Ryan Alex Farmery

I'll go to painstaking lengths to get sounds as close to the record as possible, whether it's 80s synths, strings, brass or SFX, I can pull these out in a live situation. I've studied synthesis so I find it fairly straightforward to recreate most sounds required.

Every gig is different. Some only require 1 keyboard, others perhaps 2 or 3. Some gigs, I'll use a laptop in addition. Once I know what is required of me in terms of parts, style etc, I'll then begin to work out what gear I'm going to prep. Here's a list of my keyboards I use on gigs:

Nord Stage 2 HA88, Yamaha CP88, Yamaha MODX8, Roland RD2000, Korg Kronos X 73, Hammond XK3C, Hohner Clavinet E7,  Roland D50, Yamaha DX7II, Roland XP30.

My softsynth rack consists of:

2 x Macbook Pros and 2 x RME Fireface 800 for Mainstage plus backup rig, Tascam LM8ST rack mixer, Muse Receptor Quattro linked to a Prosonus Audiobox. I also have a Kenton MIDI Merge box.

Sometimes, some sounds on my hardware boards don't cut it. On gigs where I'm playing lots of strings or brass, I'll tend to use my libraries such as:

Spitfire Audio Albion One, Spitfire Audio Chamber Strings, Spitfire Audio Harp, Spitfire Audio Solo Strings, Fable Sounds Broadway Big Band, Komplete 9 Ultimate, Project Sam Symphobia, East West Orchestra Gold, Arturia Vintage Synth V Collection and Omnisphere 2.