Monitors for King Charles’ performance at the Fleece, Bristol
Bristol, UK (May 12, 2015)—Monitor engineers are used to working in small spaces and are usually equipped with gear that takes that into consideration, but Ross Rothero-Bourge took that idea to a new level on a recent UK tour with British singer songwriter, King Charles, when he mixed monitors solely on a laptop and iPad connected to an Allen & Heath iLive system.
The recently completed 28-day tour carried an iLive system to manage both FOH and monitors. The compact system comprised an iDR-32 and iDR0 MixRacks, with an iLive-80 surface for FOH, and a laptop and iPad for monitor control.
“The venues range from 200 to 2,000 capacity so space is often a tight squeeze, but as I’m using a laptop or iPad instead of a surface, I can tuck myself away whilst being free to move close and keep eye contact with the band,” says monitor engineer, Ross Rothero-Bourge.
All members apart from the bass player were on in-ear monitors. As well as the standard monitor mixes, the engineer also created several duplicate mixes. The meticulous drummer required four mixes in total, Charles the lead singer had in-ears and a backup sub, and two of the musicians – keys and guitarist – swapped instruments back and forth during the set, requiring duplicate mixes to enable the exchange.
“On a concentrated tour like this with 28 gigs in a row, being self-contained is really important. The fact that iLive is so compact but so powerful is really beneficial,” said FOH engineer, Jonathan Lewis. “The band is a pretty standard set up of drums, bass, keys, two guitars, lead vocals and three backing vocals. We could have managed just with the iDR-32 but adding the iDR0 means we don’t have to share PFL or scenes, and it gives us another 64 channels to cater for all the in-ear splits.”
Allen & Heath
www.allen-heath.com
