Madras Mozart plays Parramatta<http://www.proaudio-central.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1612:madras-mozart-plays-parramatta&catid=14:live-sound&Itemid=16> Published in PAA March-April 2010
Bringing his spectacular show to Australia, Indian star AR Rahman built international relations and thrilled his audience. The sound system made a good story too, as *Tim Goodyer *reports Following his father, composer and conductor RK Shekhar, AR Rahman has gone on to become India’s best-known composer of film music – not least for 100 million-plus album sales and his score for 2009’s internationally successful *Slumdog Millionaire*, which was set and filmed in India. His recent free concert at Parramatta Park on the outskirts of Sydney attracted a crowd in excess of 70,000. ‘A massive number of people from across the world want see the *Slumdog Millionaire*composer and the Oscar-winner belt out his memorable Hollywood and Bollywood compositions,’ said one of his close aides. *Slumdog* director Danny Boyle claimed to have chosen AR Rahman for the score because ‘not only does he draw on Indian classical music, but he’s got R&B and hip-hop coming in from America, house music coming in from Europe and this incredible fusion is created’. AR Rahman took the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and won two out of three nominations for the Academy Awards, including Best Original Score and Best Original Song for ‘Jai Ho’ – the song that accompanies the Bollywood-style dance sequence at the close of the film. Having recently toured Kozhikode, Delhi and Hyderabad in India, the Rahman live show – featuring around 40 musicians, dancers and supporting artists – visited Sydney for a one-off performance in January, before moving on to Muscat later in the month. At FOH for both events was KJ Singh, AR Rahman’s regular live/studio engineer, behind the Digidesign mixing desk that has become a non-negotiable item on the Rahman technical rider following the India dates. For the Sydney concert, the PA system was provided by Coda Audio Services and was based around a 96-input Digidesign Profile and a Meyer Sound M3D line array. For the earlier concerts in India, the Digidesign console was provided in by Ansata, the sole distributor for India, and used by Roger Drego’s Electrocraft PA company in Mumbai for the AR Rahman performances. For the Sydney and Muscat dates, Electrocraft’s Dwayne Das remained on the team as systems engineer. The Sydney venue was the 500m-long open ground at Parramatta Park, instantly raising issues regarding noise and the surrounding residents. ‘The set-up for the concert is unlike any Bollywood setup that I have done,’ Mr Das begins. ‘The set for the concert consists of a 20m x 5m LED wall with an additional six panels of 3m x 1.5m, which could slide in and out, as and when required. The stage is set on two levels, with the musicians occupying the left and right of the lower level. The lower centre stage and the upper level were mainly for the dancers, the LED panels and an acoustic set that was performed with only piano, sitar and vocals.’ The main front-of-house system consisted of an LR system with 10 M3D boxes per side, four MSL2A as down fills per side, and 12 HP700 for sub-bass, which were ground-stacked and driven from an aux on the mixing desk. At 100m, two MSL6 boxes per side were added to assist the mid-hi reach as far as a 200m delay tower, This was built up of 12 Meyer Sound Mica boxes per side, while at 300m there were two Meyer Sound MSL6 boxes per side, and at 400m another 12 Meyer Sound M2D boxes per side. ‘The Meyer Sound M3D system did the job,’ confirms Mr Das. ‘The India Tour was done with an L-Acoustics V-Dosc system, and that is our preferred system, so there was a bit of work to be done to get the Meyer System sounding the way we wanted it – and we did get satisfactory results. Because of the venue being close to residential areas, there was an limit on the SPL we could use, so we did not get to push the system hard and ended up mixing at around 100dB (A-weighted) at the console. ‘As systems engineer I like to align a system using minimal tools,’ Mr Das adds. ‘My ears get me by most of the time. I am aware of a lot of measurement tools that are available and have used them but I trust my ears the most.’ ‘Digidesign was the preferred FOH console requested by KJ Singh,’ Mr Das explains. ‘For the Sydney concert, Coda Audio Services supplied the Profile with a sidecar so we had more faders to ride per layer. The desk was chosen for its tonal quality and also so that the plug-ins that were used on the studio recordings could be replicated at the live concerts.’ These included: Bomb Factory 1176 (now BF76) and Bomb Factory 3A compressor/limiters, Digidesign Revibe reverb, Delay II, Pitch Shifter, McDSP ML4000 limiter and multi-band dynamics processor, and the Focusrite d2 and d3 multi-band EQ and compressor/limiter bundles. ‘The ability to use the same plug-ins that one uses while mixing the songs as they are performed is a huge time-saver,’ says KJ Singh. ‘There is no trying to find any “close-to” sounding EQs, compressors, effects and so on. I just bring in the settings of the plug-ins that were used during the mix, and then insert them into the channels and*voila!*’ The Digidesign Profile system was supplemented by a Digidesign 003 Rack FireWire interface and Mac 1Powerbook Pro running Tools LE 8. There was also a Toshiba Portege M400 tablet computer and LinkSys WRT54G wireless router. I have insisted on a Profile wherever we go for the coming year, and have just finished getting my hands dirty with the SC48 – that is one nasty, powerful sucker and so user-friendly,’ KJ Singh continues. ‘Even with such a small footprint, the Profile gives us 96 inputs. I remember doing the AR Rahman *Unity of Light Tour* in 2003 with a 64-input main desk, and a 40-input sub desk for percussionist Sivamani and string section – not to mention racks full outboard gear and attached cabling. Today we carry a small, light, portable Venue with two stage racks and a FOH rack. The single-fader stereo channel is also a great space saver, especially when you are doing more than 90 inputs as we are on the present AR Rahman Jai Ho concert.’ Alongside the saving in space and the ability to call on recording studio signal processors, KJ Singh likes the fact that the desk is digital: ‘It has a good sound quality and flexibility, and for Pro Tools users, there is its ease of use – being a Pro Tools user since it came out, the smooth shift to the console was very easy,’ he explains. ‘Being a digital console, the ability to recall in snapshot mode – either for different artists or band set-ups, or for different songs with the same artist/band, is simply amazing. The EQ and dynamics are great also.’ Then there is the ability to record onto Pro Tools without any additional wiring: ‘That is the icing on the cake,’ he says. ‘On some earlier concerts I used to carry either Tascam Hi-8 machines – three of them – or, more recently, the Alesis HD24 hard-disk recorder. The redundant snake is another assurance that one hardly thinks about, but it is a huge worry off one’s mind during a concert.’ ‘AR Rahman and his engineer, KJ Singh, opting to tour with a Venue system as their only FOH console is a big deal for us – not just in India, but for all of us involved with Venue,’ says Leslie Lean, Ansata Computer Systems founder and CEO, and a key figure in bringing the desk to KJ Singh’s attention. With offices around India, the company handles digital audio, as well as IT solutions and offers Media Production Technology education. Founded in 1989, its audios line also includes CharterOak, Waves, Audio Ease and Sonnox Oxford Plug-ins. ‘The reason the system was chosen for this tour was for its studio quality sound, and also for it’s ease-of-use, responsiveness and reliability,’ he summarises. ‘The systems used on the tour not only performed, but travelled with the crew and worked flawlessly in varied environments. We think that this, more than anything, is what is getting them to show up on people’s riders, and why everyone is excited about them. The environment of interest around the Venue in India is enormous now and growing by the day – with live sound engineers across the country scrambling to get hands-on time with the console. Today, we have Venue systems in all major cities with more than 17 satisfied owners.’ Back in Parramatta Park, the other equipment to be found at FOH was a Meyer Galileo 616 system controller for loudspeaker control, Klark Teknik DN9848 delay/EQ/crossover, a TC Electronic D-Two digital delay unit, Lexicon PCM91 reverb and Smart Research C2 dual compressor. In addition, there was a Marantz PMD340 CD player for playout. Up on stage, meanwhile, there was a forest of microphones collecting the sound for the mixing desk to handle. ‘I used a total of 21 Shure UR4D wireless channels with a mix of B58 and B87 heads,’ Mr Das reveals. ‘Eighteen of the wireless channels were used for mics, and three were used for wireless guitars and AR Rahman’s Axe Synth.’ For the drums, there was a mix of Shure SM57, SM58, B52 and SM81 dynamic models and Sennheiser e904 miniature cardioid dynamics. ‘Our percussionist, Siva Mani, was miked with AKG,’ Mr Das adds. ‘This also included two wireless mics, which were strapped to his wrists so that they allowed him to move around stage and still be heard.’ The grand piano was miked with two Neumann KM184 small diaphragm condensers, and the sitar player was provided with a Fishman pick-up. For line-level signals, the DI boxes used were Radial J48 and BSS AR113 active units with phantom power. At the side of the stage, Monitor World was built around Yamaha PM5D-RH V2 and DSP5D mixing desks. PM5D-RH digital mixer offered 48:8-inputs and a 24:2:8 output structure and was connected to a DSP-5D remote PM5 brain using a DCU5D interface. We were using a total of 88 inputs excluding the MC’s mics and playback,’ says Mr Das. ‘And we used a total of 16 Sennheiser SR300/EK300 in-ear monitor channels, along with 18 Electro-Voice XW12 X bi-amplified floor wedges, four Meyer Sound MSL4 side fills and four DS-4P bass boxes on the stage.’ If the artist and the crew had expected their show to be popular in Sydney, the reception that they received was to be a surprise. Introductory speeches from NSW premier Kristina Keneally and cricketer Steve Waugh – who referred to AR Rahman as the Sachin Tendulkar of Music – certainly set expectations for the performance high: ‘A crowd of around 70,000 turned up for the concert,’ Dwayne Das confirms. ‘ Some of them were at the gates as early as 10am for a 7.30pm concert – that really surprised me.’ The band, crew and sound system were all on form, however, providing a musical spectacle to help build India-Australia relations. The concert was also broadcast live to 44 countries. http://www.proaudio-central.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1612:madras-mozart-plays-parramatta&catid=14:live-sound&Itemid=16 -- - Regards ~ ~ A.R.Rajib ~ ~
