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PismoRock On: PowerBooks are an Essential Tool for the Smashing Pumpkins
By: Chris Holmes
Hi, I originally posted a message seeking advice to a troubling dilemma many of us have experienced on our European tour. As a result of my original post I have been asked to answer a few questions on how we use our powerbooks on tour.
I am playing keyboards and synth. I use my powerbook extensively during the show. I am running a powerbook wallstreet with 300mhz G3 processor and 192 mb of ram, with system 9.04.
I am using the now defunct Opcode’s Studiovision 4.21 sequencer software (www.opcode.com ), mainly to route my midi signals from my controller keyboards to my synths and software synths during the show. Old habits die hard. I would recommend to any sane person out there use Emagic’s Logic instead. I use Studiovision in conjunction with an Opcode Studio 4 midi router.
For my sound playback I am using Bitzheadz Unity 2.0 software sampler as my main sampler. I also use a Kurzweil 2500 synth as a backup, but for program changes and load up times Unity is much more time efficient. I use this program as my main sampler running under OMS in Studiovision. It is very reliable, and sounds amazing.
I am running Unity with about 120 mb allotted to the program, triggering custom mellotron and chamberlin samples (mellotron and chamberlin are vintage keyboards from the 60s. As an aside I highly recommend Mellotron Archives akai format cd-rom which can be converted to Unity with Bitheadz Osmosis software www.mellotron.com. www.bitheadz.com).
I tried to use the vx pocket pc-mcia soundcard for sound output, but there is an inherent latency which makes using it as a live controller with Unity impossible. There seems to be an unavoidable 25-75 ms latency in Unity playback. While this can be easily dealt with for recording purposes it creates quite a problem for live applications. I then resorted to using the built in Sound Manager output with the standard 1/8" stereo jack into a mackie 1202 mixer. The results have been very good so far. It isn’t perfect, there is a pretty high signal to noise ratio compared to the vx pocket soundcard.
I also sometimes use simpletext text to speech during the intro of the show.
Here is my stage setup…
Apple Powerbook Wallstreet 300 mhz with 192 MB of RAM OS 9.04
Opcode Studiovision 4.21
Unity 2.0 running under OMS
I choose to use the older wallstreet because it is very flexible. It uses both mac serial, and scsi which are still pretty standard for music applications.
Micromoog with Roland Space Echo
2 Roland Mk-2 controllers
Korg MS-2000 synth
2 Kurzweil 2500 synths
Nord Lead 2 rackmount
Peavey 1600 midi volume controller
Opcode Studio 4
We also use our powerbooks pretty extensively while travelling. It’s the swiss army knife of entertainment systems. DVD player, portable playstation with Connectix virtual game station, mp3 playback with SoundJam MP, cd player, video editing deck with firewire cameras and Final Cut, cd burner with Toast, ethernet networking of Unreal Tournament Edition, Internet, etc. etc.
Thanks,
Chris Holmes
The PowerBook Zone would like to thank Chris Holmes for his time in answering the questions we lobbed at him. He's currently playing tonight in Helsinki, Finland. The rest of the European tour dates can be found here. For the rest of the week's PowerBook news and reviews, head back to the main page.
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