Backstage At The Grammys
The Nuts & Bolts Of The Grammy Awards System
The 2003 Grammy Awards show is coming and so is the biggest snowstorm
to hit the East Coast in 17 years. Forty-eight hours after leaving Los
Angeles, I finally arrive in New York after stops at many airport bars,
a Morton’s Steak House and the Men’s Club of Houston.
Having missed the call for the day, I head straight to the hotel bar for
a Guinness (or six) and catch up with everyone’s stories about getting
stranded in different corners of the U.S. Luckily enough, some crew made
it to Madison Square Garden to start the system load-in and ensure that
we might actually have a show this year.
As in years past, ATK AudioTek handled the audio requirements for the
auditorium at this year’s show. Live Audio System Designer Scott Harmala
of ATK chose to fly eight clusters of JBL VerTec line arrays to cover
the audience area, with only the addition of a few front fills and compact
loudspeakers mounted under the seats in the first few audience rows to
help add “presence” and more firmly anchor the audio image to the stage.
Twelve Electro-Voice MTL-4s handled sub-bass duties.
This year, four Yamaha PM1D digital consoles were implemented, one for
each of the two stages to spawn the monitor mixes, and two at front-of-house
(FOH) - one to mix the bands and the other for mixing other production
elements. Harmala decided to keep the audio path digital as much as possible.
Microphones were split to FOH, monitors and the truck on stage. Once signal
hit the FOH consoles, it was digitized via A-to-D (analog to digital)
converters on the PM1Ds.
Music mixer Ron Reaves did his thing and shipped the finished mix, via
AES protocol, to ATK’s Mike Stewart on the production console. From there,
Stewart matrixed the signal to twelve AES outputs on his PM1D, which,
in turn, fed XTA DP226 digital processors in the drive racks. Once processed
by the XTA units, signal was shipped out (again via AES) to a QSC RAVE
(Routing Audio Via Ethernet) system, which shipped it via fiber optic
cable to all amplifier locations. Once there, another RAVE system did
the D-to-A conversion, then it was on to the VerTec arrays and out to
the audience.
As an interesting side note, the RAVE system utilized a loop of fiber
optic cable, so if one piece was accidentally cut or damaged, the system
would continue working. This redundancy eliminated the possibility of
system ground loops, but, instead, there was always a chance of being
affected by a photon loop. (This did not happen, however.)
The two PM1Ds at monitor world, operated by Dave Velte and Mike Parker,
had optional control from a wireless touchpad. With the pad, the monitor
tech on stage could access the auxiliary sends on the console and dial
up the artist’s mix while standing next to them. Kind of a “can you hear
it now?” type of thing.
The introduction of digital consoles like the PM1D has transformed the
multiple-artist award show experience from a living hell into an almost
enjoyable experience. We line-checked and mixed 18 bands in a little over
three hours, using just one FOH console, and didn’t even break a sweat.
(The fact that it was about 35 degrees at the mix position probably didn’t
hurt either.) All dynamic processing and effects were derived from the
console and we even rigged up a foot pedal to the GPI port on the PM1D
so we could tap out delay times.
Each band had a 90-minute soundcheck in the three-day period leading up
to the show, a time period also used for the director to block the camera
shots. Between cigarettes, Reaves mixed each band and stored these mixes
in the PM1D memory. Every band was set up on rolling risers, and once
microphones were placed on a band, they were not moved again until after
the show. Thus we could just “roll” the band on stage, plug the band mult
into a stage box behind the drummer and be ready to go in just a few minutes
(which was all the time we had anyway). The two performance stages gave
us a little more time to set up one stage while the other was working.
A quick recall of the scene for each band on the PM1D and we were ready
to go.
The music mix was sent to Stewart’s PM1D, where he controlled all the
show elements, such as podium microphones, video and audio playback, as
well as lavalier and handheld mics used by presenters. In addition to
shipping all these elements out to the PA system, back-up dialogue and
music feeds were sent to the truck in case they lost their primary feed.
This year, the show was mixed in 5.1 for air and also broadcast in HD,
a first for a live award show. Everything went well, and all of a sudden,
it was time to load out.
Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher is Live Sound’s “man on the scene” at many large-scale live events, most of them where he also does double-duty as a systems technician and PM1D console expert.
May 2003 Live Sound International