A story only a nerd could love:

As I said I was a purist.  Rhodes piano to every show.  When it was available I played a Hammond B3.  That's at least 600lbs of keyboards folks.  A Fender Super 61 silverface (60 lbs).  A "Real Tube" overdrive.   I never even used a sustain pedal back then and I hardly do now.  I had to make comprimises then: if there was no B3 I used a Kurzweil Micropiano for organ and acoustic piano.  I ran it through an Alesis Q2 for a leslie simulator and time based effects.  Sometimes I used a Boss reverb pedal.  Yes, I used to look like a Hansen brother.  I was also bedridden about twice a year from aggrivating my hernia.

Keyboards of the 90's had no memory whatsoever...it was still measured in K.  Sometimes good for wierd sounds, but you just can't cram a good rhodes sample into that space.  I played a Korg X2 for a while, but it was more toy than tool.  Somewhere in the late 90's I was working with tracking to a computer and trying plugins - still not a popular idea in the industry...everyone was stuck on Alesis ADATs in the 90's.  I heard Native Instruments B4, and it was hands down the best B3 simulation I'd heard...including Hammond's own XB3 (expensive and still heavy).  That wasn't enough to convert me though.  It stuck in the back of my head until I tried Nemesys GigaSampler with a 5 meg Wurlitzer sample someone had posted for free on the net that I thought "Hey, that's great!  I wonder how I could get that sound onstage".  I loved the idea that there was an online community sharing samples and ideas of this quality.  And so it began.

It was late '99 that I started my mission to pioneer a live computer rig.  I'm sure it had been done by a few people by then but I'm thinking high-dollar major label acts or techo style stuff.  I wish I had known then Nemesys was an Austin based company - I'm sure they would've loved to help me.  As it was I found their program to be way ahead of it's time but VERY tempermental.  It used it's own audio driver format: GSIF.  And it wasn't quite a popular enough format for many soundcards to support this driver - so there weren't many choices of soundcard.  Laptops in '99 were woefully slower than the desktops and 3 times as expensive.  They were also driver nightmares of their own, and although Nemesys had posted a few PCMCIA cards the total price tag would've been over $5000 for a good laptop rig.

I was forced to use a desktop, but I couldn't be hauling a screen, keyboard and mouse to every show - it was 10 times as dorky then as it sounds now....I needed something discreet (I'm not fooling anyone that knows me though).  I first brough a standard desktop, spray-painted black, to shows. At the show I would attach a Gina sound card to it.  It  was about $500 all told and ran on Windows 98.  Gigasampler was in my "startup" folder and I plugged a keyboard into it after the show to shut down - it was that simple.  I just waited for the hard-drive light to turn off after 2-3 minutes of loading, then hit a key on the keyboard and prayed it would play.  I found some kick ass samples on the internet: a free mellotron and a rhodes by Purgatory Creek that I highly recommend.  Eventually I would sample my own rhodes, but seeing how other people did it was key in chasing that idea.  Sunes L-100 was my organ sound - but organ was never meant to be sampled.  I bought a copy of B4 but couldn't run it at the same time as GigaSampler...I tried switching between them through hotkeys but it was slow.  If anything happened while gigasampler was running it would pop-up a warning message on the next load saying "Program did not close gracefully" or something.  I hated that message - it foiled my automatic startup plan and I had to run a macro program on startup to make sure it didn't happen.  So in summary, I liked the rhodes sound but just about everything else pissed me off.

Smaller desktops had not yet caught on and cases were heavy and big....but after seeing Dell's 1U servers I decided I could come up with something.   I found a 1U power supply, a small all-in-one motherboard, and a plastic case - the kind that you would hold a gun in - about 12" x 8" x 6".   I suspended an 80Gig hard drive inside with the little rubber bands I tied my long ass hair back with.   I took apart a keyboard and wired up 8 tiny red radio shack buttons to be the arrow keys and such.  I also had a 2 line lcd display that interfaced the parallel port for some simple notification.  All you could see from the outside was a black plastic case with an lcd and red buttons punched through obviously home-made cuts in the plastic.  Opening it up revealed a mess of wires.  It could not have possibly looked more like a bomb.  (Strangely enough I never had trouble carrying it on to several planes...in early 2000 security was much more laid back).  On it's off days it was a DOS MP3 player, which was great for long trips in the van (used a lot of power though)....yeah, that's right, I had an 80GB mp3 player in 2000 beatch...stick that in your pocket protector. 

When it first came to shows it worked about 20% of the time.  I still brought my rhodes, but I would set up the computer hoping that it would someday win my trust.  For a small weighted controller I cut in half a Fatar/Studiologic 88 keyboard.  It felt OK and was lighter, but 44 keys was a hair too small.  My bright idea now had me bringing more crap.  As I began to actually play it, I would sometimes start the gig using the computer and franticly rip out the patch cable and plug it into the rhodes after windows crashed or there was some horrible digital noise.  One gig in early 2000 it caught on fire onstage (before the show thankfully).  I was alerted of this by the shreik of a female backup singer - man they can scream loud.  Apparently an exposed solder joint had shorted onto something and melted the plastic...lots of black smoke and my musician friends still won't let me live it down. 

By 2001 it was starting to be dependable...let's say 85% of the time.  It was in a new wood covered aluminum frame I made myself from builders square materials.  The motherboard was now a mini-atx Intel desktop board, the total size was 11"x11"x4" and it was a PIII 800Mhz with 512Mb & a 10Gig drive.  I would still use my Kurzweil Micropiano for organ, but I bought a Yamaha P-80 piano (which has the best action of any electric piano I've tried to this day).  It had some built in sounds that were an OK backup plan if the computer failed.  I was finally rid of my heavy load and pretty proud of it.  But trusting a windows 98 computer to load correctly without a screen and keyboard was a stretch...many shows I would plug it in over and over begging it to start up this time.  When I got home I'd get to see what that night's problem was ... sometimes as stupid and frustrating as a change in daylight savings time message that kept windows from loading any further.  I was really getting to love the B4 and rhodes sounds though.

I was aware of VST plugins then, but Gigasampler was still the only thing that could run... well ... gigs of samples, and it didn't play well with others.  Suddenly Native Instruments launched Kontakt - and made it compatible with the gigasampler format.  I have no idea how they could legally do that, but it was great.  With a shitload of memory it could get a smaller version of my rhodes sample.  It allowed me to finally use organ and rhodes at the same time...no need to bring extra gear and it slayed the MicroPiano's organ.  I had to learn what a VST host was, as I had only used Kontakt and B4 in standalone mode.  I can't remember what vst hosts I tried - I put hours and days of effort into finding and learning dozens of them, but they were mostly sequencers and DAW's.  And then I stumbled across Bidule.  It was the moment I started thinking this could really be something cool rather than just a way to prevent heavy lifting.  I had bidule up and running my sounds within a few hours and never looked back - sorry Nemesys.

This was early 2001...I think Bidule was on version .5 then, but it still kicked ass and was suprisingly stable.  It was a true virtual patchbay.  The effects were independent units, not slots on a track like in Cubase.  The DFD extension of Kontakt came out so I could load my full rhodes sample and a cool piano to boot.  I now had 8 MIDI drawbars I controlled B4's drawbars with...but when I discovered that I could assign midi controllers to any knob of a vst effect I needed more.  I added a programmable 16 fader control box (Doepfer PocketFader) and started running delays, reverbs, and tremolo.  I stopped bringing my stompboxes to shows after I found a passable distortion plugin from SImulAnalog.  All of these plugins were great and free too, I couldn't believe how convenient it was all of a sudden - and in no small part due to the kindness of fellow musician-nerds.

Things didn't change much until late 2003.  I was happy and everything worked how I wanted it.  I eventually stopped bringing my Yamaha P-80 keyboard and used lighter midi only controllers...so I was completely dependant on the computer  - and to this day have only had to sit out 1 show due to equipment failure.  I missed the wonderful action of my P-80,  but it's MIDI features sucked, and MIDI cables suddenly seemed troublesome after I began using USB controllers.  First it was an M-audio Radium 61 which SUCKED to program, then an Evolution MK-461C which continues to rock (then M-Audio bought Evolution).  I upgraded my now old wood and aluminum frame to an AMS E-cube 2.6Ghz hyperthreading, blah blah, etc... it seemed like a supercomputer at the time and it was even smaller than my custom job (which had doubled in size after I integrated the Gina card into it).  I got a firewire soundcard thinking it might resolve my issues with a fan noise that leaked into the signal (it didn't).  I was making some pretty new and interesting noises live rather than my roots in classic key sounds.  My never-ending search for a good piano sound ended with Steinberg's The Grand.  I was now playing with many bands...and they all made fun of my rig on general principal and for it's many issues...there was always something that didn't work as expected...I said I only missed 1 show but I embarassed myself at many practices as I tried new things.

In March of 2004 I picked up 3 shows with Patrick Davis opening for Cowboy Mouth around Texas.  Definitely the biggest name gigs I had been a part of...so of course I brought my screen and keyboard just in case :)    The shows went great but only because I tracked down some issues using the screen during soundcheck.  I got to sit in with Cowboy Mouth for their closer one night and John Thomas Griffith was really interested in my rig for the same reasons I got into it - weight (He later said he gave up in frustration after buying much equipment).  I decided then that my resistance to laptops had to end, my rig was no longer just an experiment...I needed to guarantee it would work.  Since my soundcard was firewire all I needed was the computer, and laptops are only twice as expensive as desktops these days.  I found a new Fujitsu C-series 2.6Ghz notebook for under $1000 in town.  It was SOOOO much better being able to tweak little things live or re-reoute a signal.  Or just to be able to quickly tell if there was a blue screen of death or I had just forgot to turn my amp on.  My rig gets lighter but I now catch flack for having a computer onstage from people who would have never noticed when it was a small wooden box sitting behind me.  Now I have to worry about my laptop getting stolen since everyone immediately recognizes it for what it is.

I couldn't take playing without weighted keys any longer and jumped on the M-Audio Keystation pro 88 when it came out.  A wonderful keyboard and I still have no complaints...well actually...the P-80 action was better but I sold that keyboard to the Ataris...sorta...FedEx apparently destroyed it on the way.  And I really didn't need 88 keys, but a 61 key weighted USB controller with assignable knobs and faders will probably never exist... so I took my nice new keyboard and introduced it to my hacksaw....no joke.  I cut 22 keys off the top, rewired it to add volume pedal inputs, and built a new case.  I love it even more now but it's not for it's looks.  The 4 pin firewire port on my laptop broke, but luckily I got an expensive service plan... so I now have a latest-shit Fujitsu N-series as a loaner, I'll probably have to mope on over and give it back soon.  It was 2 days before the firewire port on it bent pins and broke as well.  I think the 4 pin firewire jack is just a weenie design.  I wish PC's had 6 pin like Mac laptops do.  I use a PCMCIA firewire adaptor or the built-in soundcard to get around it.

And that's present day.  Was it really educational or interesting enough to read?  Or was it like one of those jokes from junior school where the punchline is that you kept listening for 5 minutes?  Or was it like "About Schmidt" and really made you feel like you would never get those hours of your life back?