Monitor Engineer Gavin Tempany Mixes Kylie Minogue's Tension Tour on Solid State Logic L550 Plus

Monitor engineer Gavin Tempany mixed Kylie Minogue s Tension Tour on a Solid State Logic Live L550 Plus console. The tour ran from February 15 in Perth, Australia, through August 26 in Mexico, spanning nearly 70 shows across Australia, Asia, North America, Europe, and South America. Production was provided by Solotech.

I've worked with Kylie for a long time - I absolutely love this tour, says Gavin Tempany, Monitor Engineer. I mostly mix FOH these days, but I turned down other work to come back to monitors for this one. It's the same desk I used with Tom Jones last year. I know it inside-out, and it's rock solid.

The show featured four band members, three backing vocalists, track playback, and Minogue. Minogue used six different microphones during the two-hour show. Tempany managed them through a dedicated vocal stem within the console. All levels, processing, and aux sends live in one place. If anyone needs an adjustment to Kylie's vocal in their ears, I can make it from the stem easily and instantly.

The L550 Plus was connected to dual ML 32.32 MADI stageboxes and a DL32:32 stagebox for AES feeds to Wysicom in-ears. Playback and keyboards routed via fiber through Directout M8 MADI converters. The system supported up to 128 playback, keyboard, and RF lines, and up to 64 mic inputs and 64 analog outputs. The tour used around 40 analog mic inputs.

The SSL console handled more than 260 internal signal paths, including 26 shout lines to musicians, backing vocalists, tech crew, and production departments. Integration between the SSL console and the show's Riedel communications system was handled via Dante. The flexibility of the SSL routing meant I could accommodate those interactions cleanly, without compromising anyone's monitor mix, Tempany says.

Minogue frequently performed on a T-shaped thrust stage up to 20 meters beyond the main PA, with a secondary C-stage introducing delays of up to 170 ms. To manage intelligibility, Tempany used SSL's Sourcerer source enhancer. It subtly ducks her vocal on her vocal stem during non-vocal sections - only about 5 dB - but it makes a huge difference to clarity and comfort for everyone. I decided early on to do all processing on the console with no outboard gear to make any console swaps quick and seamless.

The L550 Plus' front-panel inputs, combined with the Spectra-lyser spectrogram and FFT analyser, allowed Tempany to audition and analyse in-ear mixes without external software. I built a little adapter that goes between the earpieces and a reference mic. As this mic is permanently patched, I can instantly check phase, frequency response, or troubleshoot issues with any of the earpieces, even mid-show.

The production ran to timecode, with song and section changes driving SSL scene automation. The system used SSL's Blacklight II MADI Concentrator for a fully redundant setup with main and backup consoles running simultaneously. Both desks are live. The online one handles gains and outputs, but if anything goes wrong, I can pull a fiber and the B desk takes over instantly. They're synchronised to timecode, but completely independent. I've never needed it - and that's wonderful.

Tempany mixed from locations up to 60 meters from the stage, relying on a multiview video feed. I've mixed monitors from the most unusual places corridors, loading docks, dressing rooms - you name it. Kylie rarely speaks directly to me during the show - she'll signal through one of the backing vocalists, and they have a direct hotline to monitor world.

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