New York, NY (February 28, 2023)—Marking the silver anniversary of its now-revered sophomore album The Lonesome Crowded West, indie legends Modest Mouse just lately hit the street to revisit the gathering, taking part in it in complete each evening together with extra fan faves and rarities. Along for the journey was FOH Engineer Peter Thompson, on-hand to combine a really totally different band than the one he first labored with…a number of months in the past.
“Modest Mouse was a seven-piece throughout my first run with them final summer time,” stated Thompson. “This Lonesome Crowded West tour was a four-piece and all guitar amps, no digital profilers or something, so the entire setup was very analog.”
Well, not all of it. While the pared-back band mirrored a back-to-basics strategy in comparison with their latest excursions, its live performance stay sound was likewise easy, but it surely was additionally digital as Thompson enlisted a Soundcraft Vi7000 digital mixing console with a Vi Stagebox and Realtime Rack Core for the trek.
Thompson noticed the selection of desk as a no brainer, given the circumstances: “The solely problem was battling the ambiance of the stage, getting the guitars to venture and nonetheless have room for vocals. I’ve been utilizing Vi consoles for a very long time, since 2007 or so, and I’ve used them with Steely Dan and Bob Seger and several other different old-school acts utilizing amps and screens, so I took it to the front-of-house for this tour as a result of it’s my go-to desk.”
Tour Profile: Modest Mouse Can’t Stop
Equipped with as much as 128 inputs, 32 mono/stereo busses and enhanced 96 kHz 40-bit floating level digital audio processing, the Vi7000 was designed to supply a simple stay mixing expertise. “The Vi7000 addressed how I prefer to work,” defined Thompson. “I’ve executed a number of totally different sorts of issues with the Vi setup and it’s so simple, easy and quick. The greatest plus is that it’s very fast to navigate—like once I have to do fast panning and whatnot for sure songs, I program the pan knob to be proper there in entrance of the faders. The ergonomics of the desk is very nice—and it’s not that I don’t use different desks as effectively, however I nonetheless preserve coming again to the Vi.”
In addition to the Vi7000, the Soundcraft Vi Stagebox supplied Thompson with an additional 64 mic/line inputs and 32 analog line outputs for extra flexibility and routing choices. Thompson additionally utilized a Soundcraft Realtime Rack Core for entry to results and plug-ins by Universal Audio, which the band often required even with their scaled-down setup.
“The Realtime Rack is mainly built-in into the Vi system, which is nice,” added Thompson. “I used it for the Lexicon reverb and a few easy compression on the vocals, however I didn’t use a heck of plenty of it on this explicit run. I used the Realtime Rack quite a bit with the common Modest Mouse tour, although, as a result of Isaac would have distortion results and issues like that that aren’t constructed into the Vi. But for probably the most half, all of the parameters like comps, gates and EQ work to the purpose the place I usually don’t want extra plugins. Everything I want is already constructed into the desk.”