Synth Gear Usage

Apart from rehearsing or just playing for fun at home, I mostly use my EWI and related gear in two general kinds of situations:  solo gigs, in which I usually play over MP3 backing tracks, and in groups with people playing more traditional wind instruments. As you might guess, the equipment I use varies greatly between these two cases.

• For blending with traditional wind instruments, the key is easy portability. For this purpose, I usually carry the following equipment (details about these items are on my gear list page):
  • EWI 4000s
  • Yamaha VL70-m synthesizer with Patchman chip
  • MIDIJet Pro wireless MIDI interface
  • Behringer B205D powered speaker and stand

  This collection is reasonably easy to carry and set up (it all fits in a 30-inch rolling duffle, along with a music stand, tablet and assorted spare cables) and the sounds on the Patchman chip are realistic enough to fit in.

  Since the EWI can run on batteries, having the MIDIJet Pro means that the EWI can be played wirelessly.

  The B205D is small and light, and provides more than enough sound to match the other instruments in the group – in my trumpet quartet, I have to be careful not to overpower three real trumpets. :-)

• For solo gigs, I mostly rely on my 4U rack case, with the JV-1010 and Yamaha VL70-m synthesizers.

  In this situation I'll usually bring the Peavey KB 2 amplifier along with the Behringer B205D; the KB 2 sounds good and provides more than enough sound for any venue I've ever played (being offered an opportunity to play a gig for which this wouldn't be enough is a problem I haven't yet faced, but would like to :-), and the B205D makes a great monitor speaker.

  The RocknRoller cart helps with portability, and also provides a surface to support the rack case and amp during a performance.

  ...not that this is an easily portable rig, even with the cart (and let's not even think about venues which have stairs and don't have a ramp or elevator :-), but it offers enough advantages to make it worth the difficulty:

  • The VL70-m/Patchman chip combination is showing its age (the VL70-m debuted in 1996, and Yamaha stopped making it in 2011), but it still sounds great – both the emulated instruments, which are the VL70-m's strength, and the purely synthetic sounds (I especially like the one called "Synzilla" :-).

  • The JV-1010 is also an older product (first produced in 1999, and also discontinued), but it still has a number of sounds that I don't have anywhere else, including a cathedral organ which draws stares every time I play it. :-)

  • The Behringer RX1602 mixer provides 8 stereo inputs, which is more than I ever expect to need, and one of its strengths is that it has a mute button for each channel. This is important because the MIDI synths are chained together, which means they're actually all sounding at once (this includes not only the JV-1010 and VL70-m, but also the laptop with wind synths if I happen to have that connected as well) – and so is the audio output from the EWI's internal synthesizer. This way I can mute everything but the synth I actually want to be heard – or I can choose to play two, three or more voices in unison.

  • My backing tracks are played by the same tablet (and the same app :-) that displays my sheet music, which also feeds into the RX1602 mixer.

  Here's a block diagram of this setup as it looked up to July 2013, and another for the picture from then up to September 2014. The details will certainly continue to change, so I'll add updates each time a new configuration seems to have stabilized. :-)

[ SMW, March 2016 ]