Ricky LiveMartin Ricky Martin came to Australia recently, leaving jelly-kneed women (and certain men) piling up in drooling heaps in his wake. Rob ‘Cubby’ Colby is probably the best FOH engineer in the world to ensure 10,000 people a night got their hips swivelling. Christopher Holder experiences ‘la vida loca’. ob ‘Cubby’ Colby is not a man who’s risen to the top of the live sound heap by big-noting himself. It’s harder to recall a more humble, unassuming guy. Not to say he hasn’t a lot to brag about. When you’ve got performing leviathans like Prince and Phil Collins/Genesis on your CV you know Cubby’s done a lot right to be so high up in anyone’s unofficial international front of house engineer ‘Top 10’. RWhen I discovered that Cubby was doing sound for Ricky Martin, I have to admit, it made me rethink my preconceptions of the latin teenie-crooner. This must be a serious tour! And it is. Ricky and his entourage are serious about the sound and giving their audience value for money. There’s no skimping on the gear and the musicians. If they can employ a musician to tickle a bell-tree or whack a wood block, they’ve done it – barely a sample to be found. While in Australia the production availed themselves of Jands Production Services and their brand new L-Acoustics V-DOSC system. I was able to catch up with Cubby for a chat about the improvements in live sound and the techniques that take advantage of those improvements. Cubby had a few things to get off his chest as well, which makes for some interesting reading! Christopher Holder: I was surprised to see that Ricky had brought the best part of the Rio Carnavale on the road. This is a full- Latin leviathan: The Ricky Martin rig weighed in at a hefty 36 tonnes. Note the two V-DOSC arrays. on ‘Mambo King’ ensemble isn’t it? Award nights, but did a big latin ensemble like this Cubby Colby: Initially I was very surprised as well. present you with a few surprises? Certainly the integrity of the music is all live. Admittedly CC: Latin music, as a rule, is very busy in terms of per- there’s a smattering of sampled drums, but even those are cussion, piano, brass, and has a solid drummer, and bass triggered live by the drummer, there’s no sequenced lines. The challenge is to keep everything in perspective. material. We’ve got three live horn players, percussionists, You have to ensure the drums don’t become predominant even a sitar player! and get in the way of all the percussion – you need lots of CH: So is there a click track? space left to flesh out that percussion. But what’s interest- CC: There is a click track but just to establish the meter ing about Ricky Martin is that his music borrows much of the tune, which the drummer follows and then the click from the latin influences but there’s a lot of conventional disappears. It’s certainly not triggering SMPTE timecode, rock’n’roll going on as well. For example, Livin’ La Vida and it’s not triggering anything video-wise. That’s all done Loca has a latin feel to it but it’s not straight out latin stuff, manually. whereas Maria Maria is more pure latin and requires a lot CH: I know you’ve done a number of Latin Billboard more attention to the percussion. For example, in Maria Ricky Martin Staging at Colonial Stadium. Edward Shirley Staging were contracted to the car park is built underneath the surface accordingly to its demands. We changed the provide the staging for the Colonial Stadium playing area where the concert was sitting.(It shape of the roof from the regular ESS 24m by show in Melbourne. Iain Barclay explains would not be cost effective to build a car 18m dimensions to 24m by 24m, a 33 percent some of the unusual demands of the park that is strong enough to hold up the increase – but still supported on only four concert: occasional Ricky Martin show when it is towers which enabled vastly improved sight “I think what soon became apparent was this perfectly fine the rest of the time.) By far the lines. was a very large scale show, definitely the most efficient way of solving the problem was “I should add that despite the extra materials biggest tour in the world at that time. The rig to get ESS in when they needed to back and extra workload we were able to meet the was huge, there was 36,156kg hanging from prop. We had to go in to the carpark and schedule. The stage was up and ready in two the roof of the stage, then added to that were erect eight blocks of scaffolds to relieve the 12 hour shifts and then cleared the morning moving set pieces weighing a good two excess stresses – basically we were keeping after by 11:30.” the stage from falling into the carpark! tonnes in total. This weight presented real Edward Shirley Staging Australia: (02) 9666 problems in itself. Colonial Stadium, as with “Also, given this was the first V-DOSC tour 9566 other world class venues such as the we’ve seen in Australia and the huge Ricky Amsterdam Arena, is structured such that Martin Rig we needed to tailor the staging 33 Maria there’s a little bell sound that plays a syncopated really good go at their own proprietary sound systems: rhythm, that’s what the dance step is based on, so you’ve the Prism system, Clair’s S4 the P4, the EAW stuff, the got to keep things out of the way so it can be heard. If Meyer rigs, the EV X-Array – it’s all been very good. But those little latin punctuations get swamped, it would this has been the most impressive set up that I’ve walked become a straight 2/4 meter. up to and enjoyed mixing on. Even just for that vocal CH: Is there anything more to it technically than low/mid to midrange clarity that really comes to you – keeping your fingers on the faders? you don’t have to work hard at getting it there. And CC: Technically, it is about balancing. because there’s such an even coverage. You’ve got the two CH: But what about panning and effects, do you use columns giving 180 degree coverage, and it’s so seamless quite a bit of that to create more space in the mix? top to bottom. CC: Certainly. And this is something that the V-DOSC rig CH: Does that translate to being quite an easy system allows you to do more than in the past. For example, if I to consistently get sounding good in any shape room? had all the percussion laying on top of all the drums CC: When I set up a rig, I don’t do a lot of hunting and coming down the centre, along with the bass and all the pecking in the graphic stuff – with anybody’s PA I just try keys, well, I’d be up against it. So, if the keyboards are and get the most out of it, and get the funny room char- positioned stage right, then that’s where my panning’s acteristics out of the system if I have to. But the V-DOSC going to be – not full right, but more like 2 o’clock on the stuff is just instantaneous. You turn it on, (I have my own pan pot – that way you have a sense of hearing them in vocal mic I use and I have a couple of reference tracks I perspective. The same goes for the guitar players; I match listen to), and it’s just all there, right off the bat. their position on the stage. No instrumentalist is up the Compared to the American or the European V-DOSC middle unless they’re taking a solo. So you’re creating a shows, the Australian gigs just mean a different serial left, right and centre depth, with bass, kick drum, snare number on the back of the box. Similarly, I’ve heard them drum and Ricky’s vocal being right in front. with Crown amps, I’ve heard them with Crest, and the CH: I noticed the horns really have some width in the Camco amp, I’ve heard them with the L-Acoustics amp – mix, how do you achieve that? and they’ve all sounded very good. I’ve gone from indoor CC: I’ve always used a certain technique with live horns: I arenas of 20k, to big domes of 30k to outdoors that were pan them hard left, and feed an aux bus into anything 40k, and I’ve only needed to adding delays. between a 25ms and 40ms delay, which is panned hard CH: Do you hang additional arrays to use as your right. So you get a really wide horn sound. It’s not delayed delays or conventional stacks? enough to detract from hearing it properly, but enough to CC: For all of the inner coverage, the first 20k people I give this big sound, which makes such an impact when use the main arrays. Then mostly I’ve used another three you hear it. There are three horn guys up there trying to arrays to address the remainder of the audience.