Celebrating Hogmanay in Stirling (photo: Paul Domanski)
UK - Edinburgh may dominate UK media coverage of the annual New Year's Eve celebrations, but Hogmanay is celebrated throughout the rest of Scotland just as enthusiastically. A prime example is Stirling, where the countdown to midnight takes place against the spectacular backdrop of the city's castle, a variety of live performances entertaining thousands of people. Helping to bring the chimes and skirl o' the pipes to the 2010/11 revellers were a pair of Yamaha mixing consoles.

The event was managed by Zisys Events, which also provided the technical production. The multi-artist line-up was mixed on Yamaha M7CL-48ES consoles at front of house and monitors, linked to three SB168-ES stage boxes via an Ethersound network.

The evening featuring a range of acts, including the Heart of Scotland Choir, tribute act Madnish, 2010 X Factor contestant Wagner, fellow former reality TV (and West End) star Darius Campbell and Skerryvore, a six-piece band who fuse electric and traditional Scottish instrumentation.

"Wagner was the only act who sang to playback, there was a lot of instrumentation for the other acts," says Zisys manager Danny Anderson. "Skerryvore was quite complex, with two fiddles, bagpipes, acoustic and electric guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and a couple of vocals. Darius played with a very talented jazz band, who featured keyboards, trumpet, double bass and drums."

Every act's setup was saved as a scene, with Anderson's team soundchecking them during the afternoon, except for Wagner and Skerryvore.

"Skerryvore came straight from the Glasgow Hogmanay celebrations, but we'd done a show with them not long before, so we already had a show file ready to load," Anderson continues. "It was just a case of minimal tweaking during the first song. And with Wagner singing to playback, he was very straightforward to mix."

With an eight-way wedge monitor mix also saved for each act, it meant that the event proceeded seamlessly, the Zisys crew keeping changeover times to just five minutes.

(Jim Evans)


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