Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher has made a name for himself mixing music on hit TV shows such as “American Idol,” “The Voice” and award shows such as the Grammy’s and the MTV Music Awards. For the second year in a row, Fletch handled music mixes for the 2012 Billboard Music Awards and opted to test-drive his first DiGiCo console supplied by ATK, the show’s Audio provider.
- “When the opportunity arose for me to use a DiGiCo on the show, I jumped at the chance,” Fletcher said. “Given the choice of an SD10 or an SD7, I went with the SD7 as it had a bigger input capacity… and more flashing lights!”
- As it was his first time on a DiGiCo, Fletch spent a few hours at ATK familiarizing himself with the desk, programming his show template, and then did the rest onsite.
- “The challenge on any live TV show is to always be ahead of the game,” Fletcher said. “I found the SD7 to be easy to program and to get around on in general—which got me where I needed to be time-wise. I liked the onboard effects and stuck to what was available on the console including three reverbs (Warm Hall and Vocal Plate for vocals and Percussion Room for drums) and two delays (one short, one long for vocals) for the show. I loved the multiband compressors and they worked great on vocals.”
- “I liked the flexibility of the fader bank layout, too,” Fletcher said. “I put all my instruments on the left side of the console and had my vocals on the right side. I also put the top layer of vocals in the center section so I could have all 17 vocal mics on the surface at the same time. I used the edit range function to add things to my snapshots such as back up mics that were added after I had rehearsed all the bands and had to be put into all the snapshots. Also, I found the scope functions useful for some production elements that I had to land in my console and needed to be isolated from automation for emergency back up in case the FOH production console encountered a problem. Macros were useful to navigate around snapshots quickly as well.”
- “As it was my first time on the console—and having the time constraints of a live TV show—I didn't get too deep into it, but I’ll have some fun the next time I use one, and I’d be inclined to use one on every show, given the chance.”
