Celebrating its tenth anniversary with a UK tour, We Will Rock You is one of the most successful musicals of the 21^st century. Essential to the show is its live music, and essential to the musicians is their monitoring.

'For the tour, PA rental provider Sonalyst has supplied a high-spec system that is aslo designed to be space and weight-saving. Front-of-house PA is a combination of self-powered Meyer Sound Mica and M’elodie speaker systems with Meyer Sound UPA and M1D for fills, and a DiGiCo SD7 digital console to handle the mix. The performers, meanwhile, use miniature headmics from DPA Microphones. New to the show are Roland M-48 personal mixers, which handle the monitoring requirements for the eight-piece band.

 

‘I was on the hunt for something new and suggested these units to the WWRY team,’ says Rory Madden of Sonalyst. ‘When compared with other mixers of its type, the M-48 definitely stands out. The fact that the band is able to record or mix without hassling the engineer is great, and the sound through headphones is excellent.’

The M-48 offers control over 40 audio sources, managed in 16 assignable stereo groups, which can be enhanced with level/pan/solo/three-band EQ on each group, high-quality built-in reverb, ambient mic as well as physical inputs and outputs. Power is supplied via a S-4000D splitter and power distributor, using Roland’s Ethernet Audio Communication (REAC) Cat5e protocol.

Housed in a huge steel cage suspended above the stage, the We Will Rock You band remains hidden for 80 per cent of the show, revealed to the audience as the story reaches its climax. With seven other musicians, Musical Director Jim Henson spends the show in his airborne orchestra pit. ‘Having these new units has definitely made our lives a lot easier,’ he says. ‘We had three days of band calls, in which the musicians were first introduced to the M-48 units and they took to them like ducks to water. Each player now has full control of his own settings, so they can all get what they want.

‘It’s particularly useful when we have deps in – they can easily tweak the mix to their preferences, and the settings can be stored. When my assistant MD is conducting, he can store his own settings on the mixer. And it offers great back-up; if we got to a new venue and something went wrong, we would just recall the stored parameters from the previous show.

‘The most useful thing for me as MD is the ability to see level inputs on each of the channels, because then I can be sure there’s signal coming from FOH,’ he adds. ‘Because we’re not in a pit, all the action on stage is happening behind me and I only have a tiny monitor. I’m rely on my ears to know what’s going on, so it’s a big help to be able to glance across and see what my channels are on, eight at a time.’

Mixing nearly 120 channels of vocals, band and sound effects is front-of-house engineer Rich Scott, who has been with the show since it opened in 2001, has toured with it and set up productions in Stockholm and Berlin. ‘The Roland M-48 has replaced the analogue system we were using, which required a lot more cabling, so we’re enjoying all the advantages of digital in terms of convenience. Not only is there a useful reduction in on-stage sound from the band, but it frees me up from having to worry about their monitor requirements. We’re very happy to pioneer this technology, which has been extremely well supported by Sonalyst and by Roland.’

Mixing We Will Rock You on a DiGiCo SD7 allows the M-48 Live Personal Mixers to be integrated into the audio system – as with other digital or analogue consoles, using a choice of Roland Digital Snakes and PC software for set-up and control. Roland has also recently released a bi-directional signal converter between Madi and REAC, (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication). The S-Madi REAC Bridge enables connectivity between any Madi-equipped digital audio mixer/system and any of Roland’s REAC units.

More: www.rolandsg.co.uk