Blue Man Group Launches New Vegas Production with DiGiCo In the Mix

Blue Man Group Launches New Vegas Production With DiGiCo In The Mix Posted: February 2013 | For Immediate Release

Console's flexible functionality helps audio team maintain a consistent sound onstage for three blue front men, six band members, robots and a gaggle of eclectic wireless instruments

The creative forces of Blue Man Group (BMG) have been working for two years to bring an all-new production to the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This international entertainment phenomenonone of many adaptations around the globe from Berlin to Bostoncomprises a trio of blue men and an electrifying combination of music and inventive technology celebrating the intersection of art and apparatus. The show, cocreated with worldrenowned 3-D designer Michael Curry, adds a few new elements to the mix: instruments (including Percussipede, a musical centipede of percussion instruments), a six-piece band and a Showbot robot character.

One of the casino's interior theatres was gutted for BMG's new Vegas home and its audio team descended on the space to build out the room and install a new system. Sound supervisor Marcus Ross spearheaded the efforts and programmed the system, which included a d&b audiotechnik J-Series PA, Meyer Cinema Speaker Surround monitors and an SD7 at the show's audio helm provided by production gear provider Solotech. A DiGiCo SD8 was added a few months later to handle additional audio production elements from behind the curtain.

Even though we gutted the theatre, there were a lot of things we had to take into consideration in how we set up the system and how things worked, explains Ross, whose extensive audio background includes a mix of Broadway and rock & rolland a lot of hands-on time behind DiGiCo consoles. We were kind of predisposed to do certain things based on how prior productions were structuredhow we ran cable, where certain racks went, the flow of the system, etcetera. Because there was an install here prior, there was quite a bit of stuff that was useful to us. So I came through and took out the things we didn't need, and starting getting it prepped for the new system. The gear arrived in boxes and in 12 days we were operationalfrom pallets in the air to hit-the-ground running.

The show comprises 141 inputs/outputs, split between several elements including the six-piece band on a mix of gear from the traditional (guitar, bass, drum set and two percussion rigs) to the eccentric (Zither, Chapman stick), BMG's massive PVC instrumental creations, programmed tracks and video playback.

One of our biggest challenges was maintaining a consistent sound with so many different entities in it. We have six band members, three Blue Men nightly, and that changes per show. While it is a scripted show, every person can and does add nuances to it. Plus, they've added some really cool, interesting instruments to the Blue Man in addition to the massive PVCa huge rolling wagon of PVC tubing with specific lengths for different pitches that is the main instrument and that the three guys play. That alone has 15 microphones to amplify. A lot of the new instruments are wireless, which is a new challenge for Blue Man. For example, the drum bone is an instrument they've had for a long time, but the new version on this show is wireless. Now we have at least 20 RF channels we have to use for the different instruments. I used Professional Wireless Systems' Intermodulation Analysis Software, which was key in an easy setup of the RF in an already RF heavy area. We also used information from other shows to find out what bandwidth ranges other shows were using so we could choose the best bandwidth range for our show.

Ross was impressed with the SD7's layout, flexibility and dynamic range, particularly on a show with massive range of sounds and instrumentation. I really like the structure of the DiGiCo, he says. There's a lot of digital stuff on the market but the architecture is locked with only a certainly amount of outs, for example. I think the thing that DiGiCo consoles have over all the manufacturers is how flexible they are, with great ergonomics, which make them easy to get around on. Plus, they sound great and have great dynamics, too. Although this is not a huge cue-based show, there are only 50, there are a lot of things going on in each cue. The things that we require the console to do are pretty cool and extensive and we use the internal dynamics extensively within the console cueing. With a show that has such a huge dynamic range of instrumentation and orchestration it was very important to have a console that the dynamics had the features and sonic quality we required. Another great feature is the ease at which we can not only set the global scope but also recall scope of each cue and control what we want when we want.

All of that is key; especially considering what we've required the console to do has changed and after a couple of weeks of previews, we added the SD8. Prior to that, we were going to use an Aviom system for the monitoring for the band. But we found that we weren't able to get enough separation for what the band required and what FOH required, which is why we added the SD8. Basically the producers asked me for a couple of different scenarios, one of which included reprogramming the SD7 to run monitor inputs. But as soon as the producers approved the money expense, it was off and running and adding the SD8 made the most sense all the way around. Now, the console carries all the in-ear mixes and all of the band mixes. The OPTO SEND and RCV function allows us to add ports in the audio I/O section of the software that can show up as send and receive on the Optocore network and may be utilized to send info to and from the SD7 and the SD8 [utilized by longtime BMG engineer Jeff Slater]

LINK:	http://www.digico.biz/docs2/latest_news/EFyppluyuAwXaxfJes.shtml...
	See more stories from digico

Most recent headlines