Several years in the making, Harmony of The Worlds, composed by Satya Hinduja, began as a visionary notion of spatialising and immersing sound all around an audience.
What started with an Orchestra of eight and just four singers, quickly tripled, artistically combining the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a choir, and hundreds of pre-recorded sounds to totally immerse its audience in 360 degrees of musical wellness.
The DiGiCo Quantum 7 was the only digital mixing console on the market with the flexibility and technical capabilities to handle such a project, and controlled by Sound Engineer, Mark Rogers, it delivered flawlessly.
Harmony of The Worlds, conducted by David Murphy, was a free concert held at St Mary’s Church, Luton, created and composed by Satya Hinduja to explore the connection between music and human wellness.
The truly remarkable arrangement of Hinduja’s composition was designed to immerse listeners within the Earth’s resonance and embody the annual journey of the Earth around the sun through sound.
Mark Rogers, Sound Designer and Engineer, began working with Southby Productions on the project in November 2022, when the composition was already complex.
“It was over a hundred tracks of pre-recorded material, sample sounds and electronic sounds, playing off of Logic Pro. So, when we added in the orchestra and choir on top of this, it became a bit of a challenge,” Rogers recalls.
During a week of workshops, developing and experimenting with the composition, it became clear to Rogers and Hinduja that bringing it all together would demand equipment of the highest calibre.
“When we were looking, I remember having a discussion with Chris Jones [of Southby Productions] about what desks we would use,” Rogers continues.
“I know DiGiCo consoles really well and I like them, so I was happy to use them. Originally, we were looking at a Quantum 338, but we rapidly came to the conclusion that this was just not going to be big enough for the scale of the operation.”
Not only was the Quantum 7 Rogers’ professional and preferred choice, but it was also the only mixing console capable of a performance of this scale.
“I think we ended up with 74 auxes on the console, which not many consoles are capable of,” he says. “When Chris said there was a budget for a Quantum 7, I said ‘yes, please!’ I can’t imagine how we could have done it otherwise, frankly it made the job possible.
The concert featured the 24 singers of Synergy Vocals dispersed all the way round the Church, intertwined with an orchestra, loudspeakers, and the audience themselves.
“Because we had about 180 sources of sound, this is where the Quantum 7 came into its own,” Rogers explains.
“It was pretty much a singer, a loudspeaker, a singer, a loudspeaker, all the way around.
“We decided the practical solution was to have some of the pre-recorded tracks sub-mixed in Logic, which would send feeds into the desk inputs, which would then feed into the auxiliary buses.”