SFL trains with Yamaha

Yamaha recognise SFL's training record and their dedication to teaching others to use their products

'We put a lot of time and energy into training and supporting sound engineers transitioning to digital mixing in the live environment,' said Mark Payne, Managing Director of Yamaha dealers, SFL. So much so that the company has a permanent classroom facility set up at its Reading headquarters where converts to digital mixing can be trained to use Yamaha products, including the latest addition to the Yamaha stable, the M7CL which since its launch at PLASA 2005 has generated huge interest in the industry.

'The classroom has the facility to use material tracked from live gigs so that the engineers get real experience in using the desk,' explained Payne.

'We bought two M7CLs and we've put them to a variety of uses,' said Payne. 'It's a very impressive piece of equipment.'

SFL used one desk to run a master class for drummers at the Rivermead Leisure Centre in Reading which was a huge success. 1500 drummers attended the master class, which was woven around a gig, and was essentially an evening with Deep Purple's drummer, Ian Paice. An M7CL was used to mix for monitors and a Yamaha PM5D for the front of house PA system.

FOH engineer Dave Hutchins, confessed that he was in fact 'Mr Analogue' and had never even seen a PM5D. 'We took him into our training facility and gave him a day's training,' said Payne. 'That's all it took and Dave took to digital mixing like a veteran.'

'One of the M7's first jobs was mixing for corporate tribute band, Legends of Rock who performed at the Renault Motor Sport F1 Team Celebration in early December,' continued Payne. Sound engineer Colin Hounsome used one of the desks for monitors and Simon Kemp used the other mixing PA/FOH through d&b audiotechnik C7 stacks.

'Both engineers were extremely happy with the way the desks performed,' said Payne.

Recently, the company took a PM5D and an M7CL to Derby University to run a Yamaha Digital Mixing seminar where 30 second and third year students on the BSc Live Event Technology course were given the opportunity to get 'hands on' experience. 'We used the same live track system with sync to video that we use in the classroom to let them watch the show as they mixed it,' continued Payne.

As part of the seminar, the students were asked for feedback. 'They were asked to rate their confidence in using a digital desk before and after the seminar, using a scale of 1 (little confidence) to 5 (high confidence),' explained Payne. 'One guy went from 2 to 4 and another had a knowledge increase of 1 to 5.'

All in all, a highly successful day and big contribution to producing some of the industry's future professionals thanks to SFL and Yamaha.