Mike Garson

Garson's stage rig is elegant and powerful. His piano is a Yamaha GranTouch Disklavier digital piano. "They put a real piano action in there," says Garson. 'Feel is really important to me, and it feels right." Atop the GranTouch sits a Yamaha Motif 8, to the left of which are a fully pumped-up Kurzweil K2600 and the remote for an offstage KSP-8 effects processor. A pair of M-Audio BX8 monitors flank the piano and on its music rack is a Freehand Music Pad Pro, which holds Garson's charts. Yamaha P90 and Kurzweil PC2 digital pianos are placed offstage.

On the road with M-Audio: “Last year I sat in with Gwen Stefani and her band during one performance. They brought me up to play on a song with them, and I played it off a ProKeys 88 stage piano, using the internal piano sounds. It was fun playing on it and it sounded great!"

No stranger to road life, Garson has recorded and toured with Bowie since the early 1970s. On this outing, his rig included a Yamaha Motif ES8 synthesizer and DGT2A Disklavier GranTouch combination. Both units were connected via MIDI to a Yamaha P90 which provided additional sounds, and a vintage 01V digital mixer housed in an offstage rack, plus a variety of outboard effects.

“I use the Oxygen 8 v2 and FireWire 410 on the road with my laptop. The Oxygen 8 is for fooling around, composing on the road, and just jamming on the bus to keep me from going bored from country to country. I usually jam on the bus with the Oxygen 8, FireWire 410 and Ableton Live.”

“I use the Oxygen 8 v2 and FireWire 410 on the road with my laptop. The Oxygen 8 is for fooling around, composing on the road, and just jamming on the bus to keep me from going bored from country to country. I usually jam on the bus with the Oxygen 8, FireWire 410 and Ableton Live.”