What Live equipment do you use?

As I didn't do much live yet I will say what I'mplanning to use...

Korg ms-2000R for bass and synths Korg electribe Er1 mk2 for rhytm and drum Electro-Harmonix Bigg Muff- Pi distortion pedal for... well it's obvious, yes ;) Mackie 1202 vlz pro mixer for mixing and mic preamps... AKG D-880 mic AKG K-240 studio headphone... And still looking for a good affordable compressor

I'll add some pics one of these...

i use a lot of gear in the studio but it's rather complex to take everything along for live gigs. because of that i'm taking steps in evolving my live sets.

for the very first ones i was using just my powerbook with Live, my machinedrum and BCR2000 midi controller. i was mostly mixing up my loops in Live with the BCR for easy control and using the machinedrum for improvised bits. machinedrum and Live or synced by midi clock and the machinedrum is routed through Live for adding fx and stuff (through my motu 828mk2 interface).

now i added my monomachine and electro harmonix tube pre-amp pedal to the setup. i switch between the duo machinedrum+monomachine (using their internal sequencers) and loops in live. the pre-amp pedal is used for beefing up the machinedrum's sound.

for my electronica/IDM/techno projects i think i'm now evolving towards a setup where i'm using the monomachine as main midi sequencer for my other synths (ms2000, microwave, sidstation) with the machinedrum synced to it and using live as a mixing and fx device. the two 'machines' are great live action gear so that would work pretty well for me.

but i'm taking another route for my triphop/downtempo projects. i want to set up a live show with my musician friends from the urban jam collective. that's a live singer and musicians (drums, guitar, bass). i will also play some bass and guitar myself, routed through my sherman filterbank, pedals and other fx. i don't know yet how the whole thing is exactly gonna work but one way or the other everything will have to be routed through Live because i use a lot of fx plugins. question is how we'll setup each musician's monitoring. challenging but feasible (if massive attack can do it live then i can too ;)).

how does the chill conspiracy do it btw?

the chill conspiracy didn't do any Lives yet... never ever! One of the reasons was the thight timeschedule of the singer (hairdresser on daytime, theatre actress at night) and the other was that Stephane and I were mostly more motivated to work on new stuff and not to rehearse the old songs.

but the planned setup was: Lucy ... vocals... Mic: AKG D 3700 (giving a nice warm tone to the voice... I preferred it by far to the SM58)

**Lexicon MPX 100 ** Vocal Processor

Stephane Piano & Keyboard Piano:He had an electric Piano at home... but don't know what it was... Keyboard: USB-Keyboard directly into Reason on an M-Audio Keystation 61e

Me Bass and Fx Bassguitar: Rickenbacker 4003 directly in the mixer through the D.I.-Out of my Laney RBW300 as Bass FX a **Line6 BassPod ** (big deception finally) and a Zoom BFX 708 (plastic bullshit... breaks too easily :( but the self programmed sounds are fine), a BOSS Bass Overdrive ODB-3 and a Ibanez TL-5 Tremolo Soundtank and for the rest it was planned that I take care of Reason especially the filter Fx... to be done manually in Live with a Midi-Controller that I haven't bought yet.

but as LiquidBass I will do Lives hopefully soon... thats one of the reasons why I had the idea to set up this topic... and curiosity of course!

for years it was consisting of a roland vs 1680 as a mixer/recorder, roland mc 505 for sequencing and internal sounds, a nordlead and a digitech talker for the voice effects. at some point i took a korg ms2000 on top but i avoided it after a while. thats the best setup i ever had but the negative side of it was the keyboards, i wished i had racks instead because carrying it all was very annoying, specially when you have to go through the crowd after you played and people accidentally spill liquid on it.

then i tried to change it because i needed other sounds, so i tried the following: vs 1680, virus indigo, mc 505, evolver, machinedrum but it didnt worked well because of sync problems between the 505 and the machinedrum. the evolver was also a pain in the ass. i used a opcode 128x as midi patcher. the vs gave the midi clock, fed the 505 wich fed the opcode.

then i did the playback way for a time, most of my sounds were already recorded in the vs 1680, and i was adding some synth lines with the nordlead and the voices during the live. that was really nice coz i had only a few things to carry. the negative side was the fact that i could do much except adding effects to the tracks. so it got boring quite fast.

once i tried to bring it all and its the worst one i can think of. too much to carry, too much to plug, a real nightmare: vs 1680, mc 505, drumstation, evolver, machinedrum, virus indigo, nordlead. i had so much to focus on that i even couldnt use my voice, only a few times and it caused some mistakes coz i wasnt on time to apply changes or patterns.

and the next step is to use ableton live only with a controller. i guess i will record all my hardware sequences into live, then mash & glitch the fuck out of it while adding effects. minimum to carry, you can improvise as you want, lot more possibilities than with hardware. visually it looks probably a bit more boring but its easier in all senses.

if i had to go back to hardware for livesets, i would take:

• the mc 505 again for sure, coz its sequencing is the easiest i experienced, the megamix function also allows you to import a sequence from another pattern into yours while you're playing, wich brings lots of possibilities.

• the machinedrum because you can almost do a whole liveset only with it, its one of the most powerfull instruments i have. the sequencing is top notch.

• monomachine: i unfortunately dont own one but when i see what i can do with the machinedrum, im sure those 2 are way enough for the big thing. unfortunately they have a particular sound and it might bet boring ... depending on your taste.

as for the voice, the combination of digitech talker + nordlead is unbeatable imo. lots more possibilities than with a simple vocoder. negative side, you have carry the keyboard.

and my next live wich is probably gonna be the last hardware one will use the vs 1680 (with some pre recorded synth sounds coming from the virus), the machinedrum and the nordlead + digitech.

i didn't do a full live-set for ling time but i do semi-lives. that is: vinyl, cd's (cdj800) , my an200 (yamaha), a Boss sp303 sampler/effector and a pc with ableton and reason.

so what i do: i spin records and cd's like a normal dj would do, bu then i add samples (with lots of effects on them) with ableton and extra melodies and soundeffects with my an200. then everything goes thru the sp303 for extra effects like tape-delay, normal delay, flanger, filter, ringmod, reverb, ... and by making ultra short loops with the cdj800 i create an extra noise-sound, which i wet with delays for xtreme moody noise (and then some tricks i do: i raise the pitch of the cdj800 smoothly to +100% i creat kinda climax-effect, or if i play with the delay-time i get a massive flanger-effect). and using an 8 step-delay as a loopsampler also creates cool effects (with voices).

pics of my setup: here!!!

ooh a gear porn thread :P

i use: old amd 1700+ desktop pc to generate sounds

• these for sound & control

Thou when i play out i usually stick to records and the odd cdr of my own stuff.

incredible... everybody got lot of stuffz...

since i begin to mek some live shit, i remix my tracks and i prepare them to be played in Ableton, i dont have any midi controller, just a cheap creative keyboard, and the most important: da MOUSE lol so some special breaks in the tracks and lot of FX in ableton, im just at the very beginin...

Originally posted by : aphone

incredible... everybody got lot of stuffz...

since i begin to mek some live shit, i remix my tracks and i prepare them to be played in Ableton, i dont have any midi controller, just a cheap creative keyboard, and the most important: da MOUSE lol so some special breaks in the tracks and lot of FX in ableton, im just at the very beginin...

jow man, i wouldn't worry too much 'bout that if i where you ... your music rockx, without using a lot of gear ... just imagine the result you'll get when you decide to buy something that will help you improve your skillz even more ... it's not 'bout the amount of gear, nor is it 'bout the size of your wallet ... if you want to do/buy/get/... something, you'll manage to do so, no mather what. It's all 'bout the result , nót 'bout the means ;)

AMEN !!!

It took me years to get my stuff together, and hey, I still don't use everything ...

I started out with programs like techno maker and domus music machine...

Just do your thing aphone, you're good enough in it, the future looks bright...

depends on which project i'm onstage with

but last For Greater Good concert (at AB) I used: Novation K-station both as controller and as synth, PC laptop running live (for triggering vocal samples and noises) and reason (with some pre-made combinator set-ups to have some of my prefered sounds at hand), small behringer mixer with a terribly fuck-up SM58 connected to it so that i can send it true the k-stations fx/vocoder and also to a Line6 delay modeler... the main-microphone was from the pA thats' it...

other stuff i tend to use live is mostly for noise-making: fuck-up toys, rattlers, small percussive stuff... (check out the vibraslap and vibrastick... combining those with fx makes for some amazing sounds...)