Samyo is one of the leading Indian Youth Orchestra’s from Milapfest. The Samyo orchestra is a group of highly talented young Indian classical musicians who producing music composed by professional mentors.
We have been working with Milapfest for a number of years and have engineered countless events of theirs but 2019 saw the Samyo orchestra return to the Southbank centre, specifically the Queen Elizabeth Hall, following the venues renovation.
Our involvement for this concert was to provide the full concert audio.
Working with the in-house PA and the excellent team at the QEH we provided all other audio equipment to produce this event. With a reasonable input count in the high 50s but wanting to save on transportation weight, we provided an Allen and Heath iLive 112 with an iDR10 onstage. The iDR10 was configured for 64 analogue inputs and 16 analogue outputs.
Microphones onstage consisted primarily of DPA 4099 and 2011C for stringed instruments such as the violins and Sitars, but changing to the Line Audio CM3 for Santoor and Sarod pickup. While not the first choice, we are always impressed by the quality of the CM3.
Veena’s were amplified through DI boxes for those with better pickups or we implemented our Schertler contact mics where the pickup provided isn’t producing the tones we would expect.
Tabla’s and percussion are primarily amplified with SM57s, but DPA 4099s also work brilliantly on Mridangam.
Alongside all these instruments was a 10 strong youth choir. We contemplated ambient mic’ing this group however due to the proximity of the orchestra and the distribution of the vocalists in a straight line as opposed to a group, we opted to individually mic with the trusty SM58s, substituting with a DPA d:facto for the solo vocalist.
Monitoring was kept as minimal as possible to keep feedback issues at bay but we still ended up with 10 mixes onstage, all driven from FOH. We used a blend of TW AUDiO C12s and C15s with some M8s and M10s for those smaller areas – all powered by Lab Gruppen PLM12k44 amplifiers.
If you would like to find out more about this event, or how we could help you with a similar event – get in touch using our Contact Page