Musical legend Paul Kelly is certainly one artist who needs no introduction in the Australian music scene. With a career spanning over four decades, Paul Kelly is an iconic musician, one who has consistently captured the Australian culture through heartfelt song writing. Winning countless awards including 8 ARIA’s, 3 APRA’s, 6 CMAA’s, 4 Mo Awards as well as being inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, Kelly’s talent is undeniable.
In his true creative and diverse style, Kelly recently joined forces with world renowned composer Paul Grabowsky in order to add symphonic flavour to a selection of classics from Kelly’s vast catalogue. With the help of the Australian Art Orchestra, Vika and Linda Bull as well as Tina Harrod’s Vocal Ensemble; their one night only performance at the Victorian Arts Centre’s Hamer Hall was a special event in the truest sense of the word.
Above: The SD7 side of stage at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall
Given the gifted line up, Kelly, his soulful line of backup singers and the orchestra expected only the best for their monitoring requirements and the Arts Centre felt it was time to put their recently purchased DiGiCo SD7 to work.
This was the first show for the Arts Centre using their new SD7. It was used to handle monitors for vocalists, the band, and the chamber orchestra. Their new accompanying SD Rack was also utilised (connected via fibre).
Above: Peter Sforcina and crew busy setting up
Additionally, the gig was recorded via DiGiCo’s COPY TO MADI function. With this feature, audio from any DiGiCo rack can be copied to any MADI port output. This allows for the automatic recording of every input in the rack, completely unprocessed. In addition, by connecting the recorder’s MADI output to the corresponding MADI input on the SD series console, playback can be monitored on the same channels as the original source material. One press of the ‘Listen to Copied Audio’ button toggles between monitoring playback and live sources from the rack.
For example, to copy an SD-Rack Audio Inputs to a recorder connected over MADI, it’s a simple matter of selecting the SD-Rack in the ports list then selecting MADI from the ‘Copy Audio To’ drop down menu. The 56 inputs on the specified SD-Rack will be copied to the standard MADI connection designated in the drop down menu.
Above: A reasonably busy SD-Rack quietly doing its thing
Feedback was extremely positive all round and Monitor Engineer Peter Sforcina already noting the impressiveness of the in-built multiband compressor; particularly on vocals.
Special mention also goes out to FOH Engineer John O’Donnell and Recording Engineer Josh White.
Above: Monitor Engineer Peter Sforcina contemplating his next stroke on the SD7 canvas
