Hey,
when posting on another thread, I just had the idea to start a thread where everyone interested can discuss about their current live setups. I thought perhaps it could be helpful for other live players of every genre to share experience on wiring, midi tools and other little helpers you use. Especially since I've often read questions about MIDI wiring, I think it could be very helpful to share some knowledge on how you do it in this forum. I know, there are a lot ways of achieving the same goals, but that's exactly the point that interests me. How solve others the same problems I had and is their solution perhaps better for me than the crippled one I found myself? ;-)
I will start with some questions that might be of interest:
* What synth/tools/controllers do you use and for what?
For the coming shows of my rock cover band this summer I play a Korg Kronos, the Rev2 and the PEAK as sound engines. As a further controller I use a Kurzweil PC3. The Kronos is my main controller, stage piano and plays all other natural instruments like strings and brass. I also use its drum track feature as a metronome, sending a click from on of the additional outputs to the FOH. We do it this way, because all my arps, delays and lfos are always in time, even if we decide to play a song slightly faster than the original. We don't use backing tracks, I play everything live. Rev2 and PEAK play all kinds of synth sounds that they are able to produce and I'm able to tweak them in. I don't play any factory presets. I dealed in every patch myself, because I wanted to learn how they were build. Sometimes I use the Rev2 as a controller for the Kronos, too. Since I don't want to switch local control on/off during the gig, I created a silent patch, which I load if I want to play organ/brass/string patches on the Rev2, because it's sitting on top of the Kronos. The PC3 can basically control every other synth on stage, so it depends on the song what it does. It's sitting right of my Kronos and has the PEAK on top of it. A example use case for what I need it: For some Toto songs I need Kronos and Rev2 for Piano and Brass and I don't want to switch presets during the song, so I have the third board for playing the synth lead solos. Everything is placed on two K&M 2-tier keyboard stands. There's a little 19'' rack between the stands which includes my power supply and a little submixer (only for rehearsals, on stage everything goes to FOH directly) and a mio10 MIDI router.
* How did you connect everything to everything else?
Audio: Kronos, Rev2 and PEAK are conncted to the FOH with 2 channels LR each. Additionally I send one mono channel with the click from the Kronos to the FOH. I use one of the inputs of the Kronos for my microphone and send it to the FOH from another additional Kronos mono channel after processing my voice with the vocoder effect in some songs (e.g. In the air tonight), otherwise it's unprocessed. So all in all I need 8 audio channels in total (plus a channel that comes back for my in ear monitoring, but that's none of my business).
Midi: As you can guess, every synth is connected to the mio10 midi router. The Kronos is connected per DIN, everything else per USB with a little passive hub. It's configured so that the Kronos can controll everything else and can be controlled by Rev2 and PC3. Rev2 can control Kronos and can be controlled by Kronos and PC3. PEAK can be controlled by Kronos and PC3 and doesn't output anything. PC3 can be controlled by Kronos and can controll everything else. Every synth/keyboard works on its own midi channel.
* What problems did you have and how did you solve them?
Last year I replaced my PC3 for an AKAI MPK261 to lower the weight I had to carry around. It was all good, Rev2 <-> Kronos, MPK -> Kronos. Easy 3 board setup. But I wanted to integrate my PEAK into this live setup, so I had to find a way to get as much controll over all synthesizers as possible without using too much MIDI mergers and splitters. So I buyed the mio10 and it worked very well. I could exactly do the routing as described above. But the I realized that I want to send the MPK to different targets over the evening and tried to create different setups, e.g. one for control of Kronos, one for control of PEAK, etc. That still worked as expected. But then I realized that I can't switch these presets per ProgramChanges. And I absolutely don't want to do this per Hand on stage. There's not much time between the songs and it would absolutely happen to me, that I forget to switch the preset and then control the wrong synth. My whole setup is controlled by the Kronos. It sends all ProgramChanges to all other synths and I don't have to do anything manually while playing through the setlist. So basically the MPK is a good controller, I also liked the pads a lot. But it's very bad at being controlled. So I replaced it with my PC3 again. Now I send ProgramChanges to Rev2 and PEAK and also PC3. The PC3 then switches to the right setup which controls the synth(s) I need for the current song*. So everything works as I want it to, now.
I often get the question "Why do you do this? I mean hey... your playing in a cover band... ". Well, the answer is: I just have a lot of fun by doing it this way. I think I have some pretty nice synths and I want to use them live, too, an not just at home. Sure, I could do everything just with my Kronos. A lot of cover keyboardists do. Or get a MacBook and Mainstage and a cheap controller for the same price. But is this really what you want to do, when you think of being a keyboarder in a live (cover) rock band? Well, it's a lot of work for each rehearsal/gig, and the money I get for the gigs doesn't really pay it off. But happily I earn enough money in my main job, so that I can focus on having fun when playing music. So for me it's worth the effort.
Next steps: I think of buying a Matriarch (as soon as it is available) or finally a Prophet 6. I think I would integrate it in this setup as well. The mio10 has many many ports left for midi control, and even if our FOH mixer decides to not give me more channels, I could use the submixer in a live situation, too.
I included a picture of this setup which was taken some weeks ago in a basement at some friends house. I hope there's anybody out there who's interested in such experiences and likes to share his/her own.
It just came to my mind that such a thread could possibly already exist... but now it's to late to search for it. So if there's already something, please, dear moderators, merge this post with it ;-)
*(As mentioned in another thread: the PC3 does the midi controller job so damn well. I can layer, split, transpose, etc. up to 16 zones... pretty every workstation is able to do this. I ask myself again and again: why can't a dedicated MIDI keyboard do this? I think the Novation SL MkIII can controll 8 zones. That would be enough in most cases, yeah... but still: isn't it the job of a controller to control? Why not at least give the users control over the standard sixteen midi channels as the workstations do?)
EDIT: fixed some typos... you can keep every mistake that is still left ;-)
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