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 (formerly 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 a Macbook Pro and am now triggering various soft-synths, including the sounds found in Logic Pro and Native Instruments stuff.

    On the Guitar side, the software I'm using is Guitar Rig by Native Instruments. It lives inside Mainstage (a performance program by Logic) and basically I just plug the Mac (through my RME audio interface) 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, What it is, as well as my previous CD, Traveler was recorded using Digital Performer (MOTU) and Guitar Rig as a plug in. All the midi generated sounds were controlled by the Axon.