Noel Gallagher’s Steve Moles reports from Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena “I wouldn’t cross the street to see his brother,” is typical of the comments I received when I visited Noel Gallagher and his new band. In fairness, brother Liam always inhabited the shouty end of the partnership and just because it was not to everyone’s taste (not mine at least), that doesn’t invalidate his contribution: let anyone who has
the stage with beer. It was also brutally masculine. While this night in Sheffield still had a few beer-chuckers in the audience, there was, happily, a sizeable female contingent too. Production manager Michael O’Connor pointed out: “There are usually busloads of teenagers as well.” Hardly Mr Gallagher’s contemporaries, the latter having barely been born when Oasis was in its pomp.
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never stood on stage and sung to 10,000 fans try and say
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otherwise . . . But while Liam’s ‘Beady Eye’ revisits a template more suited to the mid-90s lads culture, Noel’s High Flying Birds (HFB) settles comfortably into middle age and a more mature audience. I’ve visited enough Oasis shows to know that their audience was partisan, wore barely contained aggression like a badge of honour, and had a penchant for showering
Sound I began with Antony King out front. He’s a sound engineer I’ve encountered variously with Depeche Mode, The Cure, Natasha Beddingfield and, in the first instance, with Lisa Stansfield. That’s a fair spread of voices and with Noel stepping into the front man role, I was anxious to discover if he can sing. “We started rehearsals mid-September last year. I think the band had been at it since July. We did a lot
of promo shows, TV, radio, a couple of one-offs in the USA. It soon became clear to me that not only can he sing really well, he can also keep delivering.”
at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. Gallagher could have chosen to use samples, but he didn’t - and it’s a treat for his fans.
HFB is a bigger band than he’s accustomed to: how’s that working? “He has added instruments; a three piece horn section is probably the most noticeable; that and a twentysix voice choir for some of the songs.” Not the cheapest item to tour, Gallagher has taken the sensible route with the choir: “There’s a core of singers we use every night, then MD David Temple seems to have a network of singers in every city.”
“The band comprises drums, bass, guitar and keyboards, and Noel. To give you some idea, when the choir aren’t on, a couple of band members provide backing vocals, but Noel has been building his vocal powers steadily. I’m using very little compression on his voice and when you consider he’s hardly sung for the last 20 years, and now he’s singing every night for a hundred minutes - well, the fact is, there’s no hint of croak in his voice.”
It’s my perception this is a growing phenomenon: maybe its Gareth Malone, that choir guy on TV? Either way, massed voices are no less uplifting here than they are on the terraces
The stage is louder than many bands in this day and age, d&b M2 wedges everywhere, and C4 side-fill stacks with subs. I use the tried-and-trusted Shure SM58a for all the
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High Flying Birds
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ontour Crew, from top: Audio crew member Ben Phillips with FOH sound engineer Antony King.
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Production manager Michael O’Connor with production coordinator Roni Horner. Left: Lighting director David ‘Fuji’ Convertino. Right: Monitor engineer Nahuel Guttierez.
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vocals, except the choir who are all on Crown CM311s - the headset mic with the big capsule. I wanted them all individually mic’d and this way the mics all move with their heads, keeping them always at the mouth. But the fact is, there aren’t many of these in the UK and Mike Lowe at Britannia Row had to ship in a bunch for me from America: Brit Row have been doing great things for me for years.
of the happiest sound engineers I think I’ve ever encountered).
He continues: “Noel plays acoustic, famously for Supersonic in this show, which is quite a change from the original recording, but the crowd seems to love it. I use an Avalon U5 DI for his acoustic, the Gibson 335 (he has a rack full of them). I’m using the Royer 122 for that nice, big, round sound you get from such a hollow body electric. Noel plays his guitar largely un-effected, and the Royer is just ideal. I do also have an SM57 on his backline to blend in a bit of the dirtier end of the instrument when required. Everything else is pretty familiar, Beta 91/52 combination on the kick, 57 top and bottom snare, [AKG] 451 hi-hat, 421 toms, and 414 for overheads. The Crown microphones for the choir have proved themselves - although they’re well upstage of the side-fills, they are still in a relatively loud environment and handle it well. I had used them before for a Hip-Hop act, so I knew their capability. It has meant I can take all the singers at the same consistent level.”
That said, King has a fair few bits and bobs off board: “A Manley compressor for Noel’s vocal, as I said just the lightest of touches, but it’s so smooth and it’s fast enough to catch everything; you can’t beat it. I also have two Teletronics LC2As from Noel’s studio that’s a really nice old Tube tool; they used one on John Lennon’s vocal. Take the front plate off and you can see it’s all hand-wired inside. The second one is for the bass player’s vocal.”
With all the choir and band inputs - and there are quite a few keyboards in there we didn’t mention, including a nice loud Leslie cabinet hiding backstage - King is using a full 96 inputs on his Midas XL8: “These days I wouldn’t use any other desk,” he said, smiling enthusiastically (though smiling is King’s default facial expression; certainly one
‘You’re not going to get an XL8 for every band you do’, I countered. “True, but I can manage with a PRO6 - that’s what we used for the one-offs in the US where we didn’t have a choir. It’s the sound that matters, and these just sound lovely.”
“I’ve got [XTA] C2s for the system, and I’m playing with the new TC Helicon. But essentially it’s the sound of the desk that matters - I do as little as possible to what comes in. I’m very wary of people who chain up all sorts of different things; this way, I find with a desk like this you get to hear far more detail - little things like the more subtle tom fills. Noel also plays a lot of arpeggios - it’s not all power chords - so there’s plenty of dynamic range to the music.” For all his state-of-the-art front end, King sticks resolutely to the ageing V-DOSC for his main system: “I still prefer it to the K1, the two systems are different and I believe that the sound of the V-DOSC is better suited to an artist like this. There’s a lot in the guitar frequency range and that can get too
Ben Phillips is King’s system tech. He had nothing out of the ordinary to report, other than he’d opted for longer lines on his main hang, thus reducing the load capacity on the point to handle enough under-hung dVDOSC to down-fill the front rows. Instead, he’d placed a curl of six L-Acoustic ARCS each side of stage, and a couple of dVDOSCs across the front to take their place. Not being allowed into the pit to photograph, I can’t comment on the sound down there, but from a purely sightline point of view it was a much less intrusive solution. Monitors Nahuel Guttierez has been mixing monitors for Gallagher for nearly five years, but never with a choir before. “All the choir are on Sennheiser IEMs. They all get a stereo send, a general mix of the choir and little of themselves on top, panned so they can sense their own voice easily enough.” He makes it sound simple. “They are positioned well back from the band, certainly well out of the field of the
side-fills; the only intrusion is the drum monitors and they are loud. The drummer plays wearing ear plugs - don’t ask - and he has a pair of [d&b] M2 wedges, left for a general mix, right just has bass guitar in it. Everyone in the band has a pair of d&b M2 wedges, except Noel who has three of them, though he gets most of his vocal from the downstage column of C4 side-fills. The outer pair is purely vocal, the centre is slap-back delay, and yes, there’s a lot of EQ in the Lakes just so I can get his voice loud: nothing above 12kHz and rarely below around 130Hz.”
Crew List Production Manager - Michael O’Connor
ontour
aggressive in a system that lifts those frequencies. In the end, I don’t let anything get in the way of the music - just polish where needed. The most I do is pull a little 3kHz out of his voice, but you can do that with the Manley and not diminish the power of his voice.”
Production Coordinator - Roni Horner Stage Manager - Pete Bell Lighting Director - David ‘Fuji’ Convertino Lighting Crew - Craig Hancock, Craig JR-Saunders, Richard Griffin, Jason Dixon, Leon Roll Sound Engineer - Antony King
Guttierez continues: “Both columns of C4 have Noel’s vocal mix in them, but the upstage column is more for the band and so is down about 3-4dB on the downstage stack. There’s also a [d&b] B2 sub alongside them for a bit of weight. I control the side-fills from the d&b R1 software - it’s easy and accessible if I need to adjust during the show. I also have Lakes on all the wedges, so I just take a Tablet with me when I’m ringing-out the system and adjust EQ remotely while I stand at the various mic positions - much easier and faster than using an assistant.”
Monitor Engineer - Nahuel Gutierrez
“Probably the most interesting thing I have discovered on this tour is with the drums. The kick drum has no hole in the front head; I thought about that during rehearsals, how
DJ - Phil Smith
Audio Crew - Barry Macleod, Ben Phillips, Gerald Fradley, Charlotte Benoit, Cesar Lopez Video Crew - Simon Schofield, David Neugebauer Rigger - Ian ‘Tufty’ Bracewell Choir Liaison - Bessie Winder-Rodgers Advance Security - Richard Walker Guitar/Bass Tech - Mickey Winder Drum/Guitar Tech - Andy Harrison Keyboard Tech - Ben Leach
Catering Crew - Steffi Head, Christian Streppel, Claire McKee, Sam Letteri
The Wash One is a real Multi Talent. You can use it to create crunchy beam colours, but also clearly selected areas on the stage can be illuminated. LD Jerry Appelt
impression Wash One at the X-Factor, Germany, (LD Jerry Appelt)
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“The reason for AED Rent buying 500 impression Spot One and Wash One is very simple – these RGB LED fixtures are the future of the industry, and we believe that we need more in the near future to meet market requests. Now we finally see that Ecology and Economy go hand in hand.” Glenn Roggeman, CEO AED Network
www.glp.de LSi - April 2012
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ontour
David ‘Fuji’ Convertino’s lighting, video and stage design - front elevation.
am I going to get a big fat kick sound out of that? So we put the 91 inside as normal, but the 52 in front I use just to trigger a gate on the XL8. The distance between the two mics makes the delay less than two milliseconds, inaudible for our purposes. That’s easy to do with the XL8 and the gates in the desk are fantastic, so soft, and there’s no click as it opens and closes. It works a treat and although the 91 sounds a bit toppy, we can take care of that.”
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Guttierez doesn’t have the antique Teletronics units to deal with, but something he, at just 31 years of age, considers equally ancient. “I have to use Summit Audio DCL200 tube amp compressors on Noel’s voice - he just loves them. But they’re getting old and really they were never built for being on the road, certainly not around the world. Luckily Mike Lowe at Brit Row seems to be able to find replacements for me wherever we are in the world when one fails.”
seemed a reluctant interviewee at first. However, when I did eventually speak to him I discovered that actually this man is just completely focussed on his job - so that told me. It also confirmed what production manager Michael O’Connor had said on the phone when I arranged my visit. “We’d tried this guy out on Corinne Bailey-Rae in the US when the touring LD was unavoidably called away. There was something about Fuji that caught our eye - his skill with handling lighting and video combined was something to watch.”
Guttierez is, like King, a big fan of the XL8 but again is happy to take out a smaller desk when needed. “I’m going to be using the new PRO2c for the summer festivals - no choir and I’ve still got the same pre-amp sound which is the main factor, so that will be fine.”
Convertino joined the production in October 2011 at O’Connor’s invitation: “Since Definitely Maybe I’ve been a fan, so I wasn’t going to say no. With no brief from the band, I stepped right in. Michael asked me to make the rig adaptable as we’d play a variety of different sized venues; single hung trusses answers that call. It’s a rock band, the only real influence from Noel is no followspots and minimal front-light. I chose Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots as my main instrument; it is just a crystal-clear light, great colour mix and nice, sharp-edged gobos. I have a few VL3500 Washes [he has 88 of the former to 18 of the latter]. Again, that’s about quality of light; the Wash will shine through anything and you can’t beat that aperture wheel.”
Lighting & Video Media Meeting David ‘Fuji’ Convertino for the first time I was a little put off; like a few LDs and sound guys I’ve met over the years he
Most of these lamps are flown, so too some 20 Atomic strobes, “but I have twelve more of them on the four truss towers behind the band. That’s another nod to flexibility - you
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can hang all sorts of things on vertical towers and you can always squeeze them in somewhere.” None of the Atomics has colour changers: Convertino evangelises for uncoloured strobes: “Hey, so now they’re flashing in mauve. Who cares? I want a good heavy blast, colour just bothers me - it can get old really fast. I also have six PixelLine 110 on each tower for definition.” The trusses are rigged very high over yet another stage devoid of any real set. (I don’t think Brilliant or Total Fabrications should panic just yet - it just so happens that HFB and Snow Patrol last month happen to be two essentially straight-up rock bands.) “The front truss is 43ft above the deck, but the VL3000s are still plenty punchy at that distance. More importantly, those in front of Noel are up out of the way - he hates light in his eyes.” PRG provides all the lighting gear, Robin Wain at Longbridge also supervising the V-18 video screen that provides the back-drop, part of the PRG Nocturne acquisition. By coincidence, and because it’s a good visual tool, Convertino’s design has, like Snow Patrol, a pair of vertically parallel angled trusses flanking the rear screen each side to give that sense of large scale when required. Because he’s also master of all media on screen, Convertino achieves some really well-matched lighting from these trusses.
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Tour Suppliers Management - Ignition Management mail@ignition.co.uk Lighting - Production Resource Group UK www.prg.com Audio - Britannia Row Productions www.britanniarow.com Video (UK) - PRG Nocturne UK www.nocturneproductions.com Video (Europe) - XL Video www.xlvideo.com Radios - Radiotek www.radiotek.co.uk Catering - Popcorn Ltd www.popcorncatering.com Trucking - McGuinness Forwarding www.mcguinness.eu Bussing - Beat the Street www.beatthestreet.net
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52 LSi - April 2012
Blended to the video content, the combination really throws that superwidescreen image into the hall: “Even so, they still fly within the confines of a 60ft wide stage,” he says.
spots, three wash, then progress to six of each. I thought about every song, where the cue points came, where musicians needed accent, and thought about exactly how I wanted it to look.”
With no real lighting brief I asked Convertino if he roughed out basic lighting structures for each song, then worked them up in detail as the band commenced production rehearsals? “No, I programmed cue to cue immediately,” so you came to the rehearsals with fully formed ideas in mind? “It’s not a spot and wash design, one song might have three
The rear screen is a field of separate video squares three high and seven wide: “It was just one of those things I’d seen when my young daughter was playing with blocks a few years ago: I wanted to try that thing where your eye fills the gaps.” There is a significant distance between each flown square, maybe half a metre.
ontour
Left: Sound engineer Antony King with the Midas XL8
past wars that sit on screen while being gently manipulated by the addition of a distorting lens effect passing over them, lending the screen an organic, living feel. As O’Connor said, Convertino is one to watch.
Though much of what Convertino puts on screen is brash and bold, and he generates all content from the M Box, he can also do subtle; the spectral choir looks, the singers lit only in dappled gobo shafts of white looking especially effective as the screen projects those images out through the field of those self-same gobo beams. There was lots of nice imagery to see, lights and video, as I think you’ll see in the photos. The song Soldier Boys & Jesus Freaks is a good example of how a simple lighting state cleaves to a mash-up of images from
If you’ve grown weary of the Oasis formulaic paean to the Beatles canon then you could do worse than give Gallagher’s new band a look-see. Put another way, take your beady eyes and start looking for high flying birds.
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“The M Box is for me the ideal tool to attack the stage,” he says - and attack he does, dazzling, swirling, rich pop art colour murals, matched perfectly to lighting chases; or a template 1950s TV surround with black and white live cuts taken straight from video director Dave Neugebauer onto its ‘screen’. Neugebauer is there just to feed the IMAG screens that flank the stage; Convertino is at liberty to take this feed whenever he wishes: “When I do, I size and place and colour it; he gets good shots.”
I’ve mentioned O’Connor a couple of times in this article. A former crew chief at PRG, I first encountered him in the production role with Rammstein a few years back. Apart from his observations on the younger elements in Gallagher’s audience, he had an interesting closing comment on the show: “I’ve been out of lighting for a few years now, but not too many, yet I’m amazed by the changes in technology, particularly the overlap between lighting and video. The key is being able to visualise well, and that’s what we first noticed about Fuji’s work when he covered on Corinne Bailey-Rae.”
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