Tag Archives: Rio

 

This article, which initially appeared within the June 1988 situation of Mix, was written by Randy Ezratty, the proprietor of Effanel Music in New York City on the time.

Articles about distant recording initiatives are sometimes tales of how some dwell file or soundtrack was made despite the circumstances below which it was recorded. The obstacles that may hinder or forestall the recording of a dwell occasion embrace something from geographical inaccessibility and climate situations, to technical issues, to uncooperative artists or producers, to bodily fatigue and deprivation. Being the proprietor of NY-based Effanel Music, a distant recording firm that focuses on worldwide moveable packages (along with standard truck-based methods), I’ve bought my share of warfare tales.

Fortunately, sometimes, I become involved with initiatives that go so nicely I understand simply how lots of the variables and unknowns will be anticipated and managed, thus leading to a superior end-product. Just as we distant recording guys are generally fast responsible others when issues aren’t precisely proper (and to pat ourselves on the again for overcoming the aforementioned perils), it occurs that plenty of the credit score for the great ones goes elsewhere, too. I’ve chosen to jot down about Tina Turner’s dwell HBO broadcast and recording from Brazil not solely as a result of there are examples of profitable and progressive audio design and execution, however as a result of this job exemplified the constructive final result of a workforce effort. As a matter of reality, Tina’s manufacturing firm is aptly referred to as Teamwork Productions.

THE PROJECT

In October of final yr, I obtained a name from John Hudson, the proprietor/engineer of Mayfair Studios in London. I used to be instructed that his shopper, Tina Turner, was going to broadcast her January live performance dwell, by way of satellite tv for pc, from Rio’s Giant Maracana Stadium. In addition to live-to-air combine services, they wanted to file the present so {that a} refined post-production combine could possibly be used for later rebroadcasts all through the month. Also, Hudson was within the course of of manufacturing and mixing Tina’s soon-to-be-released dwell album (from London recordings) and he wished to have the choice of together with tracks from the Rio live performance. The recording was to be 48-track, with roughly 52 inputs from the stage. I despatched him specs and a bid primarily based on the moveable 48-track system which we had utilized in ’87 for Paul Simon in Zimbabwe and for Peter Gabriel within the U.S. and Greece. We had simply added 48 channels of Dolby SR to the system, and I included that as a part of our package deal. I assumed that the usual follow of utilizing one recording console for each monitoring and stereo (“monitor”) mixes, with results, can be adequate.

THE SYSTEM

Just a few weeks later, I used to be instructed that we had been on for the Tina Turner job however the specs had modified. In addition to our primary monitoring system, Hudson requested that we design and provide a separate 52-channel mixdown system. He gave us an infinite and really exacting checklist of processing tools, plus specs for a mixdown board (“It may have to have the ability to do extra issues concurrently than my SSL”).

Luckily, Effanel’s John Harris had labored for Maryland Sound Industries previous to becoming a member of us and was very aware of the Yamaha PM3000 live performance mixing console. He felt that whereas this was not a recording console, its quite a few VCA sub-groups, results buses and matrixes would make it the perfect live-to-air mixdown board. AT/Scharff Rentals had a 40-channel PM3000 obtainable together with a smaller Yamaha board for further channels. AT/Scharff performed an necessary function on this job in that they provided a lot of the mixdown tools and made it obtainable for advance testing and interface previous to its New York departure.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Hudson accepted the revised specs for the expanded system and proceeded to map out a recreation plan. Three weeks earlier than the present, we obtained an enter checklist from Clair Brothers‘ Dave Natale, Tina’s home engineer, together with documentation from Hudson that specified the 48-track format plus each nuance (right down to the final patch wire) of the mixdown system. He even despatched us 48-track masters from Tina’s London reveals in order that we may get a really feel for what we’d be recording.

Hudson appropriately felt that we—the recording crew—had been those most certified to design and implement the stage interface, viewers milting and primary monitoring, and that he would focus extra on his (reasonably formidable) dwell combine.

We at Effanel divided up numerous obligations at this level. Mark Shane was to deal with the stage-to-recording interface together with the general system upkeep. I took accountability for the 48-track SR recording and John Harris was answerable for the mixdown system. Mayfair workers engineer Mike Ging (good engineer title) would accompany Hudson to help with results cues.

DATELINE: RIO

The system arrived in Rio six days earlier than the live performance. The Brazilian tv community, TV Globo, was offering distant video services for the 16-camera shoot. They additionally offered us with an exquisite 20×24-foot modular metal container positioned 280 toes behind the stage, below the seats. This air-conditioned, insulated container served as our dual-system management room. Many different comparable containers had been offered for video and satellite tv for pc uplink services.

The interface to Clair Brothers’ stage miking was a snap. They offered a hardwired mic cut up from their stage enter field to a 50-foot fan-out. This enabled us to put our enter field offstage, nicely out of everybody’s means. Although we’re all the time ready to put our enter system on stage, taking the direct feed for ourselves and giving the PA the transformer cut up, we selected this one to take the feed and provides ourselves the transformer-isolated cut up. Our Jensen transformers sound fantastic, and it saved us from disturbing issues on stage.

Tina Turner Turns It Up On Her 1997 ‘Wildest Dreams’ Tour

Once once more, the excessive caliber of individuals with which Tina Turner chooses to encompass herself was evident in her Clair Brothers crew. The success or failure of a dwell recording can very a lot rely on the artist’s live performance manufacturing workforce, particularly the sound crew (perhaps that’s why everybody at Effanel is a former live-sound mixer). We’ve all the time had good experiences with Clair crews and Tina’s was no exception. This PA crew had a greater grip on dwell recording than plenty of recording engineers that we run into.

Audience milking was a little bit of an ordeal. Maracana Stadium is the world’s largest, and we had been instructed that we’d be milking the biggest crowd ever assembled to listen to one artist carry out—”and it had higher sound prefer it.”

Almost 200,000 screaming Brazilians. It took a full two days (in 105-degree warmth) to run the half-mile of cable it took to put 10 viewers microphones in stereo pairs at various distances from the stage. The 10 mics had been submixed and restricted (a method borrowed from Peter Gabriel’s engineer, Kevin Killen) to 4 tracks.

THE ULTIMATE CROWD LOOP

John Hudson was involved that when mentioning the group stage in the course of the present, he’d get an excessive amount of PA bleed, thus throwing his combine steadiness off. As a precaution, we bought the group to cheer and yell “Tina Turner” earlier than the present (with out something popping out of the PA). A pleasant lengthy pattern of this random cheering was locked right into a stereo AMS for attainable use in the course of the dwell TV combine. As it turned out, the group overpowered the PA on the viewers mics. Our 180,000-voice pattern was pointless (and unused).

THE DUAL-CONSOLE, SIMULTANEOUS RECORD/MIXDOWN SYSTEM

John Hudson’s simultaneous file/ mixdown plan made sense from each angle:

• Quality—By having a devoted mixdown system on-site, it was attainable to strategy the live-to-air combine with the identical services one would use in a studio scenario, with out the inevitable compromise that comes with a traditional one-board, observe/combine configuration. Hudson hoped that with adequate planning, a correct mixdown setup and a great efficiency, his dwell combine wouldn’t solely sound nice on the satellite tv for pc premiere however be ok to make use of for the re-broadcasts. It was.
• Cost—Although the funds for audio on this job had already been stretched to the restrict by the prospect of bringing 7,000 kilos of multi-track tools and crew 6,500 miles, it was determined that post-production audio prices could possibly be drastically decreased by ending the job on-site. The price of bringing all people again to England for mixing and potential overdub/fixes was excess of the price of bringing a couple of thousand kilos of further tools for a few further days in Rio. (A selfless gesture on Mr. Hudson’s half, since he owns the very dear studio during which post-production would have taken place.)

It was determined that one of the simplest ways to supply sign concurrently to each the recording and the mixdown methods was to amplify and bus mic indicators for monitoring after which cut up the track-out concurrently to the multitrack recorders and, at line stage, to the mixdown console. The Dolby “To Console” output was chosen because the cut up level.

There had been a couple of good causes for selecting this methodology reasonably than splitting the microphones twice (feeding the mixdown system all 52 inputs at mic stage). One, we felt that the microphone preamps in our recording console sounded higher than these within the mixdown console. Two, it made issues simpler and faster for Hudson to obtain premixed “tracks” and stereo pairs. And three, it afforded us the invaluable alternative to file the Tina Turner gown rehearsal the evening earlier than after which, by merely taking part in the 48-track recording again by means of the Dolbys, rehearse the dwell combine (with the astounding “line-in” constancy of SR) as a lot as we wished previous to showtime the next day.

TEAMWORK

The broadcast sounded nice. As it turned out, no audio post-production was essential. Our mixdown session, scheduled for the next day, was truly a listening social gathering. Fortunately, all of our laborious work and thorough preparation paid off in a giant means. As it ought to be, the live performance itself was the simplest a part of the venture.

It was a really particular evening certainly: fireworks, camera-equipped helicopters, and a record-breaking crowd singing together with Tina Turner. It was thrilling being a part of such a dramatic peak in her wonderful profession.