03. Marcel Answers: Engineering For Tori Amos

Marcel discusses his long association with Tori Amos from both the studio engineering and more particularly the live sound engineering point of view. This inevitably causes him to contemplate some of the big issues in audio, such as digital versus analogue and the increasingly widespread use of in-ear monitoring systems. He discusses the problems and pitfalls that a monitor engineer can encounter when touring with an artist whose standards are as high as Tori Amos’. Tori is a very talented musician who has amazing hearing as well as extremely high standards. To deliver perfect sound consistently across the world from theatres to arenas, from indoors to outdoors and from solo radio station sessions to full orchestral performances is a daily challenge. Marcel has been engineering the studio work and mixing the live monitors for over twenty years and has had to meet many such challenges. Here, he discusses some of the changes both technological and artistic that he has experienced over the years, the problems caused by and with the vast array of gear he uses and particularly how he has dealt with some of the “showstopper moments” that cause mere mortals to quake in their boots.