Gig Performer was rock solid for last night’s show (Griffin Opera House, Griffin, GA) with Face Value tribute to Phil Collins. The MIDI Monitor helped me isolate which pedal was sending random zeros (as in “no sound”) prior to the set, so I could eliminate it!
This show was 100% software sounds coming from Focusrite Scarlett using Arturia V-Collection, Gig Performer, Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Keyscape, and KORG Digital Collection (especially Trident!).
This kind of hardware cost thousands and weights tons! Two laptops (a backup I rotate with a primary) three very light controller keyboards (88,64,49), cheaper stand (since the keyboards are so light stability is not an issue).
Using top touring and session players from the Nashville area, this is a musical tribute to Phil Collins and Genesis that will give you the ultimate in a high energy, memorable show.
Instant high energy tunes start the Face Value tribute show with a blistering horn section, 2 massive drum sets, a rhythm section that produces a wall of sound that can’t be matched, along with stellar harmonies and top quality audio and light production that bring to life the amazing music of Phil Collins and Genesis.
Looking forward to more touring in the years to come and now the band is working on trying to get to the Philippines, Australia and Japan for 2025/2026.
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How it started
Best known as a drummer who sings, Joey Simonton had long wanted to front a big band that had a huge horn and rhythm section sound and was a different from the average wedding or show band. After years of playing drums in many jazz, funk, rock and dance bands, Simonton was determined to put something together after he and his wife moved to Nashville that would fill that desire. With a pool of some of the greatest players and vocalists in the area, he knew that he would have something special to offer when he put it all together. Months of preparation, logistical challenges and rehearsals have resulted in a spectacular show that people of all ages can be a part of.
The “now” picture illustrates what it would have taken in 1977 to produce all of the many keyboard sounds I use on stage with Gig Performer software and Arturia’s collection of virtual instruments touring with The 77 Experience and Face Value Tribute to Phil Collins.
This platform allows me to exactly recreate the pathetically stark sounding keyboards of that era, then also emulate all the hardware it took to make those early instruments sound like they do on the record (overdubs, layers, compression, limiting, EQ, ambience).
I am so blessed to have lived in the 70s when all of this technology was unavailable. I got to learn how things really work, whether real or virtual. Lots of things that were a total PITA for me in 1979, are just not even concerns today. Unlike kids these days, I can appreciate how much bloody work it took to make things sound “good” in the 70s compared to today. The struggle was real, especially for keyboard players!
Remember, MIDI was not even invented until 1984!
I am so thankful and grateful for the many software development professionals that make all this possible. They are the REAL rock stars in my book!
At this public dropbox location, I have placed some artifacts that several folks in the community reached out to me about. During the Backstage, I talked about using Moises stem separation to extract little samples that can greatly enhance the realism of your sounds. In this folder, as NKI (Kontakt 8) patches, and the raw samples as well, for the things I extracted and use in:
Baker Street
Come Sail Away
Lifes Been Good
Love is Alive
Also in there is a patch for Arturia’s Mini V for the big ascending minimoog sound in “Blinded By the Light”. Several members of the community are already using these sounds to enhance their rig, so feel free to use them however you want to.
I’ve been asked to share this gig file with the community, after sharing it on Facebook with someone with a similar need. This is an “effect player” design several years ago I did for a Pink Floyd Tribute (Anderson Council, out of Nashville). This was when I was pretty new to GP and was still using a Nord as my main keyboard, with 2 midi controllers. In this rig “bottom” and “top” and the other two keys in the rig I had back then (NI SI61’s). I did mostly piano/organ on the Nord and pretty much everything else on the other two with GP. I stopped using hardware altogether about a year later.
Everything here that relates to the effects player is in the Global Rackspace, because I wanted all the effects available at any time, regardless of what rackspace I was using. On one of my two NI controllers, I had the eight buttons across the top mapped to the start for the effects. I never needed to STOP an effect live (they don’t loop)… unless I trigger the wrong one - which can be fun. Any/All the effects can play at once…I once started a show with the “Breathe” intro, but while it played I triggered Dogs, Pigs and Sheep. It was a the night we were opening with “hits” but would eventually play Animals in its entirety. Kind of cool.
BEFORE YOU OPEN THE GIG FILE: Copy the entire directory named PinkFloydEffects to /Shared/ and the audio player(s) within the gig file will find them. it looks in /Shared/PinkFloydEffects/ for each file. SORRY THIS WILL ONLY WORK ON MAC, one a PC, you will have to open each audio player in the Global and re-select the file from wherever you put it (it will show you the missing filename).
I left the Rackspace for Shine On you Crazy Diamond in the gig file, just so the design would make sense. Every rackspace (song) routes all audio through the Global as well, making it easy to adjust the balance of rackspaces to effects. To hear the sounds for this song you would need IK Multimedia B-3X, and from Arturia V-collection you need Modular V3, Analog Lab V, and CS-80 V4. (all are part of V-Collection 10 and higher I think, if not 9). They are all audio unit so don’t expect that to work on a PC at all
FAIR USER WARNING: A couple of the effects here are obviously “drop the needle” type recordings, and I do NOT of course own the copyright (Breathe, Money, Time). The files for Dogs and Sheep Vocoder were recreations that I did that mirror the record in timing but use different samples (Dogs) and the Sheep One was a recreation I did with Arturia’s Vocoder. I don’t claim copyright on any of this stuff actually, because I just don’t
