What Can You Learn From American Idol’s Playback Rig? (Reacts Video)

Watch me react to Laura Escudé’s playback rig for American Idol, plus some lessons from the rig on redundancy, flexibility, and affordability.

Laura was the world’s first ever Ableton Live Certified Trainer and is one of the pioneers of the playback world. She’s been gracious enough to walk us through the rig she’s using for American Idol, and it doesn’t disappoint!

After the short rig rundown video, I’ll give you some takeaways from the rig that you can use in your own setup. You don’t have to emulate a rig that costs thousands and thousands of dollars to learn something from it and apply it. So let’s see if there are some principles and concepts here that we can benefit from (and do it at a much more affordable cost).

PS. Can you believe American Idol uses backing tracks? I bet so many more people would watch if they used rEaL mUsIcIaNs.

Original Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG5bSJ_yRAg

0:00 Reacting to Laura Escudé’s American Idol Rig Rundown
0:14 In This Video: Reacting to Laura Escudé – The World’s First Ableton Live Certified Trainer
2:03 Laura Explains the Importance of Playback Engineers – My Reaction
2:38 Setup: Rigs, Setlist Controller, RME MadiFace, Andiamo, Backups, etc.
4:33 Learnings from This Setup: Having Options for Conversion and Expensive vs Affordable Gear
7:13 Takeaways: Redundancy, Flexibility, and the Importance of Laura’s Shoutout to Kris
10:47 Video’s Link in the Description – Subscribe to Laura’s Channel
11:14 Subscribe for more and see you on the next video!