Beth Thornley producer and bandmate Rob Cairns took some time to chat about the keyboard controller they used in making her new record, Wash U Clean. The keyboard in question: a Roland RS-5. They use the RS-5 but more important is what they use it to trigger: the Muse Research Receptor.

"The Roland RS-5 is used as a controller, but we like that it has decent sounds on-board just in case; we have at least a backup piano. We have presets on the Roland with split points that send MIDI to two different MIDI channels depending on where you're playing on the keyboard," says Cairns. "Then during a song, we can use the preset up/down buttons to instantly change to a new setup that sends data to other midi channels, changes split points, whatever. The Receptor stays static, i.e. we don't change programs on the Receptor. It has one "bank" open and everything is set up on different midi channels and sample mapping -- mostly for safety reasons, trying to keep everything as crash-proof as possible. I don't really use many soft synths on the Receptor, except for NI Akoustic Piano, and the rest is mostly Kontakt playing samples."

Cairns says that one cool thing the RS-5 does is, when you are holding a note that is triggering MIDI channel one and you switch to the next preset (which might trigger, say, channel two) it will still send the correct MIDI channel.

"When you let go, the note-off goes to the old midi channel (1) and if you strike the key again it'll go to channel two," says Cairns. " Maybe all [MIDI keyboard controllers] do this, but it works great, especially when you want to change sounds mid-song but you want something sustaining over the change."

Thornley and Cairns use the RS-5, as mentioned, with Receptor.

"We purchased the Roland RS-5 because A) it had a decent piano sound and B) it's super light and easy for Beth to carry. The Receptor seemed cool because I could load up way more samples than our old sampler an (Emu E4K) and it's supposedly very stable and can boot very quickly," he says.

There have been only a few problems in this otherwise happy electronic marriage.

"The only problem we have is occasionally the Receptor gets a little temperamental and will glitch or stutter, and yes, occasionally hang / freeze / crash. I think the hanging was mostly a bad RAM chip. We've never had the Receptor go down during a show, but we've had problems in rehearsals just before shows, which always made me a bit nervous," he says. "I suspect the newer Receptors, especially with solid state hard drives, would be more robust. The Roland has a button that's going bad, and it's the "program UP" button (the one that advances to a new preset) and that's a hassle because sometimes it'll overshoot the desired preset and Beth is scrambling mid-song to find the right sound."

The Muse Receptor

Cairns says the upside of the Receptor is that it is tougher than a laptop, boots quickly and is conveniently small. It also enables you to use the same sounds you use in the studio.

"Being able to use NI Akoustic Piano or Ivory for piano sounds is better than old-style RAM-only sampling." says Cairns.

We asked Cairns what else he though could use some improvement on the Receptor, and the first thing he mentioned was the method for backing up your drive. He went on about it at length and we let him as it is an interesting issue.

Regarding the negatives on the Receptor, there's only one big complaint, which is, if your hard drive goes down, you're out of commission for days, not hours. The reason being you can't clone your hard drive -- well, people who really know Linux may be able to, but the average user cannot, and Muse does not recommend cloning as the process can supposedly mess up your drive due to copy protection schemes, etc. -- point being you need to get a new drive shipped from Muse and then re-install all of your soft synths and samples (and presets). I understand that any piece of gear can fail, but if your hardware keyboard dies, you can usually easily get a replacement at a Guitar Center or a rental house and load your banks/presets in from some sort of backup device. If your laptop hard drive dies, you can boot from a backup USB/Firewire drive or restore your info to a new drive purchased at your local Best Buy or the equivalent.

"The reason Muse has made it this difficult is likely to satisfy plugin manufacturers' desire to minimize piracy, [which is] entirely understandable. But a piece of gear that's both designed to be on the road and has a hard drive needs to have some sort of fast way to get you back up and running in case of failure. The easiest would be the ability to clone your drive. I can't even remove the drive from my Receptor. It's bolted in with some weird bolts -- not a torx head; it's something I've never seen before.

Rob Cairns' Sax's Hard Drive Rarely Fails

"If you look in the KVR message board regarding the inability to make full drive backups in case of drive failure, Muse's response is a laughable sidestep: "What makes you automatically think it's the DRIVE that's going to fail?" I don't know. . . um. . . for one thing, it's the only thing with moving parts and drives fail all the time. Maddening. Yes, they've researched drives and found what they consider to be the most reliable, but still, drives are the thing most likely to fail on a computer, except for maybe a PS fan, but they usually start squawking like a duck weeks before they fail.

"So I'm now looking at a laptop solution to live gigs. I see people with their MacBooks on stage all the time, but being a PC guy I'll look for a solution on that side of the hardware aisle -- probably something with a solid state hard drive running Plogue Bidule, or possibly Cubase, and a good low-latency ASIO interface. But now Muse supposedly will install solid state drives on their machines, which eliminates some of the risk, I suppose. But I really won't feel comfortable unless I have the ability to clone my drive.

"One final thought. Muse offers an option where they will make a backup drive for you, which is a reasonable solution. The problem is that my setup changes from show to show, so I'm constantly updating things, meaning that option is of marginal usefulness. With a backup USB drive on a laptop one could theoretically be up and running mid-set with one strategically placed acoustic tune thrown in while you hook up a drive and reboot."

Beth Thornley's new CD is out now, and a West Coast tour is in the offing for the Spring.