The MusicNOW Festival was last week down in Cincy. On board for the evening of March 11 were The Books and Kronos Quartet at Memorial Hall in Over the Rhine. Thanks for the swell birthday present, MusicNOW!
I’ve been in Memorial Hall once before, when I was sound designer for A Post Modern Love Story with Blueforms Theatre Group, the precursor to our current company, Available light [theatre]. We were there for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. It was our final ‘award’ performance – we won an award (the critic’s award maybe?), so we had to haul everything from the Contemporary Art Center over to Memorial Hall and re-tech the show on 48 hours notice – lucky us! All I remember was everyone sweating through their clothes while just sitting there in the June heat, but it’s rare that I see so much energy thrown back and forth between the audience and actors. It was a cathartic evening, to say the least.
So, between my previous experience there, 2 of my favorite music groups, and my birthday, I had high hopes.
First up were The Books. I was nervous about their performance there – Memorial Hall is a music hall, not too suited for their dry electronic sounds. My fears were founded – the sound was awful. They were probably trying to keep the volume down, partly because they were opening for a string quartet, and partly in attempt not to over-excite the room. Either way, the mix was off, and the PA wasn’t quite tuned right – at least not at my seat, 4th row center. I’ve seen them twice before – both at the Wexner Center, a very dry venue with a great sound system, and a great person driving it (Scott Austin). Their music may not be quite suited for performance by 2 people. With so many layers, each of them has to pick one, and none of the layers really ‘lead’ the music, so they often end up disappearing into their backing tracks, and it becomes a music video viewing. I love The Books, but seeing them always makes me a little sad. I’ve given up a little part of my soul just to write this in a public setting.
And they didn’t play Tokyo. I’m a bit obsessed with that track – on long drives I’ll listen to it over and over, imagining a different orchestration each time. What if Kronos did it? What if a marimba quartet did it (I’m workin on this one)? What if some wanker metal lead guitarist did it? Toy piano? Brass quintet? Sax? Bass clarinet quartet (Edmund Welles, are you listening?)? Rachel’s? Zachery Allen Starkey??? At one point I had a list of 12 different orchestrations/bands/groups lined up (in my head), and had grand plans of recording a cover album of my favorite Books track. And everyone was going to see the genius of the track and the brilliance of commissioning an entire cover album of it, thus making me rich and famous. Clearly I didn’t follow through.
During the set change I pulled out my iPhone to check email and tweet about the show. But then I read an email that had come sometime during The Books’ set from Twitter telling me that @kronosquartet was following me. Uh, what? I didn’t even know they were on Twitter! I suddenly got a little scared – how did Kronos find me?? Wait, Kronos, aka Cronus, the supreme god before Zeus? OMG they’re watching me now! I think I’ll keep myself from being a twit till later…
On to Kronos. Wow, where to begin? The music ranged from quite good to excellent, most leaning towards excellent. The performances were astounding. This was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. This was the best sounding electro-acoustic performance I’ve ever heard.
WARNING: Sound Geek Speak Ahead!
This show really sounded great. They had 2 sets of mics on the instruments: a KM184 mounted under each music stand, and a clip on mic, I’d assume something like a DPA 4060. PA was EAW KF750 & SB1000. One sub per side, 3 KF750 per side – one main floor, one balcony, and one in-fill. Front fill was 2 Meyer UPM-1P.
Begin Speculation:
It took me a couple pieces to realize how the show was being mixed – for the more natural pieces, that were just the quartet, no verb, no FX, and no playback, it sounded like he was using the KM184. Considering the location of the mic (mounted under the music stand), it sounded much better than I would’ve guessed. It was a nice, natural, and mellow yet detailed sound. The KM184 can drive me nuts sometimes, with a screechy high end that can rip your face off. But perhaps being more under the instruments helped mellow the sound, or maybe they were the older, mellower KM84 – I didn’t get a close enough look.
The KM184 sound just brought everyone forward a bit, like giving the audience a seat at the conductor’s position. The first piece was mixed this way, but even quieter than the rest of the show – I’d say the PA was 6-9db below the acoustic sound. But my ears may not have acclimated in time – it’s possible that the PA was run at the same level as the rest of the show. It was more like 1-4db lower for the rest of the pieces in the show mixed using the KM184. This helped in a number of ways – it balanced out the volume with the other, louder pieces, and helped bring out some of the smaller, ‘fingery’ sounds. A lot of the modern pieces they perform sound better in a somewhat dryer environment, like a recording studio, and a little PA helps swing the direct to room ratio to the direct sound of the instruments.
The PA sounded like it was pretty heavy on the 2 front fill speakers. This makes sense, as it would help localize the sound as well. I couldn’t really tell if they were using the KF750s for this sound at all – I was directly in front of one of the front fills. But, one of the problems I had with The Books was that I was sitting in an area that was covered by both the front fills and the KF750 infill, and there was a timing difference – the KF750 was arriving after the front fill. This time difference could be easily obscured by string instruments, but pretty obvious with electronic music with fairly staccato sounds, like The Books. The EAW and Meyer speakers didn’t mix too well either for The Books – the wide open high end of the UPMs made the high end of the KF750s sound like mud. But EQing the UPMs to match would’ve ruined the natural sound of some of Kronos’s pieces when using the KM184. Also, running mostly through the front fills helps with the inverse square law – everyone is pretty much equidistant from both the instruments and the front fill speakers, equalizing the PA to direct ratio for basically everyone in the house.
Other pieces with verb, distortion, playback, etc. were mixed using the clip on mics. They had that distinct ‘stringy’ sound that close miked strings have – but not a bad stringy sound. It sounded like they used more of the KF750 for these pieces, and a healthy amount of subs for a couple pieces. All the reverb, distortion, playback, and other FX were very well balanced with the acoustic sound. This level of interaction between the band and the mix engineer happens only after spending a significant amount of time in rehearsal together. The one exception would be the last piece of their set, called 12/12. They were bouncing back and forth between the playback backing up the live performance and the live performance backing up the playback. But this ended up seeming more like an orchestration issue to me, and not the mix.
End Sound Geek Speak.
I haven’t talked about the music yet, which was all quite good. Maybe I’ll follow up later. But probably not. Just being honest here. Regardless, Kronos didn’t play Tokyo.