Earl,
I'm just gearing up to go live again, playing local gigs, after a long lay
off.
Although I have a lot of gear, I'm leaving as much as I can at home, and
going as minimalist as I can get away with:
Yamaha DX7S, linked via MIDI to E-MU Proteus 2000, with Composer, B3,
MoPhatt and Xtreme Lead V2 ROMS inside it
Roland AX-1, linked to Novation A-Station
Lexicon MPX-550 to add some deliciousness to the DX7S - the E-MU and
Novation have their own in-built FX.
I may also end up taking out my Kenton Control Freak to help control the
E-MU.
Soundcraft Spirit mixer
Carlsbro Slammer (Single 15" Sub-Woofer with in-built 300w Amp for
sub-woofer, in-built 2x 150w amps for satellite speakers, and with active
crossovers for full range stereo signal coming in, to split <150hz to
sub-woofer, and >150hz to satellite amp speaker outputs)
2x Vintage (late 80s!) Carlsbro 2x10"+2xHorns speaker cabs to act as
satellites for >150hz outputs.
Yamaha Self-powered monitor wedge.
Rackmount 6-way Mains Distribution Unit with filtering, individual fusing
for each piece of equipment etc. All equipment will be powered through
this.
+ Cases, stands, leads etc. No guitar strings needed (I'm leaving my left
handed late 80s Gibson SG at home, and letting someone else play all the
guitar stuff !)
It will all fit comfortably in the back of my Mondeo Estate.
The thought of a mac running vsti has some appeal, but I'm not going that
route. It's not so much about reliability these days, it's just that
hardware can be more easily protected and can stand up better to any
inadvertent knocks.
I did go out backing a female vocalist in the late 90s using a PC laptop and
Cubase (V5 I think, but it could have been V3.7). I only used the midi side
of it live though, the laptop then was definitely not up to dealing with
audio. I never had a single glitch with it, worked perfectly. And the
beauty of that was that I would choose on the night, on loading the song,
which midi part(s) to mute so I could play them myself, letting Cubase play
the rest of the backing. I might play EP one night, bass the next, brass
stabs the next etc, depending on what mood I was in. It was fun until other
work commitments got in the way.
But this time, with a full band line up, I'm definitely going to leave my
computers at home, and just enjoy playing live again.
While digital ROMplers never quite capture the original hardware, its pretty
good nowadays. The Proteus 2000, especially with the extra ROMs I've added
in, gives me a more than passable representation of any sound I am likely to
need, including DX and analogy type sounds. I'm really only taking the
A-Station out as an indulgence - its compact enough not to matter, and I
think it's worth having several different sound sources, both from the point
of view of having something as a backup if one goes pop on the night, and
because the D/A converters always place some common character on all sounds
coming out of a digital synth, so having several sources with different D/A
converters just increases the pallet of sounds available a little more. The
E-MU DX sampled sounds are very good, but definitely sound different from
the DX when compared directly. And some of the lead synth sounds are very
good too, but sound quite different to the A-Station.
One of the neat tricks of the Proteus 2000 is the way you can link patches
together, and choose how they are brought into use. So as well as it being
a 32 part multi-timbral 128 note ployphonic unit (which I won't need live!)
it can be configured so you have, for example, several linked patches that
are split across the keyboard, or come in at different velocities etc. And
because of it's flexible approach to control, where you patch modulation
sources to modulation destinations, I'm looking at how I can use mod wheels
and expression pedals in some songs to adjust on the fly the balance of
linked sounds, or even bring different patches in and out of the mix. It's
possible according to what the manual says you can do, but I'll be trying it
out later this week. I'm hoping for some songs to organise say three sounds
in a linked patch, with the choice of sound played made simply be changing
position of the DX7's mod wheel, or an expression pedal if I need the mod
wheel during the song - one sound when in the off position, another when
fully up, and another for anything in between. If it works as it should,
it'll be a lovely way to flip in and out of sounds during a song. On other
songs I may use a similar approach but to blend sounds instead of changing.
Using these approaches has the advantage of no delays or glitches, as no
program changes will occur, I'll just be using real time controllers to
affect which patches are heard.
Anyway, enough of that for now,
Nigel
_____
From: ***@yahoogroups.com [mailto:***@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Earl Williams
Sent: 29 May 2007 22:35
To: ***@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [YamahaDX] DX7 vs DX7s (vs DX7 II)
I really like this discussion!!
What I'm interested in is a live setup. What do some of you guys use
for onstage? I've been thinking about using more software instruments
either with a PC or Mac. I prefer the Mac. What's the census? - two
keys or three or four stacked etc. I have not played live since the
80s. I used to have a Hammond/leslie, slab piano and ARP Odyseyy. This
digital stuff seems like overkill - there's so much. Anyway, I'm
interested in what you guys use - if you play live.
Earl
Post by Bob WeeksTo add some Spice to this thread since all we get these days are some idiot
advertising junk I don't want or need. How about a good old fight over which
is better?