Rig Update 2011
Posted By Scott on January 16, 2011
Well my keyboard rig once again under went a big update the last couple weeks. After I finished producing my latest CD in early December using my Dell laptop computer as my DAW workstation I decided it was time for a change. For two years I have suffered with the laptop on a table next to the Juno Stage keyboard which meant constantly swiveling between the Juno and Dell keys. That setup was just plain not comfortable and didn’t work well for reading music and viewing online lessons.
The solution I came up with was to drill two 1/4″ holes in the riser tier arms and put in 6″ long 1/4″ long bolts which I slipped 1/4″ inside diameter fuel hose over for padding. I placed on the bolt arms a 22″ monitor. When I have paper music the 6″ arms are longer enough to add on a piece of cardboard to protect the screen then the top of a music stand to hold the paper music sheets. An unseen benefit was this moved the music a few inches closer which I’ve found is more in tune with my eye glasses.
BoogieBeau's Rig Jan 2011
The computer keyboard is a wireless Adesso which has a touch pad on the right side of it. On the upper left there are left and right mouse buttons. The touch pad has a scroll feature where moving two fingers up or down it does the scroll wheel thing. The computer keyboard itself sets on a 1/4″ x 15″ x 18″ plywood board that slides between the top of the stand and Juno. It just happens the OnStage table stand is bent in the middle and there is a gap there and that worked out like perfect making it easy to slide the plywood around to position the computer keyboard just where I need it. Being wireless I can easily remove the computer keyboard in a second if I get bugged by it. But so far I’ve found it isn’t in the way at all. I’ve switched to a chair that has side arms on it that allow me to rest my elbows on when I’m using the keyboard.
With this new setup working I signed up with a popular online music lesson site http://www.jazzpianolessons.com/. Most of the practice lesson sheet music is in PDF format and being able to view it on the monitor in perfect position is really nice. Previously I was always printing sheet music out which was a real pain to keep track of and costly in paper and ink. The next few months I aslo plan to spend time experimenting with my DAW software Sonar 8.5 LE before I produce my 3rd CD in December 2011. The monitor and keyboard are talking to a lower end HP Z200 mini tower computer. It’s not a 3D gamer computer as it comes with a standard graphics and audio support but it should be fine for what I need it for. It’s running Windows 7 64bit Pro so at least I’m up to date OS wise .. or at least until Windows 8 comes out.
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