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Lady Gaga's and Kanye West's Musicians Turn To Roland
Posted on 2 Mar 2010 12:27 to category : Instruments News
Top session musicians touring with the likes of Kanye West and Lady Gaga have recently spoken about their use of and preference for RolandMusical Instruments and Equipment.
Drummer Charles Haynes and keyboardist Pete Kuzma first formed a strong musical partnership whilst playing for rapper Kanye West.
The transition to playing for Lady Gaga required heavy changes on the equipment that they used.
When rehearsals began for The Fame Monster Tour, Charles and Pete were using considerably larger drum and keyboard set-ups.
However, with song lists and sounds changing on a daily basis, it was clear that they needed to downsize their rigs.
Charles and Pete simply turned to their Roland gear for the solutions and haven’t looked back.
Charles had grown fond of Roland products even before playing with Kanye.
After successful touring whilst using the Octopad SPD-S with Meshell Ndegeocello, Charles decided to use it again on the Kanye West tour.
Today, Charles can be seen behind a TD-20X electronic drum kit.
Talking about the kit, Charles commented: "It's really good … really good."
Lady Gaga's current keyboard player Pete Kuzma has also been using a host of Roland gear for sometime and spoke about how his "trusty" JV-820 and Roland VK-7 have helped him over the years, as have the Fantom-X7 and more recently the VP-550.
For the Lady Gaga tour, Pete's main keyboards are the Fantom G7 and the Fantom G8.
Pete praised the G-Series heavily for their ease of use and their super functionality in the touring setting.
In Pete’s words: "I don't even need a set list because I have all the songs programmed in, my favourites assigned to the pads or dials, or whatever Fantom controller."
Pete also noticed how well suited the Fantom keyboards are for the huge amount of dance, trance and house styles of music and sounds that are currently finding their way into the mainstream music markets.
Pete commented: "I can't imagine any current pop gig right now that the Fantom wouldn't be an amazing tool and a must have."
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