Products
Novation SLs 'Feel Right' On Muse Tour
By Staff
Oct 7, 2007, 00:57

When it comes to touring there is probably no one out there with Des Broadbery's range and depth of experience. With 23 years in the business--16 of those as U2's keyboard tech--this man has probably come across every type of on-stage technical issue that you can imagine. He is currently facing some of his biggest challenges on a mammoth world tour with Muse, but overcoming all hurdles with a system based around Novation's (Booth 136) SL range of controllers.

"On stage we've got a Zero SL and 61SL," says Broadbery. "This particular tour we've taken another keyboard player with us, Morgan Nicholls. I've built and designed the system that he is using that consists of Logic, software instruments and playing these instruments live. We needed something to control that in our particular crazy way, and the controller we decided to get was the Novation SL.

"It's the way that we can control an entire system as opposed to just instruments. It's using the Automap function but we've taken one template and altered it dramatically so that it works with what we do.

"It really is fantastic. The way that we're running all of this stuff just makes it very, very streamlined and very fast. We're running another piece of software with it called On Stage written by Paul Eastman [programmer] from Snow Patrol. It's a little program that allows you to load a Logic song via a program change. What we've done is designed the Novation to spit a program change number at it so it listens to it and pulls up individual songs."

But it's not just the controlling side of the SL range that Des and Morgan find appealing--the actual keyboard itself is very playable too.

"The SL61 is fantastic and what I use most and Morgan loves it too. It's a cross between a waterfall keyboard and a normal 'keyboard' keyboard. For what he uses it for Morgan said, 'This is the one and it is the one that actually feels right'."

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