Behind the scenes of TV Program: Canta+

The Canta+ (2nd edition) program was a musical competition reality show broadcasted by NDTV SC, a television station from Record Group. The program featured the participation of 40 singers competing against each other to win the prize, which was the recording of an EP and a trip to Italy for the shooting of a music video.

Foto: Bruna Silveira

In this project, I worked as an Audio Engineer and Sound Designer. I assisted in the recordings and editing of arrangements before the program's recordings. It was my responsibility to create all the audio signal routing for the program and also all the radio frequency (RF) part. The first four episodes were recorded and the final program was broadcasted live. Overall, the program had an audience of over 30 million viewers.

To facilitate the understanding and construction of the program's signal routing, I created a chart that made all the necessary audio connections for the program's operation, which greatly helped during setup, execution, and recording of the programs. Below is the chart I've made:

The program featured a live band, 4 judges, 2 hosts, and a total of 40 candidates who participated in the eliminations. For the band section, we chose to use an electronic drum kit to reduce leakage in the studio and facilitate the mixing. The drums were connected via USB to a computer where we used the Superior Drummer software with drum samples, the same computer was connected to a Focusrite 18i20 interface where we took 9 independent output channels from the drums: kick, snare top and bottom, hi hat, toms, floor tom, and overheads.

Foto: Bruna Silveira

The whole band and other microphones were connected to two audio consoles. One was a Behringer X32 and the other was a Soundcraft SI 32- channel console. The Behringer X32 console was responsible for the main recording and live audio transmission. The Soundcraft SI was responsible for a backup recording and also all monitoring for the band, judges, hosts, and singers.

The backing tracks were played from my Macbook connected to a UMC404HD with 4 outputs: Backing Track L and R, Click, and a counting channel. Two other Macbooks were in charge of recording the 32 audio channels used.

This was a very challenging and rewarding project to work on, and I was very honored to be a part of it and help transform the lives of artists and bring entertainment through music to such a significant number of people.

The program was recorded by Elephant Office Brasil and over 50 people were involved in the production.