Mick McCoy is a self-described “Disney kid.” He first hit the stage at the age of 4, and by high school he had mastered 11 musical instruments.
“I was always the guy in the band who brought the PA system,” McCoy recalls. That combination of creative and technical chops led to a career designing and building the technical side of live productions, including more than a few for Disney, such as the Broadway production of Aladdin in Las Vegas, as well as the long-running Beatleshow Orchestra at Planet Hollywood and Zombie Burlesque at Club Z inside the Miracle Mile Shops on the Las Vegas Strip.
His experiences on those productions led to working on corporate event productions in Vegas and elsewhere, such as programming and running sound for Star Search winners The Zippers, which Apple, Sony, Mercedes Benz and other companies have used for corporate events.
For most of these gigs, McCoy has been using Yamaha TF Series powered digital mixing consoles, as he personally owns four of them: three top-of-the-line TF5 desks and a TF-RACK, the compact rackmount entry in the TF Series.
He often finds himself turning to the TF StageMix mobile mixing app and the MonitorMix iOS app for the TF Series. “At the Beatleshow Orchestra at Planet Hollywood, the TF5 console is located backstage, not in the usual front of house location,” he says. “With the StageMix mobile mixing app, I can listen to the mix anywhere out in the house and know what it sounds like at every seat. It’s pretty amazing.”
According to McCoy, the show’s musicians also use the MonitorMix iOS app, which lets them adjust their individual IEM mixes on their own iPhones or iPads—up to 10 mixes simultaneously. When a show goes on the road, McCoy is able to maintain the current mix in every venue by loading his custom mixes into the TF-RACK’s memory.
“The entire show is completely automated, right down to the individual instruments and vocals,” he says. “The musicians can sound check themselves.”
For that reason, the TF-RACK has become a mainstay for the Zippers, who are constantly on the road for corporate gigs. McCoy says he is looking forward to implementing the Dan Dugan Automixer feature, introduced for the TF Series as part of the Version 3.5 firmware update released earlier this year, on road shows.
McCoy says part of his responsibility in designing a production is that it be as cost-effective as possible, and the TF consoles do that. “On the old PM4000 or the PM5D consoles, it could take up to four hours to get a mix ready to go,” he explains. “That’s a lot of money when a production is costing $1,000 an hour and a huge corporate event has an 18-hour call every day. The TF consoles can set up everything in a fraction of the time, which saves us a lot of money and effort. The TouchFlow Operation is fast, intuitive and natural. I know that I can send a show out and the audio operation will be flawless because the console is easy to use and the automation is incredibly reliable.”
McCoy finds the TF series desks to be transparent and very easy on the ears. “And I love dialing in the effects,” he says “You can hear the classic sounds of effects units like the SPX-90 in there. It really takes you back. It sounds like home.”
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