Two years ago, a catchy little pop ditty titled “All About That
Bass” hit the Internet and radio waves. Although some might have assumed a
quick, one-hit-wonder-fueled-by-YouTube ride for writer and singer Meghan
Trainor, the video for that song has amassed a staggering 1.6 billion YouTube
views and Trainor is now one of the most successful—and influential—women in
the music business with six top 15 Billboard Hot 100 hits and a 2016 Grammy
Award for Best New Artist. Monitor mix engineer Tony Luna has been with her
since her first tour in 2015, and with the recent addition of FOH engineer Mike
Fanuele, the two are both riding faders on a pair of DiGiCo SD10 desks.
“I was on a different platform before this tour,” Fanuele
reports. “But from day one, Tony started to sell me on the advantages of the
SD10, which he was already using. I had one question: could I put anything
anywhere I wanted to? He assured me I could and I’ve been really happy with
it.”
Pulling on a background that started in the recording studio,
Fanuele approaches a mix in a way that might confound some live engineers with
most outputs feeding more than one group. “Drums are a good example,” he says.
“For instance, the snare and kick each have two mics. But those mics feed a
snare group and a kick group, and the actual inputs do not live on the top
layer of the SD10. And each of those groups becomes part of a larger drum
group.” This approach allows him the flexibility to make minute adjustments to
each input, but still grab one fader for snare or kick or even the entire drum
mix on the fly. It’s a good illustration of his need to be able to “put
anything anywhere.”
Even approaching the desk as a new platform did not put Fanuele
behind and he reports a very little learning curve. “I was out last year with a
different desk that had a very high learning curve,” he says. “But having Tony
and Nathan McBee from Clair to give me a quick overview, within two hours I had
a solid 54-input mix that looked pretty much like it does today.”
Both engineers are using the SD10s paired with a Waves Extreme
server and Mercury bundle package. Luna also uses a MacBook Pro running Waves
Tracks for virtual playback. The 54 inputs (full band with a horn section) go
through Dolby processing, Lab.gruppen amps and Clair’s i3 rig.
Even with that full Waves package, neither engineer is using a
lot of plug-ins. For example, Fanuele uses a lot of compressor channels, but
most of it is DiGiCo’s onboard processing. “The drums are actually more layered
than that,” he describes. “There is a snare group that is treated with just EQ
and maybe 2dB of compression. Then the same two mics feed a ‘snare compressed’
group, and the sum of those two groups feeds an overall snare control group.
But I’m only using plug-ins—in terms of inputs—on Meghan’s vocal. Everything
else—all EQ and compression on inputs—is on the SD10.”
Luna, whose diverse client list includes everyone from Justin
Bieber and Alicia Keyes to Five Finger Death Punch and Aerosmith, takes a more
straightforward approach. “I’m not even pushing faders,” he notes. “My SD10 is
so dialed in that I use two things: the Next button and the fader for the crowd
mics. I hit the Next button per scene, rail the crowd mics, Meghan smiles and I
know we’re good.”
“I started mixing on DiGiCo consoles in 2006 and never touched a
plug-in until 2013,” Luna adds. “I love some of the Waves stuff, but if that
server goes down, there is nothing on it that is a show-stopper or that is
going to get me fired. It’s all on the console.”
And neither engineer sees this as a short ride. “When you see
Meghan perform, you immediately realize that she’s the real deal,” says
Fanuele. Luna concurs: “I started in February of last year and knew right away
that she was going to be huge. Her range and writing—plus she\’s just a really
cool person. I love the artist and tools we get to use—a big shoutout to Clair
Global who has been with us from the beginning. It’s a great gig.”
