Especially for you

The visuals were then programmed and formatted for all the screens by Richard Turner during the production rehearsals, which is now triggered by MIDI timecode from the on-stage keyboard of musical director Sarah DeCourcy.

The live camera mix is directed by Ruary MacPhie. XL is supplying three Sony 55HD cameras, which are positioned with one at FOH, and two in the pit on track and dolly.

MacPhine cut the mix using a Panasonic AV-HS400 HD Vision Mixer, and this was beamed onto two Barco DLite LED screens hung either side of the stage.

On-board for yet another of Minogue's tours is her long-time front-of-house engineer Chris Pyne.

As usual Pyne did not leave home without his faithful DiGiCo console, but this time he traded the D5 in place of the SD7.

After trailing the SD7 at PLASA07, Pyne says DiGiCo's managing director James Gordon asked him if he wanted to road-test the console for the KylieX2008 tour and he keenly took-up the offer.

"The initial programming of the SD7 took around a week during rehearsals prior to the European tour, but it's always a work in progress. You don't ever stop refining and changing things - every venue and new sound system creates a new issue to deal with," states Pyne.

Due to the electronic, and harsh at times, sound of the tour, Pyne says every song is individual in its acoustic application meaning that he can not apply the same EQ settings and various other parameters as a blanket mix because it always changes.

Also on tour with Pyne is an ADK 48kHz multitrack hard-disk recorder.

This acts as a refinement tool for Pyne, as he can record any show in real-time and then play it back through the SD7 console via MADI to carry-out an individual mini sound-check prior to each show, which reduces the time the band has to be sound checking for.

As part of the global touring process Pyne specifies three different makes of PA systems, with JBL being one of them.

But, he says the only issue with using JBL is that he has spent the entire year working with Meyer Milo and the whole stored mix and drive system has been geared towards that brand and its particular sound, so it took a bit more tweaking to get the system sounding the way he wanted it to.

To set-up the JBL system to suit the outdoor elements and the reflective surface qualities of the car park venue, Pyne used Meyer SIM 3 to analyse and EQ the system, while the local crew used the JBL prediction software to aim and array the speakers maximising the audience coverage and to keep the sound from reflecting off nearby objects.

"For even sound dispersion across the entire site the main hangs were straight line arrays hang of 16 JBL Vertec 4889 Line Array cabinets, which have the normal 90 degree coverage pattern that's sufficient to deal with the wider audience area," he says.

"To fill some of the dead spots created by the video screens we added some Turbosound floods and the same for the centre fills. Additionally, we added two delay towers for the long throw audience area consisting of eight a side JBL 4880A array sub speakers."

Pyne says he likes working with outdoor locations as he does not have to deal with the reverb issues that he is faced with in other venues. But, obviously in an outside area he says it does pose different challenges and he has to factor in other elements like wind.

Adding to the glitz and glamour of the tour are three custom-finished versions of Sennheiser's 5200 microphones, in chrome, gold, and one diamante.

"We have been using this microphone since its release; in fact, before it was released we did some testing for Sennheiser. The microphone suits Minogue's voice - it's very reliable and its small size fits well in her hands," states Pyne.

"Being a petite woman, it's important for her to be comfortable while jumping around the stage, and over all, the Sennheiser RF system with the Neumann 105 hypercardioid capsule has got quite high gain-before-feedback properties.

"As far as flagship, handheld radio microphones go, I don't think there's a better one on the market."

On another note; Pyne says this leg of the tour was novel as the stage Minogue performed on in Dubai was previously owned by her and sold-on to Protec after her Showgirl Tour was cancelled.

Nick Whitehouse and Bryan Leitch of Visual Light provided lighting design and operation services for Minogue's tour.

The concept for the show's design is based around a giant "light box" and the set comprises a rectangular, raked main stage and two band risers stage left and stage right, which are front lit by of Barco's MiStrip modules.

Whitehouse says most of what he does as the lighting designer is visually compliment the screen and the video heavy and theatrical components of the show. He describes the vast video and light combination as a "disco wall of death".

Whitehouse's lighting rig (including some X-shaped truss supporting the tour's X manifesto) complements the video-heavy show and the European A show rig consists mostly of Vari-Lite VL3000 and VL3500 Spots, VL3500 Washes, and VL500 Washes.

But for the Dubai, B show, Protec supplied a mixture of Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200s, Alpha Wash 1200s and some Alpha Wash 575s.

Touring with the show, Whitehouse acts as board operator, controlling his extensive rig of DMX automated fixtures with via a Virtuoso DX2 console from PRG.

Whitehouse opted for the DX2 as he says it is the ideal programming tool for digital lighting media servers because its flexible and adaptive console controls are well suited to programming for a large number of control channels.

For the lighting heavy show Whitehouse employed around 1000 lighting cues for the B-show, while for the full scale A-show there are 2000 at play.

READERS' COMMENTS

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM