Boogie Monsta and Ms. Mauikai are the down to earth, indie pop/alternative soul
duo known as D’ALA. Boogie brings the musical roots of his French-Iraqi heritage to
the group, and Mauikai brings the musical roots of her Cuban-American heritage. All
together, D’ALA is born of a unique recipe for making grooves that are so
infectious; their audience has no emotional bandwidth left for wondering about the
technicalities of the recipe! Boogie and Mauikai have been working together since
2009, most often on projects involving the complicated logistics of numerous band
members. With D’ALA, they’ve been playing fly dates around the U.S. and abroad
with nothing but an acoustic guitar, a pair of microphones, and a Metric Halo LIO-8
outfitted with four mic preamps and a paired MacBook Pro running Metric Halo MIO
Console +DSP and Ableton Live.

“Minimizing our production has been an artistic revolution for us,’ said Boogie, who
does extensive work as a producer and engineer. “We enjoy playing stripped down
versions of songs, with nothing but guitar, our voices, and midi pedals to control
loopers and trigger sounds and effects. The loops we create at the beginning of a
song are organic, and we’re free to vary the tempo to suit the mood of the moment.
The triggered sounds can all work with any loop tempo, which allows us to really
play our songs as acoustic musicians, but with a huge universe of electronic sonic
possibilities.’ Mauikai added, “Our new setup is so intuitive that it has transformed
our song writing process. We can improvise and find new ideas that are so exciting
we feel compelled to develop them into finished songs.’

In the studio, Boogie uses a two-channel Metric Halo ULN-2, as well as the LIO-8
that he takes on the road with D’ALA. On the road, the LIO-8 amplifies their two
vocal microphones, the P-90 pickup on Boogie’s electric guitar, as well as its piezo
pickup that makes it sound like an acoustic guitar.

He uses MIO Console to build his own custom “+dsp graphs’ (zero-latency
processing algorithms running on the DSP in the LIO-8 hardware), that he uses to
give the guitar different sounds for different songs.

For example, one graph drops his guitar an octave so that he can effectively play
bass. Another graph gives his guitar an “afro-funk’ sound. Another graph takes the
“quack’ out of his piezo pickup to make the acoustic guitar sound as if it’s
beautifully mic’d. Importantly, Boogie is able to use the processing capabilities of
MIO Console to adapt their sound to suit the particulars of any venue’s PA system.