Park Life: Linkin Park Live
Linkin Park’s FOH engineer, Pooch, navigates us through the waters of high SPLs, a new super heavyweight PA, 66-track nightly recordings, and broken wrists. And all this on his birthday!
13 December 2007
Text: Christopher Holder
It’s Pooch’s birthday and, for his sins, he’s spent the last eight hours holed up in a fluoro-lit shoebox somewhere in the bowels of the Rod Laver Arena mixing tracks from Linkin Park’s Auckland date.
Kenneth ‘Pooch’ Van Druten is Linkin Park’s front of house mix engineer. And he looks nothing like a ‘Pooch’ – a nickname bestowed on him by Motley Crüe’s Vince Neil many years ago. Saying that, I’m not entirely sure what a walking/talking ‘Pooch’ should look like. Regardless, providing concert ‘bootleg’ recordings is part of the service. “It’s for the kids,” says Pooch as he surveys the 66 ProTools tracks from the Auckland gig with relaxed, slightly bleary-eyed ambivalence. Here’s how it works: after the gig you buy a ‘CD’. Well, actually you buy something that looks like a CD, but, in fact, it’s an authorisation ‘code’ to download the recording of the concert in five days’ time. It’s quite an onerous promise. Hence the long hours spent mixing. But ‘the kids’ love it.
Pooch: “I’m proud to say that we’re one of the few bands that delivers in that time. Metallica delivers in three weeks or something. There are a few bands that deliver on the same night but what they’re selling is a FOH board mix. What we’re delivering is a full-on release-quality ProTools mix. It’s a lot of work; I can spend up to 10 hours a day mixing Linkin Park.”
10 hours a day!
I suggested to Pooch that he must be tempted to take the Auckland mix, splice in the words ‘Hello Melbourne’ and catch up on some kip. He has a good ol’ chuckle at the suggestion: “Linkin Park fans are really techy – really computer-oriented – so they’d catch onto that right away. We’ve been doing this for about four months now and apparently people are trading shows. The files aren’t encoded so they can freely trade shows among themselves. And that’s cool to see.”
Of course, there are more differences in a gig than simply the lead singer remembering the name of the city he woke up in when greeting the audience. Take the second Melbourne date, for example: like I mentioned earlier, it’s Pooch’s birthday. I’m not sure how old Pooch is, or what that equates to in dog years, but there must be times when he wonders what it’s all about, stuck in some boxey room, a million miles from family and friends, mixing Hello Auckland. There again, when 5000 people and a multi-platinum band are serenading you with Happy Birthday – as they were at the Rod Laver Arena – that’s a pretty special moment. In fact, when Pooch pulls up the ‘Melbourne2’ ProTools session in a few day’s time I’m sure there won’t be any temptation to just give Auckland a quick massage and head back to the hotel!
And, just as an observation, when huge bands and artists like Madonna are more interested in a contract with a tour promoter than they are with a record company I suppose it should come as no surprise that bands are using these concerts to connect with fans and, indeed, sell them ‘product’.
Pooch: “Fans are always going to make bootlegs, so why not sell them a ‘bootleg’ and sell them something that sounds awesome. That way the Internet will be full of awesome bootlegs and not a bunch of crap.”
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
With all this ProTools manipulation, as expected, Pooch drives a Digidesign console. More surprisingly, he’s only a very recent convert to digital mixing.
Pooch: I’m an analogue guy. I still say that. I had a Midas XL4 for 15 years. So I came kicking and screaming into the digital world. My first step into it was a [Digidesign] Venue, but it wasn’t a tour… it was a couple of one-offs here and there. Then I stood in front of the Profile and felt that whatever was wrong about the Venue in my own mind, the Profile fixed.
More importantly, this console [the Profile] sounds great. It’s a little quirky compared to other consoles, as all Digidesign products are. But when you know it and use it, it’s good.
Christopher Holder: Have you dispensed with all your outboard for what’s on the Profile?
Pooch: Yeah, I have. I’ve made a significant investment in plug-ins – I’ve got an iLok that I’ve spent good money on, which is like bringing your own racks of outboard gear. It works great.
CH: Which obviously means less lugging and a smaller footprint compared to an XL4 and 100 comps and gates.
Pooch: It’s funny. The footprint of front of house has gotten smaller – the Profile is obviously a smaller board than an XL4 – but you’re kinda left with the same number of racks. You have a playback rack, a drive rack and the FOH rack. So yes, it’s a smaller footprint, and yes, we don’t carry all those compressors and gates, but it’s not that much smaller.
CH: Has your iLok opened your eyes to gear you’d not normally audition?
Pooch: Absolutely. For instance, Rane makes a Serato vocal compression plug-in. It’s a beautiful compressor. But if you’d asked me to use an analogue item of Rane gear I’d have said, ‘nup, not happening’. But right now I’m using it on vocals all the time.
CH: And, like any loud rock show, I’d imagine getting the vocals to punch through would be half the struggle?
Pooch: Particularly Chester, who goes from whispering to very loud. You can spend time getting the compression right, but it’s still a 10dB fader juggle all the time. He’s an amazing singer but he’s so dynamic it’s tough to get him in the program.
Fans are always going to make bootlegs, so why not sell them a ‘bootleg’ and sell them something that sounds awesome.
BIG NEWS
Pooch is part of a growing cadre of senior engineers that are demanding an Adamson PA on the technical rider. Norwest Productions in recent times has invested heavily in an Adamson Y10-based rig, so no problem there. Well, not so fast. Pooch has actually spec’ed the chunkier Y18 system. I’ll include some more technical info about the Y18 elsewhere in this story, but the Y18 must be one of the most formidable speaker systems in the world. It’s based on the foundation of an Adamson 18-inch low frequency device along with the same mid/high unit as the Y10. It’s quickly gathering a reputation as being a very loud PA with headroom ‘for days’. Chris Kennedy, head honcho of Norwest, decided the way ahead was clear: spend up big on a new Y18 system and get the Linkin Park account. While he was at it, Chris also bought a truckload of Adamson M15 wedges, which would fulfil the wishes of Linkin Park’s monitor engineer, Kevin ‘Tater’ McCarthy. It’s a big, big investment. And I don’t think we’ve seen the sort of buzz about a new PA in this country since JPS brought V-DOSC into Australia.
Christopher Holder: A Linkin Park show is very loud. Is that a fair description?
Pooch: It is a loud show.
CH: And that goes some of the way to explaining why you have such an enormous PA?
Pooch: Some way. It’s a loud rock show. We’re talking about 105dB A-weighted at the console – which is loud – but I think there’s ‘good loud’ and there’s ‘bad loud’ and hopefully what I’m doing is ‘good’. However, when it comes to the PA, I’m more concerned about coverage. I don’t care if you spent $150 to be at the front or you’re standing at the back… you should have the same show. Especially with technology like it is now. When we were doing this 15 years ago, you couldn’t get good even coverage. But now you can. You bring the tools you need to do that. That’s the real reason.
PLAY IT LOUD, OKAY?
CH: What are the special demands of mixing really loud shows?
Pooch: When you push hard it does place extra stresses on things and highlights what’s not up to scratch. For example, the problem with line array is – when you really, really get into them – they start to give up. But they don’t give up as a whole; instead portions of the PA will give up. For instance, everything else sounds great at a really high volume but the mids start going away when you try and introduce more stuff. And that’s a real concern because you don’t want portions of your PA being different. Hitting compression in the lows, making that part of the PA squashed but not the other parts? That sounds weird. Those are the concerns when you’re mixing loud.
We use an Adamson PA, and the reason why we use Adamson is because it’s one of the few line arrays that doesn’t do that. I describe it like this: you get your mix going, and the band is all there, and it’s big and it’s loud, then you add your two vocals into it… and most line arrays just give up – they can’t get there. Whereas, to me, and with this band, the Adamson PA just seems to get better when you add the vocals. And I think that’s because of the solid midrange thing that they’ve got going on. It’s really, really good.
CH: And being super-loud means being super-careful with every mic and every setting?
Pooch: Yep, you have to be completely vigilant about mic placement. Probably a better way of describing things is: make sure every single day is the same. I want to see the guitars show up on the board in the same way every single day. The kick drum the same way… We’ve all worked hard to make sure it sounds good and introducing a new variable because you’ve been careless or because of bad communication can completely destroy your mix. So, it’s about making sure that every single thing is exactly where it needs to be.
CH: ‘Loud’ not so long ago meant you left the gig with ringing ears and a headache. What can you tell me about mixing 15 years ago compared to now?
Pooch: Back then it was a whole different thing. Fifteen years ago it was all about ‘combat audio’ – there wasn’t much finesse; it was war.
For many years I used a Showco Prism PA – a front-loaded JBL, big, monster rock PA… a great-sounding PA. But, compared to what we’re using today, it didn’t have the nuances. So one factor in all this is that the PAs have gotten a lot better.
The second thing: the arenas have gotten a lot better. In those days the sports stadiums were horrendous. Those places were never ever designed to be excited with that much sound energy. Rooms aren’t nearly as bad these days.
So now, as a mixer, I’m released a little from it being ‘combat audio’ and the struggles of just trying to get the vocal heard. Now it’s more a case of ‘oh man, that sparkly keyboard part could do with a touch more 3k’. So it’s very liberating being able to deal with that sort of detail. If you have your overall mix happening and sounding great, then it’s all about the detail.
FALLOUT BOY
Almost to prove how ridiculous my facetious ‘tweak Auckland and move on’ ProTools proposition was, the second Melbourne show had more surprises in store. After we all sang Pooch Happy Birthday, Chester spectacularly came a cropper taking a flying leap from the two-metre-high drum riser. The front-of-house bat phone flashed red and Pooch received the news: “We’re pretty sure Chester has broken his wrist”. The unflappable Pooch had the look of someone told they’d need to wait 30 seconds for their meat pie to get warmed up in the microwave. A short while later, the adrenalin-charged lead singer jogged uncertainly back on stage – wrist hanging limply, like a seagull with a broken leg – to continue the show. “Now that’s f**king rock ’n’ roll!” bellowed a clearly-impressed fan from the front row.
As Pooch relives the audio of the gig in another ProTools bunker in another city on another night, I’m sure it’ll all come flooding back like ‘déjà vu all over again’.
RESPONSES