New Gear

New gear for the downsizing effort is finally in place. After weeks of careful evaluation, the selected items are now ready to be worked into the live rig.

The idea is to reduce the equipment load to the smallest possible volume, whilst expanding the capability of the rig as a whole. Whilst playing with a huge rig does make for great flexibility and less patch changing mid performance, the benefit is far outweighed by the inconvenience.

The CME controller is first for the chop… too heavy by far at nearly 50 kilos in its case. Next out is the Roland D50, which is only used as a simple controller live. Those two are replaced by the new Novation 61SL – a top of the range MIDI controller to drive samples and softsynths from a notebook PC.

Software of choice is from Arturia, whose software synthesisers are near perfect re-creations of the greatest, classic analogue synths. From the powerful “Wakemanesque” MiniMoog, to the CS80 beloved of Vangelis, from the ARP2600 used by J-M Jarre to the famous Jupiter 8 used by just about every 80s and 90s band… they’re all there.

It’s a new era.