Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Hi all - I'm a pianist/keyboardist and guitarist. I have a Casio Privia Keyboard and Martin Acoustic/Electric as my two main pieces of equipment.

Recently I've had the desire to [and opportunity] to play live shows and also the added incentive of recording my music. Unfortunately, a keyboard with lowly built in speakers and a barely-functioning electric component in my guitar [oh yeah, and I don't own a microphone] is not the best equipment to have when playing in the size venues I'll be in with the demand for good, polished live music that they have.

This past week, I visited a friend who plays in a band and he took me into his basement and showed me all his gear/equipment. Basically, all I saw was a very impressive mess of pedals, switches, cables, microphones, speakers, amps, controllers, synthesizers and other things that I had no idea what they do with awesome names that seemed to consist of just numbers and letter combinations. I left my brief visit with him with my head spinning. Any questions I had quickly turned into a technical discussion with terms and jargon that went completely over my head.

I come humbly to this forum seeking some general guidance on the necessary and crucial pieces of hardware I could add to bring my live shows and practice the most benefit. Before I go into that, let me sum up musically what I'm trying to accomplish:

As a solo musician, perform a number of cover & original pieces in the wide-ranging genres of alternative, classical, rap/hip-hop and rock with as excellent sounding vocals.

Sounds simple enough - outside of my guitar/keyboard instrumentation, I'll want something to give me awesome rap-sounding beats for my rap songs, something to help me loop my instruments (probably would want to loop them both at the same time), and overall just have great solo control of my sound.

But right now I'm struggling with understanding first off, WHAT equipment I should be getting, what all the technical jargon means, how these pieces all interact with one another, and everything in between.

Based off this summary, I would appreciate and all guidance and pointers on what I could be looking for when it comes to improving my hardware. I hope this was specific enough to stimulate responses!

Thanks for reading,
Ryan

Wow. Sounds like you need a lot. If you're onstage looping instruments and singing over the end result, that sounds like Keller Williams to me. Maybe he has a YouTube video of a rundown of his stage gear. I've seen Emma Ruth Rundle twice, and she uses the Electro Harmonix Hazarai Minute Man delay/ looper for her guitar.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Electro-Harmonix/XO-Stereo-Memory-Man-with-Hazarai-Delay-Guitar-Effects-Pedal.gc

I don't use any loopers, so I couldn't tell you what to use.
Does your keyboard have the option of plugging into an amp or PA and bypassing the built-in speakers? If not, I would say the music you make with that instrument onstage would be expiramental at best.
You would need a small mixer onstage to run both instruments to the pedal, most likely with your own mic. The house mics might not be available for what you're looking to do.
There are free online drum machine and home recording and editing resources. I don't know if that's too tech savvy for you, but it would be a good place to start on that department.
Good luck.

You can use a high-end looper pedal to store pre-recorded backing tracks/songs (like this Boss looper: http://www.guitarcenter.com/Boss/RC-30-Loop-Station.gc )
But you'll have to learn how to create the tracks on your computer and then d/l them to the looper. The looper pedal will also work for live looping.