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When Australian audiences first saw KylieMinogue doing her teeny bopper thingover 10 years ago, few thought she’d bearound for the long haul. They were

wrong. Years on she’s as popular as ever. That samekid singing along with Kylie into a hair brush in the‘80s now sings along with her in the Barina on theway to work.

Since moving to the trendy DeConstruction label,Kylie’s image has been transformed from recordcompany muppet to talented media darling. Herrecent tour dates confirmed the change in our Kylie: anew critically acclaimed album, a ‘real’ band, and sellout dates across the world. I caught up with the tourat the Palais in Melbourne.

MonitorsAfter having a nose around the stage, the first thing I noticed was an interesting monitor set-up, so I thought I’d betterget the lowdown. from Kylie’s Monitor Engineer, Rod Matherson. Rod’s been around the traps for years now, getting hisfirst gig with a little known band called Spiff Rouch. Anybody remember that lot? (They ended up becoming AustralianCrawl, if that’s any help!)Trevor Cronin: What does the monitor system consist of, Rod?Rod Matherson: We’re using the Midas XL3 console and extender. We initially got the extender because we had over40 input channels. But then, because we didn’t need a lot of the stuff in the monitors – like the percussion overheads,drum overheads and the snare bottom – I ended up cutting it right back. I crammed it all onto the 40-channel boardand used the extender for the support band, which was great because I didn’t have to mess up my channels orrearrange anything for the support band. It’s not that easy to reset an XL3 exactly right. TC: I see that you’re using the TC Electronic programmable EQs…RM: The TCs, yeah, they’re deluxo graphics. I find them a delight to use – they’re really clean and really easy to getaround. I’m a pretty simplistic operator. A lot of people may use all the feedback ‘search and destroy’ functions onthem, but I basically use them as a straight graphic. You can adjust them as much as you like and still come back toyour standard EQ and compare... they’re fantastic.TC: You’re using the Claire Brothers’ controller?RM: Yeah, the remote controller. It’s got an umbilical cable on it, so you can walk out on stage and stand in front of themic checking it out. I don’t bother with that, I’m from the old school. I just walk out and check it. We use the Claire12AM wedges and they all sound pretty well identical. You just tune up one send really well, and you can duplicate thatonto the other sends. I leave the board pretty well dead flat.

Kylie Minogue made a triumphantreturn to Australia on her recent tour.Trevor Cronin braved the screaminghordes to file this report.

Live

© KDB Pty Ltd / Miller Media

35

TC: Your monitor set-up for the drummer isfascinating, what is it?RM: What you’re looking at attached to the drummer’sstool is ‘Rod’s Rock Bottom’! It’s a pair of drivers boltedto the seat. I run a stereo feed to it and I have a levelcontrol box on the back of the seat. You sit on the seat,plug in your in-ear monitors or headphones, and tailorthe sound for yourself. It’s not crossed over or anything,just full range sound is fed to it. From the chair you canadjust the bottom or top end feed to the in-ears to suitwhatever mix level you feel you like – it’s quite simple.

I have a graphic EQ patched over each in-ear send,although with the drum feed I didn’t use any EQ at all!You basically just run it flat with the in-ears. You get thebottom end feel through the seat – it’s great. Thetransition from top to bottom is really good – ourdrummer thinks it pretty deluxe.TC: How did you come up with that idea?RM: Well, I first saw ‘the shaker’ when Garbage touredhere and I was working on the show. I had a good listento his set-up with a tape running through it, and Ithought it was pretty good.

I hadn’t actually seen anyone run a stereo feed todrive the in-ears off the same unit, everyone runs aseparate feed. But that way you end up running threesends – a left, a right and a sub feed. Doing it my wayyou only run a stereo feed. I’m actually starting tomanufacture them.TC: I bet Chris Pyne at Front Of House would bereally happy about the lack of drum fill. I know frommy own experience, it really cleans up the sound.

RM: It cleans up the drums, but most of the band allplay with wedges, and have pretty serious drum levelsrunning through them. It’s a new band and everybodyhas to hear everything, especially for timing.

The first gig we did, we had it all set at a nice level,everything sounding really nice at sound check. At thestart of the first song, the audience screamed so loud theband couldn’t hear anything. They couldn’t play! Theband were screaming for more, more of everything, sothey could hear it. So we had to set the stage level upreally loud, just to cater for the screaming.TC: Those little girls scream really loud, don’t they?RM: Or in Kylie’s case, those little boys! TC: Some of the band have in-ear monitors…RM: Kylie uses radio in-ears and the two backing singersare on in-ears, but they’re on a cable which I run off aRane headphone amp. Off the same amp, nearby onstage, is our percussion player, and I also run a clicktrack to him from one ear mould. That way he actuallygets his click through the same amp – so I was runningthree channels to the headphone amp for him. ChongLim [MD and keyboardist] also has a click in an in-earmonitor, which is on another headphone amp in his rack.We have two clicks: a main click, which is a drum click,for the drummer and percussion player to hear; andanother click which Chong and Kylie hear. There arecertain points in some songs where there’s a completestop, where she needs to come in exactly on time, righton the first beat – that’s a different click sound.

The other thing is that the two backing singers areright next to our percussion player, who is incredibly

Monitor Engineer, Rod Matherson (right), and Monitor System Engineer, Grant Barrett.© Marty Williams

37

loud, so it’s nice to have something that’s close to theirears instead of blaring wedges. They can actually sit thereand be comfortable singing amongst themselves. In theirears they have a bit of keyboards, a bit of an overall mix,minus the percussion! What I do is put a graphic overthem and I tune them for the individual performer. Thatway the desk stays basically flat, so wherever I send theirvocals it sounds the same anywhere on stage. The otherway is to crank the board with more top end, whichmeans it would affect all the other sends.

Angus Burchall has the drum stool and he’s running instereo. I can place things in his ears according to theirposition on the stage. The guitarist is on the right handside of the stage so I can pan him slightly and have itsound like it’s coming from where he’s standing. If youdon’t run them really loud you can still hear a little sourcesound outside the ears as well. You just reinforce what’sthere and pan it correctly. If you do it right and subtlyenough, you can almost make it sound like you haven’t gotany in-ears on at all – it sounds like you’re hearingeverything acoustically on stage and in its place. If youtake the in-ears out, you lose all that.TC: What do you use for monitoringduring the show?RM: I basically listen on closed backcans to the whole thing. Because theyblock out the external sound I canhear more distinctly what is in themix. If I was monitoring with awedge, in-ears or lightweight cans, I’dbe hearing a lot more of the stagesound, which would cloud what I’mactually putting in the mix.

It’s a pretty comprehensive mixwith lots of fiddly bits. I spend mostof my time concentrating on Kylie’smix – riding things like vocalharmonies and keyboard levels,which are reasonably critical becauseshe pitches a lot off the keyboard.Then I’ll just do all the other cues.Occasionally I’ll get back to listeningto the wedge sends, but I know the other guy’s are prettycomfortable with the sound, so therefore I can mostlyleave them alone.

I’m running Kylie’s monitors stereo post fade off thefaders, and the band are all pre-fade off the aux sends.With Kylie’s mix, because we have about eight or 10keyboard lines and samples, I run a mix of them out ofthe board, then run it back into a channel. I then feed thatone mix, with a compressor over it, to the band, and runthat post fade. That way I can actually ride keyboardlevels on one fader instead of having to dial up 10different faders and alter the mix. I’ve also duplicatedKylie’s mic in two channels – that gives me an extra onefor her in-ears specifically. So now I can adjust that, get itexactly right for her and leave the other one for the band’smix. When she is walking around amongst the band withthe mic I can tailor the bottom end or top end as the micreacts with being close to the wedges, without affecting

her send to the rest of the band.We use BSS compressors across Kylie’s vocal, and her

vocal for the band. At times she belts it out and it gets tooloud – she can really cook. So I have two differentcompression levels: one for her ears and one for theband’s set of wedges. So the band can still get thedynamics without getting their heads torn off ! TC: Does Kylie get along well with the in-ear monitoring system?RM: Yeah. We started with a standard Garwood system,but the belt pack is quite large and was a bit difficult tohang off some of the frail dresses she uses. So we got aGarwood LV1, which is the new mini pack – it’s tiny, notmuch bigger than a credit card, and it just runs on one AAbattery, very deluxe.TC: Do you use cue sheets?RM: Yeah, I have the song list, and I drew stuff up as wedid the production rehearsals. I just went through certainbits, like the start of some songs, where maybe the firstfew bars of keyboard need pushing up and then bringingback down; or maybe Kylie would like to hear a guitar a

bit cranked up, just for pitching at thestart of a song – stuff like that.

Except for about three of the songsI’m doing something, generally mixingsomething in it, so I’m reasonablyactive.TC: It must be great to have therehearsal period to work it all out…RM: I would have liked some morerehearsals with the full set-up. Therehearsal studio is just not indicativeof a live show, ‘cause you’re not inthe same environment. You’re in aloud rehearsal studio, whereeveryone’s crowded around eachother and you don’t get that exactfeel and level that people need. Onceyou get up to level in a liveenvironment, and the front of housePA gets turned on, then it’s like, “oh,everything’s a bit different now”.

TC: There’s huge phase interaction between FOH andmonitors, even the change in room temperature altersthings doesn’t it?RM: I find with monitors that’s a part of the craft,actually. It’s being able to go in and pre-empt what aroom’s going to do, especially if you’re going into adifferent room every night. I tend to tune it just a little bitroughly and then see what comes up in the changeover.Then if you’re doing multiple nights in a place with anin-house system, at the next sound check you go, “ouch,that’s a bit rough!”, but you know it’ll actually be right onthe night. Because you’ve done the changeover a coupleof times you know that you can rely on what you’vedone.

I like that challenge, I’m more comfortable with mixing20 sends of hellish monitors than I am going out andmixing a three piece band at Front Of House. Seriously,put me at a FOH desk and I’m nervous as hell!

“I was hoping to basethis show around

100-105dB peak, butat the first night in

the Palais, thecrowd arced up and

we measured them at110dB plus. Which is

really loud!”

WE TOLD YOU

WHERE TO SEE IT.

38

System EngineerThe FOH house systemwas a Jands rig. Jands’System Engineer, PatRichardson, put the rigtogether.TC: What does theFront Of House rigconsist of ?Pat Richardson: It’s aself-powered MeyerMSL rig: 24 x MSL4’s,eight x 650P’s, four xMSL2A’s. It’s very muchlike a theatre system thatwould be installed forsay, Beauty & The Beast,Les Mis, or Sisterella,except we’ve tried tosimplify it as much aspossible. We do all ourzoning, delaying andeverything with an oldIvie and just pulse it outusing the laser system –it’s really quick.

We can lock the system together, and move itanywhere in the building. So, to suit a band like this –which uses a lot of in-ears – you’re not getting that muchthrow off the stage, except from the guitars really, sowhat you’ve got to do is try and match up the image.TC: So the main system is delayed to keep it in timewith the back line?PR: We basically compromise between Kylie’s positionand the band, depending on what venue we’re in. So wejust move it up and down the stage until it gets to a pointwhere it feels like the focus is on her. If you don’t do thatyou always have the PA 20, 30 or 40 milliseconds out ofalignment with the band, and it’s quite amazing how theimage is then lost.TC: So tell us a little bit about your speaker systemplacement using the laser system.PR: We’re using laser technology to actually see our horndispersion. On this show especially, we’ve really gone backto the drawing board and thought alot about where we arefiring all those horns, and trying to do it in the best waypossible. The last thing you want to be doing in a venuethis size is to be splashing horn pattern all over the ceilingsand walls, as it just ends up sounding bad. It’s like theanalogy of the hose: when you water the garden with ahose, you shape the water to point it at the plants and notat the fence or the cat and the dog.

With the lasers we can accurately point the PA to theexact seat where we want it to go. The lasers are mountedin an aluminium device connected to the speaker cabinet,and they’re set at a pre determined angle. When youcouple the horns they go from 35° to 17.5° dispersion,turning it into a long throw box. We put two 8.75° laserson them, so as the PA goes up and down, these two dotsappear in the audience, showing you the coverage at the

3dB down point. There’s no more going in with‘angleometers’, and thinking, “okay, if the PA’s going tobe hanging there, it’s gotta be at plus eight degrees”, thendoing the calculations and spending 45 minutes in thevenue just working out what angles you want. Now I canjust take it up, point it, and there it is. I mean, it justdoesn’t get much better than that.

Front Of HouseChris Pyne manned the FOH position for the tour.TC: So Chris, when you got offered this gig, what sortof preparation did you do?Chris Pyne: I got the latest album, which this tour ismostly based around. The band rehearsed at AdelphiaStudio (really great large space in Melbourne) for threeweeks. I went in at the beginning for the first four daysand then I’d go in every couple of days. I’d just sit andmake notes on my computer and do my little cue sheets,and, if the situation arose, I’d make some suggestionsabout sounds, hairstyles... stuff like that .TC: Was there much input from the CD’s Producer?CP: The Producer did a lot of other things apart frommusic, he had a lot to do with staging, the lighting, andthe way the set was structured. So once he finished thatside of it, we got together and he told me what hewanted to achieve. His first comment was that he didn’twant it to sound like the album, which is pretty odd Iguess, but he wanted a more rocky, live feel to it.

Kylie’s previous tours were very much sequencer-based. Our brief here was to make it sound live and havethe band play the parts, not sequencers. I mean, there isan element of sequencer involvement, but a lot of thefunny little noises you hear are actually coming from theguitars! People have gone, “Oh wow, the band is reallycooking, they’re really solid and really powerful,” which is

FOH Engineer, Chris Pyne (left) and System Engineer, PatRichardson behind the Midas XL4.

© Marty Williams

nice to hear.TC: Let’s take a look at the inputs on the console, andsee your treatment of a few instruments and yourgeneral approach to the situation.CP: I’ve been doing this for a very long time, I’m one ofthose people who sticks to the basics, the things that Iknow will work – I’m not really overly fancy with what Ido. I don’t have a lot of effects and I use compressorssparingly. I basically use compressors to keep control ofthe vocals. We use the BSS 901 four-band compressor onKylie. She has a peak in the 2.5kHz area, so I’ve got theBSS sorting that out. There’s some gates on the drums,and that’s pretty much it – it’s pretty simple.TC: Obviously you use some reverb and some delay?CP: We’ve got a Lexicon PCM80 as Kylie’s vocal reverb,a TC Electronic TC2290 for echo, and an EventideH3000 for a bit of spread on the vocals. I use a YamahaREV500 multi-effects unit for the drums – a pretty basicroom reverb, not too much of that – and that’s it.

Microphone-wise, we have Shure SM98 clip-on micson most of the percussion – they have a really nicebright top end. We don’t have to do too much to them,and they’re very unobtrusive – you don’t see mic standseverywhere. Because the percussion player’s congas arepacked so tightly, there’s no room for large mics, so the98s fit where other mics wouldn’t.

I’m using the Midas XL4 console with moving fadersand automation. I’ve set up 26 scenes, each scene is

configured as a starting point for each song. Each sceneis just muting things like vocals and keyboards that aren’tbeing used. I use the moving faders a little bit, but notmuch, mainly they’re just to set up the start, and then Imanually mix it from there.TC: Have you had any troubles with getting thesounds, or getting the mix across the way you want it?CP: As the band gets more comfortable they get a littlebit louder, which is the bane of the live sound engineer –it gets a little louder and the control over the music andthe separation decreases. Some of the venuesare quite small, andthat’s startingto be aproblem. Butthe band isprettyco-operativewhen it comesto altering stagelevels and thingslike that. BecauseKylie’s using anin-ear monitoringsystem, she can hearherself pretty clearly, so the band level is notbugging her that much. But it does happensometimes, stage level is something that we’re

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trying to control.TC: In-ear monitor systems, from my experience,really add a huge dimension of clarity and ‘in yourfaceness’ to the vocal sound. Would you agree?CP: I think so, yeah. For a start there’s not thatsmearing characteristic that you have with lots ofwedges everywhere, firing vocals all over the place – itcertainly cleans it up. I find that the one downside isthat the vocalists hear themselves so well, they don’t putout so much. So I had a chat to Rod to make sure thatthe vocals were not too loud in Kylie’s in-ears, so shesang loud enough to make sure we got enough level.Luckily enough, as Kylie goes along, she gets strongerand stronger. I mean the first few shows it was difficult,we were squeezing pretty hard to get some level, butshe’s really come along quite well.TC: What sound level does the show run at? CP: I was hoping to base this show around 100-105dBpeak, but at the first night in the Palais, the crowd arcedup and we measured them at 110dB plus. Which isreally loud! The crowd just wiped out the band, and thePA. So you have to go back to the drawing board andfigure out a way of getting the music across withoutbreaking people’s ears, but still not sounding weak. Itgets to the point where you can’t squeeze any more outof the rig.

Luckily enough the MSL4 system’s clarity is verygood. Jands put together good systems these days, after25 or 30 years of being in the business, they’re thepeople that have the resources and the know-how to putthese things together.

Final impressionsDuring the showtime I had a good walk around thetheatre, and found that the system’s coverage wasexcellent. The mix position is right at the back wall andunder a balcony (not ideal), but the Meyer rig coveredthat area well. The coverage was quite even across thebalcony area as well. Kylie’s vocal was very true andclear, and worked well over the different material, whichranged from duo ballads to banging rave numbers. Ididn’t hear one feedback scream from the monitors,which is pretty rare.

To sign off on a non-audio note: it must have beenthe best smelling show I’ve been to in my life! I’m suremost of the audience had, in the previous hour or two,showered and changed into their best party gear andsplashed on something from Calvin Klein. And that wasjust the blokes!

AT

The Crew Front of House Engineer: Chris Pyne

Front of House System Engineer: Pat Richardson

Monitor Engineer: Rod Matherson

Monitor System Engineer: Grant Barrett

Production/Tour Manager: Nick Pitts

Australian audio hire company: Jands

Venue: Palais Theatre St Kilda, Melbourne

Capacity: 2880 x 6 shows

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