Readying to tour the US through June in support of their Lonerism album, Tame Impala will have new engineer Parker at front of house.
Wanting to carry his own desk for the tour, Parker needed something that would slot into the Australian psychedelic hypno-groovers trailer, alongside their gear. After surveying the options, he chose a road-ready DiGiCo SD11 in a flightcase plus a DiGiCo D Rack (32 x 16) with a 75M Cat5e cable housed in an additional Pelican.
Not only did the SD11 fit the bill, but can be set up on a venue’s house console without having to alter the existing set-up.
‘I spoke to Alex Hadj at UK sound company Wigman Acoustics and asked for advice on a small format desk, which would work in a variety of show sizes,’ Parker explains, ‘He put me onto the SD11, which is tiny but powerful. I’d used DiGiCo consoles before, and remember getting a good result when mixing [songwriter and Strokes’ frontman] Julian Casablancas on an SD7 in Switzerland a few years ago. Then I saw the SD8 on a few TV session-type shows with Franz Ferdinand and so by the time I came to cover The XX for a couple of weeks last summer, I was able to jump onto Rik Dowding’s touring SD8 and be fairly familiar on the general use of the board. An afternoon running a multitrack of the band back into the showfile helped with other details.’
Parker’s total of 32 inputs for the gig, comprised 28 lines from stage, a couple of FOH ambient mics and a Space Echo pedal. ‘To make a few more faders available, I run as much as I can in stereo which then leaves me space to have the house board slave into me with a few inputs (to take care of the support band),’ he says. ‘Because we are using in-house PA’s each day, my only outboard gear is the Space Echo for delays – all other FX are done onboard.
‘I prefer to tune the PA with parametric EQs rather than graphics, and the SD11 gives me four bands on the matrix outputs and four on the master. If I need more I assign through more stereo groups (with the fader at unity), which drive the matrixes, each of which will have another four bands… very flexible.
‘The only other gear I am carrying is a mics pack. During the day I set up the PA using parametrics rather than the onboard graphics. By running matrixes for the outputs I can get four on the matrix and then four on the master, which tends to be enough, but if not, I can then assign the matrixes to another stereo group and then that group to the master group which gives you another four… Very flexible! I also have my laptop and an RME MADIface for multitracking and virtual soundcheck purposes, via Madi.’
One of the features that Parker’s getting a lot of use out of on this tour is…. ‘this little button next to the pan encoder that flips the signal hard left/hard right or centre instantly, and is good for making peoples brains explode…’
‘Tame Impala is a psychedelic rock band so the more extreme the effects we can do the better. I’ve got snapshots for reverb on the full mix, pitch shift on the full mix. The kind of things they say you’re not really supposed to do.
‘Another thing worth mentioning is the DiGiCo sound. It has been said many times before, but this is a great sounding desk.’
Parker also makes use of the desk’s Macro buttons extensively: ‘I’ve got macros for pulling up a grabber graphic on the left and right and one on the center vocal group. We are using an old Sennheiser 441 through an onstage delay pedal, which results in loads of shimmery top-end. Having a graph at hand is useful during the show to deal with anything that pops out. I also have macros to pan the guitars super wide or back to nearer the center, which can sound pretty cool, especially if you’re in the middle of the room. The ease of the layout system means that I can have a mixture of VCA’s, input channels and groups on the same page so I don’t have to jump around from bank to bank during the show much – all my important stuff is right there on 12 faders.’
More: www.digico.org
