I currently have a Nord Stage on loan in my studio (thanks, Serge!), and I must admit, it is a beautiful beast. The pianos are, perhaps, an acquired taste, but once you get into them, you can’t stop playing them; the electric pianos are, maybe, the best I’ve ever heard apart from the real thing; the organ is very, very good, and the synth is, while not overwhelmingly brilliant, very usable. Its modular & hands on nature makes it an absolute pleasure to play; the keys feel great; it’s incredibly responsive, both in terms of the board and the controls; it’s light & portable; it looks cool; and it’s only about €3000. OK, that’s expensive, but it is as close to the perfect keyboard I’ve ever used, particularly when the portability issue is brought into the equation. Clavia’s anal approach to everything means that there is no “second rate” sound available to you at all.

But it’s not totally perfect. The rather bizarre inclusion of a USB connection without MIDI over USB beggars belief on something that expensive. The “drawbars” are a little hard to get used to. The synth section is not hugely versatile, and it’s missing some things considered basic on boards a third the price (such as an arpeggiator, and maybe a simple sampler area).

So what is a perfect live keyboard? Well, if the Clavia fixed the issues above, that’d be it. Oh, and if it dropped the price by a grand! Nonetheless, despite my reservations (mostly to do with price I might add) I was so taken by the brilliant sound of it that I was just about to buy one for myself, when… Logic Studio came out, with this new programme called MainStage.

For the past, 3 to 4 years I’ve been trying to figure out a way of using my Mac laptop in live situations reliably. I have done it, in many different bands, but always with limited success and a lot of reservations. Crashes, latency, unpredictable behaviour, a lack of responsiveness and limited controllability are the main reasons I always went back to the traditional route of hardware. I tried Reason, Logic, Rax, and Ableton, but was never really happy. I read about lots of other people doing it, but though I was committed to the idea, it just wouldn’t work out.

MainStage, however, is very, very promising. I’ve just spent some time creating patches on it, and it’s so simple, even a guitarist could use it!  (Just kidding! I meant a drummer.) Latency seems fairly minimal, and with care, you can create processor-light patches in no time at all. It’s fully AU compliant, so that means any AU synth or effect is available to you. Basically, for many people, that probably means no more approximating the sounds you used on your recording; if you used a soft-synth in the studio, you can now use the same one live. The interface is self-explanatory, and it has some very clever features, like a “floating split point” which guesses where you want the keyboard split to be based on where you are playing.

It’s early days though. Its version 1.0, though I must say, it doesn’t feel like it. I have had a couple of crashes, but I imagine that will be figured out soon enough. And I haven’t actually tried it out live yet, but I will. And when I do, I’ll have a plan B in case it all goes horribly wrong!

I’ll be posting about my experiences with MainStage, the Nord Stage, and the new Logic Pro 8 over the coming weeks. And for those of you wondering if the upgrade is worth it, I would have to say I think it is, for many reasons, but especially for this one; Sample. Accurate. Editing. In. The. Arrange. Window.

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