Ringling Bros
Open Labs Exclusive Artist Interview
- by Carson Barker, Open Labs Staff Writer
For seven years, Gabriel Romero Jr.'s eyes would scan the stage and see elephants draped in satin costumes doing headstands, motorcyclists flipping in mid air over a spew of flames, and white tigers prancing on their hind legs at the tamer's direction. While he was twisting knobs and pushing keys on his prototype NeKo, scantily-clad women would cartwheel in front of him, trapeze artists would fly above his head and clowns would be throwing pies and shooting people with seltzer bottles. Fifty weeks out of the year, Romero was a musician in the constant company of wire-walkers, painted clowns, exotic animals and daredevil stunt men. But when you're the lead keyboardist for Ringling Bros. Circus, that's just an average day on the job.
"It's a different animal, definitely," said Romero Jr. "It's almost like scoring for a film, except the film can change every time. You have to memorize the music, you're not reading the music because you have to be watching the show at all times. You have a general idea of what's going to happen, but it doesn't really happen on time. Sometimes problems arise on the floor, and you have to compensate for it."
Romero started improvising for the Ringling Bros. Circus in 2000, and worked his way up the ranks to the lead keyboardist for the daily extravaganza. It was a demanding job, to say the least, requiring that Romero Jr. spent all of his time on the road, work virtually everyday of the week and have a host of musical responsibilities like coordinating sounds samples, sound effects, keyboards, and synthesizers with flying acrobats and roaring tigers. The job had its perks though, like extensive traveling, hanging with other musicians like Norwood Fischer and Angelo Moore from Fishbone (one of his biggest influences), and getting to test drive an Open Labs product, which Romero treated like a circus monkey.
"They sent me out a machine in 2004 and I had it through 05-06," Romero said. "It was one of those signature series NeKos, so it was pretty new, and I broke it a few hundred ways. It didn't have any bracing at first, so after all the stuff I did to it, they started looking at the structure and parts. I believe they're even using a new kind of metal for the chassis now. It's the same model, they just kept adding new things to it."
Though Romero spent a good chunk of his life working for the circus, it wasn't his first act. After eight years of piano lessons as a child, the Arizona native enrolled in community college where he joined up with a slew of jazz, rock, Latin, concert bands, and percussion ensembles. Along the way, the multi-instrumentalist picked up guitar and saxophone, but still calls the piano his main instrument. This self-saturation in musicianship may come across as overwhelming to most, but for Romero it still wasn't enough.
"Before Ringling I played in about seven different bands and taught high school drum line. Ringling was the first thing that I did on the road. I would pick up other stuff, whether it was producing a hip-hop album or writing music for circuses in Europe. I did about three or four other circuses in France, Italy and Germany."
The demanding position of being the Ringling Bros. keyboardist extraordinaire required a party of instruments, and it all had to be mastered, manipulated and executed with keen precision for the show to run accordingly. Romero had the daunting task of managing all of these instruments until he received the NeKo. Thriving on the NeKo's expansive possibilities, Romero also used his NeKo for other projects, including syncing music to video via the NeKo's LCD touchscreen for demo projects.
"I would open up Sonar, drop in the new act videos and write music directly to what's going on. It became a scoring tool, the end result was the demo that would go to the conductor and actually teach the conductor what the cues were."
The ambidextrous instrument also allowed him to solve the problems of many machines performing a single task.
"I used few keyboards and a lot of sample based stuff in those shows," Romero said. "It got to the point where the average setup was two synths and a slew of rack mount samplers. The NeKo replaced everything right from the beginning. It's something that the shows really can't function without anymore – being able to access all the different sounds, samples, and effects libraries. They finally were able to get everybody's effects from all three shows all into one library. It was terrabytes and terrabytes of old stuff from the 80s, a lot of proprietary sound effects for clowns that you couldn't find anywhere else. It was pretty cool."
Now residing in Austin, TX, Romero Jr's touring days maybe over, but his Open Labs days are not. Under his own label, Left$ide Music, Romero Jr. is juggling several projects at once: producing, managing, and marketing various acts from southern songstress Bel Stuart to hip-hop acts like Tye Dilla.
"I've carried a MiKo to a woman’s house who played big glass prayer bowls; she didn't want to take them out of her home. All I brought was a MiKo, headphones, and a mic - that's it. I got all of these great sounds out of it. She had about six of these things, and her house had wood floors so it resonated very well. There's a lot of power in those little machines; it's very handy for people who are accustomed to doing as much playing as they are recording."
Now the circus comes through town, does a few acts and fires off to the next city without Romero on board. He still works as a consultant for Feld Entertainment, and spends every December in Tampa, FL. helping create new Ringling shows, but that's the extent of his involvement under the tent. The traveling life grew tiresome for Romero, but there's still a small glint in his eye that yearns for the days of white tigers, playful elephants and floating high-wire artists bouncing across tightly wound strings.
"I do miss the touring aspect of it," Romero said. "But there's a lot of material that has been sitting on the back shelf. I've finally made Austin a home, so I can stop moving around so much and pull everything together."
Artist Q&A
Q: How as the Neko and Miko made your job easier with the circus?
A: Programming synths for a live show is no easy task. Manipulating midi, setting layers and splits, and just lining up sounds in general can be a tedious and mind-numbing experience. When we put the shows together, the band is on site rehearsing music and making the correct changes to fit the acts - this goes on from about 9am to 5pm. Creating, changing, and updating my setup pretty much kept me working till midnight after that. Fun times. With the Neko I was able to program the shows on the fly. "Midi" is no longer in my vocabulary any more. Since I could use my favorite vst plugins, I had the best sounds around at my disposal. No more choosing a multitude of keyboards and racks for various different "good" sounds. I had them all in one box.
Q: And if you needed to go back and use, say, an older keyboard's sound/patch?
A: ... I'd just clone it with Mimik!
Q: The Neko and Miko are PC based. Are they really that stable on the road?
A: I was very pleased to be a part of the process in helping to make these machines 'bullet-proof'. Ringling is such a rough schedule - and the gear takes more punishment than any show touring. I once had a guy ram a forklift through one of my keyboard cases - put a nice dent in a 88-key controller. Thank god it was just cosmetic damage. I beat the hell out of keboards as well ... always breaking keys and buttons - all of this helped the guys at Open Labs build superb bracing inside the machine. They have also always been ahead of the curve in their choice of proccessors - I never sweated my Neko more than 68% of its resources. Not to mention that having that much power there on the bandstand let me record tracks for sessions that were being put together in studios thousands of miles away.
Q: Why would a keyboardist chose the Neko or Miko?
A: Open Labs has single-handedly changed the rules in the music world. You cannot look at this as just another keyboard. I recommend this board to any serious musician because of its ease of use - the Karsyn software makes setting up for gigs effortless. But the biggest reason I tell people to buy these things is the fact that you are no longer bound to the sounds that other keyboard manufacturers give you. This machine will be anything you want it to be - more and more vst instruments are created everyday; and you can use them all in this machine. It is the ONLY board out there that can evolve with you, hands down ...
Equipment Used
Purchased NeKo 64 (Gen1)
Purchased OMX64
Purchased MiKo LX (Gen 3)
Artist Link