my opinion, real value for probably the most comprehensive and musical Limiter currently available.

The X-Limit is no exception and has overnight become my new go-to. I can’t name another brick wall limiter that retains transients and punch so transparently. I can’t think of another maximizer that behaves so impeccably on individual channels, not to mention its magical combination of Threshold and Ceiling, with which you HEADLINER USA

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Mr Americana

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Photograph Credit: Fritz Myers (Past Future Consultants)

Photograph Credit: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

COMPOSER

A vastly accomplished and prodigious composer, Jeff Beal is known best for scoring the wildly popular Netflix political drama House of Cards. However, while working on the show for its sixseason run, Beal felt a yearning to return to where it all started for him — writing music to be performed in the concert hall.

Beal talks to Headliner about his stunning new Americana-tinged music for soprano and orchestra, and the discovery of letters from his great grandmother that inspired this new music, The Paper Lined Shack.

These days, there’s a noticeable and fairly even split between film composers from a very classical or even jazz background, versus the newer breed who enter via the world of rock and pop. Beal is

very much the former, every bit as much of a concert-composer as he is for the screen. Growing up in California’s Bay Area, he took up the trumpet in third grade, becoming increasingly avid at the instrument as he discovered the music of Miles Davis. His grandmother Irene was an accomplished pianist and professional silent-movie accompanist and fostered his interests when she gave him a copy of Davis’ Sketches of Spain.

Attending Eastman School of Music in New York, one of the most prestigious performing arts colleges in the world, Beal particularly fell in love with combining jazz and orchestral arrangements. “I was all about the trumpet in my early twenties,” he says. “I wanted to be the next Wynton Marsalis, and in fact during my senior year, he came HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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“THESE JBL SPEAKERS ARE REALLY NICE, ESPECIALLY WHEN I HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE ROOM. IT JUST FEELS EQUAL.”

to Eastman and I was invited by my mentor to compose a piece and we traded solos, which was quite a thrill.”

Beal certainly doesn’t see any disconnect between this more traditional background and his media composition work. “What drew me to music was storytelling. When I found jazz and improvisation, I felt, ‘Oh, I’m telling a story with music. I’m using this instrument in this creative act to express something’.”

A wonderful characteristic and linking chain throughout Beal’s musical output has been its distinctly American flavored classical music, in the vein of John Adams. It’s all too abundant in his brilliant and beloved music for House of Cards. Shame on anyone who skips the intro which sees Washington D.C overnight in fast motion, scored by bass guitar, strings, percussion and Beal’s first instrument, the trumpet.

“I’d worked with David Fincher (the show’s frontrunner, also known for Seven and Fight Club) on a Superbowl advert, and then I pitched myself to him for the show. The American component of the show is fascinating to me. A lot of my heroes HEADLINER USA

like John Adams, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, have that unabashed American sensibility in their music, which is tied up in jazz. Before I started work on the show, David (Fincher) sent me the song Crime of the Century by Supertramp. I realized the part of the song he loved the most was the jazzy outro it had, and then we both got excited about trying to bring that to the show.”

Undoubtedly, you can hear this musical imprint on Beal’s new concert music album. The story behind its conception is quite incredible.

“I wrote quite a bit of concert music in my early twenties: a jazz trumpet concerto, a bass concerto, and a piece for the Turtle Island String Quartet,” he says. “But then my scoring career just went into hyperdrive. But over six seasons of House of Cards, I did really start missing it.

“When we were moving, we were unboxing and found these sort of autobiographical pages that my mum had given me about 10 years earlier that my great grandmother wrote – a little diary of her life that

she wrote down for her children.

And I remember when my wife (professional singer Joan Beal) and I read through this, she was the one that realized this could be an opera.

My wife actually wrote the libretto (the text for the singer) and The Paper Lined Shack was born.”

It’s not only enormously inspiring musically, but this story of perseverance is astounding.

“In Della’s writing, it’s her life growing up, and then eventually moving to rural Idaho with her husband, Franklin and their six kids,” he explains. “Tragically, in the most buoyant part of life, Franklin died suddenly. And so she had to face that harsh reality. But she writes about it so poetically, about how she managed to raise this big family on a 10-acre farm on her own.”

The Paper Lined Shack is available to stream now, as well as a stunning physical CD release that such a wonderful project deserves. “The actual genesis of the project was from Leonard Slatkin, a brilliant conductor and champion of my music,” Beal says.

COMPOSER

“He’s conducted the National Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and this particular commission is honoring his 50 years with the St Louis Symphony.

We’ve got performances of this work scheduled in New York and Boston.

Getting to do it live is a real joy.”

Like his hero John Williams, Beal is one of the rare DIY film composers — he not only composes his music but arranges, notates and even produces the music in his studio. And for the latter, he relies on his JBL speakers for both the concert and film worlds he exists in to work through all the nuances of his music.

“My main speakers are JBL – their 308 model,” he says. “And the paired subwoofer. I have a similar pair for my rear speakers. I have those in my studio here in New York, and at my

studio in California when I need to be there. I just find they’re very easy on the ears. They don’t tire. And I love this new tweeter design with the dispersion behind the tweeter that is incredibly useful for presenting.

“When you do near-field monitoring without that type of tweeter design, the sweet spot is not very big,” he elaborates. “So these JBL speakers are really nice, especially when I have a lot of people in the room and I’m doing a presentation. It just feels equal.

We’re all hearing the same thing, no matter where we’re sitting. There’s a wonderful consistency to them in that way. I bought them when I set up the New York studio, so I’ve had them for over 10 years now.”

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composer who must be cherished.

Especially when he’s able to produce such astonishing work as The Paper Lined Shack — take a listen and be transported to rural Idaho. It really is quite something.

JBLPRO.COM JEFFBEAL.COM Photograph Credit: Fritz Myers (Past Future Consultants)

As more and more film composers are drafted in from the world of popular music, Beal is the type of HEADLINERMAGAZINE.NET

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SHARLENE MONIQUE London-based artist Sharlene-Monique speaks to Headliner about her creative process, working with Shure as part of the pro audio giant’s Make The World Your Stage campaign for supporting independent artists, and what it’s like to sing at a royal wedding…

Inspired heavily by the gospel music she was immersed in as a child, before going on to absorb the influence of such artists as Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, Lianne La Havas and Gabrielle, Sharlene-Monique has taken those musical touchstones that were so crucial to her artistic development and used them as a springboard to create a sound uniquely her own. Having been honing her craft from such a young age, she has gone on to achieve a formidable amount in a very short space of time. At 15, her band Divine Unity performed at London’s Royal Festival Hall, her solo work has seen her support the aforementioned Gabrielle on tour, and as part of the Kingdom Choir, she performed at the wedding of a certain Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

In addition to the release of her latest EP Perspective in 2021, she was most recently involved in Shure’s Make The World Your Stage campaign.

Designed to support up and coming, independent artists, Make The World Your Stage offers artists the chance to record a track utilizing the company’s world class equipment, as well as a professional photo shoot to help promote themselves and their work to a wider audience.

Headliner sat down for a chat with Sharlene-Monique to discuss her fascinating career to date, and how Shure is helping her break new ground and reach new audiences…

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“AS AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST, TO BE GIVEN SUCH A MASSIVE PLATFORM IS JUST A GIFT.”

When did you first know you wanted to be a singer?

I have been singing since I was about three. In the Pentecostal Church my dad was a musician, and he would make my sister and I sing songs.

Eventually, she didn’t want to do it anymore, but I always loved it. I sung in a band when I was 15 called Divine Unity. We played places like the Royal Festival Hall, we played overseas, and then in 2017 I released my first solo song. I’m also part of the Kingdom Choir, for which I had the pleasure of singing at Harry and Meghan’s wedding. And I recently toured with Gabriel.

How did the performance at the Royal wedding come about? And how did it feel to perform?

It was incredible. The choir director got a phone call from someone who knew someone who knew someone who worked as Prince Charles’s assistant, and he wanted a gospel choir for the wedding. It was a bit overwhelming, being escorted in a coach with police through London and seeing people like Oprah and the Beckhams arriving. It was amazing, a really special thing.

How did you set about pursuing music as a full time calling?

I’m someone who puts myself out there quite a lot and I take risks.

Karen, the leader of the Kingdom Choir, used to go around Europe leading gospel workshops. I had HEADLINER USA

no desire to be a gospel choir conductor, but I would go with her and those opportunities opened other doors for me. So, when it was time for the Kingdom Choir to do an album with Sony Music, my connection with her meant I ended up having the only original song on the album.

Even the Gabriel tour, being able to tour on that level came from doing local gigs. I had the privilege of singing at an event called The Gold Show, where she happened to be in the audience because one of her backing vocalists was one of my co-headline artists. She DM’d me because she wanted one of my CDs, and then later I bumped into her at a petrol station! She was like, ‘I remember you, I loved your set’, and she starts telling me she’s going on tour. So, I just asked her if she had a support act. She said no and told me to contact her manager. Now, I know that opportunity didn’t ‘just happen’, because they had seen me and liked me, but if I hadn’t asked, that opportunity wouldn’t have presented itself.

You’ve become involved in Shure’s Make The World Your Stage campaign. How did that come about?

One of my mentors is a fantastic artist called Jake Isaac, and he was performing at their press day around this time last year. He needed a support act and he asked me if I wanted to come along. I then

connected with a young man called Jack who told me about the Make The World Your Stage campaign.

I knew Jake was already a part of it and they said they would love to have me involved.

It’s been a great experience. As an independent artist, to be given such a massive platform is just a gift. I love what they are doing as it’s for up and coming artists like myself, and it helps give you that exposure to a wider audience. So, we went to a studio - that I chose - to record one of my favorite songs, and it was just great. I was interviewed, there was a photo shoot and it was an opportunity to record with an incredible system. It was great to hear myself sound that good! The whole thing has been amazing.

SHURE.COM SHARLENE-MONIQUE.COM

Case Study

FOCUSRITE PRO IN WAYSTATION STUDIOS GRAMMY®-winning producer/engineer Dave Way's resume runs across all genres, spanning pop, rock, R&B and more, and his credits include such acclaimed artists as Christina Aguilera, Fiona Apple, Ziggy Marley, Macy Gray, Michael Jackson, “Weird Al" Yankovic, Phoebe Bridgers, Ringo Starr and dozens of others, in addition to the acclaimed soundtrack to Echo in the Canyon.

His most recent GRAMMY nomination was for “Best Immersive Audio Album," for his work as immersive audio co-producer on the 2019 album The Savior by A Bad Think.

Learn more at pro.focusrite.com or scan the QR code below

Like many working in the world of immersive audio, Way's attention has turned to the Dolby Atmos® format, and in 2020 he took the leap and upgraded his personal facility, Waystation Studio, to be able to mix in Atmos.

Since last year, he has been settling in with the new setup, mixing several projects and even recording an entire album specifically to be mixed in Atmos – helped in no small part by his arsenal of interfaces and a RedNet R1 controller from Focusrite Pro.

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