Ricky Ashford - Audio FOH Engineer – A$AP Rocky

In this video from Midas, we talk to Ricky Ashford, who is the FOH audio sound engineer for A$AP Rocky, SZA, Jay Rock, Kiana Lede’, Lucky Daye, SIR, Soulja Boy and Schoolboy Q.

Video Text:

I love the fact that I do something, that, when I turn a fader up ten thousand thirty thousand one hundred thousand people jump in the sky you know that that’s one of the most exciting things about what I do even like to this day like I still get little Shivers and goosebumps sometimes my name is Ricky Ashford I’m the front of house engineer for ASAP Rocky out here on the Red Hot Chili Pepper stadium tour originally I was a musician so I played drums first then I ended up playing bass then I was a keyboard player then I ended up playing a little bit of guitar and then I’ll say you know what I kind of want to start getting to the technical side of things so I started volunteering at churches and stuff just kind of helping with the technical teams and when I was in high school I ended up joining the tech team there and played in the band there too I started to realize hey I kind of like the technical side of things.

I ended up going to college to do sound so I went to full show University in Florida and got my bachelor’s in science and touring so um I ended up going to school to do sound and now I’m out here doing it I think some of the biggest requirements for him is having a lot of dynamic plug-ins and effects to keep everything tamed um because it’s a lot of movement going on it’s a lot of different types of variables happening through the show my preparation process it typically starts with me talking to a music director or it starts me talking to uh production managers and stuff like that like getting the logistics of what will be on the tour like is it a band is it a is it tracks is it what what’s what is it um and that lets me know how I need to preparate my files and stuff so after I know all of that information um I can actually say hey I need this I need that I need this type of console I need this type of gear these microphones and then I’m actually at home a good amount of time just getting my file together so that’s really the preparation process before I even get to rehearsals.

This show is is one of our first shows where we’ve had very consistent gear I’ve been using the same exact console for this actual for this actual gig so when you have more consistency you can use the same thing every day you can build and build and build and you know really fine tune some things foreign 96 Heritage d I’m not using any external gear which is crazy because I’m actually getting a pretty good result out of console without having to need to use any external gear it’s on the inside of the cone so it had some pretty decent plugins like some I was actually blown away at some of the reverbs some of the stuff that’s on the console is actually really good all right some of the dynamic compression stuff some of the dynamic eqs the distressor so you got some really good reverbs on there it’s a lot of stuff on it that that’s really good this desk is not only clean but it’s it’s very saturated as well which I like I’ve been mixing about what 10 years now I’d say throughout all the years of me doing this job I think one of the most important things is your personality it’s a lot of stuff you deal with every day that if you don’t really like this job and you don’t really want to do it or have a heart for it you quit it’s like you know I don’t want to do this anymore but you know just have the right heart about it have the right intention and everything will be fine you know if you have a good personality with it it’s like a never-ending drug that you’re just like oh my God like I love this feeling but yeah it’s one of my favorite things [Music] [Music]