Where music, culture and worship meet.

This blog examines, reviews and discusses how worship is being lived out in culture and in the church. We tackle everything from songwriting techniques in corporate worship, to interviewing worship leaders and pastors, to reviewing the last big rock concert.

May 26 2008

My stage setup, instruments, software, etc…

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Took a shot of my live setup with my iPhone this past Sunday. Thought it might be fun to diagram exactly what I play with.

Life Connection live setup

  1. Apple MacBook Pro (GR) - this is my workhorse. In addition to running Guitar Rig I use this for most all my personal work. It’s an older MBP but it gets the job done. 2.33 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD
  2. Guitar Rig 3 - After leading worship and playing lead guitar in a lot of worship bands in smaller venues I was sick of dealing with stage volume issues. I was having to turn my amp down so low amp didn’t have the chance to get to the warm part of the tubes. Literally I was having to have my amp down at 1 so the FOH guys would stop complaining. So I was really limited in my tone and sound. All direct options whether software or multi effects had such poor quality and weren’t an option until I found Guitar Rig. I experimented with it on some recording projects, then tried it live and was very happy with the flexibility and sound quality. So this is my rig for small venues and I highly recommend it for congregations 300 or smaller.
  3. Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot Controller - I don’t particularly like the foot controller that comes with Guitar Rig, so I just got the software edition and got my own midi foot controller. 2 foot pedals is a must, dedicated volume pedal then the other for trem speed, wah, what have you.
  4. Presonus FireBox - “2 out of 3 musicians recommend Presonus for their firewire audio interface needs.” I’m one of the 2.
  5. Apple Macbook Pro (Reason) -My newer machine. 2.4Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB Ram, 150GB HD
  6. Reason 4 - I talked a bit about how this came to be in an earlier post. Slowly been integrating more synth tracks, live and recorded.
  7. M-Audio Oxygen8 v2 - wanted something small and ultra portable with a decent amount of assignable controls and transport. This fit the bill. Great controller for Reason.

Guitars

  1. Fender American Standard Strat 3-tone sunburst - not old enough to say the year yet. Over 10yrs old, less than 30.
  2. Gibson Super Jumbo Acoustic, J100 Xtra - I love jumbo acoustics, I like them to sound full, deep and rich. Not a fan of bright acoustics.

Some other time I’ll diagram my amp and stomp box setup. So that’s what I play regularly, comment with your setup.

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November 21 2007

New foot controller on its way

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Native Instruments: Guitar Rig 2Figure it’s time for some gear talk on here since I’m really excited about my new foot controller purchase. A couple years back I switched to Guitar Rig(GR) for my live rig. I never imagined I would be using a complete software rig ever in my life, but that was until I heard Guitar Rig. I used to be, still am I suppose, a collector of as many classic pedals as I could get my hands on. With my Matchless Hotbox being my pride and joy. All multi-effects pedal boards, amp simulators, software solutions I’d heard up until GR sounded sooo bad, I never even considered them. Then my brother begged me to start using GR on a few recording projects we were doing and I was really impressed. My huge complaint with multi-effects units and software apps has been that the sound is so obviously a digital signal, there’s no cabinet breathing, no warmth, no peaks that you can pick out. It’s just all washed and over compressed and just too cute and nice.

One thing GR lets you control in addition to any combination of amps and cabinets you wish is mic placement. I can’t tell you how important that is for sound and GR really hit it out of the park there. So once I realized that the amp/cabinet selections were actually really good, I then got to enjoy the wide selection of other effects. It’s super handy being able to get such a wide tone swing during a live gig. Not to mention the flexibility afforded by the other effects. But sound quality is of the utmost importance and I can honestly say that GR is the only software/multi-effects unit I’ve heard that makes me say “wow” (yes those are quotes around wow). And GR2 has made me even more pleased, but I’m upset that they continue to release major upgrades at a blistering pace, GR3 already is out. Ever heard of minor FREE updates Native Instruments???

Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot Controller

So now onto my purchase. I originally bought GR 1 which came with a 4 button (not really banks) 1 expression pedal foot controller. 2 of those buttons are reserved for switching presets, so really you’re left with 2 buttons. That really made things tough, lots of preparation needed to be done on the presets making sure from song to song you could quickly get to each preset. Not an enjoyable situation. So I needed a bigger foot controller and found a Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot controller (actually a lot of them) on ebay for dirt cheap. 10 button, 2 expression pedals AND 2 dedicated preset/amp switches. So now I don’t have to use any of the 10 buttons for switching presets and the 2 expression pedals is huge. You always want volume control but many times I need tremolo speed or wah control or other such timings that can’t be tapped out. I can’t wait for it to arrive and get it all setup.

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