If you have ever seen me play, or heard my recordings, you know I like my gear. I love to play around with different sounds and textures in the music. When I heard about the Axon guitar synthesizer, I knew I had to check it out. I've been using one ever since. The Axon lets me create music in many different ways. I find being able to play chords and have them continue to ring along while I play lines over them a unique and expressive way to work in a trio setting. I like to blend regular guitar sounds with midi (synthesizer) sounds. I'll often solo with a Hammond, B3 organ sound (from a JV1080 in my rack) blended with a clean or semi distorted sound to create what I think is a really cool texture. Things are changing now, though. My rig is changing. I'm no longer using outboard gear to generate my midi sounds. I have an Intel Mac and am now triggering various soft-synths, including the sounds found in Logic Pro and Reason.

    On the Guitar side, I'm using Guitar Rig by Native Instruments. This is software that lives in my new Intel Mac. Basically I just plug the thing into a powered Mackie speaker and go. I'm quite happy with the tone I get from the software. Plus its pretty cool to be able to go to a studio date with just a guitar and a powerbook and plug in and play. My new CD, Traveler, was recorded using Digital Performer (MOTU) and Guitar Rig as a plug in. All the midi is, of course, the Axon. I have much more tweaking to do with Guitar Rig but I'm told its the journey, not the destination. Now that I'm doing midi from the Mac as well, my set up is becoming much easier to deal with.