Playing The Astonishing live

[Peter1960]

OK, so we know that the band are not taking any other musicians with them on the upcoming tour. I am therefore intrigued to know how they will reproduce the string / orchestral parts (and there are a lot of them !).

A number of tracks contain Jordan playing piano with strings in the background (eg A Better Life, Chosen, The X Aspect). It will be difficult for him to play both parts without sacrificing some of the performance.

So, will they use tapes ? Could James or JP play some simple string parts on a separate keyboard ?

How do you think they will do it ?

[Rodni Demental]

They will use backingtracks for anything that can't be replicated or duplicated much like the 'noise' section of Illumination Theory last tour. Maybe the Nomac tracks will be pre-recorded? Although I must say it would be cool to get a kind of noise improv from Jordan for Nomac sound.

Everything else will be played by patches from Jordan, and you'll be surprised what he can do with two hands. Tbh I'd be surprised if he hadn't already considered how many limbs he'd need available to play all the parts at once while writing the material.