DiGiCo Is The Go-To For David Patridge on Broadway
Renowned sound designer and mixer, David Patridge, worked his first Broadway show in 1989, and has never looked back. Since then, he has worked on a string of eclectic shows, from Mamma Mia! to Kinky Boots. He's just opened much-talked-about off-Broadway production, Gigantic; has done a build-out for Cirque du Soleil's Paramour, which opens in the Spring; and will be working on Tarzan in the Autumn. For all these productions, Patridge looks no further than DiGiCo's SD7T. ARTICLE COURTESY OF HEADLINER MAGAZINE - https://issuu.com/headlinerhub/docs/headliner_13
Renowned sound designer and mixer, David Patridge, worked his first Broadway show in 1989, and has never looked back. Since then, he has worked on a string of eclectic shows, from Mamma Mia! to Kinky Boots. He’s just opened much-talked-about off-Broadway production, Gigantic; has done a build-out for Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour, which opens in the Spring; and will be working on Tarzan in the Autumn. For all these productions, Patridge looks no further than DiGiCo’s SD7T.
Patridge’s first love remains mixing front of house sound, but he also finds sound design very rewarding, as it allows him to collaborate as a creative, being part of the process that brings new musicals to the stage.
“My role as a sound designer is probably about 80% people-skills and psychology, and 20% technical know-how,” Patridge explains. “You need to be sensitive, and attentive to the needs of the performers both onstage, and in the band; and you have to be diplomatic and patient: to be able to cope with almost everyone having an opinion on the sound!”
In today’s industry, Patridge believes that going digital is a complete no-brainer when it comes to mixing consoles.
“Digital may not be quite as warm, but the ability to have programmability is king when doing a large musical; we may be managing 130 input channels and 64 output channels, and being able to accurately set and recall all of that routing, mixing, and DSP power is crucial,” Patridge explains. “That’s why the DiGiCo SD7T has become the number one desk on Broadway and the West End, and will remain there. Furthermore, using the DiGiCo has also reduced our outboard gear drastically: we use all the effects and processing from within the SD7T, including Waves SoundGrid. Our only piece of outboard is a TC6000 reverb system!
“We started using Waves with the SD7T last year, which works great; and moving forward, it is a great problem-solving toolbox. We love the Waves API 2500 compressor, which has an amazingly powerful auto-makeup-gain feature to allow us to colour a vocal or instrument with loads of very musical sounding compression while not suffering wacky gain structure shortcomings.”
The DiGiCo SD7T has become the number one desk on Broadway and the West End, and will remain there
