The Tube has to be a major success story in terms of recording bands both live in the studio and on outside broadcast while still being able to retain that spontaneous element which is missing from pre-recorded programmes like Top of the Pops.

So successful has the Tube been in this department that many rock and pop shows, be they regional or networked have tried to capture the same spirit with varying degrees of success. Even the notoriously low key Whistle Test did not escape a re-vamping which left it much improved.

To see what makes the Tube into what is probably the most emulated rock and pop show on TV, we trekked north to Newcastle where the show is filmed at Tyne Tees studio on the bank of the river Tyne.

To Southerners, anywhere north of Watford Gap can appear to be a bit of an unknown quantity, but armed with a road atlas and a large packet of Opal Fruits we set off in the trusty Ford into uncharted territory.

Two and a half hours later, in a car littered with sweet wrappers we stopped at a services just outside Sheffield only to discover that we were just half-way there. Undeterred the intrepid H&SR hacks restocked with Opal Fruits and pushed onwards up the A1 until finally Newcastle, that bastion of northern charm, came into view.

At 10am we were met at the studio by Nick Hamilton from the Tube press office who introduced us to Tyne Tees sound controller John Overton. Although John wasn't working on the programme himself that day. They have a rota system and there is no specific crew at Tyne Tees just for the show, contrary to popular belief. He kindly showed us around while everyone else was having a break and explained the basic operation.

The Set-up

On the studio floor, both the band foldback and audience PA is run by Entec in conjunction with Tyne Tees; the mics are split at the stage boxes and the signal sent straight to the two control rooms upstairs to be mixed for transmission. Live in the studio that day were the Art of Noise, Talk Talk, and American Blues artist Robert Cray while outside in the carpark, the Urban Warriors were due to smash up an old Daimler Sovereign. Apart from this there are various video tape inserts, and live interviews to be coordinated. We asked John just how much preparation was involved for Tyne Tees sound.

We first find out on Wednesday morning at the production meeting what bands we have and their channel requirements, and we get a chance to do some patching on Wednesday afternoon, but generally it starts on Thursday morning with an attack on the rat's nest of wires that hangs from the patchbay! It's on Thursday that the gear and later on the bands arrive, although it has been known for a band to turn up as late as Friday afternoon if they've been playing a concert the night before, and this means a last minute rush for the crew. We try and soundcheck on Thursday afternoon, and then Friday from about midday is taken up with camera run-throughs, soundchecking late arrivals, and filming inserts for this and later programmes.

Control Rooms

The two control rooms used by the Tube are surprisingly small; the main one is adjacent to the studio floor itself and Studio one is situated in an older part of the building. Calrec desks are used in both, but although they are automation-capable, they don't have the computer package; it probably wouldn't get used on a live show like the Tube anyway. John first showed us into control room one.

This studio is usually set up for another programme, but today Tyne Tees were using the Calrec 32-8 augmented by an Alice 10-2 desk purely for the Art Of Noise. Some of the channel listings looked pretty odd, and were obviously the names of Fairlight samples, 'Bing Crosby' in particular caught the imagination and we found ourselves looking forward to what the Art of Noise had to offer on the programme that evening.

Evidence of the co-operative approach Tyne Tees take towards the bands in the studio could be seen in the choice of outboard gear: a Korg digital voice processor for the backing vocals and an AMS reverb which the Art Of Noise had brought up themselves were sat alongside Tyne Tees' own Yamaha REV7 on which a vocal plate programme was selected.

But was anyone familiar with the band's material allowed into the control room: a producer or engineer for instance?

We allow them into the control room certainly, to offer advice, because they obviously have a much better idea of how the band want to sound. Generally we can only get to hear the band once before we go on air, although we do beforehand have cassettes made of their playing and that gives us a chance to see what they're aiming for.

Studio one monitoring is courtesy of JBL 4315s which have been equalised to suit the room and when a mix is set up, a mono feed from this studio is sent to the main control room. Everything looked as if it was running smoothly but when we spoke to sound engineer Chas later in the day he revealed that they'd had a few problems.

There was chaos yesterday. The Fairlight broke down and the mic list differed to the one they wanted. This was a real bummer, and happens quite frequently because, although Colin (Rowell) gets the listings on Wednesday, the bands often change things around on Thursday. They originally wanted eight channels out of each Fairlight so we got them down to four out of one and five out of the other, which I've sub-grouped. We also had to ditch a few effects off each, but we managed, and the band are happy now.

Main Control Room

The main control room desk curves in a 'C' shape around the engineer, and consists of both horizontal and vertical control panels. With 60 channels into sixteen groups, and eight VCA subgroups. Versatility is the name of the game and they can have two separate band mixes set up (when we were there it was Talk Talk and Robert Cray), as well as control of video tape sound, presenters' mics, and talkback. The Calrec has bar graph monitoring on the groups which they find easier than having 16 VUs and John Overton told us that the desk could easily be wired for multitrack record and playback.

The sweep EQ on each channel starts at the bottom with 50-600Hz, offering a boost or cut of 8-10dB, then 250Hz-3kHz, with a similar range. Mid-range is 450Hz to 5.5kHz, and on top there is 950Hz-12kHz, with a roll-off pot at the bottom and top end, Q control and phase switching.

Contained within the console in a vertical control panel to the right of the engineer are ten compressor/limiters with bar graph input meters, and to the right of this the patchbay with its 'rat's nest' of leads.

Back on the main desk we find that each channel has a phantom power switch on it, and Tyne Tees prefer this independent switching facility because with so many jacks to patch, it's quite easy to go across the wrong one and get an awful crack on the desk. The two stereo foldbacks and four mono foldbacks are equipped with peak meters. There's also an 8-channel audience sub-mixer linked to microphones: usually Calrec condensers, suspended above the audience which is fed to one fader, obviously an important consideration on a live programme.

As the sound nerve centre, how do you keep in touch with what's going on?

We're able to hear talkback from presenters, boom operator, video, and all the rest of the sources via hand-held and headset mics. We're also able on foldback to talk to various areas, for instance, foldback four is going to the green room and there's a speaker in there for rehearsal, obviously we wouldn't use it on transmission but for rehearsal it's valuable. On the studio floor we're in touch with the audience PA operator who's on the Soundcraft desk via a headset.

For outboard equipment they have a couple of Yamaha REV7s which everyone spoke of very highly, and also an AMS RMS16. In addition to these there are two EMT reverb plates downstairs. However, as in Studio one, bands often bring their own effects units and sound engineer Gary Nattrass recalls seeing them stacked high to the right of the console.

What a lot of people don't know is that the sound is actually transmitted live to Channel Four at Charlotte Street and recorded there. It's then sent back up the networks to all the regions so it's done a bit of travelling before it gets to the TV.

Main Control Room Monitoring

A pair of Tannoy Super Reds are used with a single Fostex 6301 powered monitor mounted on the desk top as that is the closest reference for TV speakers that they presently have. We asked John if he was happy with the performance of the Super Reds in a room of this size.

Having just used a response analyser in here in the last few days the room copes quite well and the speakers work well in it. The bands seem to be happy, and the SRM12s have been here since we opened the studio and I think they produce a reasonable sound.

With such good monitoring do you ever wish that you could work in stereo?

I think so. Agreements on a format for stereo TV are being thrashed out at the moment. Hopefully, it's just around the corner. I went to Germany last year as part of an ITCA group looking into the whole business of stereo broadcasting. The Germans are already doing it and I heard the whole range of programmes, and I think stereo enhances all of those but they're using a different transmission system to the one that I think the British will eventually use.

One of the main problems from the sound engineers point of view is the difference in the monitoring between Studio One and the main control room. The JBLs are hard sounding with a tight bottom end, whereas the Tannoys tend to be softer, and this can make life difficult if moving from one studio to another.

Studio Floor

The Tube studio is not as big as it appears on TV. A clever set, lots of movement, and the use of wide angle lenses all conspire to produce the programme we eventually see. As regular viewers will know, the surroundings change from week to week, but when we were there three stages and a large screen surrounded the audience area with the set: pillars, spiral staircases and scaffolding somehow cleverly contriving to merge in. All the gear was set up and everything looked ready to go. John explained:

There's usually a fourth stage where the screen is. We identify all the stages as North, East, West and South. Apart from the main studio area, some parts of the programme are filmed in an area called the Green Room which usually has a set in it: either a bar or a living room. This is more often than not used for an interview so there are four mics plus a spare one there, but bands have been known to play in the room too. A real pub, called The Egypt Cottage, which adjoins the Tyne Tees studio has also been the scene of filming and they've used practically every area in the building I think, the boiler room the medical room, the producers office, and the Tube office. I have a loom of 14 cables ready to go in to cover microphone requirements and today it's being used for the Urban Warriors in the car park outside.

You also use radio mics.

Yes, but generally we try to get cables in if it's upstairs because the building, as you've noticed, is like a big metal box and radio mics don't work too well far from the studio. If we were using radio mics we'd certainly cable a mic as a spare.

I found out that the presenters' radio mics used on the show were Microns and the signal from them is received on two aerials placed strategically outside the main control room adjacent to the studio. However, these microphones have occasionally been known to go wrong with a resultant burst of white noise which can be an embarrassment on live TV.

The show has seven cameras, four mainlines, and three Sony portable hand held ones. The latter have proved to be a trademark of the show, enabling their controllers to get up on stage and move amongst the artists or follow Jools, Paula and Muriel around the building for various features and interviews.

It was now lunchtime, and we were assured that after lunch things were really going to get busy in the studio and control rooms as part of the build-up to the programme going on the air at 5.30. We sensibly decided to adjourn to the pub with the sound team.

After talking to the crew it became apparent that one of the success stories of the Tube involves the close partnership engineered by Stage Manager Colin Rowell between Tyne Tees and the Entec PA company. Colin commands a lot of respect in both camps and, as the link between the rock world and the world of Television is tenuous to say the least, it's no mean feat that he's managed to bring the two together. Colin directed us to Entec's man on the spot, Chris Trimby, who spoke to us about the PA company's involvement in a break during the Art Of Noise soundcheck.

Entec

Entec were brought in at the beginning of the second series mainly because each band were bringing their own resident company, and it was just mayhem. One week there happened to be three Entec systems in and Colin Rowell saw that this was a lot more organised so from then on Entec got the job. All the mics are split at the stage box. The foldback mixers (one per stage) get one half and the control rooms upstairs get the other half.

This means that Entec control not only the sound for each band on stage but also the choice of microphones, and their positions unless the band bring their own engineer who specifically requests certain gear. Chris is quick to point out that there's a spirit of co-operation between Entec, Tyne Tees and the specific needs of the bands.

It's always a case of give and take. You have to have a marriage. When we first came in here there was a thing about rock 'n' roll people coming into television and vice versa, and normally the way that we work is a lot faster and harder, but after about three months it all settled down and I might as well be an employee of Tyne Tees now. On Monday and Tuesday I'm in the Entec office in Shepperton and I phone round the bands and talk to either the tour managers, their resident engineers or producers and make a channel listing, what effects they might want to use and then they can either bring their own in or subhire from us. The standard effects we have are reverb and echo because on stage the sound is a bit flat and a bit of reverb on the snare and vocals brightens things up no end.

We arrive in Newcastle on Wednesday afternoon, find out the stage positions for each band then rig the stages and make sure everything's working. After the Tyne Tees guys knock off at about 6pm we make all the horrible noises to get rid of any screeches and rings in the system. The bands come in on Thursday so everything should be 90% ready. Friday is basically for camera run throughs, unless a band has come in late.

How versatile is the system?

Monitor systems are a lot more sophisticated than they used to be because bands are wanting to hear a front-of-house mix on the stage so the desks we use are standard DDA 28:8:2s which have four aux and four foldback sends. It obviously depends on the number of people in the band and how many boxes there are on stage. For the Art Of Noise, we're using nine monitors each with a separate mix, but the most we can get from the DDA desk is twelve.

We've started using the new JBL 15" custom-built wedges with a small radial or peppercorn horn in each, and we're really pleased with them. They're run by Rauch DVT amps and power-wise on the Art of Noise stage today we're talking about 4K if it were running flat out, and about 3K for Talk Talk.

I notice that you're using a lot of Shure SM58s on the vocals.

Yes, we also use Sennheisers and ElectroVoice. Not every band will want the Entec guys to do the foldback mix; they may bring in their own engineer who'll do it for them. Large bands normally carry both front-of-house and monitor engineers, and obviously we'll provide whatever mics they want within reason and try to accommodate them, which leaves our guy free to help out, should anything go wrong. We've got a pool of over 70 mics to choose from. You can go crazy with mics, rigging a spare for a spare and so on. Entec will rig one if they have a radio mic out we have our own radio mics and we have one spare, but nine times out of ten if it's with one of the presenters, by the time you get there it's too late.

JBL

But the Tube also has a live audience in need of a good PA system if they are to respond to the band. Chris explained how this was sorted out.

The studio area looks small, but it's even smaller by the time you start taking things like camera angles and lighting into consideration so JBL designed the compact three and a half kilowatt flown system. It's a 2-way system powered by Rauch DVT250s and consisting of 4612s for mid-range, housing two 12" JBL speakers and 075 super tweeters; the bottom end is handled by JBL 2 x 15s. The idea is that you just take an extra mono group mix off each of the three monitor desks via a sub-group, and this is fed to an 8-channel Soundcraft desk and out to the flown system.

Manning the Soundcraft that day was Tyne Tees man Ken Stevenson who's been with the Tube from the start. His job when the show is on is to control the mono band mix from each stage but he also has a few inputs from the main control room upstairs. These are soundtracks from video which the live audience hear while watching the large screen where video is shown. On video that week were interviews with Canadian hard rock group Heart, a man who claimed to have had tea with Jesus, live footage of 'Then Jericho ' who were filmed in the studio the previous week, and various archive material.

Mic Routing

Signal from the presenters' mics are also sent from the control room upstairs to the Soundcraft on the studio floor so that the audience can hear as well as see what is going on when Jools, Paula or Muriel move to another part of the studio — the green room for instance, to interview someone. As the director sometimes likes to get a shot of audience reaction to events, this can be particularly important. For instance while the Urban Warriors were paradiddling in the carpark outside, on the studio floor Ken was given a mix of the two Sennheiser mics strategically placed to capture the rhythmic destruction of the old Daimler Sovereign parked in Jools Holland's parking space.

In a rack underneath the desk a stereo graphic is used, but also rather interestingly, a howlround reducer the function of which is to lessen the chances of feedback when the presenters are on the studio floor with their radio mics. It works by shifting the pitch of the signal by a few Hz and Ken is able to detect any feedback in the house PA system and counteract it before it gets to the control room upstairs. The final input to the desk is from a disco which runs for the audience's benefit when a long video tape is being shown, or when there is a video tape for which the director does not need to have camera shots of the audience reaction. Sitting alongside the Soundcraft is a 2 x 10 JBL cab for monitoring purposes, and Ken is in constant touch with the main control room via a headset.

By mid-afternoon the studio floor was buzzing with activity as the bands had a final run-through with the cameras, the presenters briefly rehearsed (yes, we were surprised to find this out too!), and some inserts were filmed.

How to get on the Tube

While the sound crew were occupied, we went to talk to Tim Graham, one of the researchers for the programme who deals with relatively unknown bands and asked him the ultimate question — how to get on the Tube?

The principle is that to appear on the Tube you've got to be seen performing live by one of the Tube team. Somebody might send a tape and we like it, or one of our 3-man team could hear about the band or read good reviews. Sometimes we'll go out on the strength of a good review but the proportion of people wanting us to come to gigs and check the band out because they know that's how they can get on the programme is far greater than we can actually manage.

What makes you pick out a particular band?

It's usually whether you like them or somebody else in the team likes them and convinces you, or there could be some sort of whisper going around about the band which we'll get to hear because we've got a lot of contacts. It makes a nice change to get a video from an unknown band. We know they haven't spent a lot of money on it and of course that's taken into consideration. Of course there's the more straightforward route of a record company plugging a band which we all take with a big pinch of salt. At the other end of the scale on one occasion I went down to London to see a band one of my friends told me about, and they were fantastic, so we got them on the programme, but that sort of thing is pretty unusual. (That band were actually Loose Tubes who have been featured in our very own Readers Tapes section, so take heart H&SR readers!)

By the time we'd finished our chat with Tim it was almost time for the programme to start and we then tried to get some sort of perspective on the show from the performers' point of view, because they leave straight after the show. However, we were foiled in our attempts at investigative journalism by the bands themselves who had nothing but praise for the whole set-up, that is, apart from the notoriously (and ironically) silent Talk Talk who had nothing to say at all! So we ended up chatting to Jools Holland who told us that he buys H&SR to read on the train up to Newcastle, and has a studio of his own at home with a B16 and a digital 2-track which he uses mainly for high quality jazz piano recordings. (How about inviting us down to do a feature, Jools? -Ed).

How has the programme changed?

It can have more things on it now. When it first started you couldn't have art and comedy, or jazz much, but it's expanded in those directions.

On the Air

The sound on the studio floor from the JBL system is hard and punchy, and although it's not as loud as some gigs I've been to, it's certainly a more realistic level for band and audience to work and listen to. As far as the camera crew are concerned after the afternoon's run through they know roughly what the director wants and they can operate on and offstage regardless of level. Sound crew chief Ken Stevenson summed it up:

Basically it's a live gig for the bands and we sit in on it.

We found our way up to the main control room while Talk Talk were on and were surprised to find that all the monitoring was being done on the single Fostex. A lot of level was pumping out of this little speaker and we were impressed at the way it handled the volume without breaking up. On the desk Brian Jackson and the band's producer, Tim Friese-Green, had everything well under control. Both were operating the faders and to my mind it does the Tube credit to give so much co-operation to the bands.

Talk Talk were ending the programme but the transmission to Channel Four at Charlotte Street doesn't actually stop until the band finishes the song, even if the Tube is off the air. This means that they can use the whole thing later in Tube specials if necessary.

It has to be said that this programme has managed to get it right. It captures the spontaneity of live performance, and has a lively and varied format of rock, pop, jazz, blues, art and interview. The choice of performers may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there's usually something in each programme for everyone, not to mention the 'specials' like the Heavy Metal bash not so long ago.

On a technical level the main reason why the show works is clearly down to the interaction between Entec and Tyne Tees. It benefits everyone connected with the show in the television centre, and ultimately improves the end result for the viewer. Seeing bands live on TV is much more interesting than watching people mime. So what if there are mistakes! It shows that people are human and detracts from the demand for mechanical perfection currently in favour in the music industry. I suspect that the mistakes, wherever they come from, are a contributing factor to the Tube's success. After all, this is live TV and as John Overton said:

'When we go on the air at 5.30, that's it. It's Russian Roulette really'.