Re: Na co pak to vsechno nahravali
Autor:
safa (IP zalogováno)
Datum: 4 March, 2007 23:08
Tady jsem nasel co jsem hledal:
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Sound International Magazine: February 1980
ABBA LIVE
Although ABBA suffered criticism through most of their tour, the four Swedish superstars and their backing group of nine individually talented musicians managed to turn every audience wild with enthusiasm. One of the interesting and critical things about this type of show is of course the sound, particularly since ABBA are well known for records which have been recorded purely in the studio without any economising on overdubs, mixdowns and special effects. The question is whether the live performance would sound anything like we've come to expect from the six albums released since 1973, or if it would get as close as possible, considering the problems of a tour.
Engineer Claes af Geijerstam, a true nobleman with the nickname Klappe, was engineering the tour. He is a keen, experienced professional. Over a bowl of hot soup Claes mentions some of the considerations made at the very first stage of planning. 'We were to do large concerts (14,000 seats) as well as small (2,500 seats) ... on two continents ... and with a non-rock'n'roll audience. Although I was well aware of the new Harwell PA development (see SI May'79) there were two main reasons we selected the ElectroSound Turbo cabinets for this tour. First, the Harwell cabinets were such a new development that we couldn't count on the size of the system we needed being constructed before the start of the ABBA tour, particularly as we were to have them shipped to America where our first concert took place in Edmonton, Canada. Secondly we weren't absolutely sure that the system would be versatile enough to be "flown" in the air, thus providing a 100% visual contact for the audience.
'The Turbo cabinets are small enough to ensure that, so we flew 12 bins. We also placed 20 bins on stage bending them around the corners when needed. I had in other words - a stereo set on the top and on the bottom creating a solid sound-wall which, during the song Summer Night City, allowed me to sweep the music for a special effect through a Sound Sweep 5050. That's a nice effect, particularly as that would give the audience a new impression not known on ABBA’s albums.'
Claes (Klappe) normally works as a staff-producer for a competing record company, Frituna, but has been a friend of the group ever since the time of the Hep Stars back in the 60s. As ABBA has such a great appeal to young kids as well as to older people, Claes understood that the volume of the PA should be kept within a reasonable range. Apart from this, people expect - in an audio/visual show like this - to be hearing whatever the spotlight focuses on, which meant the musical background should be kept a little lower than the vocals, another of the difficulties of transferring studio to stage sound.
Microphones and routing
A couple of Audio Design selective limiters with limiting settings around 2-2.8kHz were applied to Agnetha's and Frida's vocals to get rid of high peaks, and compression was applied to the backing vocals of Tomas Ledin, Birgitta Wollgård and Liza Öhman as well as to the clavinet and bass guitar, ensuring an even level through the concert. With the exception of the monitor mix, vocals were equalised with the eq facilities built into the desk. The bass, however was equalised with an Orban 672A which - by the on/off switch on the effect returns - allowed Claes to select either a metallic, sharp punching sound for disco numbers or the round, soft, smooth sound (preset on the input section of the desk) for ballads.
Microphones were chosen by Michael Tretow, ABBA's studio engineer, as the shows performed at the Wembley Arena, London, were planned for a live LP along with a TV programme filmed by Swedish Television. The choice was a combination of AKG 415s, Shure SM57 and 58s, Beyer 101s, Shure Unidyne 3 and 4s, Sennheiser 421s, RE20s, and a couple of Pro Nasty 400 and 500 radio mics.
All signals are split on-stage. One feed is for the Soundcraft Series 2 monitor mixers (16 plus 24 inputs), one for the ElectroSound main desk, and one for the live recording which was done by Michael using the Rolling Stones mobile.
Stuart MacKillop is in charge of ABBA's keyboard electronics, and explains that the routing of the instruments on stage right follows the standard routing procedure, whereas the stage left keyboards have a mixing facility of their own which makes the routing look a bit different: the four instruments, a Yamaha CP70, Hohner D6, Prophet-5, and ARP Odyssey, feed (through direct injection boxes) the main desk as well as the keyboard mixer located by keyboard player Anders Eljas in order for him to achieve the desired amount of direct feed with his own effects plus the monitor mix.
Four monitor speakers fly backstage on the lighting rig, two on each side of the stage, but Anders has one of his own located just beneath the Prophet-5, providing him with a sufficient amount of his own signal.
Instruments
Benny Andersson, the highly active ABBA member on stage right, also plays a Yamaha CP70 (constructed on a barbershop hydraulic chair - without the chair though), but in addition to that he gets some very rich effects out of the giant Yamaha GX-1 computerised organ (see review in SI Sept '78) as well as his beloved old Minimoog.
The guitar amps are all Music Man 410 and 410HD which feed the main desk directly. Bass monitoring on-stage runs through a 212RH, the only cabinets not tilted on the stage. All drums and percussion (with the exception of the bass drum) are miked from the top, a few inches from the skin. The percussive instruments include a mini-glockenspiel, a xylophone, a tambourine, a cowbell, a guiro, a cabasa and a vibra-slap.
ABBA like the blend of electronic and acoustic instruments. Although you don't actually hear it on the albums, guitars have been overdubbed several times. Two of the electric guitars are custom built by Arne Arwidson (AA-guitars, Stockholm) and are played by Mats Ronander and Lars Wellander, who also switches between an Ibanez acoustic guitar with two built-in pickups (one standard for stage monitoring, and one George Bolin contact mic) and a Fender Stratocaster with a Schecter pickup. Rutger Gunnarsson plays a Hagstrom bass.
Effects
The new Eventide Harmonizer H949 is used with the new 'backward sound' effect (setting of 1.36) on the drum opening of Why Did It Have To Be Me played by both percussionists, Ola Brunkert and Åke Sundqvist. The Harmonizer's 'repeat' facility, which keeps repeating the digital program inside forever without a decay, is activated briefly at the part, ‘…it's gotta be rock'n'roll (roll, roll)’ in Gotta Hole In Your Soul. In addition to that the Harmonizer is used with its standard effect on most of the vocals with a 1.006 setting (beware: the readout has four digits, not just three as on the old one) plus a wild delay of 100msec in the left channel and 200msec in the right for Lars' guitar solo on Eagle.
Sound engineer Klappe generally centred the direct vocal signal between the left and right PA cabinets and then fed the harmonised delayed signal and the delayed signal to, respectively, the right and left cabinets. That sort of fattened up the sound.
Reverb was provided by a Master Room on most of the tour. As it wasn't available from ElectroSound by the time the tour started out in Europe, Klappe got an AKG BS10 which provided him with a 3.5 second delay. The BX10 is small and handy but, unfortunately, just a bit too 'short' and metallic-sounding for this particular show.
Electronically there were great variations during the tour, which covered 41concerts in 64 days. Sometimes limiting of the voices couldn't be properly set as the four articulated vans (plus the crew bus) couldn't get unloaded as scheduled and - apart from this - Klappe had brought a new facility back from the US, an Ursa Major Space Station SST-282, which was just built into the rack as they reached Paris.
Two types of flanging were used, but they never dominated the sound picture, Klappe just used it to mellow out the sounds of the glockenspiel, acoustic guitars and grand piano, but used it very carefully. The two units used were the Eventide Instant Flanger and an MXR Flanger/Doubler which was never used in its 'doubler' position.
Main desk
The ElectroSound main desk was really more than just one. A 20-input and a 32 -input board were linked together, providing a total of 52 channels. Four of these channels were for the returns from the BX10 and the Harmonizer, as they were to be equalised for quality. The bass eq of the Orban unit was returned on the effects return, as was the tape deck for the house music and the flanger returns.
PA
When setting up the PA, Klappe prefers to listen to three kinds of music: a slow ballad with a lot of vocal in it gives a good impression of what the vocals are going to be like; some disco numbers give a feel of how the hall is reacting, particularly to the punch of the bottom end; and some rock music allows the PA to be played really loud to hear where echoes will start to be picked up.
The desk output is routed through two ElectroSound one third octave graphic equalisers and through a dbx 160 stereo limiter, on to the Amcron DC300 and ElectroSound amplifiers, through which the signals are routed to the low end cabinets transducing frequencies below 250Hz and the mid cabinets which handle everything above about 250Hz. It’s a 4-way active crossover system.
Act and repertoire
The repertoire consisted of about 22 songs and was not unfamiliar as the songs were selected from previous albums. The stage act, which can be considered partially responsible for the negative criticism of the press, was performed in typical Polar-blueish iceberg colours.
Channel assignment Desk 1 (percussion)
Upper left kit: 1 - Bass drum; 2 Snare; 3 Tom; 4 Tom; 5 - Tymp; 6 Tymp; 7 Conga; 8 Glockenspiel; 9 Xylophone; 10 Bells.
Middle kit: 11 - Bass drum; 12 Snare; 13 Hi-hat; 14-Tom; 15-Tom; 16-Tom; 17-Tom; 18 -Tom; 19 - Bongo; 20 Bongo.
Desk 2 (effects etc) 1, 2 - Ursa Major Space Station return; 3, 4 - Eventide Instant Flanger; 5 - MXR Flanger/Doubler return; 6 - bass return; 7, 8 -Teac C- 1 tape deck.
Main Desk 1 - Bass drum; 2 piano; 3 Clavinet; 4 - String synth; 5 - Arp Odyssey; 6 - Guitar (Björn); 7 - Acoustic guitar ; 8 - Guitar (Lars Wellander); 9 - acoustic guitar; 10 - Acoustic guitar; 11 - Guitar (Mats Ronander); 12 - Vocal; 13 - Radio mic; 14 - Radio mic; 15 - Vocal (Björn); 16 - Vocal (Agnetha); 17 - Vocal (Frida); 18 - Vocal (Benny); 19 - Backing vocals (1); 20 - Backing vocals (2); 21 - Backing vocals (3); 22 - Backing vocals (4); 23 Piano; 24 Moog; 25 - Vocal mic at piano; 26, 27, 28 - Yamaha GX- 1; 29, 30 - Eventide Harmonizer return; 31, 32 - Reverb return.
Sub-masters: 1, 2 Vocals; 3, 4 - Keyboards,;5, 6 Drums; 7, 8- Percussion.
Three rigs by Main Desk Rig 1 Ten compressors; MX9 FlangerlDoubler; Eventide Instant Flanger; Eventide H949 Harmonizer; Orban Equaliser 672A; Teac C-1 cassette tape deck.
Rig 2 Dbx 162 (2); TFA Electrosound (2); Soundsweep 5050.
Rig 3 Electrosound two third-octave graphic equalisers (2); dbx 160 limiter (from desk to PA); Ursa Major Space Station SST282.
Reverb: AKG BX 10.
Special Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cathy Olds, Newcastle, Australia