Missy Higgins has embarked on ‘an anniversary tour with a difference’ to celebrate 20 years since her trailblazing debut, The Sound Of White.
The Second Act Tour is touring theatres nationally in a special two-act show. On the road with Missy is her long-term FOH audio engineer Brent Gray.
“I’ve worked with Missy for over 20 years,” he commented. “I did her first-ever show with a band at the Evelyn Hotel in Melbourne around the time The Sound of White was released.”
Brent says that he has never specifically discussed with Missy how she wants her sound interpretated in the broadest sense. His approach to mixing has always been to try to faithfully represent what’s coming off stage with a high-fidelity, polished production quality.
“I encourage the artists to create their own sound – from the choice of instrument, amplification, tonality and performance style – and then I focus on creating space for it all to coexist in a clear, yet natural, way,” said Brent. “Ultimately my goal is for the artist to sound uniquely and undeniably like themselves; just bigger, louder and wider with a bit of added depth, shimmer and hopefully excitement.”
Brent says that Missy certainly has definite ideas about how she wants certain elements within individual songs represented, and they’ll often work together at soundcheck to find how that can best be achieved. That generally comes down to questions around addressing performance style and/or mix balance/effects.
“An example of that is the tone and potency of BV’s in a few songs where the original recordings captured quite ambient off-mic performances,” elaborated Brent. “In this case, I’ll encourage the vocalists to do exactly this, be more off-mic than I would prefer in normal operation instead of programming a reverb to create an estimation of that. I find approaching things this way often answers both questions effectively with the most efficiency.”
ALIA caught the show at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre where ei Productions provided the Martin MLAc PA. They’ve been in there a bunch of times and Tim (Brent’s PA tech for these shows) approaches the room in much the same way Brent would with a combination of flown and groundstacked components. The system was 6 x MLAc per side flown and 4 x MLAc per side ground-stacked on stage with 2 x DSX subs per side and 2 x single MLAc as front fill. This setup helps with getting coverage to the back of the room underneath the balcony while avoiding firing directly (as much as possible) at the exposed balcony structure.
“I’ve only used the MLAc a couple of times, once outdoors at Taronga Park Zoo and these Civic Theatre shows, so I haven’t had a lot of time to get a full appreciation of what it can and can’t do,” added Brent. “What I can say is that it delivers what I generally expect of a modern line array system. I had a good couple of shows so no complaints from me.”
Brent was mixing with an Avid S6L 24C which is his preference but not specifically the 24C. However on this tour, given the available footprint at FOH in most venues, the 24-fader surface was the obvious choice.
“I was an early adopter of the Avid Venue Profile and then again the S6L when it arrived,” said Brent. “I think the simplest answer regarding preference is that it’s what I know and my workflow has therefore been developed and refined based on their architecture. I’ve had countless hours on both these consoles and the depth of my knowledge of them far surpasses that of any other digital consoles. I could get on a DiGiCo, Yamaha, Midas or SSL and use them but it would be slower and more difficult for me to do what I want to do.”
Brent is a fan of the control options of the S6L, particularly the events section. He has been able to program things to the point that most of his creative/accenting moves are achieved by pressing and/or releasing an X, Y or colour switch. That can include a combination of simultaneous moves.
“For example in Missy’s song Casualty, there’s a trumpet solo that is shortly preceded by a funky double-bass line that I want to highlight and as Missy is off her mic dancing around the stage during the solo, I want to reduce her vocal volume to mitigate drum spill. So by pressing the X button on the trumpet channel, I’m able to simultaneously increase the volume of the double-bass for that funky lick whilst increasing the volume of the trumpet and switching on its delay send for the solo. I can then reset the double bass volume and reduce Missy’s vocal volume by pressing the Y buttons on these respective channels at the right moment. The same applies for the trumpet volume and delay send at the end of the solo while Missy’s vocal volume is reset by pressing the X button on her channel. Doing all these things as single moves would require 2 sets of hands and more time than is available.”
When mixing the show, Brent focuses heavily on creating space for the individual instruments to be able to coexist in a pleasing way whilst retaining their unique signatures and leaving room for highlight and accent. With the high number of vocal mics and the presence of acoustic instruments like cellos and double basses, a lot of this is achieved by mitigating masking and spill.
“The S6L events to the rescue again!” added Brent. “I can set BVs lower in general and increase the volume by pressing the colour switch on their group fader when they’re singing and then the volume is reduced when I release the colour switch. In songs combining singing and humming/low-level ‘ooohs or aaahs’, I can even out the balance of those elements the same way. Likewise, key cello moments, the colour switch while being pressed will increase the volume of the cello group as well as open up the microphone (we use a mix of pickup and microphone) and then simply releasing the colour switch reverses everything. This all requires a lot of focus during each song and knowing who plays what and when and preempting that so everything has the appropriate amount of impact. Having said that it is very effective!”
Brent uses two distinct reverb settings for the vocals, either the 480 Hall or an EMT Plate depending on the song. He uses delay subtly to create depth and movement in the choruses or key moments like solos and there are a couple of songs where Missy’s piano gets an exaggerated reverb setting in a stripped-down section of the song.
With microphones, there’s nothing particularly esoteric being used … a lot of Sennheiser Evolution 900 series, Shure SM57, Beyer M88, Neumann TLM102s, Radial DIs and DPA 4099s. DPA DeFacto 4018vs are used for Missy’s vocal which Brent describes as a magical pairing!
On this tour, Matt (Boz) Boaro is mixing monitors. Nathan Davis has been Missy’s long-standing monitor guy but he wasn’t available for the entire run so he started the tour and Boz has been on board for the past month and a bit. Nathan is an S6L guy so a 32D has been used thus far but that’s about to transition to a DiGiCo SD5 which Boz is more comfortable on.
The band is entirely on IEMs, with no stage monitoring at all …. which is great for Brent! Boz is carrying 12 channels of Shure PSM1000 with two PA821b combiners and a Shure Helical antenna. The band all have their own moulds.
Brent’s biggest challenge on this show is mitigating masking and spill without creating unwanted artefacts given the vocal count and acoustic instruments. At the Civic specifically, nothing especially.
“For me, it’s often convincing the PA Du Jour to do what I want it to do, but the MLAc was friendly enough,” he commented. “We had two successful shows.”
JPJ Audio supplied the touring FOH control package.
