all the geeky details of the SC live rig
Since I’ve been putting together the material for the upcoming SC show (see the website for details), I decided it’s as good a time as any to post about the setup I’ll be using. Here’s my ugly but informative diagram:
The centerpiece of the rig is a Tapco Mix 260FX mixer, which I probably spend more time “playing” than any actual instrument in the rig, unless you count the Nocturn. The “brain” of the rig is the K2000S, which handles most of the sequencing duties and serves as a source of synth sounds. The laptop serves as a sort of virtual rack, hosting several synths and effects in a modular host (namely energyXT). I’m generally not doing anything very complex sequence-wise in a live setting, though the K2000 could certainly handle it if I wanted to.
The K2000S can play multiple sounds at once, but only has two assignable outputs (there are 3 pairs of stereo outs, but one is the “mix” out), so in most cases I only use two sounds from it at any given time. That may not be a lot, but with the laptop it works out fine in practice.
The laptop (on loan from Kris) is not exactly a powerhouse (2.8GHz P4 w/512MB), but it can handle a couple of synths with effects. It usually handles the drums and one or two other sounds. I also have the output from the SoundBite loop sampler routed into its inputs, set up so I can sample whatever’s playing through the mixer’s control room routing and mess with it via software. This is one of the nice touches on the Tapco mixer I’m using- unlike many budget mixers, it has a ton of routing options- including the ability to choose which sources go to the control room/headphone outs (the choices are main mix, submix, and CD/tape input, and all 3 can be engaged at once).
Speaking of routings, I have some unorthodox stuff going on there too (nothing extremely crazy, but not quite “right”). You may have heard of the old dub trick of routing a signal out through an aux send, through a delay, and back into a mixer channel, which can then access the same aux send for feedback purposes. I have an old ADA digital delay setup that way, coming back into a mono channel- the mono channels have sweepable mids, which is very handy in this application. I also have the submix outs routed to a Kaoss pad, and back into a mixer channel, stereo in this case. I didn’t do that one so much for the feedback possibility, but to have a sort of freely-patchable insert effect. Since it comes back through a channel, it can also be used with the other effects.
Although it’s rather simple, I find this rig quite flexible, and lots of fun. All in all, it may be better suited to noise than anything resembling music, but it can be tamed. Something I would like to point out is that my use of hardware does not imply any lack of faith in a software-based setup, it only reflects the fact that I don’t have that much power available in software here. I do enjoy sequencing on the K2000, but I’m much more comfortable in a more visual environment. Also, the dub-feedback thing is easier to pull off in hardware.
