David Taylor
Watching some of the Sunday night Glastonbury made me think about how ‘ambient’ a music mix should be before it loses it’s definition and becomes too ‘swimmy’ in quality. At LWT in the 70s I learned at the elbow of Vic Finch, how to duck the audience faders to keep a sit-com exciting and still keep the dialogue in the foreground. The epitome of this at that time was probably the shows mixed by Mike McCarthy….loud and exciting though the audience was, you could hear every word of dialogue because the compressors work hard, as did the fast hand on the audience fader.
This technique also worked for music mixing, as the audience mics could colour the sound mix very dramatically if left up, but were needed to make it feel like a real ‘live’ event of course.
Over the years live broadcast music mixers have therefore had two techniques to decide to use I think. There’s the ‘just enough’ audience constantly in the mix to ‘make it work’, and the ‘just add audience when necessary’ method.
I mixed lots live music and went for the later most definitely. It’s much harder work, having to be really vicious with yanking the audience fader down when required and at some point you’ll get it wrong and the colouration will be enormous….but at least the music mix will be the best you’re able to achieve for most of the show. Of course there are lots more occasions now when the audience knows the words and sings along, which means the ‘how far up’ decisions come more frequently but I regret that the Glastonbury mixers seem to opt for the ‘half to three quarters up’ audience all the time and I’m afraid I just don’t like it like that. On Sunday, Cat Stevens and Elton John sounded like I was listening ‘from a distance’ when I wanted to be ‘up close’ more often.
Nick Gilbey
I presume the music mix came from the BBC radio trucks?
PS I prefer to be able to hear the singer clearly. It did sound like the voice was coming from a mike placed in front of one of the PA speakers.
Dave Plowman
I thought it excellent. Nice bright vocal sound just like the old days. Not ‘loose’ at all, but plenty reverb.
Roger Long
Glastonbury is all about the audience
This colours the mix obviously and also makes for a pretty similar sound for all acts
200 ,000 voices can be compelling and emotional
I did a Julian Temple film for Mr Eavis in 2002 , the 30th anniversary, I was on top of sound control Pyramid stage for the first live Animals set by Roger Walters ,in quad PA
And later Rod Stewart with full touring band.It sounded great up there I, was on Dat and a mid side pair of MKH mics
Wind phase was minimal the audience and band’s excellent
It’s a difficult gig for live tele
You have to be there
Music is just half the experience.
Alasdair Lawrance
I thought it was good sound, too, but what do I know? I did think there were some voice sync problems with Elton’s set, which I put down to all the fiddle-faddling that goes on these days post-mic in the TX chain, but all in all, I thought his Farewell a real triumph.
Two things impressed me – one was Davey Johnstone, Nigel Olsson and John Mahon being still with him 50 years on, and they’ve still ‘got it’, and two, the audience not even born when EJ started out still knew the words to the ‘Golden Age’ hits.
I saw him at Watford Football Ground probably in the ’70’s, when we all sat respectfully on the grass – how times change! It might have been with Hibou, but I can’t be sure, perhaps John can confirm or otherwise?
Alan Taylor
A huge factor is the expectations of the production team. If a freelancer wants repeat bookings, they need to deliver what the director wants, even if it’s not necessarily what they might prefer themselves.
In the case of a conventional rock concert, all eyes and ears are generally on the music until it’s time to applaud between songs, but when it comes to a festival, the audience become much more a part of the show – visually and audibly. When it comes to the immense crowds for Elton John, directors will include countless shots of the crowd and expect to hear them too, especially when the artist encourages them to sing along. I think it’s correct to balance the mix with the crowd always being fairly prominent as they are such a big part of the show.
The sound levels at festivals are pretty extreme, even though there are limits to the permissible volume. It’s not easy to pick up audience reaction without PA colouration. If you ride the audience faders too much, the colouration will go up and down accordingly. Most festival TV
directors I’ve worked with have wanted to clearly hear the crowd reaction, even if it adversely affects the music mix.
I’ve never done Glastonbury, but I’ve mixed coverage of Reading, the V Festivals and a number of smaller, but still pretty damn big festivals. There isn’t one solution which works for all, as there are too many variables. I make careful notes about what works and what doesn’t work. After being particularly delighted with the crowd pickup at Reading one year, I thought I had it sorted and made careful notes of how I did it in order to replicate it. In subsequent years it didn’t work out quite as well as before. I’ve no idea if it was down to a change in the PA system, the layout of the stage, or just a more subdued crowd, but what had previously seemed almost effortless had become much harder work.
Always entertaining to see Ray Cooper being the showman that he is. I’ve worked on a few Elton John concerts and Ray can get very close to upstaging him at times while playing nothing more than a tambourine or triangle. He is another who has backed Elton since the early days, but not continuously. Top bloke too.
Tony Grant
1970 or thereabouts, word spreading around TVC, go have a look in studio 4. Wow, there’s this trio, piano, bass and drums, playing away, no camera rehearsal in evidence at the time and obviously enjoying themselves, belting out Country Comfort, Burn Down the Mission, etc. None other than Elton. The following day I went out and bought the album, Tumbleweed Collection.
Didn’t watch very much of last night’s offering, but on our cheap tv, receiving Freeview, it sounded to me too as if the sound was coming from a mic in front of a PA speaker (but hey, I’m only. cloth-eared cameraman).
Hugh Snape
Quite an interesting read:
Nick Gilbey
Really interesting to read about the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury. Also interesting that the BBC have replaced Arena OB facilities with OB units from Timeline (ex BBC OBs Dan O’Donnell’s company) and Cloudbass, which started off as a university media facility. It is good that the BBC is using the smaller companies and not just giving all the work to EMG and NEP Visions.
Paul Thackray
Timeline TV bought some (3?) of the Arena OB trucks in the sale of the assets by the administrator’s. Obviously they were the trucks that ‘usually’ did certain jobs, so are the first choice for any of those jobs now.
Timeline is a small company compared with EMG , but its not that small these days! It has quite a big OB fleet (Greenford based), Ealing Broadcast Centre in an Office block next to the Premier Inn. (Studios & PCR’s etc , replacing what they had at Ealing Studios) Edits in Soho & Salford / Manchester. BT Sport has used them to support the Studios in Stratford from Launch to date, but this will cease shortly as BT Sport ceases to exist in 3 weeks time and it will become ‘TNT Sports’ as a Joint venture between BT & Warner Brothers / Discovery and will use facilities elsewhere.
Nick Ware
Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m sure you will find that it’s all about who will do it cheapest. I used to do a lot of pop videos and Channel 4 stuff for one of the best known of such prod companies at the time (early Elton, Ozzie, Kiki et al) to name but three. He used to pitch for any financially interesting job going, saying that even if he only made a Pound out of it, it would stop anyone else doing it. That was quite a while ago when production and facilities companies would use the up-front money from the next to pay off the last job. Whatever he (we) did, he was even then a multi-multi millionaire whereas I’m not! I’m sure nothing has changed.
