Vytautas Leistrumas (Solo Ansamblis)
SPB: Walk us through your gear setup from your last tour. How do you implement the mix of live and electronic elements?
Leistrumas: Let's start with a very important, beloved and sometimes hated Elektron Octatrack MK2, which serves as a midi host, effects machine and also plays some backing tracks as well as gives tempo for our drummer. We feed Arturia’s Minibrute and Microbrute signals into it where effects are applied. Midi notes, CCs and clock are being fed to Novation Mininova and Arturia Minibrute synths and (sometimes) a laptop computer, which generates time code signal for visuals and lighting. We use MOTU MIDI Time Piece to split a midi signal. Then there's the wonderful YAMAHA Wind Synthesizer WT-11, which is played like a clarinet using WX-11 Wind controller. Our Godin electric guitar is going through some Boss pedals like reverb/delay and drive straight to a stereo Peavey Classic Chorus 212 amp. Of course, we use two mics to pick up the stereo chorus effect. Our bass is something basic - Musicman bass guitar to an amplifier. We love to use Korg Volca Keys small synth for various effect sounds as well as synth-wave sounding melody lines. Last, but not least - our drummer plays Roland SPD-SX and Roland TM-2 samplers plus a regular drum set. Main and monitor mixes are done in Waves eMotion LV1 v11 mixing console by our sound engineer with all those nice waves plugins, therefore we always have the best possible sound.
