ARZ: Progressive Rock band from Portland, OR

Rock star

Scorpio

ARZ is an eclectic progressive rock that blends elements of metal, classical, and world music into sonic tales embodying literary and spiritual themes. ARZ weaves guitar textures of hard-edged distortion, classical fingerstyle technique, crystalline acoustic, intermittent mandolin and banjo, layered against classic percussion sounds. We're fusing the great music from the past: 70s prog rock, jazz, classical, and world music using the technology of today. The grandness of the sound created by two people is made possible by the use of technology to allow the drummer to play orchestral percussion and keyboards along with drums, and allowing the guitarist to play other instruments through the use of a MIDI keyboard.

Their next album will be recorded entirely live; no overdubs, no extra tracks, what you hear on the disc is what you will hear live. We hope to tour soon bringing an entirely new rock concept to live performance.


Steve Adams – Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals

Steve plays a Roland VG-99 MIDI guitar which enables him to play not only any electric and acoustic guitar sounds, but many other stringed instruments at the flick of a switch. Through this system also gives Steve the ability to add layered sounds from a synthesizer keyboard.

Merrill Hale - Drums, Percussion, Melodic Triggering, Vocals

Merrill is utilizing an electronic drum and percussion kit for this unique project. Its center is an IBM laptop computer which runs a number of drum, synthesizer, orchestral and ethnic percussion VST modules. Among them are Addictive Drums by XLN Audio, Atmosphere by Spectrasonics, Elite Orchestral Percussion by Vir2 Instruments. Running all these programs is a live MIDI percussionist performance program called MyKits written by Shof Beavers of L & L's Software Delicatessen and VSTHost written by Hermann Seib. The drum kit is comprized of various Roland pads, a TD-12, SPD-20, and a Hart Dynamics snare drum.

Come check out our ARZ prog rock band official site at:

http://www.thearzuniverse.com

People who like progressive rock, and also people who like discussing music recording, VSTs, instruments, and microphones.