Thom Cadley (shown) mixed Session At West 54th Street from an SSL 4096 console in the control room, but the monitor mixing was handled by Ira Malek on a Crest LM desk.

Pro Sound News Nov.97 page 68

Sony Main Stage

Taping Sessions At West 54th Street

by Christopher Walsh

NEW YORK CITY— On a recent night at Sony Music Studios' main stage, a few hundred lucky fans were treated to an extremely intimate performance by Ani DiFranco, one of many artists to tape a set for Sessions At West 54th Street, a PBS television program airing in most major markets. The sessions, 47 in all, were taped over a sixweek period, and the two acts per day shooting schedule left virtually no room for error. In an environment that brought together people from both the sound reinforcement and recording worlds, close collaboration and teamwork were vital. Audio engineer Ira Malek served as the monitor engineer for Sessions , and described the tapings as "one of the greatest experiences in terms of collaboration I've ever had." Malek, who has worked from the Roxy Theater to Wembley Arena., describes some of these expreiences and potential pitfalls: "Just because we have the ability to do retakes doesn't mean we want to. The producers of this show want a live feel to it." To that end, "the anti-feedback law is heavily in effect!"

Malek worked with mix engineer Thom Cadley, who was in the control room at a Solid State Logic G Series 4096 console during the performances. "Thom is one of the greatest guys I've worked with in this situation," said Malek. "Obviously, it's more important what goes on tape than what would be in the monitors or even front-of-house. Reinforcement is a very minimalist kind of thing for television; they don't want to know about it.

"One of the interesting experiences that I had on this as a sound reinforcement engineer was having to put studio microphones in the monitors," Malek continued. "They wanted a studio look on this show. Not only that, he wanted to use these mics to record with. A good example of that was a Neumann TLM 170, which has multiple uses, but is a really great vocal mic. However, because the pattern is not the same as a typical dynamic microphone, it's fairly difficult to reinforce in the monitors, and my EQ curves and my module EQ would look pretty zany. It took a fair amount of time to make it loud enough for [the artists] to hear it, and if they weren't directly on the microphone, physically kissing it, there was nothing there. If the parameters were too difficult to reinforce them or they r took too much time, Thom would defer to me and say, 'If you can't make them happen in the monitors, we'll go back to the Beta 87 or 535.' It's very rare in these experiences that I've had doing television that they'll defer to me. Thom was fabulous."

For Malek, the result was a huge success but hardly stress-free. In addition to maintaining the rigid schedule, he had to work with all the artists' own engineers, not all of whom spoke English. "Most of the engineers were pretty professional and knew what they were doing, but there were a few that didn't. Most of them were at least professional enough to let me drive—set up the EQ and sends, and all that. And there was the language barrier. And time frame is the ultimate thing for TV. It's a big, big deal. But once we got into a rhythm of doing things, we went fairly quickly."

PRO SOUND NEWS / November 1997

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