Novation leagues ahead on Steel City tour
04-02-2009
Alan Pollard, keyboard tech with the Human League and Björk, reveals how Novation plays its part for both for cutting edge MIDI control and providing the sounds on stage… Keyboard guru Alan Pollard has been involved in high profile gigs for many years and recently completed a mammoth 18-month world tour with Björk. His most recent outing was The Steel City tour which featured three big names from the 80s – Heaven 17, ABC and the Human League – playing to packed venues across the UK. “I’ve been with the Human League for around 12 years,” says Alan. “I’ve been out with them pretty much every year. With this it’s three Sheffield bands going out to make a bigger show and it’s been going down very well. They are not trying to educate people, just playing some great hit records for people to have a good time to.” Alan runs through an on-stage Digital performer-based system which includes two Novation SuperNovas.
“It’s a system that has evolved over time,” he says. “It’s playing the MIDI so all the modules are where the sounds come from. Sometimes there’s a little audio but not much. The Novations do quite a few things. There’s something on every song and it does quite a few of the analogue type sounds, things like The Cat sound in Love Action. It does more of the esoteric stuff and some of the evolving sounds as well. Philip [Oakey] uses Novation gear in his studio too.” This more traditional system MIDI based system is very different from the cutting-edge system that Alan used on the Björk tour. That was so ahead of itself that some of the technology used on stage wasn’t even commercially available! However, Novation still played a big part as Alan reveals. “I had the Remote 25SL to stop and start the songs. There was a firmware issue with MacBook Pros where the first key press wouldn’t do anything. With a lot of her songs the sequences wouldn’t necessarily start at the beginning – maybe she would sing and then the sequence would start. The starts therefore had to be bang on the money and I found the starts and stops are much nicer to do via the Novation keyboards. I also used the faders for mixing and playing a couple of notes. Damian [Taylor, keyboards] used the rack version of the SL extensively, using the faders and knobs a lot more for mixing Ableton Live during the show.” So from providing the sounds on stage to the MIDI control, Novation finds just as many uses on the road as it does in the studio.
