Will Markwardt of Minneapolis' The Absent Arch has played a number of instruments in the band despite his current focus on the guitar. The band expanded from a sort of "keep myself busy" solo project to a five piece. As the pieces were added, his duties diminished. Earlier, Markwardt talked about his guitars and keyboard. Though Markwardt concentrates on the guitar these days, we asked about some of the other instruments in his aural arsenal.

Other members of the band use a variety of instruments. When you digress from the typical (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard) sort of thing live you can sometimes run into problems with sound systems (and occasionally sound engineers). The Absent Arch use instruments including the viola, flugelhorn and trumpet.

The viola used by Jonathan Waldo has a pickup connected to to an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb and a Line 6 delay then run into a Mesa Boogie Blue Angel 4x10.

"It's my old amp, actually; he's using it because his only other choice is an old Peavey that sometimes gets stuck on a heavy distortion channel," says Markwardt. "When we toured last summer, he used a pair of cheap solid-state Fender Frontman amps and put them on either side of the stage to get stereo delay. We liked watching him haggle with various FOH guys about the necessity of it, partly because we think they were right."

Not surprisingly, the viola has also been the biggest pain in the posterior for live sound engineers, but The Absent Arch figured out a way to ameliorate the pain.

"The viola has traditionally been the biggest thorn in the side of live sound engineers, but that problem was solved when Jonathan got a Schatten Designs passive bridge pickup with a quarter inch output. It sounds pretty good through the '73 Fender Bassman and the Mesa -- not to mention our roommate's 1970s Twin Reverb, but we don't think he'll let us take that out of the house," says Markwardt. "The flugelhorn and trumpet are sometimes miked, but Brian likes to just blast over the rest of the stage directly to the audience in most venues. He used to play lead trumpet in his college jazz ensemble and sometimes just stand next to the crowd and play to the side when the overall venue volume is lower."

There were other instruments they used to use but decided to cut their losses. Sometimes what seems like a good idea turns out to be a pain in the butt for everyone at a show.

"We used to bring this cheap glockenspiel on stage, but that was just a lost cause -- though to their credit, engineers tried in vain to get it in the mix," he says. "The most nerve-wracking instrument we have ever brought on stage was a psaltery, a small auto-harp-like instrument that's bowed. Didn't work well. Not well at all."

The Absent Arch are also recording their first CD in the basement of Markwardt and band mate Brian Voerding's abode.

"Everything is going down in digital using an incomparable piece of software called [Cockos] Reaper, that we think the entire world should know about," he says. "The basement really allows us to really take a lot of time -- sometimes too much time -- experimenting with sounds as opposed to a more streamlined approach in a commercial studio. It's a basement, though, and because the heating vents ring and the ceilings are low, we're doing some of the drum takes with a friend at Owl Recording down the street."

The front end of the signal chain includes a lot of Blue microphones, a couple of Kiwis, a couple of Baby Bottles, a Bluebird and a KickBall.

"We use Oktava MC-012s (yes, the Russian ones) as drum overheads and sometimes for acoustic guitar. They were our first two microphones, which Brian bought about six years ago while drunk one night on eBay. We have a Cascade Fathead ribbon stereo pair that we recently bought (they're cheap, have fantastic sound, and are great for vocals and horns)," says Markwardt. "For pre-amps, we just have a couple of Blue Robbies, and track everything through a Midas Venice 240. It's advertised as a live board, but the pre-amps are great and hot enough that we can get enough gain for the Cascade ribbons. We don't use much for processing, either, just Reaper's built-in plugin, ReaVerb, which allows the user to upload reverb impulse files that can simulate any room for which an impulse has been made. The EQ and compression plugins are also very cool."

Markwardt says that the record has a variety of sonic interpretations for different instruments.

"There are electric guitars and acoustic guitars, viola through an amp or dry, trumpet close-miked or from across the room, vocals close-miked and from a stairwell, things like that," he says. "Partly that's because we think a recording should reflect a willingness to model sounds to the structure and narrative content of a song. Partly it's because Waldo, our band's recording genius and gear nerd, has ADHD."

The CD will be released in the late summer. Shows in the Minneapolis area are imminent and a far-reaching tour is planned for 2009.