Justin Timberlake Tour Takes On ‘Tomorrow’

New York, NY (January 13, 2025)—Justin Timberlake tears through more than two-dozen songs every night on his Forget Tomorrow world tour, lighting arenas ablaze with his tasty amalgamation of pop, R&B and dance music. Throw in eye-popping production, a 10-piece band, a half-dozen dancers and hits from across his nearly 30-year career, and it’s easy to see why the tour has played to sold-out crowds nightly since kicking off in Vancouver, B.C., last April. More than a million fans will have been entertained by the time the tour wraps up this summer in Paris, 15 months and 117 shows after it began.

Throughout the journey, Montreal-based Solotech has provided audio, and manning the FOH console at every show has been veteran engineer Jaymz Hardy-Martin III. The production marks his first time mixing Timberlake, joining a well-established team that has worked with the artist on multiple tours, but Hardy-Martin has likewise worked with musical director Adam Blackstone, touring MD Justin “Bishop” Gilbert and monitor engineer Jon Kooren over the years as well. “I also knew the drummer, the background singers and I went to college with the horn players,” he said. “Because I knew a lot of the other people, it was very easy to fit in and to make everyone and the artist comfortable.”

Of course, the key to keeping an artist comfortable is to create a mix that brings the excitement on stage to every seat in the house with impact and musicality; that meshes perfectly with Hardy-Martin’s mixing philosophy: “I’m there just to make the sound come to life,” he said. “I don’t put myself on the mix; I just want to make what you have sound great live in any environment. I always start simple and then add only as needed. You always start with just the board; we’re sitting on a $100,000 console, so how much outboard gear do you really need?”

As a result, the FOH position is carefully thought-out, and while there’s a Waves server and a pair of outboard Bricasti reverbs onhand, most of the heavy lifting is done inside the DiGiCo Quantum 338 console: “I haven’t gone into any situation where I was not able to accomplish it on a DiGiCo. I’m using a 338 because I don’t need a Quantum 5 or 7. I do bussing and parallel compression a little bit, because you can do it right there on the desk; and because I’m getting older, I love the way the screens pop and are a little easier to see—I’m trying to move fast; I don’t have time to squint!”

Much of Hardy-Martin’s sound comes from considered miking, starting with putting the singer on a standard Shure 58—a move that surprised even the engineer himself. During rehearsals, he recalled, Timberlake borrowed the choreographer’s 58 to speak for a moment: “He sounded like when I talk to him in person, so I said, ‘Well, that’s the mic’—that makes it more personal for the fans, because even though you’re in an arena with 20,000 people, you feel like you’re talking to him one-on-one. I have the Waves F6 [EQ] on Justin, because he has a huge range, from falsetto on ‘Cry Me A River’ to low register on ‘No Angels,’ and I can’t EQ that from song to song, but just F6 and a little bit of compression on him, and the 58 is perfect.”

With both a lengthy set on a B stage and a finale that has the singer gliding mid-air above the crowd well in front of the L-Acoustics P.A., Waves PSE is used on the vocal to prevent feedback. There’s also a variety of vocal effects addressed with plug-ins like Manny Marroquin Distortion and Enigma Modulation, but dynamics and EQs for drums, keyboards and the rest are handled inside the console. “My secret sauce, however, is the L3 [Multimaximizer plug-in] on my overall master bus,” said Hardy-Martin. “Put it on that last output and depending how hard you hit it, it brings everything in tighter, a little louder, a little more in your face and clearer.”

Despite all the technology at work, one of the most important meters Hardy-Martin uses isn’t on a screen or in a rack—it’s the fans in the faraway seats. “I’m always looking in the back corner,” he said, “and if it’s one of Justin’s hit songs and that person standing against the wall is dancing, I know it sounds and feels good. Even though we walked up there when the room was empty, everything is still translating, so when I see them moving, I always tell Hilario Gonzalez, my system engineer, ‘We did a good job tonight!”