TSA Approved Dawless Tactical Assault Rig
Major Monday rant here, but amateur musicians should not worry about travel music kits. I see a lot of people talking about travel setups who don’t even release music, which is bizarre. And I see a lot of stuff on Marketplace and Craigslist for sale that’s “never gigged,” yet they have Pelican cases for it and pluck-and-pull foam and all this elaborate nonsense. It’s bizarre.
Now, I can get really nerdy about cases too. The SR cases for the Moog stuff a few years ago are absolutely beautiful. At $300, they’re worth every penny. Honestly, the case for my Grandmother was so good I literally bought another Grandmother just to get the case. Side benefit: I’m basically getting the case for free, which is amazing. I’ll sell the extra one as soon as I fix the reverb on my old dirty Grandmother. Which is a horrible thing to say. Forget I said that.
The point is, I’m traveling this week, and I’m basically bringing a Keith McMillen little MIDI keyboard with me, and I’ve got the whole world. If I wake up early and have time to make music, I can get after it with total proficiency. I could probably do a gig with it because I’ve got headphones now and everything lives in software anyway.
You do not need travel shit for your equipment. Almost no one goes on tour.
I know this guy who comes into rehearsal with his guitar slung over his shoulder and I have a massive amount of respect for trashy stuff like that. Just throw the guitar in the back of the car and go. Not zipping it up in the Mono case and babying it and blah blah blah.
Again, I’m guilty of all this stuff too.
But I’m also not the guy pulling out some battery-operated groovebox and putting it on the airplane tray table. You can absolutely make Ableton beats on the plane with headphones and nobody cares. But if you pull out a piece of gear and start tapping pads in public, you look like an idiot.
It’s the difference between playing games on your phone and pulling out a Nintendo Switch. For whatever reason, one feels socially invisible and the other feels like a performance.
Not worth unpacking the why. It’s just how it is.
Monday rant over.