BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

My Gear

So some of you might be curious as to what my setup is like and what I use to record and play my music. So here goes...

My current setup is the following:

[HARDWARE]
-Apple Macbook Pro: I use the 15 inch 2010 refresh Core i7. This machine rocks. I love it a ton!

-Blue Microphones BlueBird Mic: I have owned a lot of Mic's and this is by far my favorite. Mostly because I think it looks spiffy. 🙂 But it also sounds pretty good too.

-Gibson SG in Cherry Red: Love this guitar. This is what I use to record all of my electric guitar tracks with anymore. I used to use an imitation fender strat for a long time, but I just love this guitar. It's so nice to play and the look and feel of it just do it for me.

-Martin Custom X: This is my acoustic guitar. It's amazing. I've had it for a few years now and it's the one I use to play live and record with. It is the guitar on my website with all the nifty signatures. I love this guitar!

-Apogee Duet: This is my firewire interface which I plug my guitar and mic into.

-Yamaha VDrums: I mostly just use these to come up with drum beat ideas and play along with songs to get a feel for things. I rarely use these in recordings. There are a few songs that have these on them though.

-Korg NanoKey: I really should get a full size keyboard. This is just a two octave tiny little USB powered midi controller that i use it to work out melodies and keyboard and organ tracks and some basslines.

-TC Helicon VoiceLive 2: This is used in my live setup. I use this to make my vocals and guitar sound all pretty when I'm playing live!

-Sennheiser HD 280 pro Headphones: These are used for recording and mixing and everything in between.

-Audix OM5 Mic: this is used for playing live.

-JBL EON 500: Another live only thing. I use this when PA system isn't supplied while playing live. It's portable and REALLY can get pretty loud!

-Fender Jazz bass: I forget exactly what kind of bass this is specifically and I kinda don't care because I haven't taken it out of it's case in a long time. I never use it anymore. I just keep it around for nostalgic purposes since it was gifted to me by someone I used to hold very dear to my heart... note used to... Only took me like 5 years to get over her... haha. Only. Sometimes you have to meet someone else that sparks your interest to leave the past behind (Im thinking of you photo girl... Sigh... I wish you would give me a shot hehe... no pun intended...  sigh, I hope maybe some day you'll change your mind, cuz I sure do like you a lot). Anyway's the old flame was who I wrote nearly every song about from around 2004 to 2007 ... I imagine 30 songs are probably about her. I really think it's time to sell this bass. I just don't use it, it means nothing to me anymore. I use either the keyboard Reason basses other synth basses or more recently I have been using the Bass guitar virtual fx in Amplitube along with my Gibson and actually playing the bass lines in on my electric guitar. It then makes it sound like a bass guitar in real time. It's just kinda a glorified pitch shift effect. The last two songs I finished recording feature bass recorded this way. Can't tell can you? This brings us to the software portion of our post...

[SOFTWARE]

-Steinberg CUBASE 5: This is my main deal... I've been a cubase user for 10 years now and even though it acts up and crashes on me sometimes (and everyone keeps telling me to switch over to logic) I think this is just what I love the best.  It works for me and I like it.  This is where the main recording takes place... I also apply FX and edit here

-REASON 4: This is where the backing track drum beats magic happens.  I have LOADS of refills and use this to do all kinds of pianos, organs, synths, drums, etc. etc.  Please note though that unlike most basic music production programs all of the drum beats and all of the pianos and synths and organs and strings etc. have to be pain stakingly either recorded in or manipulated by hand.  I don't use prefabbed loops for any of my stuff.  It's just not my style.  I prefer to build things from scratch than use anything canned.  It's like the best cooking is from scratch.  🙂

-Amplitube 3: this is what I use for my electric guitars.  It gives me nice tones to play with.  I plug my Gibson SG right into it and then bam I tweak this to give me some good guitar tones for recording.

-Soundbooth: I use this for final touch up of the final wav file before I upload the track to the copyright office and then my website.

Well that's the main deal.  I'm sure there's something I missed like some of the iPhone apps i use to help come up with interesting and new chords to use in the songwriting process... or microsoft word for writing lyrics in.  Or excel for keeping track of my set lists.  Really though I figure that's probably a good rough idea of what I use.  I always think i'm completely unprofessional with this whole music creation thing.  But after writing that I realize that I have REALLY put a lot into this whole music thing.  I suppose I am possibly semi legitimate.  Even though sometimes I don't really consider my self very professional.

So there ya go!  🙂  I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed telling you.

Credit where credit is due: When I was writing this blog I decided to add pictures between each item which is something that I got from this other blog I think is super nifty.  So I'd just like to credit that idea to the person I got it from:  http://lilmisswisecracker.com