The EM Poll

Five-String Wizard

Mar 13, 2008 4:29 PM, By Jon Chappell

           

BELA FLECK TAKES THE BANJO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE

Spotlight Sharing

Fleck is quick to acknowledge the high level of his supporting talent, both in the core of the Flecktones — the Wooten brothers and Jeff Coffin — and the distinguished and recurring guests that regularly grace his live shows. Live at the Quick documents and celebrates some of the most successful and popular cameo appearances: Andy Narell on steel drums, Paul McCandless on oboe and saxes, and Paul Hanson on bassoon, as well as the more exotic exploits of Sandip Burman on tabla and the throat singing of Congar-ol Ondar. It might seem daunting just to play along with such virtuosic and diverse individuals, let alone mold them into a cohesive ensemble, but Fleck has developed his own approach to directing: “I don't tell them what to play so much as I might tell them when to play,” he says. “I might say, ‘Play the pocket and then when it's time to jam, do whatever you want.’ I may have them take five or six passes.”

Or Fleck will simply tell them when to enter and exit, and that's often enough. “I do have a very clear sense of that as we do start to play a song,” he says. “I'll be able to say, ‘Leave some space. Don't play all the parts.’ There's ten guys onstage, after all, so you need to come and go. Or, ‘I think you should stick with the melody here and take off there. Can you fill in chords here?’ Or Paul [Hanson] has this pedalboard that allows him to play whole chords with the bassoon. So it might be, ‘Do your chord backup stuff here.’ And that's how rehearsals go. As you know what each person does really well, you can just say at a rehearsal, ‘Oh, you should be doing that thing that you do that's really cool.’ And not, ‘Play this note, play that note.’

“You know, being a leader is a funny position,” continues Fleck. “Often the people you're with are more than your equal. I've been playing with people like that — Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, Branford Marsalis — all my life. The interaction might be equal, but often the player is more than my equal. You're just the leader today. Tomorrow they could be the leader. I try let people do what they do best.”

In that egalitarian attitude may lie the key to a larger principle that makes Béla Fleck's ensembles so unique and successful: he knows how to put musicians together and then let things happen. For Fleck, the creation of a viable ensemble doesn't mean just throwing together a bassoonist, a throat singer, and a steel drummer. It's gathering a group of kindred spirits who are bound to inspire each other, regardless of their chosen instrument. Says Fleck, “I find musicians I love and then figure out how to make it work. I never had any preconceived notion about playing with a bowed bass or soprano sax or synth drums or electric bass, but I did love Edgar, Jeff, Future Man, and Victor. I used to follow the philosophy of ‘Learn from the masters.’ Now I learn from people I play with. And I'm still learning from those guys. I learn something every day of my life from playing with them.”

The House of Flecktones

Richard Battaglia is the Flecktones' Grammy-winning front of house engineer as well as the band's tour manager. He's an acoustic-music veteran, having worked with the Flecktones since their inception and before that with the influential and pioneering New Grass Revival.

What are the particular challenges that front of house engineers face in sound reinforcement for acoustic musicians?
The primary issue is balancing miked signals with pickup signals. No acoustic musician in his right mind enjoys the sound of his pickup, and that's what we've been working on all these years: combining a mic and pickup into one great sound. It's the musician's desire to hear the acoustic part of the sound, but it's the engineer's job to get it out to the audience.

FOH engineer Richard Battaglia

How do you combine the miked sound and pickup sound on Béla's banjos?
We built these little mini condenser mics and mounted them onto the instruments and then combined them with the pickup. I spent a couple of years working out a preamp with D.I. capabilities, which is called the ACH-104. It's a single-rackspace stereo preamp, and the concept is that you combine the pickup and mic into a single stereo jack at the end pin of the instrument. You then take a stereo ¼-inch cable out of the jack and plug it in to the preamp, which splits the signals in the preamp. You can then add EQ to the mic or pickup separately and send the signals out separately from the preamp over separate outputs or combine them. It's got six outputs — XLR outs and ¼-inch outs — plus patch loops, EQ, a tuner output, and a mute switch. The pickup signal goes to the monitor, the house gets mic and pickup. I've made about 80 of these, and a lot of folks are using them: Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Sam Bush, Emmylou Harris, Bernie Leadon, and Mark Shatz. I hope to be manufacturing them soon.

What is the blend of mic-to-pickup in the house?
Almost an equal blend.

What are the advantages of the pickup sound for the house, as opposed to just a straight mic?
It's punchy. The pickup gives the banjo the sound that will cut through, and that allows you to turn it up. It's got all of that, it just doesn't have the air the mic does. But to be able to combine the two sounds gives you a really fat acoustic signal.

How has the Flecktones' wireless in-ear monitoring approach evolved?
We've been doing wireless monitors for quite a long time. We jumped in early — when everything was really expensive. [Laughs] It had mostly to do with making it easier for Béla to turn up without his banjo feeding back into his stage monitors. That was a big move for the acoustic side of it. We've now got it to the point where about a year ago we did a bluegrass festival with Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Béla, Stuart Duncan, and Bryan Sutton. All great players. We had great mics on stage and used no pickups whatsoever. And we were able to get a great sound onstage, all because we used in-ear monitors. And because the musicians were able to hear the actual miked sounds, not just the audience, that made it all the more enjoyable for them.