The Gear Blog: Part i: 5 Things the Remedy wouldn't be caught without
As I was trying to come up with a small list of gear that we just couldn't live without, I kept find myself wanting to add to an already lengthy list. And in the end it would have been a list of 50 things instead of 5. So to narrow down the list I decided to list the top 5 pieces of gear (besides primary instruments) that as a band we would never want to be without. So in no particular order here's what I came up with:
- In-Ear Monitors
- Keyboard with Good Quality Pad
- Overdrive & Delay Guitar Pedals
- Metronome
- Reverb & Compression Vocal Effects
So much of what we do as a band depends on our ability to hear on another well. Without this ability, our music would be a sloppy mess. 15 years ago the industry standard was wedge monitors, which did a great job of letting musicians hear themselves, but had many downsides as well. Many drummers that I have talked to over the years have complained about ringing in their ears due to the volume level that they had to keep their monitors at to simply hear what was going on.
Well gone are the days where musicians are required to decide between their long term hearing and hearing at the gig. The way that we have worked around this issue has been to use in-ear monitors(IEM). The use of IEM has allowed us as a band to never compromise in our ability to hear one another and at the same time ensuring our ability to play music with our kids many years from now. While there are many different options when it comes to IEMs, we've chosen to us Aviom products. Their products take responsibility of mixing the monitors away from the sound engineer and put it back in the hands of the musicians themselves. No longer is it necessary to take valuable minutes away from rehersal or sound check to simply get the monitors set. We have found this saves valuable time when preparing for a show.
The next item on our list is something that you don't realize that you're missing until it's gone.
Especially within the context of our music, a keyboard with a quality pad is invaluable.
Up until just this past spring, we used a Korg Triton. In it's prime, this keyboard was a thing
to be reckoned with, the ability to play different patches and even split the keyboard top and bottom
made this a very capable workhorse for us for a few years.
This past year after drooling over them for a few months we final bit the bullet and purchased a Nord Stage 2. To say that we are beyond please with it is an understatement. This machine does almost anything that you can possibly imagine, but the feature that we use more than anything else is its ability to blend its unmatched piano patch with its thick textured pad. Add to this the capability to blend the two on the fly with the use of a control pedal and you have one of the most fundamental pieces to our arrangements.