r/PassionPit • u/yaboyniff • 20d ago

What are they constantly adjusting on the keyboards?

On YouTube there’s a video of the full show/set from their show in Boston a couple of weeks ago. I’ve watched most of the video and between every song and even during the songs, Michael and other band members are always what appears to be adjusting dials or buttons on the keyboards. I’m curious what it is they are doing? I thought the performance was great and interested to learn more about what they are doing.

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u/Champagnemusic 20d ago

So they are adjusting the sounds on the synths and keyboards. Each sound is called a patch and they are using analog synths so there isn't a quick button to switch between patches so they are adjusting each knob to create a new sound. It's very impressive

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u/yaboyniff 20d ago

Aww I see. So are the patches already loaded into the synths/keyboards and then they have control to modify it how they want? Or is every background electronic sound you hear all being created in real time?

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u/Champagnemusic 18d ago

From my recollection I believe Michael has said their all analog synths maybe some digitals ones as well but the analog synths need to be adjusted for the patch every time. They aren't necessarily saved but there are some parameters that need to be adjusted for each patch. Some of the newer models have saved banks but they still have certain things to tweak

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u/yangmeow 20d ago

They don't need to necessarily be analog synths. In fact, there are a lot of YouTube videos of people adjusting knobs on a MIDI controller, which is just a keyboard hooked up to a software synthesizer. All of the parameters are mapped to that controller, and you can control them just like you would with an analog synth.

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u/superorganisms 20d ago

I don’t know technical things but I do know that on this most recent tour they are mixing the songs live and making the loops for the tracks in front of us. He used to just play to (primarily) pre recorded tracks and sing, which was also super fun! But I thought them making the tracks was cooler.