This is the first in what will be a lengthy series of process articles about taking the studio material of RT60 on to the stage. My live rig is already mostly assembled by this point (just waiting on the nano Kontrol), but I always start any stage plan with a diagram of what I think I need to accomplish everything, and I move the parts around until I end up with a logical rig. A somewhat truncated version of that diagram appears above.

To understand my reasoning for this collection, you'd really have to know the RT60 material, and considering the first time it will ever be heard outside our Circle Of Trust is at these shows, you'll have to take it on faith for now.

The heart of the rig is a MacBook Pro running Mainstage 2, which sits on a sliding shelf in the top space of the rack. I'll talk about how I've set things up there in the next post, but for now suffice to say that I've essentially built a mixer for the hardware synths and the couple plugs I'm using (which consist, in total, of one instance of ESX24 for piano parts, one instance of EVOC PS for vocoder duties, an instance of Eos, and an instance of Dr. Device.)

The audio chores for this setup are handled by a TASCAM US-1641, which I chose because of its robust drivers, and the fact that it just happens to have the correct amount of I/O for this particular context. I don't trust FW devices on stage, through long habit and experience, so it was a matter of going through all the available USB audio interfaces, seeing what the general feelings about them were on the forums, and comparing their I/O structure to what I needed to accomplish. The US-1641 ended up being the logical choice.

Under that is an Ibanez UE405 (built by, and occasionally seen branded as a Maxon) multi-FX unit. If you're not familiar with it, this is a fairly cool unit to tack on after an analog synth on stage, because it has a comp, 1 channel parametric EQ, analog delay, and analog stereo chorus, as well as an external loop. In this case, I'm running the Yamaha CS5 (The World's Most Expensive CS5) through it, and then straight in to the front panel of the US-1641. In the external loop is a Memory Man w/ Hazarai to provide some longer delays, as the analog delay in the unit has a maximum time of only about 600ms, which isn't that useful when most of your songs are 80bpm or slower.

Under the UE405 is a Yamaha TX802, which is essentially a rack-mount DX7II, for all intents and purposes. I use this for bell-like tones and beating sine wave stuff, because ( with all apologies to Native Instruments) FM7 just can't pull it off with enough meat. I really like all the early Yamaha FM synths, but the TX802 is the cream of the crop, features- and playability-wise.

And finally, under that is the Roland MKS-80, which I use for what it does best, pads. In the unlikely event you're not familiar, the MKS-80 is basically the end of the road as far as Roland analog synths go. In specs, it lives somewhere between a Jupiter 6 and a Jupiter 8, but it is somewhat more sophisticated than the latter in a couple respects. I'm working on a method where I have a touch screen monitor essentially set up as a cooler looking MPG-80 in order to tweak it live, but for now it's living in Pad Land.

For the keyboards themselves, I'm using the World's Most Expensive CS5 for drones and a couple leads, through the analog effects as mentioned above. This is above a Yamaha P85, which is an 88-key all-in-wonder. I don't actually use any audio out of the P85, which is a good thing because the only way to _get_ the audio out of it is to plug something in the headphone jack. This thing has the best graded action keybed ever made, in my opinion, but the other design decisions from Yamaha are so stupid as to almost beggar belief.

In any event, this is what I do most of my playing from. If I manage to find a mechanically sound Roland RD-1000 before we get in to serious rehearsal, I'll use that instead, but for now I'll use this because I'm used to it, and I won't have to fuck with all the velocity mappings I've made.

Last but not least, a Korg nano Kontrol rests on the P85, and provides me with the ability to touch levels up, change songs in MainStage, and mute and unmute channels. I could go a bit more complex and add some more synths to the mix, but really, I can pull off most all the sounds that I'll have to play with this relatively simple rig. It's a nice playable compromise between setting up with just a laptop and a controller, and showing up with a Rick Wakeman-sized pile of gear.

In the next couple weeks I'll go over my MainStage setup and go over what I'll be playing exactly, explain Jeremy's rig and his role in things, and have photos and video of everything once it is all in one room and running. Until then, questions? Comments? Criticisms?