New York, NY (June 25, 2024)—Marking two decades since the release of its first album, Keane has hit the road this year for Keane20, Hope and Fears, a tour of festival dates around the globe. Along for the ride are FOH engineer Philip Harvey at the front-of-house position and Hannah Brodrick on monitors.
Facing getting in and out of festivals often means having a stripped-down mixing setup, and for the engineers, that meant going with DiGiCo desks and shared stage racking. Brodrick has additionally employed Klang for immersive mixes, helping to keep the monitor footprint compact
“In the formative days of the tour, the request was made to keep production as simple and as compact as possible,” Harvey says. “The Quantum 338 features were a key factor in the choice to use DiGiCo. The availability of dynamic EQs and multi-band compressors on every channel provides a safety net to catch and compress potentially offending frequencies that might jump out of an input (or output) inadvertently from song to song.”
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Brodrick, who is also co-director and co-founder of Women in Live Music, oversees an SD12, creating immersive mixes without additional outboard gear. “I’m using an SD12 96, running at 96 kHz, with one SD Rack and a Nano Rack for extra inputs, all with 32bit input cards,” she says. “I don’t need any external kit for Klang or recording, just the two cards that sit in the back of the desk and a couple of bits of ethernet…. I was a little daunted by the idea of Klang to begin with, but talking to Phil Kamp and following the YouTube videos really helped. It’s a compact set-up and the processing power of the SD12 is just right.”
Both mix positions make extensive use of Macros, aiding in providing the band with whatever its request is. Harvey explains, “There are a couple of key features that I really love about DiGiCo consoles; namely Macros, but also the availability of dynamic EQs and multi-band compressors on every channel. I have a few Macros set up: engage Copied Audio for virtual soundcheck; select the Alt Input for our Lead Vocal Spare mic; turn drum gates on and off; as well as Save Session and engage my ‘Between Songs’ setting. This last setting mutes all vocal effects, but leaves the vocal mics unmuted so all band members can speak to the audience as they prefer. I rely on the Macro buttons quite heavily.”
