LSi - April 2012 www.lsionline.co.uk 46 “I wouldn’t cross the street to see his brother,” is typical of the comments I received when I visited Noel Gallagher and his new band. In fairness, brother Liam always inhabited the shouty end of the partnership and just because it was not to everyone’s taste (not mine at least), that doesn’t invalidate his contribution: let anyone who has never stood on stage and sung to 10,000 fans try and say otherwise . . . But while Liam’s ‘Beady Eye’ revisits a template more suited to the mid-90s lads culture, Noel’s High Flying Birds (HFB) settles comfortably into middle age and a more mature audience. I’ve visited enough Oasis shows to know that their audience was partisan, wore barely contained aggression like a badge of honour, and had a penchant for showering the stage with beer. It was also brutally masculine. While this night in Sheffield still had a few beer-chuckers in the audience, there was, happily, a sizeable female contingent too. Production manager Michael O’Connor pointed out: “There are usually busloads of teenagers as well.” Hardly Mr Gallagher’s contemporaries, the latter having barely been born when Oasis was in its pomp. Sound I began with Antony King out front. He’s a sound engineer I’ve encountered variously with Depeche Mode, The Cure, Natasha Beddingfield and, in the first instance, with Lisa Stansfield. That’s a fair spread of voices and with Noel stepping into the front man role, I was anxious to discover if he can sing. “We started rehearsals mid-September last year. I think the band had been at it since July. We did a lot Noel Gallagher’s Steve Moles reports from Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena
LSi magazine April 2012 Philips Vari Lite on tour with Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Mar 22, 2016
Steve Moles' interview with lighting designer for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds tour
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“I wouldn’t cross the street to see his brother,” is typical of
the comments I received when I visited Noel Gallagher
and his new band. In fairness, brother Liam always
inhabited the shouty end of the partnership and just
because it was not to everyone’s taste (not mine at least),
that doesn’t invalidate his contribution: let anyone who has
never stood on stage and sung to 10,000 fans try and say
otherwise . . .
But while Liam’s ‘Beady Eye’ revisits a template more suitedto the mid-90s lads culture, Noel’s High Flying Birds (HFB)settles comfortably into middle age and a more matureaudience. I’ve visited enough Oasis shows to know that theiraudience was partisan, wore barely contained aggressionlike a badge of honour, and had a penchant for showering
the stage with beer. It was also brutally masculine. While thisnight in Sheffield still had a few beer-chuckers in theaudience, there was, happily, a sizeable female contingenttoo. Production manager Michael O’Connor pointed out:“There are usually busloads of teenagers as well.” Hardly MrGallagher’s contemporaries, the latter having barely beenborn when Oasis was in its pomp.
Sound I began with Antony King out front. He’s a sound engineerI’ve encountered variously with Depeche Mode, The Cure,Natasha Beddingfield and, in the first instance, with LisaStansfield. That’s a fair spread of voices and with Noelstepping into the front man role, I was anxious to discover ifhe can sing. “We started rehearsals mid-September lastyear. I think the band had been at it since July. We did a lot
Noel Gallagher’sSteve Moles reports from Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena
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High Flying Birdsof promo shows, TV, radio, a couple of one-offs in the USA. Itsoon became clear to me that not only can he sing reallywell, he can also keep delivering.”
HFB is a bigger band than he’s accustomed to: how’s thatworking? “He has added instruments; a three piece hornsection is probably the most noticeable; that and a twenty-six voice choir for some of the songs.” Not the cheapest itemto tour, Gallagher has taken the sensible route with the choir:“There’s a core of singers we use every night, then MDDavid Temple seems to have a network of singers in everycity.”
It’s my perception this is a growing phenomenon: maybe itsGareth Malone, that choir guy on TV? Either way, massedvoices are no less uplifting here than they are on the terraces
at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. Gallagher could havechosen to use samples, but he didn’t - and it’s a treat for hisfans.
“The band comprises drums, bass, guitar and keyboards,and Noel. To give you some idea, when the choir aren’t on, a couple of band members provide backing vocals, but Noelhas been building his vocal powers steadily. I’m using verylittle compression on his voice and when you consider he’shardly sung for the last 20 years, and now he’s singing everynight for a hundred minutes - well, the fact is, there’s no hintof croak in his voice.”
The stage is louder than many bands in this day and age,d&b M2 wedges everywhere, and C4 side-fill stacks withsubs. I use the tried-and-trusted Shure SM58a for all the
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vocals, except the choir who are all on CrownCM311s - the headset mic with the bigcapsule. I wanted them all individually mic’dand this way the mics all move with theirheads, keeping them always at the mouth. Butthe fact is, there aren’t many of these in theUK and Mike Lowe at Britannia Row had toship in a bunch for me from America: Brit Rowhave been doing great things for me for years.
He continues: “Noel plays acoustic, famouslyfor Supersonic in this show, which is quite achange from the original recording, but thecrowd seems to love it. I use an Avalon U5 DIfor his acoustic, the Gibson 335 (he has arack full of them). I’m using the Royer 122 forthat nice, big, round sound you get from sucha hollow body electric. Noel plays his guitarlargely un-effected, and the Royer is justideal. I do also have an SM57 on his backlineto blend in a bit of the dirtier end of theinstrument when required. Everything else ispretty familiar, Beta 91/52 combination on thekick, 57 top and bottom snare, [AKG] 451 hi-hat, 421 toms, and 414 for overheads. TheCrown microphones for the choir have provedthemselves - although they’re well upstage ofthe side-fills, they are still in a relatively loudenvironment and handle it well. I had usedthem before for a Hip-Hop act, so I knew theircapability. It has meant I can take all thesingers at the same consistent level.”
With all the choir and band inputs - and thereare quite a few keyboards in there we didn’tmention, including a nice loud Leslie cabinethiding backstage - King is using a full 96inputs on his Midas XL8: “These days I wouldn’t use any other desk,” he said,smiling enthusiastically (though smiling isKing’s default facial expression; certainly one
of the happiest sound engineers I think I’veever encountered).
‘You’re not going to get an XL8 for every bandyou do’, I countered. “True, but I can managewith a PRO6 - that’s what we used for theone-offs in the US where we didn’t have a choir. It’s the sound that matters, and thesejust sound lovely.”
That said, King has a fair few bits and bobsoff board: “A Manley compressor for Noel’svocal, as I said just the lightest of touches,but it’s so smooth and it’s fast enough tocatch everything; you can’t beat it. I also havetwo Teletronics LC2As from Noel’s studio -that’s a really nice old Tube tool; they usedone on John Lennon’s vocal. Take the frontplate off and you can see it’s all hand-wiredinside. The second one is for the bassplayer’s vocal.”
“I’ve got [XTA] C2s for the system, and I’mplaying with the new TC Helicon. Butessentially it’s the sound of the desk thatmatters - I do as little as possible to whatcomes in. I’m very wary of people who chainup all sorts of different things; this way, I findwith a desk like this you get to hear far moredetail - little things like the more subtle tomfills. Noel also plays a lot of arpeggios - it’snot all power chords - so there’s plenty ofdynamic range to the music.”
For all his state-of-the-art front end, Kingsticks resolutely to the ageing V-DOSC for hismain system: “I still prefer it to the K1, the twosystems are different and I believe that thesound of the V-DOSC is better suited to anartist like this. There’s a lot in the guitarfrequency range and that can get too
Crew, from top:
Audio crew member Ben Phillips with FOHsound engineer Antony King.
Production manager Michael O’Connor withproduction coordinator Roni Horner.
Left: Lighting director David ‘Fuji’Convertino.
Right: Monitor engineer Nahuel Guttierez.
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aggressive in a system that lifts thosefrequencies. In the end, I don’t let anythingget in the way of the music - just polishwhere needed. The most I do is pull a little3kHz out of his voice, but you can do thatwith the Manley and not diminish the powerof his voice.”
Ben Phillips is King’s system tech. He hadnothing out of the ordinary to report, otherthan he’d opted for longer lines on his mainhang, thus reducing the load capacity on thepoint to handle enough under-hung dV-DOSC to down-fill the front rows. Instead,he’d placed a curl of six L-Acoustic ARCSeach side of stage, and a couple of dV-DOSCs across the front to take their place.Not being allowed into the pit to photograph,I can’t comment on the sound down there,but from a purely sightline point of view itwas a much less intrusive solution.
Monitors Nahuel Guttierez has been mixing monitorsfor Gallagher for nearly five years, but neverwith a choir before. “All the choir are onSennheiser IEMs. They all get a stereo send,a general mix of the choir and little ofthemselves on top, panned so they cansense their own voice easily enough.” Hemakes it sound simple.
“They are positioned well back from theband, certainly well out of the field of the
side-fills; the only intrusion is the drummonitors and they are loud. The drummerplays wearing ear plugs - don’t ask - and hehas a pair of [d&b] M2 wedges, left for a general mix, right just has bass guitar in it.Everyone in the band has a pair of d&b M2wedges, except Noel who has three of them,though he gets most of his vocal from thedownstage column of C4 side-fills. The outerpair is purely vocal, the centre is slap-backdelay, and yes, there’s a lot of EQ in theLakes just so I can get his voice loud:nothing above 12kHz and rarely belowaround 130Hz.”
Guttierez continues: “Both columns of C4have Noel’s vocal mix in them, but theupstage column is more for the band and sois down about 3-4dB on the downstagestack. There’s also a [d&b] B2 sub alongsidethem for a bit of weight. I control the side-fillsfrom the d&b R1 software - it’s easy andaccessible if I need to adjust during theshow. I also have Lakes on all the wedges,so I just take a Tablet with me when I’mringing-out the system and adjust EQremotely while I stand at the various micpositions - much easier and faster than usingan assistant.”
“Probably the most interesting thing I havediscovered on this tour is with the drums.The kick drum has no hole in the front head; I thought about that during rehearsals, how
Th e Wash One is a real Multi Talent. You can use it to
create crunchy beam colours, but
also clearlyselected areas on the stage can be
illuminated.LD Jerry Appelt
www.glp.de
“Th e reason for AED Rent buying 500 impression Spot One and Wash One is very simple – these RGB LED fi xtures are the future of the industry, and we believe that we need more in the near future to meet market requests. Now we fi nally see that Ecology and Economy go hand in hand.”
impression Wash One at the X-Factor, Germany, (LD Jerry Appelt)
Glenn Roggeman, CEO AED Network
Crew ListProduction Manager - Michael O’Connor
Production Coordinator - Roni Horner
Stage Manager - Pete Bell
Lighting Director - David ‘Fuji’ Convertino
Lighting Crew - Craig Hancock, Craig JR-Saunders, Richard Griffin, Jason Dixon, Leon Roll
Sound Engineer - Antony King
Monitor Engineer - Nahuel Gutierrez
Audio Crew - Barry Macleod, Ben Phillips, Gerald Fradley, Charlotte Benoit, Cesar Lopez
Video Crew - Simon Schofield, David Neugebauer
Rigger - Ian ‘Tufty’ Bracewell
Choir Liaison - Bessie Winder-Rodgers
Advance Security - Richard Walker
Guitar/Bass Tech - Mickey Winder
Drum/Guitar Tech - Andy Harrison
Keyboard Tech - Ben Leach
DJ - Phil Smith
Catering Crew - Steffi Head, Christian Streppel,Claire McKee, Sam Letteri
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am I going to get a big fat kick sound out ofthat? So we put the 91 inside as normal, butthe 52 in front I use just to trigger a gate onthe XL8. The distance between the two micsmakes the delay less than two milliseconds,inaudible for our purposes. That’s easy to dowith the XL8 and the gates in the desk arefantastic, so soft, and there’s no click as itopens and closes. It works a treat andalthough the 91 sounds a bit toppy, we cantake care of that.”
Guttierez doesn’t have the antiqueTeletronics units to deal with, but somethinghe, at just 31 years of age, considers equallyancient. “I have to use Summit AudioDCL200 tube amp compressors on Noel’svoice - he just loves them. But they’re gettingold and really they were never built for beingon the road, certainly not around the world.Luckily Mike Lowe at Brit Row seems to beable to find replacements for me whereverwe are in the world when one fails.”
Guttierez is, like King, a big fan of the XL8but again is happy to take out a smaller deskwhen needed. “I’m going to be using thenew PRO2c for the summer festivals - nochoir and I’ve still got the same pre-ampsound which is the main factor, so that will befine.”
Lighting & Video Media Meeting David ‘Fuji’ Convertino for the firsttime I was a little put off; like a few LDs andsound guys I’ve met over the years he
seemed a reluctant interviewee at first.However, when I did eventually speak to himI discovered that actually this man is justcompletely focussed on his job - so that toldme. It also confirmed what productionmanager Michael O’Connor had said on thephone when I arranged my visit. “We’d triedthis guy out on Corinne Bailey-Rae in the USwhen the touring LD was unavoidably calledaway. There was something about Fuji thatcaught our eye - his skill with handlinglighting and video combined was somethingto watch.”
Convertino joined the production in October2011 at O’Connor’s invitation: “SinceDefinitely Maybe I’ve been a fan, so I wasn’tgoing to say no. With no brief from the band,I stepped right in. Michael asked me to makethe rig adaptable as we’d play a variety ofdifferent sized venues; single hung trussesanswers that call. It’s a rock band, the onlyreal influence from Noel is no followspotsand minimal front-light. I chose Vari*LiteVL3000 Spots as my main instrument; it isjust a crystal-clear light, great colour mix andnice, sharp-edged gobos. I have a fewVL3500 Washes [he has 88 of the former to18 of the latter]. Again, that’s about quality oflight; the Wash will shine through anythingand you can’t beat that aperture wheel.”
Most of these lamps are flown, so too some20 Atomic strobes, “but I have twelve moreof them on the four truss towers behind theband. That’s another nod to flexibility - you
can hang all sorts of things on vertical towersand you can always squeeze them insomewhere.”
None of the Atomics has colour changers:Convertino evangelises for uncolouredstrobes: “Hey, so now they’re flashing inmauve. Who cares? I want a good heavyblast, colour just bothers me - it can get oldreally fast. I also have six PixelLine 110 oneach tower for definition.”
The trusses are rigged very high over yetanother stage devoid of any real set. (I don’tthink Brilliant or Total Fabrications shouldpanic just yet - it just so happens that HFBand Snow Patrol last month happen to betwo essentially straight-up rock bands.) “Thefront truss is 43ft above the deck, but theVL3000s are still plenty punchy at thatdistance. More importantly, those in front ofNoel are up out of the way - he hates light inhis eyes.”
PRG provides all the lighting gear, RobinWain at Longbridge also supervising the V-18video screen that provides the back-drop,part of the PRG Nocturne acquisition. Bycoincidence, and because it’s a good visualtool, Convertino’s design has, like SnowPatrol, a pair of vertically parallel angledtrusses flanking the rear screen each side togive that sense of large scale when required.Because he’s also master of all media onscreen, Convertino achieves some reallywell-matched lighting from these trusses.
David ‘Fuji’ Convertino’s lighting, video and stage design - front elevation.
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Blended to the video content, thecombination really throws that super-widescreen image into the hall: “Even so, theystill fly within the confines of a 60ft widestage,” he says.
With no real lighting brief I asked Convertino ifhe roughed out basic lighting structures foreach song, then worked them up in detail asthe band commenced production rehearsals?“No, I programmed cue to cue immediately,”so you came to the rehearsals with fullyformed ideas in mind? “It’s not a spot andwash design, one song might have three
spots, three wash, then progress to six ofeach. I thought about every song, where thecue points came, where musicians neededaccent, and thought about exactly how I wanted it to look.”
The rear screen is a field of separate videosquares three high and seven wide: “It wasjust one of those things I’d seen when myyoung daughter was playing with blocks a fewyears ago: I wanted to try that thing whereyour eye fills the gaps.” There is a significantdistance between each flown square, maybehalf a metre.
Tour SuppliersManagement - Ignition Management
Lighting - Production Resource Group UKwww.prg.com
Audio - Britannia Row Productionswww.britanniarow.com
Video (UK) - PRG Nocturne UKwww.nocturneproductions.com
Video (Europe) - XL Videowww.xlvideo.com
Radios - Radiotekwww.radiotek.co.uk
Catering - Popcorn Ltdwww.popcorncatering.com
Trucking - McGuinness Forwardingwww.mcguinness.eu
Bussing - Beat the Streetwww.beatthestreet.net
Travel Agent - ET Travel Ltdwww.ettravel.co.uk
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“The M Box is for me the ideal tool toattack the stage,” he says - and attack hedoes, dazzling, swirling, rich pop art colourmurals, matched perfectly to lightingchases; or a template 1950s TV surroundwith black and white live cuts takenstraight from video director DaveNeugebauer onto its ‘screen’. Neugebaueris there just to feed the IMAG screens thatflank the stage; Convertino is at liberty totake this feed whenever he wishes: “WhenI do, I size and place and colour it; he getsgood shots.”
Though much of what Convertino puts onscreen is brash and bold, and he generatesall content from the M Box, he can also dosubtle; the spectral choir looks, the singers litonly in dappled gobo shafts of white lookingespecially effective as the screen projectsthose images out through the field of thoseself-same gobo beams.
There was lots of nice imagery to see, lightsand video, as I think you’ll see in the photos.The song Soldier Boys & Jesus Freaks is a good example of how a simple lightingstate cleaves to a mash-up of images from
past wars that sit on screen while beinggently manipulated by the addition of a distorting lens effect passing over them,lending the screen an organic, living feel. AsO’Connor said, Convertino is one to watch.
I’ve mentioned O’Connor a couple of timesin this article. A former crew chief at PRG, I first encountered him in the production rolewith Rammstein a few years back. Apart fromhis observations on the younger elements inGallagher’s audience, he had an interestingclosing comment on the show: “I’ve been outof lighting for a few years now, but not toomany, yet I’m amazed by the changes intechnology, particularly the overlap betweenlighting and video. The key is being able tovisualise well, and that’s what we first noticedabout Fuji’s work when he covered onCorinne Bailey-Rae.”
If you’ve grown weary of the Oasisformulaic paean to the Beatles canon thenyou could do worse than give Gallagher’snew band a look-see. Put another way, takeyour beady eyes and start looking for highflying birds.
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Left: Sound engineer Antony King with theMidas XL8
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