Mixing acoustic with electronic

[Squids]

Hi. Just wanted to share an enlightening experience here. Hopefully it will inspire someone else too.

 

Lately, for my own musical pleasure, I've been messing around with my home writing set up. Like many around here I have a studio. Mine is not in my house, it's in a commercial building that I go to whenever I can but when I am home I have a different kind of set up. It's much more scaled down and centers around a grand piano and an usual acoustic/electric guitar from Danelectro.

 

It's just a little mixer, some M-Audio powered speakers sitting on top of the piano, a Boss SE70 multieffect unit, a Moog Piano Bar, a Helpinstill pick up on the piano as well and this old Dano acoustic/electric convertible guitar. Then, I can bring over my laptop with whatever small sound card and softsamplers and synths (not to mention HD recording studio such as Cubase or ProTools LE) and add that into the set up (and an optional extra midi controller in case I want to play finger drums... non-chromatic sounds don't trigger so great from a "real piano controller").

 

So what I am finding very enjoyable is hearing the real acoustic piano layered with electronic sounds from midi triggered plug-ins or hearing the sound of the acoustic part of the Dano and mixing the monitors so I hear an even balance with whatever washy effect on the electic signal there is. The combination of hearing the electronic part in stereo and the acoustic part of these particular "controllers" that are real instruments themselves LIVE is a very inspiring thing. It's also cooler to play mechanically than many midi controllers as well because you get a mix of the various imperfections of the instrument or your playing mixed with the perfection of electronic instruments or certain DSP processing. A sort of organic meets technology vibe.

 

Anyone else have a writing rig where you use real acoustic instruments as controllers or as dual acoustic/electric instruments?