Australian pop-punk band 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) made their name as somewhat of a YouTube sensation, but rose to international stardom after touring with UK mega-boy band One Direction during their 2012 Take Me Home tour. 5SOS have since released three studio albums, headlining three world tours in the process. Their current Meet You There tour supports their 2017 hit record, Youngblood, and at stage left position, Pavan Grewall is working from his trusted DiGiCo SD10 console.
Grewall is adept at both FOH and monitor roles. He has flown faders at FOH for a number of well-known artists, including Meghan Trainor, Nick Jonas and Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen, with whom he spent five years touring the world.
His current role as monitor engineer with 5SOS is one he is enjoying: he has been working with both the band and the DiGiCo SD10, supplied by Adlib–Sound, Light & Visual Solutions, for 18 months.
“I’m running an SD-Rack and an SD-Mini Rack to accommodate the additional inputs for this show,” he says. “And I really love the mic pres on the SD10: they’re so transparent, and that’s what I really enjoy—and actually, that’s what I need—for working monitors because, ultimately, I am trying to give the band the truth of it.”
And that means no coloration, unless they ask for it, he explains.
“The guys are very easy to work with, and know what they like to hear. Occasionally, the drummer might ask me to jazz up a mix or something, which is cool and very easy to do on the SD10—but with this console, I ultimately get more of what is actually happening, as it delivers a very pure sound.
“I also have a Snapshot for anything that needs to be done every day,” he reveals. “For example, there is a portion in the set where Michael [Clifford, guitarist] and Callum [Hood, bassist] switch vocal mics, so that happens with my Snapshots. And I take timecode to trigger that. The internal FX within the console are also excellent—I use them on everything, along with a few Waves plugins, just as extra tools when I need them.”
The uber-successful 5SOS Meet You There tour ran from August to November last year, kicking off in Osaka, Japan, and finishing up in Madrid, 52 shows later, with Grewall not missing a single beat.
