Jacob Collier

EVENT FOCUS

JACOB COLLIER

The GRAMMY Award-winning musician updates his live set up with the help of long-time engineer, Ben Bloomberg.

Making his start by uploading YouTube videos in 2011, the young Jacob Collier caught attention of non-other than Quincy Jones. After signing to the famed music producers’ management company, Collier has gone from strength to strength, scooping two GRAMMYs, releasing two albums and becoming a force to be reckoned with as a live performer.

Since 2015, Collier and Ben Bloomberg, a PhD student from MIT Media Lab, have become a live tour-de-force. After seeing his videos online, Bloomberg put himself forward to produce a one-man-show unlike another with custom vocal harmonisers, and instruments. With a new album, Djesse Vol. 1, Collier set our on a new tour with a whole new live set up in collaboration with Bloomberg.

“This latest tour covers the world of Jacob’s newest album with some favourites from In My Room as well,” began Bloomberg. “For the first time, Jacob is touring with a band which includes Rob Mularkey on bass (and among a litany of instruments), Christian Euman on drums and Maro Secca singing, playing guitar, keys, harmoniser, percussion.”

Moving away from the one-man-band concept of prior tours, Bloomberg explained how the team has upscaled in recent years. “Previously Jacob stood in a circle of 14 instruments, playing and looping them all. Now we have four people on stage playing almost that many instruments each,” stated Bloomberg. “The setup has become increasingly

complex and this puts a huge demand on the audio team. We’ve added a monitor engineer to help manage the increased responsibility along with our own mics, wireless and desks to maintain some consistency.”

For this run, both the band and crew wanted to avoid playback and click tracks for the audience to experience the talent of all four musicians. For Collier’s latest album, he employed the services of The Metropole Orkest, which presented an interesting challenge to recreate some of tracks live. “This requires everyone to have access to a staggering number of sounds and textures in quick succession,” explained Bloomberg.

He furthered: “We achieved this with two complementary technical goals. First was to make all the technology needed for the performance run on a single laptop. This helped to lower costs, but also meant we could provide complete redundancy for the whole rig by adding a backup laptop. Second, we wanted a system that would work with both Dante and MADI based mixing desks, as these are the most commonly found digital audio protocols.”

At the core of Collier’s live set up was a range of Focusrite products which the audio department would be “stuck without,” according Bloomberg. He continued: “The Rednet The D64R Dante to MADI conversion allows us to replicate our computer IO flexibly to both desks with essentially zero latency. This is critical because we are looping for parts of

08

JACOB COLLIER

the show and any sort of round-trip latency can cause a groove to fall apart with many iterations of overdubbing. Rather than running the primary laptop on Dante Virtual Soundcard, we use the Focusrite Red 16Line again because of its extremely low latency and native thunderbolt 3 interface.

Bloomberg also gave praise to two Novation SL MkIII controllers used by Secca (with a third used by Collier) who has a set of patches that she recalls throughout the show which change properties of everyone else’s sounds as well as her own. “Christian and Rob have a set of secondary patches on their controllers as well to allow them to jump around and improvise, but Maro’s patches will handle things like transpositions or enable side chain signal paths between Christian and others.”

It’s also worth mentioning a unique part of Sacca’s patches which include MIDI from a selection of Roland SPD-SX drum pads which are manipulated, based on her patch using a MainStage scripting node and

some customised JavaScript which is then sent to the lighting desk. This triggers cues directly from stage preventing the need for the band’s lighting op to count in 7/4. “In this way the show actually runs itself without significant operator intervention,” commented Bloomberg. “The audio team is there purely to mix the show. The sound selection, looping, lights and other elements follow along with the musicians.”

While speaking to Bloomberg, it seemed that making a streamlined system was always the name of the game. “In general, we’re always looking to minimise inputs and trailer weight,” he commented. “An electric guitar is only used on one song, and Rob found a killer auto wah amp simulation in the App Store of all places. We actually loop the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 outputs through the AD inputs of Rob’s Yamaha Montage 6 keyboard. The electric guitar and the keyboard share a desk input and we don’t need to carry around extra pedals or amps for the guitar.”

Away from the stage, both Monitor Engineer Claudio Somigli and FOH Engineer Jose Ortega, utilised DiGiCo SD12s. “I am a huge DiGiCo fan,” enthused Bloomberg who has mixed most of Jacob’s large shows on them. “The DiGiCo effects, analogue and pre-amps are just astoundingly good. We knew going into this process that we would need a lot of flexibility and the SD12 provides this in spades. Its dual displays make it really fast to program and work with in a rehearsal situation as well.”

In terms of on-stage sound, with so many live looping elements being used, IEMs have always been standard practice for Collier. “We have so many acoustic instruments and open mics on stage, making it critical to keep the stage volume as low as possible,” commented Bloomberg. The current rig consisted of 6 stereo mixes of Shure PSM1000. “We’ve been huge fans of Shure wireless and are also carry 4 channels of Axient Digital.”

The audio crew mic’d Collier’s piano with a pair of DPA 4099s and a single Yamahiko pickup on a countryman type 85 DI, which has been the crews preferred piano kit since 2016. “He also has a Yamaha AC5M steel string guitar, a BBNE5 bass, both on Shure Axient Digital packs along with a Yamaha SLB200 upright bass with a Countryman Type 85 DI, and a set of 3 rock and concert snare drums over a Surdo (Beta 52) with some percussion and cymbals (KSM9 as stereo overheads),” listed Bloomberg.

Two more channels of Shure Axient Digital provide both the singer’s primary vocal mics - one handheld KSM9 and one DPA4088 core. “Wherever possible we try to use the KSM9,” commented Bloomberg. “It’s a great match to Jacob’s voice. However, the DPA comes in handy when he is running around away from the piano.”

To conclude, Bloomberg said: “This has been just a fantastic experience,” he went on praise the artist. “Jacob is such a special talent and close friend - it’s an honour to get to work with him. The most special thing about this show is that it really has the capability to follow the creative whim of the artists on stage. We’re starting to see fans show up again and again to consecutive cities because something different happens every single night. I’m so happy that our tech and our team supports that kind of creativity.” TPi Photos: Davide Gostoli www.jacobcollier.com

INGENIOUS SOLUTION No. 892 Strictly Special Effects

MTFX.com/ADS

+

=

When it comes to live Special Effects, tackling tough challenges is what we do best! Welcome to MTFX. The ingenious effects people. 01452 729903 info@mtfx.com www.mtfx.com

10