Contestants Reggie ‘N’ Bollie rehearsing with an RME Fireface UCX and Octamic XTC preamp
The RME Fireface UFX, Fireface UCX and Octamic XTC played an important part in this year’s X Factor, ITV’s phenomenally successful Saturday night primetime TV show. Now in its 12th season and with a huge amount of vocal talent on display each year, from the sublime to the comical, the show continues to attract millions of viewers each week.
As you might expect, producing the programme is an extremely demanding operation both technically and logistically. From the early audition stages through to the finals where 13 acts are whittled down to 3 for the final episode, the production team faces a challenging weekly schedule.
With so many artists involved and with only a short space of time between each show, songs need to be chosen, arranged, recorded and rehearsed in time for the live Saturday night performances. And of course, there’s no room for error when you’re producing Saturday night primetime TV!
With such a demanding workflow, it’s no surprise that RME has been chosen for use on the show. Ben King, music researcher for the X Factor, explains how the RME Fireface UFX, Fireface UCX and Octamic XTC are crucial to the weekly rehearsals.
“The interfaces are being used to record the vocals and the piano during ‘routining’, which we send to contestants for them to learn their songs (as we can’t make up tracks for them until the day before soundcheck on Fridays). So all they have to rehearse with are these piano and vocal tracks.
Additionally, the choreographers, studio directors, script supervisors, Simon Cowell, SYCO and THAMES producers all have these piano and vocal tracks to take timings from, plan camera shots, and also listen to hear if they like it. So, pretty important!”
Contestant Mason Noise during ‘routining’
Ben also went on to explain the term ‘routining’.
“Routining is actually a made up word we use – it’s basically where we work out the arrangement of the song the artist wants to sing, then record the vocals with a piano track.
In a way it’s a mix of finding a track the artist likes, working out the two minute arrangement, vocal coaching, mentoring, and recording the vocals with a piano track. Because there’s so much that happens we tend to just call it ‘routining’ but this isn’t an official word, I guess the best word would be rehearsals instead!”
Of course, this is not the first time RME has been specified for X Factor – engineer Dave Moore is also an RME fan and has worked as part of the music team and sound department on almost every series, along with Britain’s Got Talent.
The RME Fireface UFX was used extensively during rehearsals
RME has also featured on previous X Factor contestants’ tours, such as One Direction and Olly Murs, whose engineers chose RME for the reliability and stability that is synonymous with the brand.
Providing unrivalled reliability and stability is what RME has built its reputation on – paramount when producing shows such as X Factor – and this is why engineers around the world working in both music and broadcast have come to rely on RME products.
Our thanks to Ben King, THAMES and SYCO. Congratulations to X Factor 2015 winner Louisa Johnson.
Find out more about the X-Factor show here.
If you’d like to know more about any of the products mentioned in this article, contact us via info@synthax.co.uk or call 01727 821 870 to speak to one of our team or to arrange a demo.