Its About Time

Help is on the way. Let’s assume you’re playing a two-tier rig — say, your main digital piano or all-around ’board below a more specialized axe like a virtual analog synth or virtual-vintage organ. This is usually enough for most bar, club, wedding, and casual gigs, especially given the splitting and layering capabilities of most of today’s pro keyboards. You also carry your own amp or powered monitor system, either mono or stereo. The key to quick, painless setup is this: Prepare a routine you can execute without thought. In the end, you’ll appreciate it even more than your bandmates.

From Car to Stage

A hand truck minimizes the number of trips to and from your vehicle. Get your own, as the venue’s may be rickety or have a keg on it when you show up. I’ve found the Rock ’N’ Roller Multicart (see photo at right) to be far more flexible than general-purpose dollies from hardware stores. Their R12 model has fat, inflatable tires on all four corners, which seems like overkill until that gig where you’re shown a cobblestone or gravel path to the stage. Multicarts adjust in length, and have fold-up vertical brackets on both ends, so you can safely stand cases vertically if necessary. Hard cases with flat surfaces, such as those from RoadReady, or SKB’s “Roto-molded” line (shown below), will stand on any dolly more stably than soft gig bags or cases with plastic “bumpers” molded into the shell, such as SKB’s familiar 4214 model. Two keyboards, a stand, a pedalboard, a briefcase for cables and accessories, and one or even two speakers should take just one trip — spend half an hour one day to figure out how everything fits best, and load it this way every time.

From Upstage to Downstage

For too long, my thinking was “place all the heavy stuff, then connect all the cables.” On a tight stage, though, this meant making trips around or under my rig to run cables, squeezing between the edge of my keyboards and the bass amp or ride cymbal, and otherwise wasting time and bodily motions. A quicker way is to work is from the farther-away “footprint,” — that’s a place on the stage where gear lives, such as a rack and amplifier placed behind you — to your keyboard stand’s footprint. Over the past 15 years of weekend-warrior gigging, I’ve found that the following steps, in order, save even more sanity than they do time.

1. Connect power strips for each footprint. If your keys and amp are close, this may be only one strip, but make sure needed AC outlets are right underfoot from the get-go. Also, your stage location should never be slave to where a venue’s wall outlet is, so bring an extension cord or two.

2. Place the amp or monitor system and plug in its power. This may be just a single keyboard amp. If you have a rack with a mixer and power amp, or sound modules, it pays to put a power conditioner in the top space, to which you leave everything else in the rack plugged in. That way, you only have one plug to deal with when you’re setting up.

3. Make audio connections that are part of the amp’s footprint only. These could be from a small mixer to powered speakers, or from a power amp to passive speakers. Wherever possible, avoid having to reach behind things. For example, I set my Mackie SRM-450s on their faces so the rear panels are accessible, plug in power and audio, then turn them right side up.

4. Run cabling from the amp’s footprint to where your keyboards will be. Plug audio cables into your amp or mixer inputs and stretch ’em out. Do the same for any MIDI cables that connect rack to controller. Lay them to whichever side of your keyboards’ location they’ll be safer from musicians’ feet on. Label which cables go to which keyboards ahead of time, either with a masking tape and marker or little wraps of colored tape. Planet Waves cables come with tiny rubber bands for color-coding. You should also have ganged your main audio/MIDI run into a snake using cable wrap. See “Snakes on a Stage” for details.

5. Place and adjust your keyboard stand. Pre-determine your preferred height and second tier position so you don’t have to think about it at setup.

6. Run cabling up the stand. Working from the floor, bring your main cable run up one leg or X-member of the stand, then drape the ends in a handy position, most often over the rear of one of the bottom tier’s arms. Separate the bottom keyboard’s cables from the top’s.

7. Place and run keyboard AC cords or power supplies. Do this just like in step 5, but don’t gang power and audio cables together, because the proximity of alternating current can cause hum and noise. I even made a separate two-cable snake for my keyboards’ power cords.

8. Put keyboards on the stand, and connect audio and MIDI cables. At this stage, the operative word about what goes where is “Bam!” not “Hmm.” That’s why labeling is essential.

9. Tidy up. Secure loose cables to the leg of your stand. If you’re all snaked up, this step should be minimal, requiring only a Velcro strap or two. Don’t “barber-pole” cables around the stand’s legs — you’ll hate yourself when it’s time to break down.

A neatly set-up rig fights you less when it’s time to tear down, which is basically just reversing the steps. Remove the keyboards, put them in their cases, get the stand out of your way, then carefully gather your power and audio runs, and so on. Sometimes, leaving audio cables connected at the amp end (turn off the amp!) until they’re mostly wrapped up avoids tangles with other cords onstage, which can happen if they’re flopping around on the floor as bandmates frenetically strike their own gear. Breathe and relax through this process, and you’ll be at the bar before the guitarist leaves with anyone.