While stuck, like everyone else, in semi-quarantine-work-from-home-bullshit, I decided to do what all good drone musicians do and prepare a live stream for you to quietly ignore. I've been picking the gear, collecting sounds, and just generally fucking around every chance I get (which is a lot of chances lately).

At first, the rig was going to be the WaveState, MPC One and Behringer DeepMind 12. After some discussions on social media, a lot of people said they wanted to see what the Force could do more than the One so I swapped that out. Not sure that's the best choice for me, and maybe that says something about where I should put my focus in the future, but for now the Force will be the center piece.

After a few sessions, I decided the broadcast rig needed to be a bit more weird than the DM12 could get me, so I swapped it for the DSI Pro 2. it will also be better if both synths have their own keyboards for MIDI routing reasons. If I can figure out where to put it, having the DM12 in the rig would still be really nice in case I need some NOT super weird analog sounds in there (which is likely). Unfortunately, the Ikea shelf I made this stand table out of is only so long.

After a day playing with it, this is a scary powerful setup.

The Akai Force is an interesting beast to work with. It doesn't have quite the same flow as the MPC despite running very similar operating systems. It does have some *very* nice conveniences the MPC doesn't have, though (like a SELECT button that lets you select a pad to edit without also triggering it to play - essential in a live context) and those make up for it. It's physically HUGE playing surface takes getting used to.

The Pro 2 is an obvious choice because of it's almost modular nature. 4 oscillators, 2 filters, 4 LFO's and a modulation step sequencer. It's as close to a portable modular with patch memory as you can get

The WaveState is on another level from the DSI. Being so new, I still don't fully get all that it can do, but it's DEEP. Contrary to popular belief, it's anything but a one-trick pony, since you can also use it as a straight S+S rompler or vector synthesizer. The pads that fall out of it are very, very good.

The last thing I need to work out with this rig is mixing. Right now, the big Mackie is on the otherside of the studio along with my Axe FX III and Lexicon Reverb. I may have to move that rack closer somehow, but I don't know where it will fit. Maybe a small format stereo line mixer for the rack next to me is in order. I could use the Mackie 1402 and just not use the bum channels, but that's a lot of desk space I don't have. I will have to ponder further.

I am hoping to be set with material for a performance sometime within the next week. Once I'm set on the material, Ill setup an event on my NoiseTheorem facebook page for it (also need to figure out the platform...possibly Twitch). More details to come.