Sound engineer Brett Doig has been with The Paper Kites since 2010 having met them at The Toff In Town, Melbourne, where he was co-production manager together with Jason Young.
“It was one of their first shows from memory, we had a great gig and clicked,” said Brett. “The rest is history as they say.”
Brett says that the band likes their sound to be interpreted with honesty and accuracy. The Paper Kites have a very textural sound, there are many moving parts to a TPK song and those parts all have a beauty within themselves.
“From guitar tones to drum tuning, the band are meticulous in getting their sounds right from the start,” he added. “My job as I see it is not to get in the way. I’m sonically a very natural engineer and balance is everything. It’s about trying to make those black boxes on either side of the stage disappear and allow the audience to focus on the lyric, the melody, the rhythm.”
They didn’t travel with a PA, maybe in time and when the budget allows Brett will be able to pop in a truck his preferred black box which he says will be something from the John and Helen Meyer stable for sure.
Princess Theatre, Brisbane – d&b
Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide – RCF
Palais Theatre, Melbourne – d&b
State Theatre, Sydney – L-Acoustics
Odeon Theatre, Hobart – d&b
For control, Brett used a DiGiCo SD11i adding that DiGiCo consoles offer him the best combination of flexibility and sound quality on the market.
“Even though the SD11i is only a 12 fader console, its layout and configurability mean I can access relatively quickly everything I need and configure a single page layout (combination of Control Groups, Multi Inputs and Master Bus) that I run the whole FOH mix from,” he explained. “I also travel a Meyer Sound Galileo 616 which does system EQ and matrix duties, fed via AES from the SD11i.
“Once we’re up a running I like to put myself in the position of an audience member (not physically of course!) seeing the band for the first time. It’s something I think all engineers that have worked with an artist for a long period have to do. We know everything so intimately musically it can be easy to think that those important ghost rhythms, passing melodic lines and backing vocal stings are where they need to be. Our brains are very good at resolving things we know should be there when in reality they may not be. In this mindset of a first-time listener, it’s a great place to focus on whether the song is getting to me, giving me that emotional response.”
Brett remarks that the mic set-up is constantly evolving and always fun. Drums are covered by mics from AKG (Kick and OH’s), Beyer Dynamic (the mighty M201s on snare and hats) and Lewitts for toms. Vocals are from Sennheiser including e935, e945, MD431MkII and a Shure Beta56a for drum vocals.
“I’m now using an Earthworks SR314 on Sam’s vocal which he also adores in his IEMs,” said Brett. “It’s the most accurate vocal mic I’ve ever used, no inherent character just Sam’s voice louder. Guitars are covered by Radial JDXs and Sennheiser e906s. Bass is beautifully resolved via an Avalon U5 and Shure Beta57a, other DI’s from Radial and LR Baggs. Tracks playback is handled by a JoeCo Blackbox.
“I also run Optogate PD-05Ds on Dave and Christina’s microphones and three songs in the set are performed around an Ear Trumpet Delphina.”
Brett also looks after monitors running eight mixes from the SD11i for monitor duties plus a sub for Josh on drums. Everyone is on IEMs plus there’s a sub for Josh on drums.
“We run UE 7 Pro customs,” said Brett. “The system consists of four Shure PSM1000 series P10T transmitters and two PA421B antenna combiners all cased up in Naut custom Pelican cases. On this tour, we added two additional musicians to the lineup so seven mixes plus a tech mix (for our guitar technician). When Julia Stone guested on Without Your Love in Melbourne I reconfigured my Cue pack for her. I have a full monitor split setup within the DiGiCo SD11i, all channels (bar click track and snare bottom) are duplicated, one for FOH duties and one for monitors. There are also floor mic switches (from Optogate and Radial) for all five band members plus a dedicated mic (with another Optogate) for the backing singers and a switch mic for tech, all for talkback duties. All seven channels are processed through the matrix to provide a talk loop that feeds back into their mixes via the merge input function on the monitor busses. I have a sweet little Genelec monitor on that loop at FOH so they can talk to me during the set.”
The tour was challenging for Brett as he was Production Manager, Tour Manager, FOH engineer and Monitor engineer saying he felt like a hat stand!
“Technically I’d say we hit it out of the park,” he concluded. “The brief for this tour was to put on some amazing shows sonically and visually and I think we did that. Crowd responses were exceptional and the band enjoyed every minute of being back on stage and able to play their new and old songs again live.”
Band Photo: Gabrielle Clement
