At mousetrapreplica shows a listener can expect to hear mountains of organic electric guitar layered on top of one another, blending with synthesizer sounds that range from subtle bleeps and squeaks that conjure fairies brushing against your cheek as they dance around you, to tremendous bass tones that make you feel that you are about to die & the last thing you feel is that cute and fuzzy lookin' grizzly bear gnawing on your lower intestine.There may be 20 independent sounds happening simultaneously, some synchronised to a beat, some not, there may be pre-recorded beats and samples thrown in the mix for good measure.
Now, I didn't write this to describe my own music, I wrote it because all of the above happens at every mtr gig, but all the audience will ever see is a guy playing guitar and occasionally pushing a few buttons on a keyboard and laptop.
Some people have found confusing or a little isolating, which for some of the more visual among us, may even distract from the music itself. My set-up has confounded even self described 'audio-geeks', so I created this page so people can understand the technical side of how I do, what I do.
Here is a little diagram explaining how it all works. Click on the boxes for an in-depth description down the page.
Guitar
My trusty Ibanez Artist 1980 model, the one that went walkabout just before the Fringe Festival tour and ended up in an alley way in Richmond, with the case being full of syringes.
The guitar is equipped with a MIDI pickup, enabling it to control the synths on my laptop.
Guitar to MIDI interface
My guitar goes straight into this lil' unit, which converts my guitar signal into MIDI signals, and also spits out the regular guitar audio signal. It's an old Roland GR-30.
MIDI Foot Controller
This big pedal allows me to control my computer (running Ableton Live) with my feet. There are buttons for setting the tempo of whatever I am doing, but mostly for turning the synths on and off, and also for recording MIDI and audio loops. It's a Behringer FCB1010, and it makes a funny hum when you step on it too hard.
MIDI Keyboard Controller
This snazzy lookin' thing is mostly used for controlling the levels of my synths, and occasionally triggering samples.(See pic below for an action shot of a sample being triggered!)
Occasionally I actually get the urge to play it as a keyboard, who would've thunk it? It's a Korg Kontrol 49.
THE SPACESHIP
Enter the Spaceship. It takes me routine voyages to other planets. From another angle it looks like this:
It is a ridiculously large pedal case. In the case is a Boss RC-50 Loop Station, for sampling myself on the fly:
My beloved Boss GT-5 effects unit, for which I've owned for nearly 10 years, and can still find fascinating ways to make music with it. Currently I predominantly use it for delay sounds and harmonizers, particularly in conjunction with the amazing wave pedal parameter. It looks like this:
Here is my Boss DD-20 delay pedal. During the course of taking all these photo's, I mistakenly plugged it into the wrong power supply and fried the pedal completely. It will cost me around $380 to repair, the $RRP is about $400. On the upside, it does make the spaceship slightly easier to lift.
On the top tier of the spaceship, you will find two volume pedals, one for sounds going in to the spaceship, one for sounds coming out of it.
And finally, here are a bunch pedals whose sole purpose is to control other pedals..... The on the left controls which DD-20 preset I am using, the one in the middle controls the 'reverse' function on the rc-50 as well as the method I use to overdub new sounds. The bigger pedal on the right controls the volume of the current loop I am working with on the RC-50 Loop Station.
Thinking about lifting the Spaceship into the car/venue etc makes me grumpy. The image below is for people who would would prefer to let the picture tell the story:
The effort of lifting the spaceship causes all sorts of pained facial expressions, one of which can be seen below:
I hope you had fun reading about the spaceship.
Now for the rest of this nonsense.....
amp footswitch
This changes some settings on my amp, most notably changing from a clean sound to a dirty/distorted sound. It is not as cool as the Spaceship
Guitar Amp
My trusty Genz Benz El Diablo Combo. It makes beautiful clean sounds and rock sounds that will hurt you. It has an effects loop in which the Spaceship spends most of it's time docked in. It also has a line out so i can send it's signal to the sound card, and sample it live on the fly with ableton. Here is another angle:
MIDI to USB interface
This is the rather boring little box which routes my MIDI signals into the computer. woopy poop.
Laptop
Here is my Laptop, a MacBook 2.0Ghz with 1 Gig of Ram. I run Win XP for some crazy reason, and yes I run all my audio applications from it. It's ok. My software of choice is Ableton Live. I use 35 ableton tracks for mousetrapreplica shows, so it is a lot to get ones head around!
Soundcard
Here is my soundcard. It is a Mackie Onyx 410F. I really dig it. It has a nice clear sound. The sound from my computer goes out of here and into the P.A. system and into your ears. I also run my line out from my guitar amplifier so I can sample my guitar into Ableton, and manipulate it from there.