My tech set-up: violinist Violeta Vicci

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My number one accessory is my DPA condenser mic (dpamicrophones.com). I place it over the bridge on the violin or my octave viola and use it for both my voice and instrument. I find it reproduces the most natural sound of any microphone I’ve tried. I often play in slightly louder environments, so I also use a Fishman V-200 (fishman.com) pickup inside the bridge, which converts the vibrations to sound.

The second most important thing is my laptop. I use Ableton (ableton.com) to mix different parts, electronics and my live instrument, before sending it to the venue’s sound engineer. That way they receive balanced outputs and I have total control of monitoring the whole concert with headphones. Inside Ableton I use their loop function to loop my live violin and vocals throughout the gig. I activate Ableton’s different parameters and functions with a small midi foot pedal. This is a PreSonus ATOM controller (presonus.com), which is originally only intended for use with hands. I somehow have become accustomed to using it with my bare feet and several reviewers have remarked on my ‘dexterous toes’. If you’re thinking of buying one, I’d say stick to a foot pedal! I also use a second laptop for visuals, which is connected by ethernet cable to my first laptop, giving me full control and syncing audio and videos in real time.

The soundcard I use is the MOTU UltraLite-mk5 (motu.com), a very compact and great piece of kit for the road with as many as eight outputs. This allows for greater flexibility when sending audio to the sound desk during the performance and lets the sound engineer do a great job of mixing the sound in the space.

Last but not least: my pedals. They do all sorts of things, from delay, to harmonising, to distortion or just adding simple reverb. The first pedal I ever bought was an octave pedal, the Electro-Harmonix Nano POG (ehx.com). It’s a brilliant piece of kit and adds a very natural-sounding octave to the violin, when I want to sound like a cello or a bass. My most recent purchase is the Strymon Timeline (strymon.net), an absolute gem of a delay pedal with many customisable settings, from syncing the BPM of the piece to the length, amount of repetitions and the way the sound is processed.

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