“ It is , relatively , a bigger PA because when these guest artists come out , the crowd is so loud that if you don ’ t bring a stadium-sized PA , you ’ ll lose it .”
Cardi B onstage
We don ’ t want people to be walking away with their ears ringing ,” says Moore . To accomplish this , the rig consisted of , per side : 24 Adamson E15 boxes on the main hangs ; eight E119 flown subs ; 18 of Adamson ’ s smaller S10 boxes on the side hangs ; and four S10s for front fills . Additionally , there were 24 E119 subs per side on the ground .
“ It is , relatively , a bigger PA because when these guest artists come out , the crowd is so loud that if you don ’ t bring a stadium-sized PA , you ’ ll lose it . If Eminem comes out on that stage and 17,000 people scream at the top of their lungs for three minutes and you only have a small PA , you ’ re never going to win ,” says Moore . “ A lot of people on the technical side will look at the PA and say , ‘ Man , that ’ s a big PA !’ but the show is a very dynamic show . So it ’ s not like when you see it you ’ re like , ‘ Oh man , I need earplugs . This is loud and this is going to be torture .’ No , it ’ s not like that . People say , ‘ Rap shows are just loud and it ’ s just a bunch of bass and you can ’ t hear the vocals ,’ but it ’ s really the complete opposite . It ’ s a dynamic show and it has low-end , but it ’ s not rip-your-face-off loud , and you hear the vocal mic . You hear every sibilance of what Drake says throughout the whole night .”
To help achieve that clarity , Drake is using a Sennheiser SKM 9000 transmitter with an MD 9235 capsule . “ Everyone who touches the stage uses a 9000 . We have eight channels of it and it ’ s all run over AES to the front of house console ,” says Moore , before emphasizing the simplicity of mixing Drake ’ s vocals . “ Drake doesn ’ t cup the mic and he doesn ’ t yell . Like , he raps and it ’ s laid back so there ' s not much work I have to do . He puts himself in the pocket , so I don ’ t have to deal with yelling . And he ’ s consistent ! I can tell you that my gain on my console for his vocal mic has been the same exact same since we switched to the 9000 . Before the 9000 , we used a [ Sennheiser SKM ] 5200 and my gain was the same exact gain for years . I ’ ve never changed my gain on his microphone .”
Over at FOH , Moore is working on a Digico SD7 console with a selection of outboard gear . “ Drake wants it to sound like the record so I try to give a record sound , and I don ’ t mean album , I mean a record sound . Like if you could play a 45 at a concert , this is what it would sound like ,” he explains . And getting that 45 record sound requires every person and piece of equipment working in unison , Moore says . “ It ’ s not just one thing ; it ’ s a combination and it starts from the stage . It ’ s our mixing channels plus 18 channels of playback . It ’ s the AES microphone , it ’ s the vocal performance that Drake gives , the Dante to the amp racks , it ’ s running everything at 96 KHz ,” Moore emphasizes . “ It isn ’ t just one piece of gear or it ’ s not me as a front of house engineer . It ’ s all of us working collectively and every piece and moving part of audio that works together to make the sound . If Drake ’ s in-ears are off , then the front of house mix is off , and if front of house is off , then Drake ’ s inears are off . We ’ re all working together collectively to get this sound . Our musical director is also our playback guy , so we have timecode so we ’ re all on the same page . When we get to the next song , Sean [ Sturge , the monitor engineer ]’ s snapshot fires , my snapshot fires , Ableton snapshots fire , everything moves collectively together and that ’ s how we achieve what we achieve .”
As far as his gear , in combination with the SD7 , Moore has two of Avalon ’ s VT737SPs – one for Drake ’ s vocal and another for the guest artists . There is also a TC Electronic 2290 dynamic digital delay because , he says , “ There is just no plug-in that will replace a 2290 .” There are also two DBX 120A subharmonic synthesizers . For outboard gear , that ’ s pretty much it , as much of the work is done in Ableton on Moore ’ s MacBook Pro .
The MacBook is run to a MOTU 112D Thunderbolt / AVB / USB interface and routing matrix and then out of that into the console . “ I have an Ableton set-up where I have scenes and what happens is when my console scene changes , my Ableton scene changes so that the
28 • PROFESSIONAL SOUND