Chicago, IL (March 28, 2017)—Chance The Rapper has been on a roll in recent months, between taking home three Grammys last month, including Best New Artist; making a memorable Saturday Night Live appearance in December; and a heavy touring schedule that resumes next month. When he’s been on the road—and it’s been a lot lately—his audio team, Kyle Bulmann (Front of House) and Robert Ziemba (Monitors), have been using SSL L300 live consoles, supplied by VER Tour Sound.
Bulmann explained, “I wanted to be able to dial in more color – more character. Even in my initial tests with a few tracks, I was able to tell right away that the sound was top notch, especially the sound of the pre-amps and the effects – the on-board saturation and dynamics were fantastic….and after poking around for a bit, it was obvious that the workflow was fantastic as well. It’s very ‘user-definable’. You’re not stuck operating the console in only one or two ways. I felt immediately at home with the SSL.”
In monitor world, Ziemba has been providing mixes on Chance’s tour for puppeteers, techs, the band, and the video team, but noted, “Even with that much, it didn’t get cluttered or confusing. There was never a problem with anything, and it sounds great.”
The show inputs are 16 channels from the drum kit, dry and FX lines from the trumpet player, four keyboards, six channels of tracks, click, and seven RF mic channels. “With all the talkback and utility inputs, the show ended up being about 60 channels,” explains Bulmann.
He notes that one of his biggest challenges of the tour came from Chance’s dynamic vocal range. “It’s around 40 dB… The real intimate, raspy, soulful singing that he does has a wildly different tone than the powerful hip-hop passages. When he’s rapping, there’s a lot of mid-range in his voice that isn’t there for the more intimate vocals. Being able to feed different processing chains separately via Stems was really helpful.”
Solid State Logic
www.solidstatelogic.com
