Jim Daneker Live Keys & Tracks Tour Rig 2021

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys jim daniker here with michael w smith i thought i would take you on a quick tour of my touring rig for fall 2021. um we are kind of going back into michael's career when we started this tour in 2020 uh i think the first and only show we did was march 12th and then covet hit so we never got to do that tour so we're picking up where we left off and as part of the set we're going all the way back to the early part of michael's career we're playing some some old stuff all the way to the new stuff but because we're doing that i thought it would be fun to recall his keyboard rig from back in the 80s through the early 90s so that said i am bringing out old faithful the yamaha kx88 which is one of the best controllers ever made it doesn't have any sounds in it it is just a fantastic piano style weighted keyboard and it just feels superb to play so my rig has evolved a lot through the years before i forget um a lot of you guys know that i am also a big roland fan roland and yamaha to me are the two top notch companies they always have been they just make great stuff going back a few years my rig was kind of the opposite of this instead of being just one keyboard it was four keyboards all roland and um but the show was entirely different then and so it was it's hard to explain why i've made the changes i've made but go back and forth a lot between the two um so i'm retiring some of my roland stuff to the studio which is where i tend to use that stuff more but on the road for this tour it makes the most sense to go back to the yamaha stuff and so before that with the first leg of the tour i'm using the kx88 which i'm having a blast with because it's so much fun to play feels fantastic however sooner than later i actually have it out with me i'm switching to the new yc88 which is again it's brand new and the nice thing about the yc88 is for the first time it lets me do everything i need all in one keyboard i've never really had that for the last gosh 10 15 years i've used the yamaha cp300 which is a digital piano and then on top i will put a smaller keyboard usually for organ centric duties and the last year that's been the yamaha yc61 which is fantastic and that's got real hammond style waterfall keys but it has physical draw bars which are a big deal to me because i play a lot of b3 stuff so yamaha just came out with the full size version of that which is the yc88 it's got 88 piano style keys it actually has wooden sides on the keys it it looks feels great uh but it also has the eight physical excuse me nine real physical draw bars which is uh again it's a big deal but for now uh for the first leg of the tour where we're doing some of the classic material i wanted to bring out the kx88 because it's just a lot of fun so um yeah i'm gonna flip the camera around and take you on a kind of walk through what i'm using and try and explain why if you have any questions about any of this stuff feel free to ask in the comments below be sure to like and subscribe because i'm going to be putting out a lot more content over the next couple months but yeah that's basically it one one other note though when i started with michael 26 years ago this fall the rig was vastly different now of course we can do everything with a laptop but back then the rig was the size of a industrial refrigerator it was 27 rack spaces tall two racks wide so that thing probably weighed 800 pounds it was full of midi modules korg was big at the time so the 01w series the wave station let me see what else that rig had it had a pair of akai s1100 samplers had a pair of roland mks 20 piano modules it had uh three or four roland jv 1080 modules with expansion cards it had two massive roland line mixers it had two yamaha digital line mixers so that let me kind of take any combination of sound modules and route them to any output because there were three keyboard players on that first tour that i did so it was endlessly complicated [Music] [Applause] and it cost a fortune to ship and it needed space on a truck and all that kind of thing now it's one controller one laptop and it's very simple very sleek so in some sense these these rig walk-throughs this one's not going to be very complicated there's not much to it but i love it because it's it's um it's sleek it's reliable and uh i can actually do far far more these days with just a laptop based system than i ever could back in the old days so anyway hope you enjoy this again feel free to ask any questions and let's get started okay so here is the uh the main overview of the rig starting with the controller it's a 35 year old yamaha kx88 which is a fantastic controller um feels absolutely superb i managed to find one in mint condition and uh it really really is great and uh even all these years later it just man just feels right okay so we've talked about the kx88 now let's talk about touch osc on the ipad this is an app that lets you create your own custom control panel whether it's knobs faders or buttons that let you do pretty much anything you can imagine in my case this is a modified version of the template that comes with backstage pass so you can see here there's 24 program change buttons which is all i need for a typical show because some of these are splits and layers and that sort of thing but i also went further uh specifically for for this particular show i've got some commands that let me run logic like start stop i can close uh the current song i can open a song i can navigate up and down through the track list i can go left and right in the finder to pick different files and open them without ever having to come over and you know work with a computer i can do it all right from here so let's see what else i've also got key commands for previous marker next marker top of the song marker one i can mute and solo tracks if i need to um so yeah this basically is kind of my remote control for the computer so that i really have to turn sideways and interact with this um so these are the these are really the three main components this is the controller and again in this case using the kx88 right now but i will be switching to the yc88 later in the tour the ipad which is my remote that you know talks to the computer and then the computer itself so let's check that out okay so as for the computer itself um it is mainly there to provide my sounds all of my sounds come from backstage pass which is the custom virtual keyboard environment i built for main stage and it's completely controlled by the ipad which i've already showed you and it's got all the same stuff in it that that the the commercial version has that anybody can buy but of course there's a handful of sounds in in my version that are exclusive to this show so obviously nobody else will have those sounds but it's the same backstage pass anybody else can have um and then along with with uh with that i run logic which runs our stems and sympty right now the track selected is our simply signal that drives video and our click track and so as far as actually running things i'm going to show you an example i'm going to try to run the ipad with my left hand while filming with my right hand so um i can close the song just by hitting the escape key and then i've got all the songs in order here on the desktop and we're not doing this many songs but the first two columns are generally both halves of the show and um smitty will you know typically have things in order but we call him the king of wing because he will sometimes go off script and and i've got to be ready for anything so the the main question i get is is everything in one file and the answer is no that would never work with smitty because he's always changing things problem with doing everything in one file is say you have 20 songs in your set list but you make a change to song number two you know you cut a chorus out or something well it messes up then everything from there forward so um for that reason and the fact that you know i've got an entire careers worth of michael's music in the computer i need to be able to have different versions of songs and so forth so it's just much easier to have every song as a separate file and then some people want to know well how do you how do you do that really i can't show you the ipad and the screen at the same time but i've got a way of navigating it with the ipad so i just go to the next song open it it opens you just saw how fast it opens less than a second and it's ready to go and of course i hit the space bar on the ipad we're off and running and you know as soon as the song finishes i hit close open the next song and we're off and running the natural question would be you know do you ever run into any trouble with that and the answer is no logic is gosh you've been using logic for 30 years now and it's just flawless you know once you have once you have everything set up right and optimized um for a touring rig it really really is rock solid i shouldn't say it's flawless because no software is flawless but if you know it well enough you know how to set things up and and how to optimize things um part of it is just not asking the computer to do more than than you should you know you shouldn't be running massive track counts you shouldn't be running virtual instruments like omnisphere or you know large contact instruments you know like i'm trying to think you know like an orchestral string library that's going to really tax the computer there are ways around that so it's just a matter of of knowing your stuff and setting up your rig in the right way but uh so anyway yeah every every song different file uh some are busier than others um [Music] but a lot of times it's just click you know a lot of times i just open a click track and um and that's it so that's the show computer logic on one hand and backstage pass running my sounds and that's it this particular computer is a 2014 macbook pro it's a quad core i7 with 16 gig of ram it's getting a little long in the tooth waiting to see what apple does here fall of 2021 hoping to get a new machine soon but this one has been absolutely rock solid it's also an older model which has a proper keyboard i i've got a new macbook pro or you know one that's about two years old i guess it has a new butterfly mechanism which is awful it's you know it's a 4 000 computer and the keyboard i'm afraid to look at it the wrong way but this thing is a tank it's it's a rock solid machine it's got real usb thunderbolt ports it's got a card reader and it's got a magsafe port for power um these are the good old days and um so that's why i've hung onto this machine for so long it just runs so well so so that's the machine so let's look at a few other things okay next up are the stands people have asked about these stands this stand i'm using for the laptop is actually meant to be an office desk stand very heavy duty one but um i found it on amazon i'll put a link in the description uh it's about a 300 stand it's very heavy um it's hydraulic you can raise and lower it just by squeezing that handle and it'll erase but it's it's really heavy duty i like the fact that the laptop is really solid on there and um i took the table off and made a smaller base for it but you can see you know it's all metal and um just a really cool piece i really like it even like that it's open on the bottom so i can have my interface and other stuff down there and then the keyboard stand that you see here is not a keyboard stand it's actually a custom industrial lift for a really heavy office desk it's made by a company called tech19 i think or that might be the model i'll put a link in the description as well for this i would not recommend it if you are you know traveling in normal musical circumstances you know if you're it's not portable it it doesn't really come apart it's you know once it's built it's built you could take it apart but that would be a pain um it's about 65 pounds it's very heavy it's made of steel and it's electric the column here raises and lowers just by um using a remote controller let me show you the controller here underneath my ipad right there is the controller that raises and lowers the stand i don't actually use that during the show when i take the stand out of the case i raise it to the height i want and then i unplug it so it actually never moves during the show but um i really really like this stand uh it's very very heavy even though you know i've got a kx88 sitting on it which is 65 pounds this stand is capable of lifting 175 pounds so it's rock solid i can bang on the on the keyboard and it doesn't wiggle at all it's like a like an iron podium so that was a good find and of course i like how it looks i think it's nice and sleek it looks clean on stage it's got a cool look to it and so it's probably my favorite rig i've ever had in terms of just the way it looks you know it's it's uh i like the single keyboard on a stand thing it's not complicated i don't have a x brace stand where everything's wobbling and cheap looking it it just looks right and it more importantly it feels right it doesn't doesn't move at all and it does what i want it to do [Music] okay so audio interface um this is a motu ultralite mark iii it's a hybrid firewire and usb interface and i gotta say up front i am not a fan of motu gear it's not my first choice however i have two of these and these particular boxes are the only thing i've ever had of theirs that has not let me down and the only reason i went with these in the first place is because they are the only interface on the market at least that i know of that checks all the boxes for me it's small it's only a half rack space it's made of metal so it's very durable it has a lot of outputs it's got 10 balanced tip ring sleeve outputs so i don't have to use direct boxes i can just use a trs to xlr snake and um you know most boxes of this size only have anywhere from two to four or maybe six outputs if you're lucky this one has 10. so it's a lot more flexible than others i like the fact that i can use it with firewire firewire 800 even though it's an older protocol it still works great it's bus powered so if i'm in a place where i need to be mobile and i don't have a you know power it'll run off your computer's power um and so it's great for mobile work it has a built-in midi interface old school five pin midi in and out it has digital audio in and out the spdif um what else uh i think that's it yeah so it just it does everything i need it to do um so despite the fact that it's motu and every other box of theirs i've ever had has been a miserable failure at one point or another this one has been rock solid uh over several years and until somebody else makes something like this this is what i use and it works great um i wish universal audio would make something like this i love love love the apollo series i've got several of them at home in my studio and we've got one on michael's computer for his piano sounds but for for playing back stems and all that kind of stuff this particular box is you know again it's the only thing i've found that does what it does so universal audio rme uh apogee i wish that that they would make something like this but they don't so anyway so that's the audio interface okay last but not least this hideous contraption is a i call it my cutting board pedal board it's a cutting board from target it's like vinyl plastic very heavy duty and i have mounted both of my pedals to this not with velcro but actually screwed to the pedal board from underneath um and what that does is it keeps the pedals from first of all from just being loose and flopping around in a bag um all the cables are are tied to the pedal board and it just keeps them reliable both of these pedals are at least 10 years old this is a yamaha fc7 it's by far the best volume slash expression pedal on the market because it's got a really wide range um you know if this is where you put your foot you you can get a nice wide angle out of it most pedals have a shallow angle which is a lot harder to control your sounds that way the wider the angle the more control you get and this thing's a tank these have been around for 45 years if not longer so i have several spares but you know again this one's 10 years old this is a roland dp-10 sustain pedal probably the heaviest duty sustain pedal on the planet it feels like a grand piano it's really hard to push with your hand because it's meant for your foot but these are built like tanks as well they feel fantastic and they just work forever so these two pedals i i can grab this whole pedal board you can see my my custom cable loom that i've got everything all my cables wrapped in so when that's disconnected they just wrap around the pedals and i slip this whole thing into my carry-on bag in one grab i'm not you know dealing with a bunch of pedals flopping all over the place so that's my pedal board um it's red so i can see it in the dark on stage and um yeah it's it's hideous but nobody sees it but me so there you go one other little thing that most people don't ever see and they're not even aware of it i'm a stickler for you know call it ocd whatever i hate seeing cables i hate for the audience to see a rig that's got cables draped everywhere so i'm really picky about having my cables wrapped i get this nylon webbing that you can get on amazon or you know any electronics supply store i run all my cables through one i loom them together and they are attached to my stand on the back side so that nobody sees them when you look at my rig from the front you don't see any cables so all you see is the keyboard and the stand it looks nice and clean so you're looking at the back of my stand here looking up at the underside of the keyboard and i just wanted to show you that so you can see that it's you know it's done right it's neat it's clean and it just keeps your rig looking nice and respectable so okay so uh here we are two months later uh just now getting around to finishing this video we are now obviously on the christmas tour with michael w smith and amy grant um anyway that's what happens sometimes on the road takes forever to get things done so i hope you enjoyed this look at my keyboard rig again if you have any questions feel free to get in touch leave your comments below and um yeah there you go i hope this was fun take care and if you're watching this at christmas merry christmas [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: JimDaneker

Views: 677

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Keyboards, Synths, Touring, Tracks Rig, Keys Rig, Keyboard Rig

Id: 1k6zbUzBz_0

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 06 2021