The work continues....

Work continues on the new live set. Jet and I spent Saturday afternoon soldering the last of the MIDI connectors that are mounted to the outside of the rack. This will allow easy access to from the rack to the synths on stage. The next step is the fun part. We are rebuilding the current 20+ songs using real hardware synthesizers and drum modules. As it stands, only the lead synth part in “Among the Separate” cannot be reproduced with hardware. It will be the only software produced sound in the set. The current synth setup looks like this:

Jet’s synths:
1) Novation Supernova II - 48 voice.
2) Roland Juno 106 - vintage analog circa 1984
3) EMU Proteus 2000 rack module – Composer & XL-7 ROMs
4) Roland JV880 rack module – Vintage ROM
5) Roland R8m drum module – Power Drums ROM

Jet is bouncing around ideas for his third playing board on stage. We could be using his Korg X3, even though the board sounds pretty vanilla. We may add an Oberheim Matrix 1000 rack module eventually, but this setup is very powerful as it stands. Using the MOTU 8 channel MIDI interface we will be able to control any of the rack mounted synths from Jet’s keyboards. This will also allow patch changes and automation of any of our MIDI capable gear (including vocal processing).

On Saturday we tested the new Juno 106 through our PA and were transfixed at the sound. The bass is truly inspiring. The lights dimmed as the speakers struggled to get enough juice to reproduce the raw sound of 100% analog bass.