If the prospect of mixing live sound for a studio-based electronic production duo isn’t intimidating enough, when the set dynamics suddenly go into random mode, the levels veering between drum & bass, dubstep and jungle, the sound engineer needs to depend on the versatility of his desk.
Fortunately the highly experienced Rampton has not only been present during the lifetime of Soundcraft’s Vi6 digital desk but had several tours with one production duo, Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx, notched on the belt by the time he took up with another — Chase and Status — this Autumn.
Rampton had become an early convert to the Vi6 whilst it was being beta tested at London Astoria's LA2 by Rob Barham, several years ago. “Rob did all the work on this and I was well impressed by the desk as he was the first to show me around it.” Afterwards, as house engineer at KOKO, he helped introduce many engineers to Soundcraft’s new digital platform (The Feeling’s Jon Sword and Friendly Fires’ Richard Barling being two).
Further residencies at the O2 Arena’s IndigO2 (a near mirror image of KOKO’s technical infrastructure) and other popular pre-millennium London venues such as Mean Fiddler (with its resident Soundcraft Vienna), Powerhaus and Subterranea underlined his combined love of touring and residency work.
A self-confessed Luddite who never took to the first generations of digital desks, his life was transformed when the Vi6 came along, particularly after the touch screen was introduced.
“I quickly realised that the Vi6 would be the nearest you will get to interacting with an analogue desk — but with all the benefits of digital. Sonically it was excellent, and with a very tactile interface the surface feels like an analogue desk, allowing you to interact with the music better. After only ten minutes on the Vi6 you feel comfortable.”
Recommended to Basement Jaxx by SSE Group’s Miles Hillyard three and a half years ago, he knew he was ready to take the board on the road.
“With Basement Jaxx there’s a lot happening. There are seven or eight different vocalists and the songs segue into each other so any changes to the set are big. I wouldn’t be able to implement this on the fly, or with any degree of finesse, without the Vi6’s snapshot facility. This became the most persuasive element.”
“Once you have your head around the snapshots it’s easy. In tour mode, with minimal pre-production time, snapshots free you up to be creative because you don’t have time to make changes and start fixing things.”
After Basement Jaxx announced they were stopping touring, Rampton moved to Chase and Status following the Good Vibrations Festival in Australia last February where both bands were appearing. “Tour manager Chris Griffiths approached me to say that Mark Kennedy, FOH with Chase and Status, would be returning to Faithless — and so he offered me the tour.”
Seeing the band for the first time, he immediately noted that the show was loud, intense and physical. “Every track is totally different — but again snapshots were imperative as there would be no time to tweak it. The dynamic changes are so much more extreme with some dance bands, compared with guitar bands.”
Rampton was running 30 inputs on the tour — many from world class Bays drummer Andy Gangadeen’s kit — plus six principle vocal channels, warming up the environment with onboard compression and other effects.
One beauty of the desk was that all his inputs were assigned to the console’s first layer, with just two FX returns on the second layer. “Because I have the whole of my show on one surface I can keep the feel of an analogue desk.”
Rampton would start with his nightly routine with a pre-show file, updating the snapshots and saving as a post-show file. “I have the snapshot window automation open the whole time. Then, with the previous day’s show loaded, I will redo every snapshot. It’s such a simple procedure and guarantees continuity.
“As the artist works through the show, the Vi6 gives me the opportunity to save any changed states for any or all of my inputs and to overwrite whichever snapshot I am currently in on the fly. The isolate facility aids this process immensely. I might decide to keep a particular setting on one specific input for consecutive songs so all I need to do is to hit isolate on that channel. Then, on selecting the next snapshot, I can de-select the iso button on that channel and overwrite the snapshot. This takes so little time and is so easy to do, and most importantly, doesn't distract me from the show itself, keeping me focused on the gig.”
The sound engineer is full of praise — both for the help given by SSE’s Miles Hillyard and for the console he so strongly recommends. “Of course the Vi6 is my number one choice — there’s no other desk I’m happy to use. Every aspect of the show I can trust to the Vi6 — it’s just so easy to navigate around and it sounds fantastic. It has never let me down, it is an entirely reliable platform and I love the results I've been getting with it.”
For more information please contact Sound Technology Ltd, Soundcraft's distributor in the UK and ROI, on 01462 480000
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