Hey folks!

Im looking at taking my own original material live and i’m looking for the right gear to get it all together.

Here’s the back story:
I started Kamihamiha as a solo project, not really thinking about live performance and worrying more about production techniques and the way things sounded as opposed to traditional “songwriting”. Now i’m looking at taking it live, and I’m pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to do it.

My current recording setup involves Pro Tools 8/Reason 4 with an Mbox2 external sound card and an Oxygen 8 V2 MIDI keyboard/controller. When recording, all the drums are sampled, and most the time layered. For example, I’ll layer 2 kicks together, and 2 snares with a digital clap to make the basic kick/snare rhythm. I’ll then add loops behind with the low end cut out to create the ghost notes, and more loops for hats/rides. On top of this, I use a lot of digital percussion loops and just generally sounds that cannot be achieved on an acoustic kit!

On top of this, many of the tracks use tempo based effects on the synths, such as side chained “pumping” basses, or tempo based LFO wobbles.

Now for working live, I have the gear listed above, as well as a Novation Launchpad and a Kaoss Pad 3. These are enough to work a DJ set, but I want to work this as a band - Not a guy pretending he can rap to a backing track.

One idea i had was to use the stereo output from my Mbox as 2 mono outs instead of 1 stereo. This way, I could send the left channel (Click + Drum layer samples and some synths) to the drummer, (Who would play the straight rhythms on an acoustic kit, and some of the electric hats on a Yamaha DD-55 drum pad which will be connected to a leptop running Reason via MIDI) and the right channel to the FOH. Problem here is I would lose any stereo info, and (correct me if im wrong) may end up with phasing problems.

The general setup of the songs:
Sampled drums (layered)
Synth basses (Sometimes multiple)
Synth Leads (Sometimes multiple)
Guitars
Vocals

Can anybody think of any ways around these problems? I think that an external sound card with multiple independant outputs would be the answer, but havent a clue which cards have seperate outs and not just multiple master outs.

I’m also looking for a mixer which could be used to control levels, pan and cross fading in Ableton, as jumping about on the launchpad is just a bit fiddly!

Any help is appreciated :)
K!