Hi I'm Andrew Burrows, I am 26 from London England, I am a musical director, drummer and playback technician.
I am the playback tech and keys tech on Girl In Red
This gig relies very heavily on midi, so one of the first things I do once set up is I will always run a midi loop and check on every instrument that I control and ensure it is responding.
We have a mechanical lift during some shows and it is my responsibility to call the timings and adjust the sessions if we are using it or not. The same goes for pyro - I will be the one either controlling or calling it throughout the show.
During the show, Marie (girl in red) will often play on her own before or between songs so I remotely control her patch changes whether it is on the guitar or piano. Timecode is also quite an essential part of any show that uses it so I will always ensure that video and lighting are receiving when we set up the day!
I am using Ableton, iConnectivity and Apollo! I use two PA1Us as aggregate devices for tracks, a distripalyzer for timecode, the apollo is for keys and vocal inputs - I use a PA12 for the outputs for keys/vox as I need 10 lines.
I also use a MioXL for control - we have a MioXM in keys world, drum world and another MioXL in guitar world. All instruments are controlled via midi throughout the show.
We have two laptops for tacks (A/B) which also contains all of the guitar/drum midi automation and one is for keys/vocal processing/midi automation. They are all identical in structure in arrangement view.
Using the the LIOBOX 2 means I only need to edit setlists in one place - and not 3 separate times on 3rd party UIs.
When things change on the fly I can easily scroll through and feel confident I won't falsely trigger anything as it's so robust.
I can customise the controller to make sense to me for this particular show, there are some moments where I need to loop/pause the show which is super easy with this.
I try to encourage any gig I am on to get one - particularly if you have a playback tech or multiple laptops. Being able to jump between different setlists is extremely helpful and it is super easy to scroll through songs on the fly -
I keep a bank of songs that we don't plan to play at the bottom of the list in case we do them, this is where I keep a linecheck, midi check, output check and mute too.
If you are using ableton it is extremely useful, and once set up for the first time I have never needed to work on it again, so for me it is very easy to navigate and use. When I am directing rehearsals, having the view in advanced mode is super helpful as I can easily reference key signatures, BPM and track length, all things that are brought up a lot in rehearsals.
One of my favourite things about the LIOBOX2 is how well it has been built. Being able to see the screen during bright days, a firm press is needed which means no accidents. Being able to customise the controls is brilliant. Big fan
