The Radiophonic Workshop on the Road (tech spec overview)
Mark acts as the technical hub, and Roger, Paddy and myself have independent work stations that handle all our individual sounds, but receive patch change commands from a timeline running on Mark’s computer. This timeline also runs the videos. A personal monitoring system allows each of us to mix eight stereo audio feeds to our own personal liking. These contain the sound of yourself and everyone else, including drums and any track playback that may be needed. In addition, the last two controls (15 and 16) carry cue idents and click track. The cue idents are voiced signals to warn of upcoming junctions, and the click track, a metronome. Different items will require a different combination of these two. The number ‘Wasted Plain’, for instance, has no click track but has signals for major changes followed by a four beat pip sound counting down to the change.
Mark’s technical hub feeds a series of stereo audio feeds to our dedicated mix engineer, Zoe Martin, front of house. This is where final balancing takes place and where the live mics from the drums meet the direct audio from the band and the final sound is fed to the PA speakers.
It’s an intricate setup, but it’s served us very well over many years. One of the exciting things about it, is its ability to change all of our sounds in an instant, sometimes in the middle of a song where a whole new palette is called for. In any concert there are almost a hundred patch changes shooting across the stage, keeping the recorded tracks and our live performance in sync with the video on the screens above.