| news | timeline | tour dates | tour diary | band info | recordings | on the web |
| archives | interviews | media |
|
Interview with Michael Harris, Belfast, 2008 09 26, page 4 ibth - So how do you build you mix, do you have a routine you always follow ? harris - Usually the way i work is i make sure the drums are good and full, and you can hear everything real well. I start with the drums because if the drums get lost there's no rhythm, or there's very little at least, and i feel it's hard really to enjoy it, unless you're up front. I usually build the mix around people who are standing closest to me.. and see how they respond. Looking into the audience and picking somebody out, and then seeing how they react to what i do. There was this one girl tonight that i saw and she was kind of sitting there drinking, and i started doing the mix and a little later on i saw her dancing and enjoying herself.. Or maybe was it because she had gotten drunk or whatever, but it was like "ok, cool, maybe i made that one person happy with how i did this." 
ibth - Oh he did, but maybe.. i was thinking.. he was a bit too loud in regard to Aaron ? Then again, with the way the cabs were oriented.. harris - Yes, the thing is.. usually the reason i have a tendency to push him is because he's playing lead, and then there are certain times when i have noticed, like at the beginning of "Mannequin" a few shows back, when his tone kind of sucked and he was not loud enough, and you wouldn't really get what was happening at the beginning of the song so now i have a tendency to push him up until his sound is really full, and then i pull him back down when the song starts or something like that but.. And again, it's also a very hard thing to make Aaron's tone to cut through a room like that. If you push it it starts to be kind of "crrrrrshhhhrrrrrshhhhh." I think a lot of his tone needs to come off of his amp and i need to do very little with that. ibth - How do you plan to solve that issue in bigger rooms where the tone from his amp isn't going to go that far ? harris - In bigger rooms i usually have them turn their amps up, cause it projects more, and then generally i add what little needs to be added. All the mikes in live settings sound like crap. And there's really no stuff you could put them on that would improve the sound, so the best way to deal with that to me is just to use less, to do less, and to have them turn up. The problem that presents obviously.. it's kind of a weird loop.. as if you took two steps forward, and then took one step back, because what happens if you have them turn their amps up on stage, is you can't push the vocals loud enough. Or, you know, the bass gets lost on stage, so you need to turn that up so you have this gain-stage war where you're pushing faders up and up and up and then you're just maxing up the master bus and you're screwed, so.. ibth - We've been noticing quite a volume increase in the set. Especially with "I Don't Have An Excuse.." which starts very low.. harris - That's on their end. Actually that's weird.. Because i watch my master bus quite a lot, kind of like you're looking in your rearview mirror when you're driving a lot, i glance over, and i'm picking up +3 almost all the time. I think they turn their amps up onstage a lot in between the songs. ibth - During "I Don't Have An Excuse..", some days, Aaron turns the volume on and on, but on his guitar.. and he changes the settings on his amp at the beginning of "Mannequin" quite a lot.. harris - Yeah, he does do that, that's true. ibth - And there's yet another volume level reached with "Rebel Hiss".. harris - Yeah, i don't know what that's about, man.. being back there it's hard to see.. There are these three people who have been coming to the past few shows, and they were standing up front for the London show, the PA was behind them, and Mike said he looked down, and they were like (Harris put his hands on his ears) because it was just so loud.. i think they turned on.. ibth - In London ? London was very loud, i can confirm, i had my ears ringing significantly afterwards.. harris - Me too, me too, it was really loud. The sound engineer kept telling me to push the master bus, and it just kept limiting, so i was like "turn it down" but, you know.. people do different things. That's the other thing about the audio engineering world, is that people do so many different things, that when i walk into a room, i usually prefer to let the soundman do what they do first, and then take over. Because they know the room better than anybody else who's gonna work in there, and there's no reason to pretend like i do. ibth - What's THE nightmare scenario in a club or in the architecture of a club ? harris - The nightmare scenario is never that you walk in and their PA is shit and their monitor system is shit and you don't know what to do, because you can always find a way to work with the crappiest stuff possible. It's really easy. It sucks, but it's really easy. The worst thing, the hardest thing, is to have a proper soundcheck and to have everything go perfectly smooth, and to have everything change. Everything dies on you, the amps die, they hum, the monitors blow for no particular reason.. ibth - Like in Exeter ? harris - Yeah, Exeter was a bad one. You know what was weird, was The Sugarmill, in Stoke-on-Trent. Out of nowhere, i didn't have any control on the monitor system there, there was a monitor guy, he blew up his own monitor.. and it was just like, "what the hell, how did that happen ?" they have a whole separate system and outboard gear and everything to make sure that it works and yet it blew up, and so it's a nightmare cause you don't know what to do as a FOH guy. So yeah, that's the nightmare scenario. The nightmare scenario is that the monitors blow because then they just can't hear themselves. Exeter's a good example, because what can you do then ? Aaron has a tendency to have a really wild dynamic range when it comes to singing, so if i have him too low, you can't hear him when he's singing quietly, but it's perfect when he's yelling or screaming. But when i have him too loud, then he blows his monitor, and you're screwed. And that's the worst, because you don't even have an option, there's no outs at all. ibth - How do you manage the whole sound matter when you can't soundcheck ? Like for instance you were playing these festivals, and there were a few days when i think you arrived too late for that to be done.. harris - Yeah.. well Leeds was bad. We never do soundchecks at festivals. We do line checks.. you just test all the mikes and make sure they're on the proper instruments and make sure they're receiving at the proper level, basically. So you hope you can do that, you always do that, you can't not do a linecheck. A good example of a time when we did a proper linecheck, but one of the tie lines blew during the set was in Yeovil.. when the kick drum just all of a sudden blew up, and then it went back down. Something was wrong with their tieline going back to the console. The guy had no control over it.. On every console you have a pad, a reduction button, basically, and so immediately when it blew up i turned that button on, and then, when i saw on the meter that the level had gone down i took it off, so that was kind of a ok solution, but you can't do much. So you hope you get a linecheck, you hope you test all the mikes and they're properly working, but there's ghosts in it, for sure, things go wrong all the time. And feedback comes from nowhere, like you heard tonight, what song were they playing, there was just a lot of feedback coming through the monitors, i can't remember what it was ? ibth - Yeah, Les Gars had quite a bunch of problems too.. harris - Oh yeah, they had a terrible time too.. soundcheck, they didn't have any.. no.. they did soundcheck, we didn't have any though. And then all of a sudden, it comes up, it's just because of where people are standing. ibth - Do you add a lot of effects at soundboard level, like reverb, etc. ? harris - A modest amount, i usually use a reverb, a tap delay, sometimes, a separate reverb unit for certain drums or percussions or things like that, but generally i try and keep it kind of simple, because it gets lost one way or the other you know. Unless you're playing a venue like Leeds, or Reading or Bingley, like we did. Those things get lost. Did you even hear the reverb tonight really ? ibth - On the vocals.. a bit, but very very little, save for "Pioneers..", of course. harris - You can always hear it there, cause everything goes away. ibth - It feels like there was more reverb earlier in the tour than nowadays ? harris - Yeah, well that's honestly completely dependant on the venue, and the kind of gear that they have. There are so many different effect units, and every single club has them set up differently, that's why i'm kind of trying to use our gear now, my effect units, because i can set them how i think they work best in all the venues, and just use them over and over. But tonight was a prime example, cause there was no way to get the reverb to cut through.. I maxed it out, cut out all the bad frequencies that i could, boosted all the good ones, and you still couldn't really hear it, even if i had the faders all the way up, and i was peaking above zero for the reverb. There's just no way to get it to ride above everything. When everything is that loud, there's no way. ibth - What sort of gear do you bring along, that is Jubilee's and doesn't belong to the venue ? Because the console is the venue's, right ? harris - We bring a digidesign box that we can record into, i bring a stereo compressor for the vocals if they don't have one, for the drums, if they don't have one, and then i bring two effect units, one for delay, one for reverb. ibth - The delay, when do you use it ? harris - Oh i use it for Mike a lot, i try and use a slapback a lot of times, a really quick delay, because i feel like it suits his voice pretty well, a kind of Lennon thing, a kind of nasal sound. ibth - You've been mentioning that you've been doing sound for Wires on Fire as well.. is there any difference in the direct comparison ? Are there any other bands you've been doing sound for, apart from Wires on Fire and Jubilee ? harris - Not really, i mean i've been doing things for everybody.. my friend Chris, i've been working with him for a long long time. Here and there i've been doing certain things, but ultimately they've been the main focus of my life for a whole year.. yeah, that's probably it. I kind of think it's good to be focused on a certain kind of thing. There's a huge difference between the way that we approach the Wires On Fire stuff and the way that we approach the Jubilee stuff. It's a lot more carefree with Wires On Fire, it's a lot more moment-based. Whereas i think the Jubilee stuff is a lot more about multiple moments, different days, different weeks, different parts of the year, all pieced together. There's a huge difference in that way. Wires it's like : drums we do, man they sound good, let's do the bass, man that sounds good, let's keep going.. We just kind of build and build and build until the song is done. Jubilee it's more like : we take this, and then we work with this and this and this and then this part doesn't really fit so we take it out and we add this part in and so forth, you know.. ibth - So it's more of a recursive process where you permanently go back to what's been done ? harris - yeah, and reassess and reassess and reassess. Wires On Fire isn't like that, it's more linear. ibth - Do you have any distinct memory of the best sounding Jubilee gig so far during this tour ? harris - I have a distinct memory of all the ones that sounded good. I don't know if i can say one was the best, but i think that probably.. i mean, it's hard, because when they play the best, and when they sound the best, it's a very different thing. But i think all in all, probably the Manchester gig was my favourite, sound wise.  harris - Playing wise it may have been that one too. ibth - Isn't it paradoxal, to say that the best was the one where their own gear was broken and they had use someone else's ? And when they didn't have any time for soundcheck ? harris - Yeah, i mean, that is kind of ironic and weird. I think it's because they just had to do it, and they had to go balls out, and they had to figure it out, you know. They didn't have a choice, and that led to a sound.. Cause i think it's completely joined at the hip like that. I don't think there's any way that you can go on stage and be fully prepared and be happy and all and play the best gig of your life. There's no way.. i think the best art comes from some kind of struggle. I don't know what it is, but something. And having that guy yelling at them "come on, bring it on !" and having to do it. It was like, they're just forced into a situation, where they have to play and have to play well and they have to do it with intention, too. Something like that. There were a few other really good gigs, but that one sticks out in my mind. |
|
Jubilee (ju.bi.lee), n. : 1. A rock'n'roll band from L.A., Ca., currently composed of Aaron North (vocals, guitar), Tony Bevilacqua (guitar, vocals), Jenni Tarma (bass), Troy Petrey (drums.)2. Jubilation; rejoicing. 3. A season or an occasion of joyful celebration. 4.a. A specially celebrated anniversary. b. The celebration of such an anniversary. |
|
isolate by the hour homeabout us contact |
|
Jubilee on vimeo |
 get In With The Out Crowd from Jubilee's Digital Music Store |
 check out Rebel Hisson Jubilee's Digital Music Store |