Photo: Steve Jennings
Young the Giant (Sameer Gadhia, vocals, keys; Jacob Tilley, guitar; Eric Cannata, guitar; Payam Doostzadeh, bass; Francois Comtois, drums) released their much anticipated sophomore album, Mind Over Matter, in late January 2014, working with Grammy Award–nominated producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Paramore, Nine Inch Nails Beck). Mix caught the band in early February, second night of the tour, at the Fox Theater in Oakland, Calif., using the house-provided Meyer Sound P.A. system.
“On this run we are very tight on space in our pack, so I challenged myself to occupy a small footprint,” says front-of-house engineer Titus Woodham. “I’m using a Midas Pro2 control surface, DL251 for ‘stage’ I/O and DL 451—with 3x 8-channel AES cards— for ‘FOH’ I/O. The Midas Pro series, at 24-bit/96k, seems to have the best analog sonic characteristics when using a digital console. Once I’m in the digital realm, I prefer to keep all my I/O fully digital and properly clocked at the proper bit depth and sample rate [24/96]. Midas A/D converters, then a Lake LM 44 as the final D/A; however, anytime I can go directly into the P.A. system amps digitally is ideal.
Front-of-house engineer Titus Woodham
Photo: Steve Jennings
“The Gen 2 onboard plug-ins are great!” he continues. “I’m using the onboard effects for primarily dynamics. I’m carrying an additional rack with two Eventide Eclipse V4, a TC Electronic FireworX, a TC Electronic System 6000 with [4x] engines, Waves MaxxBCL [stereo bus, master comp], JoeCo MADI 64-track recorder [with remote iPad app], and two Lake LM44 [wireless tablet control]. This entire rack is all clocked at 24-bit/96k, and all the connections to the console are fully digital.”
Monitor engineer Ricky Leon
Photo: Steve Jennings
“I’m mixing the band on an Avid Venue SC48,” says monitor engineer Ricky Leon. “Sameer Gadhia’s main vocal mic is the Shure KSM9 HS, and for his effects vocal he uses the Shure 55s, which goes through a TC Helicon voice processor. He can get really creative with the setting, so I tend to set a hard compression on this line. He has great vocal range so I also use a comp along with a limiter.”
All guitarists use Bad Cat amps miked with a combination of Shure SM57s and KSM 32s, according to guitar tech Josh Schreibeis.
Drummer Francois Comtois’ kit has a Shure Beta 91A and Beta 52 on kick, Beta 57 and SM57 on snare, KSM 137 on hi-hat, and Beta 98AMP on toms, according to drum tech Colin “Gravy” Strahm. Cymbals are KSM 32s, and his vocal mic is a Beta 56.
