Benefits of using a computer running Gig Performer and VSTs - Short Stories

Stories from the Trenches
1

Karl Sanders: Ultimate Portability

The picture’s worth a thousand words! This Quad Cortex unit is not that big, but it’s heavy.

Every ounce matters to the airline company!

You get a 23 kilos and that’s it per bag. So, every ounce that you spend on some piece of gear is some ounce that you couldn’t spend bringing guitar strings, clean socks, you know, whatever.

So, I travel with my laptop anyway. Look at this! This weighs about 4.5 pounds, HP Spectre.
(NB: it weighs between 2.4 and 4.7 pounds or 1.08 to 2.14 kg depending on the screen size and model – 13-inch, 14-inch, or 16-inch)

If I’m just using this as an effects unit, the difference of weight between Quad Cortex and HP Spectre not only does it matter to the airline company – how much weight I’m trying to bring – but it’s also weight that I got to drag around when I make a connecting flight.

So just for practicality sake, if I can do everything I need to do with this laptop and Gig Performer that I would be doing with Quad Cortex and it sounds better from my nice VSTs anyway, is this (Quad Cortex) ever going to sound as good as a Lexicon or Eventide? Close, but you know, not really! So I vote for the skinny laptop!

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:light_bulb: Short Stories compilation No 5 → LINK
:light_bulb: Short Stories compilation No 3 → LINK
:light_bulb: Short Stories compilation No 2 → LINK
:light_bulb: Short Stories compilation No 1 → LINK

Gig Performer is easy to use - Short Stories
Gig Performer's way: Visual approach - Short Stories
[blog] Gig Performer through the Eyes of Musicians: Setups, Stories, and Insights
Moving from Mainstage to Gig Performer - Short Stories
2

Robert Martin: Less problems, more possibilities!

Problems being things like when all that gear is set behind the stage with blankets on it to isolate and mics on it to make it come through the PA and so the audience can hear what’s going on, you have all kinds of issues like the darn guitar players won’t turn down and they’re their amps are bleeding through into the Leslie mics and if somebody, like a tech crew guy, goes walking by and accidentally bumps the mic out of place and it starts banging into the rotor on the bottom of the Leslie – you got serious problems there!

You don’t have any of those issues with the plugins.

And again, being being a Hammond guy since the 60s and knowing what those things will do and how to get them to do it, I was able to program the plugin in such a way that when it’s brought back through a PA system live you can’t tell the difference so there’s no issues with that, plus you don’t have any of those problems that I just mentioned like the mic getting out of place and leakage from other things.

And you can do things with the software that you cannot do with the real thing!

For instance, if you want a real spare sound with only two drawbars out, you cannot overdrive the Leslie and get it to growl with only two drawbars on the real thing. But on the plugin, you just dial up the drive and there you go you got the sound you want!

3

Eddie Huerta: Quality of Sounds, Future Proof, Backline Proof
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Number 1: When you go virtual instruments, all of a sudden this world of VSTs, and you know Tom Oberheim actually created this, so it’s an actual Oberheim it’s an actual Moog, so the authenticity of sounds and the quality of sounds I think is the number one reason.

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Number 2: a lot of these hardware companies, you have like the M1 for example we’re talking about then that one turned into the Trinity and then they replace that with the Triton and then they replace that with the … Right?

So, here you are, you have all your customized splits and layers and everything on your one keyboard and the thing’s all banged up, it’s been in the backseat of your car you need to replace it, okay, you got to replace it with the new instrument. What do you with all these custom things that you’ve created all these beautiful things the maybe the ROM state is not the same… So, to me, the number two reason it’s kind of future proof regarding your sounds.

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Another point: Also if you’re dealing with backline and you get an older board, I mean – massive pickle, right?
And that’s the other that’s the other thing! If I’m doing local dates or drive to dates then, okay, I take my own rig. But for the other ones that we gotta fly to and stuff on my rider it literally says: whatever stand, whatever seat, and one 88-key weighted instrument.

I can show up at the gig and it could be an Alesis or a Casio or or a beautiful Motif or whatever. It takes me 5 minutes during sound check to make sure that that thing spits out MIDI channel one.

Final thought about the Gig Performer-based setup:
I have the keyboard here and I have all my splits, I have all my sounds, so it future proofs it.

No matter what gig I do and no matter what keyboard or instrument I’m playing I have all my sounds available to me.

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4

Dave Schulz: Superior sound quality

The reason I got into Gig Performer was me being anal about the quality of my sounds. I always wanted to use plugins like Omnisphere, Trillian, Keyscape, these heavy CPU-intensive programs and I wanted to use a lot of them at one time. And Gig Performer is the first program, first opportunity for me to use these VSTs and not worry about crashing . That’s that’s the bottom line that’s that’s literally why I use it, because it doesn’t crash and

I’ve actually gotten hired more because of it .

Because I’m getting the client closer to the record than he was than than he thought he could get. It just made it a lot easier which made the workflow quicker which gets the results faster which gives me more work. It all builds on itself.

5

Jett Durham - Play the same guitar all night | Songs with different tunings

There are a couple of plugins that do polyphonic pitch shifting now and one of them is the Neural DSP Archetype: Petrucci plugin. It’s actually how I first started using it, so I have an instance of that plugin and I’m only using it for this Transpose feature here.

So, when I turn this on, I’m going to turn the turn the knob, so I can actually program it.

This setup lets me play the same guitar every night all night.

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6

Trey Gunn: Unparalleled routing

No matter what device I was using, I would always run up to some way that I couldn’t send the signal path. Or if you’re using pedals you have to do all these cables and you have to make decisions.

With Gig Performer, there’s no limit to the routing.

You can just change it like that, so it’s great!

7

Jacob Karlzon: I use VST effects on the acoustic piano!

What I do is that I use also effects on the grand piano, on the acoustic piano.

But I also route to RME. So, I use one volume pedal for that, so I can fade those kind
of things in and out.

Then I have two for these things that you see here, and also one for the Nord Stage, when I use the internal sounds from there. (So four pedals in total)

I like the Boss FVL, it works to get it into into hand luggage. It’s sturdy enough to bring on
tour in in this way.

8

Alistair Begg: I’m now travelling with other members of the band!

So:

  • The amp I was using: 40 LBS (~18 kg).
  • The speaker, when I was only carrying one, was 98 LBS (~44.50 kg)
  • Other speaker which I didn’t carry very often was 59 LBS (~26.80 kg)
  • The pedal board 93 LBS (~42 kg).

So now you travel with significantly less weight?
Oh, yes!

I’m usually travelling with other members of the band now!

You know, keeps the cost down to have as many in the car as possible!
So, it’s a balance of how many people and how much gear you can get in.

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Plus, going extra miles for the best Chapman stick sound quality → LINK