Tomorrow

Tomorrow we leave for Minneapolis.

Tonight is the last tech night before rehearsals really start with the full band in Minneapolis. Considering we’ve completely overhauled the technical innards of the band, things seem to be going very well. The synthesis of laptops and guitars in a more-or-less rock band context is something that I expect we’ll be seeing more and more of, actually.

The drums, in particular, are pretty amazing. ‘Real’ cymbals, but everything else coming off of the laptop, but triggered by very sensitive mesh pads inside of real drum shells. You should see these things…

I’m running, in parallel, Guitar Rig 3 and KORE. KORE is acting as a shell for Kontakt 3 and Akoustic Piano - both of which are being enhanced by further instances of Guitar Rig, etc to get the sound exactly right. As a sometime propellerhead I can say with certainty that this is the most excited I’ve been about live electronics ever. It’s finally to that point where less is actually more. 1 laptop. 1 keyboard. 3 guitars. That’s it for me.

Rebecca’s setup has evolved a bit, also. Our ongoing experiment with the KAOSS pad has worked out, so that’s definitely staying. That means that 3 mics are coming with us on tour. We’ve swapped out some of her processing, though, and she now has a ‘virtual analog’ delay line in her chain. Should make things sound much better than the digital dinosaur we’ve been lugging around for the past few years.

The songs themselves are coming together nicely. ‘Professional’ is sounding particularly good to my ears, as is ‘Evensong’. It’s going to be a blast playing so much new material at once.

I hope you can make it out.