Mixing the sound of big concerts never gets old and is very exciting. And just now I got to mix a concert that really rocked my boat. Hollywood soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer is one of the most inventive musicians out there. He tries not to repeat himself and conjures up a new sound world for each film he works on. Just listen to his Dune soundtrack and you know what I mean.
So when I got to mix the Auckland Philharmonia in a concert with so many highlights of his career, I was very giddy. And it was a huge undertaking too. In order to turn the orchestra sound into a cinematic experience with band and synthesisers I had to use microphones on every player. Quickly I had ninety faders occupied under my fingers.
Me mixing the full orchestra on a DigiCo console. The best gear for the best results. :-)
And I used quite a few different reverb machines to change the sound between all the pieces. If you think about it, The Gladiator with its lush sound and soprano singer sounds very different to the action-driven Batman soundtrack. But then we had Interstellar and The Thin Red Line. The list goes on. It just got better and better the further we went into Hans Zimmer’s back catalogue.
Anyway, it was great fun and the audience loved it. Thanks so much for Western Audio for all the great gear and the team of fabulous engineers to help with the sound. It takes more than the front-of-house mix engineer to make it all happen. There’s also a system engineer, who looks after the line array loudspeakers, and a monitor mix engineer, who makes sure that the musicians can hear everything they need to hear, and then there’s at least one more engineer who looks after all the microphones and cabling. With ninety microphones, there was a lot of cabling!
Here’s a snippet of Interstellar, played by the Auckland Philharmonia, mixed by moi. Goosbumps in the hall!!
The concert took place in Auckland’s Kiri Te Kanawa theatre, and was presented by the Australian producers of the Art Of The Score podcast. It’s very interesting. Check that out when you have a chance.