Writer, performer, producer, filmmaker, and one-man tour de force Mobley told us about his beloved Daughtership custom mid-controller rig...
Mobley: I can't do without my Daughtership. The Daughtership is a custom midi-controller rig I designed and built with the help of a fabricator friend. On the outside it's appearance is vaguely inspired by the Moog Model-D. On the inside, it's a cannibalized M-Audio Axiom 61, an old iPad mini, and an iConnectivity MIDI4+ interface, as well as a USB hub and a tangle of cables and convertors.
The rig is indispensable to me because it allows me to control every aspect of my show: I can play the keyboard, finger drum on the touch screen, adjust my in-ear mix, change the effects on my vocal mic and my guitar, trigger samples, change lighting and video, and a million other little things. Every wired piece of gear on stage plugs into it and then it relays all that information to a rack that I keep at side stage.
I could've accomplished all that with a coffin case and a table, but the thing I love about the Daughtership is that by keeping everything inside this neat little package, it makes setup/teardown immeasurably faster, it's more visually pleasing for the audience, and it makes me feel like I'm play an instrument and not running air traffic control. I had a very specific need and it was so gratifying to spend hundreds of hour figuring out exactly how to fill it. Now I can't imagine going without it.
Mobley's We Do Not Fear Ruins album is out now.
Photo by Alex Parker.
