Dominic Frasca

Apple G4 Powerbook Jury Of Peers
Dominic Frasca On The Apple G4 Powerbook
By Jude Gold | Winter 06

Who? A full-contact classical maverick who pushes minimalism to the max, Frasca is as inspired by Philip Glass and Steve Reich as he is AC/DC and the Scorpions. Last June at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, after witnessing Frasca’s mesmerizing two-handed avant-garde nylon-string antics, a panel of judges (including GP editors and rock-guitar kingpin Steve Lukather) awarded the Ohio native top honors at Guitar Player magazine’s first-annual Guitar Hero competition. And although Frasca studied classical guitar at the University of Arizona and Yale, he doesn’t let his formal education keep his performances from, in their own way, totally rocking. In addition to earning credibility in the minimalist community by arranging Reich’s 1967 piece “Violin Phase” for four distorted electric guitars and recording it on Reich’s 2001 album, Triple Quartet, Frasca also gained notoriety as a performance artist of sorts when he shocked a crowd at Oberlin College by shoving a guitar through a wood chipper.
“You can excite an audience, you can anger an audience, you can even scare an audience,” says Frasca, who was dubbed “Eddie Van Halen for eggheads” by Entertainment Weekly. “Just don’t bore an audience.”

What? Apple G4 17" 1GHz PowerBook laptop computer (1GB RAM, OSX Panther) running Apple Logic recording/sequencing software and Waves and Nomad Factory plug-ins.

Frasca’s Gear
• Thomas Humphrey nylon-string with custom fingerboard endowed with a small “fretless bass” section above the 12th fret on the low-e string, and a Thomas Humphrey-designed Martin Millennium 10-string (strung with both nylon and steel strings) featuring a fretboard modded with threaded holes to allow for the attachment of screw-down capos at select positions on the neck. Both guitars have various pieces of cardboard, wood, and plastic affixed to their bodies to enhance the timbral effect of percussive strikes, and each instrument is outfitted with an RMC Acoustic Gold polyphonic pickup system.
• Custom buffer/break-out box built by Sal Trentino that sends each string’s output to its own channel on a MOTU 828mkII audio interface, which then digitizes the audio and funnels it into Logic.
• Audio-Technica AT4040 and Neumann KM 184 microphones (placed in front of the guitars to pick up the natural acoustic sound as well as any percussive strikes) that also have their signals routed into the PowerBook via the 828mkII.
• A QSC USA900 power amp that projects the final mix in stereo through EAW MS63 3-way monitors. (“Nothing compares to these speakers when it comes to amplifying nylon-string guitar,” raves Frasca.)
Testing Environment Onstage, on the road, at home, in the studio, and at The Monkey, Frasca’s New York City laboratory/performance space (where he uses his RMC pickups and other gear to perform in 5.1 surround sound).

Cheers “There are many things about using a laptop that I love,” shares Frasca. “The first is the convenience it offers. When I started setting up my instruments with multiple pickups back in late ’80s, I’d have to bring a big 12-channel mixer along with racks of effects—effects often nowhere near the quality of my current software plug-ins—in order to mix each string with separate effects and individual panning. The setup time for my gear was around four hours—not to mention that it really sucked hauling all that stuff to gigs, especially when I had to fly. Now, with my laptop setup, I can literally bring all of the electronics I need for my show onto the plane as carry-on baggage.
“The second thing that’s great about laptops is their flexibility. Unlike using a hardware-based setup, which has definite limitations as to how things can be configured, the laptop—provided you’re running a full-featured program like Logic—has very few routing restrictions. Want ten effects sends? No problem. Want to have a [Manley] Pultec EQ on each string without adding any extra weight or expense to your rig? Done. For each piece of music I play, I create a unique Logic song file that has a track set up for each individual string and external microphone. Within each track I set volume, panning, and any plug-ins—mostly EQ, compressors, expanders, maybe some octave doubling on the bass string to fill out the sound, and occasionally filters or chorus—that I need for that string or mic. I also run buses for groups of strings that share common effects such as reverb or chorus. During each song I am able to change any of these elements via a MIDI foot controller.
“Another huge advantage is programmability. For instance, when I play a new venue, I inevitably have to tweak my settings to compensate for the amount of natural reverb—or lack thereof—the room has. I may also need to EQ out any frequency boosts the room might have. I do this by simply recording sections of pieces directly into Logic during soundcheck and then playing them back and making the necessary adjustments. Once I’ve done that, I save the settings and create a folder for that venue so that the next time I perform there, all I need to do is open up the song files I have customized for that space.”

Beefs “There really aren’t many cons when it comes to laptops,” states Frasca, “but if I had to bring up one thing, I’d remind people that the main drag about these machines is that they become obsolete very quickly. When you drop $1,800 on a Universal Audio 1176 compressor, you have a piece of equipment that will be as functional and relevant in 20 years as it was the day you bought it. But you can spend $3,000 or more on a top-of-the-line PowerBook and within two years it may not be able to handle the latest programs or upgrades. And there’s always the risk of a crash. Luckily, my Mac has never crashed on stage, nor has it ever broken down, but I do travel with a backup 12" PowerBook just in case.”

Postscript:
Hear Frasca’s entrancing compositions and über-stereophonic guitar textures on his debut disc, Deviations [Cantaloupe Music].