Allen Digital Mixing Systems & Heath on Rick Wakeman and 'Local Natives' tours

The legendary keyboardist uses the Qu-32 digital mixer for his concerts, while the American indie-rock band uses the dLive S Class digital mixing console to manage the operational monitoring needs of its tour.

Keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman, best known for being one of the members of the legendary band 'Yes', He is currently on tour with singer Jon Anderson (also founding member of said group) and guitarist Trevor Rabinas.

A musical tour called ARW, for which Wakeman has chosen a Qu-32 digital mixer from Allen & Heath (whose products are sold in Spain and Portugal Audio-Technica Iberia) to complete your stage team, manufacturer whose products you have relied on in the past, as in the dLive digital mixing systems that have been in charge of managing the FOH sound and monitors of several of his solo concerts.

Wakeman's onstage rig includes eleven keyboards (some modern and others classic); four sound modules and an Allen Qu-32 digital mixer & Heath, which provides a new level of control to Wakeman's performance. Before, the artist had an analog mixing console, with basic DSP functions, but now the scenes offered by Qu-32 mix and route specific keyboards to the FOH console, along with selected DSP effects to help create Wakeman's very personal playing style on each song.

Engineer Erik Jordan controls Wakeman's equipment using a complex MIDI system, designed especially for this tour, which has as its central element a Sycologic M16 MIDI patch bay that acts as a master controller. As Wakeman's performance evolves, he himself uses a simple keyboard to select various Sycologic settings, each of which sends specific MIDI commands to the Wakeman keyboards and the Qu-32 mixer, in a complex 'dance' that reconfigures the entire system for the next song.

“For any sound source and for any song,” explains Jordan.- we can adjust the input gain and signal routing; to EQ; noise gates and compressors and three or four different effects. It is vital that the mixer responds very quickly and uniformly, and Qu-32 does it very well”.

For this engineer, the DSP of this Allen digital mixer & Heath is optimal, “which has allowed us to simplify Rick's team, eliminating many external effects. In all aspects, the Qu is a phenomenal console. It is completely reliable and surprisingly powerful, that behaves like mixers that cost ten times more. I just had to plug it in and I started working immediately.”.

The Rick Wakemans, “Qu-32 has become a fundamental piece of my team. Gives me complete control over the mix and shapes the sound like any other of my instruments. “This console opens up new possibilities for my music.”.

‘Local Natives’ con dLive

In his successful series of concerts throughout the United States and Europe, ‘Local Natives’, American indie-rock band based in Los Angeles, has trusted the dLive S Class digital mixing system, also from the manufacturer Allen & Heath, to manage operational monitoring needs.

In promotion of their third studio album, called 'Sunlit Youth', Monitor engineer Laurence Eaves provided the band's five members with twelve separate monitor mixes., in-ear and through wedges, of the 48 sources present on stage, using for this a dLive S5000 surface with a dLive DM64 MixRack modular mixing and processing rack.

To adjust to all these changes, Eaves uses dLive scenes to readjust microphones as musicians change positions on stage and reconfigure mixes. It also uses dLive's filter recovery to quickly modify scenes when the situation requires it..

Besides, keeps both frequently used mics and direct sends on the top layers of the dLive and places the reverb sends and main outputs from wedges and in-ear monitors on the bottom layers.

Eaves uses dLive 'plate' reverb for each member of the band and 'plate' and 'hall' reverbs for the snare and toms. At the same time, uses the two-stage tube preamplifier - which emulates tube harmonics- on bass and drum mics. Regarding the dynamic equalization and delay that the system incorporates, applies them to the battery, as well as in other sources. A Dante card installed in the Surface S5000 allows for multi-track digital recording and Eaves uses the Virtual Soundcheck option to configure each performance.