William Gramling

Apogee Duet user

Recent Projects: Colbie Caillat

After the release of Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Colbie Caillat’s second album, Breakthrough, and a long but not endless summer tour, keyboardist William Gramling has mastered the art of traveling light. With his Apogee Duet, MacBook Pro and Logic’s Mainstage as the main components of his keyboard rig, he’s built the ultimate live performance setup. Gramling credits Duet’s sound quality with igniting his passion for creating music on the road, on the stage, on the go.

“There’s also no latency, everything comes up as if I’m playing an acoustic instrument.”

As a pro keyboard player, he knows first hand the imperativeness of sound quality on every part of the creative and performing spectrum. “If I’m pleased with the sound, I play it differently. I play it with more intention. I let it breathe and take the space that it is meant to take,” he confides. “If I’m in the studio working in a production environment, the sound I hear will affect the parts that I’ll create and the way I envision my parts interacting with the song.”

Duet’s seamless integration into Mainstage makes the solution an obvious choice. Gramling says the combination “lets me edit patches, split patches, split layers, split keyboards, assign controllers to different parameters, and most of all just makes it all easy.” A fan of Apogee’s Maestro software, he says he appreciates the ability to tune the system to his preferences. “The parameters are fully adjustable. If I’m trying to monitor my sounds without annoying anyone around me, I can do the master mute function, audition sounds and tweak them to what I need with my headphones on,” he explains. “There’s also no latency, everything comes up as if I’m playing an acoustic instrument.” Gramling adds, “And that’s where I come from; I come from a background of playing instruments that respond naturally to my touch. The Duet makes me forget that I’m working with software.”

Ease-of-use is a close second to sound quality for the traveling musician. With Duet’s simple setup and low-latency software, what’s not to love about an easy system that sounds great? “Duet makes every sound as clear and pristine as I want it. It sounds beautiful.” And as Gramling attests, it’s really that easy.

To hear more about Colbie Caillat,

visit colbiecaillat.com