LIVESOUND showcase
El Camino on the Road
By Jonathan Brudner
On March 22, people all types, sizes, races, socioeconomic backgrounds and genders congregated in New York City’s Madison Square Garden for one binding purpose: to have their faces
melted off by the Black Keys. In rapid-fire succession, guitarist Dan Auerbach, drummer Patrick
Carney and company tore through so many fuzzed-out blues riffs and handclap choruses from
their new album, El Camino, that surely somewhere up in the ether, Marc Bolan was shedding
a joyful tear of glitter.
The Black Keys’ meteoric rise
began in Akron, OH, and the Buckeye State has left an indelible mark
on the band. Not only is it touring
with Highland Heights, OH-based
Eighth Day Sound, but FOH engineer Jason Tarulli himself is an
Ohioan: “We’re all from Akron. I
was in bands when they were starting up,” he said. It wouldn’t be long
until he entered the band’s life. “Pat
and Dan had a small recording studio around the time they were recording Rubber Factory, and that’s
when I met them. They would play
at a place called the Lime Spider,
which is where I worked. That was
around 2003-4; eventually in 2008, I
started touring with them.”
With no formal training, Tarulli
learned how to mix while working
Akron’s clubs, and even though he’s
now mixing for arenas, he hasn’t let
go of that DIY attitude: “Coming
up in small clubs, you have to work
with what’s given to you. You just
KENNY SUN/CREATIVE COMMONS
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The Black Keys headlined New York City’s Madison Square Garden, playing into a bevy of
Shure microphones.
have to roll with it; so it’s important
not to rely on your favorite mic being there every day. It’s nice, but you
can’t always rely on that.”
Working with the band since
then, Tarulli has seen things change
dramatically for the group’s shows—
and that in turn has been a major
change for himself too, moving up
from mixing club gigs to sold-out
concerts in major arenas. “It’s surreal, but awesome,” he said. “I didn’t
really feel behind the curve coming into it though, because we’ve
been thrown into so many situations
along the way. Also, I live in Akron, an hour away from Eighth Day
Sound, and they let me go in there,
tinker around with the consoles, talk
to the PA designers and things like
that, so I had a feel for what was
happening ahead of time.”
With the band now carr ying
production, Tarulli mixes daily on
a DiGiCo SD10. “I used an SD7
in 2009 for the first time, paired up
with a d&b J system, which is a great
rig. Those two together really stuck
out and sounded great, and that was
something I remembered when it
came time to start spec’ing out what
kind of PA to take out on tour. It’s
really flexible, having the digital capability of both tracking and digital
playback. It actually sounded better
than other digital consoles that we
used.”
As the audiences and venues get
larger, so has the PA system; it is the
largest rig that Tarulli and the band
have worked with: “There’s a d&b
J rig, there are some Lake processors, and a Smaart system. Our lead
audio tech, Chez Stock, takes care of
all that for me during the day. I work
with her to make sure everything’s
good. It’s 12-14 J12s per side, with
6-8 JSubs, along with J8 side fills.”
Synonymous with the Keys is
their vintage sound. They often eschew modern equipment in favor for
older, warmer guitar amps, and Tarulli sees his job as making sure their
sound and vision comes through
without the whistles and bells associated with a lot of modern acts.
“I’m not there trying to make a lot
of changes to the way they sound,”
he said. “I’m trying to keep it as
true as possible. One thing I do focus on is trying to make the drums
sound as huge as possible. There’s so
much going on in their world with
fuzz pedals, delays and vibratos, I
let them do their thing. It’s mostly
just compression and some gates on
drums.”
Capturing what’s happening on
stage, Tarulli primarily uses mics
from Shure (the band is endorsed
by the company). Accordingly, all
the vocal mics are SM58s, except for
the bassist, who’s on a Beta58. Otherwise, SM57s can be found across
the stage. “For a live sound, I’m always going to rely on it,” Tarulli said.
“There isn’t a single thing you can’t
use that mic for; in a pinch, just
put a 57 on it and you’ll be fine.”
(continued on page 59)
[
April 2012
]
LIVESOUND showcase
The Black Keys
(continued from page 46)
With that in mind, every guitar amp
is captured with a combination of
Palmer DIs and SM57s, except for
Auerbach’s Victoria amp, which gets
an SM7. Meanwhile, the bass rig is
outfitted with a Sennheiser MD 421.
The drums also utilize Shure mics,
with some SM81s for overheads, Beta 57s on and under the snare, and a
Beta 91 in the kick drum. “We also
use an Audix D6 in the kick drum
as well, and Sennheiser 904s on the
toms.” Rounding out Tarulli’s love of
57s, the mic is also placed on Carney’s cowbell—a rock ’n’ roll staple.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the Black Keys’ stage setup
is the three guitar amps that Auerbach has lined up in succession, facing out to the side of the stage. “It
makes it difficult,” Tarulli allowed.
“The guitar amps are blasting into
each other, making for poor isolation—along with some weird phasing issues.” So why do they do it?
What’s the meaning behind this sonic monolithic setup? “Pretty much,
that’s just to keep the singer from
getting his head ripped off by his
own amps,” Tarulli deadpanned.
Monitor engineer Fabian Quiroga noted, “It’s one of the toughest
things to get used to. When I first
came into this gig, I had three amplifiers facing at me. It gets really loud.
In Europe, it was really bad because
we would go from doing a huge stadium stage to doing a 20-foot stage,
so the amps would be right there.
Sometimes you have to be careful
because you try to overcompensate
what’s coming from those amplifiers. But it’s something I’ve gotten
used to.” If there’s any monitor engineer who can handle the din coming
from the stage, it’s Quiroga. Mixing
at church since he was 13, Quiroga’s
long resume includes working with
the Harlem Globetrotters and the
circus. After hooking up with Eighth
Day, he worked with artists as diverse as Tom Jones and Chris Brown.
Mixing monitors on a DiGiCo
SD8, while working primarily with
d&b M2 wedges, Quiroga is beginning to introduce personal monitors on stage as well. “We’re making
the transition slowly,” he said. “This
last run, since we’ve been adding so
many more elements, and there’s
so much background vocals from
(touring musicians) John Wood and
Gus Seyffert, I put them on Ultimate Ears UE-18s as well as wedges.
Dan has two M2s, plus a B2 and
two Q10s for side fills. Pat is using
two Q Subs plus a C7 top as and
[
April 2012
]
Holding down the fort for the Black Keys’ audio are (l-r): Jason Tarulli, FOH engineer; Chez Stock, crew chief/house engineer; and Fabian
Quiroga, monitor engineer, all alongside the DiGiCo SD10 at front of house.
he also had a B2 and two Q10s for
sound reinforcement.”
Quiroga’s stage mix for the Black
Keys reflects the band’s evolving
sound and tastes—with more nuance in their explosive sound, a lot
more is getting put into the mix:
“The taste of the band has changed
for what they want in monitors,” he
said. “Things are a little more keyboard heavy right now, so they’ve
been asking for that. In the side-
fills, I’m blasting a lot of keyboards.
I complement a lot of guitars on
Pat’s side and just try to compliment
what’s not coming directly from
their mixes. They have a little bit of
everything.”
With a world tour that isn’t letting up until January of next year,
Tarulli and Quiroga have a lot of
work ahead of them. But the Black
Keys haven’t really stopped moving
and growing since they formed in
vitalstats The Black Keys
Eighth Day Sound (Highland Heights, OH)
Band Engineer:
Jason Tarulli
Monitor Engineer:
Fabian Quiroga
Crew Chief/House
Engineer:
Chez Stock
Monitor Speakers:
d&b Audiotechnik M2, B2, Q10, C7,
QSubs
Personal Monitors:
Shure PSM; Ultimate Ears UE-18
House Amplifiers:
d&b Audiotechnik
Systems Engineer:
Monitor Amplifiers:
Assistant Engineer:
FOH Equipment/Plug-Ins:
FOH Console:
Monitor Equipment/PlugIns:
Carl Popek
Bryan Procuck
DiGiCo SD10
Monitor Console:
DiGiCo SD8
House Speakers:
d&b Audiotechnik J8, J12, JSub, B2,
Q10
2001. Releasing almost an album a
year, a frantic energy pervades everything about them. Their songs
are loud and heavy, and their music
ubiquitous (it’s hard not to watch
TV and hear a song or two of theirs
of a show or a commercial). Eight
hours before show time, Tarulli and
Quiroga sat in one random room
in the caverns of MSG, the walls
adorned with posters from past entertainers who graced the world’s
most famous venue. Tarulli paused
for a minute and then said, “They
are the same people today that
used to tour small clubs all across
the country, and they haven’t really changed too much.” He reclined
a little further into his chair, and
smiled to himself. “They just happen to be huge rock stars now.”
Eighth Day Sound
8thdaysound.com
DiGiCo
Digiconsoles.com
Shure
shure.com
d&b Audiotechnik
Waves
Lake Processors; Rational Acoustics
Smaart
Microphones:
Shure SM57, Beta57, Beta58,
SM7, Beta91, SM81; Palmer DI;
Sennheiser 421, 904; Audix D6
There’s more 5 Check out
fan-shot video of The Black Keys
tearing through “Lonely Boy”
at Madison Square Garden at
prosoundnetwork.com/apr2012.
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