Kraftwerk have been verking der pc'.s.
I have read the Prodigy are going soft on us.

Anybody else?

As well as you famous lot of course!

Vince Clarke used VSTs extensively on Erasure's new album. It might be interesting to see if he packs it all up on a Powerbook for Erasure's next tour.

BTW, I caught Kraftwerk live a few weeks ago. Anyone who says virtual instruments sound thin are talking out of their ass. There was enough bottom end to satisfy even Sir Mix-a-lot.

I too use almost exclusively VSTi's now.

Peter.

I saw Kraftwerk at the RFH in March. Thought I detected a touch of aliasing.

Anyone knows Nena?

Her two keyboard players were mainly using laptops, except for the rhodes - during the last tour, that is.

nuffink wrote:

I saw Kraftwerk at the RFH in March. Thought I detected a touch of aliasing.

Did they have a virus on stage as well?

Talking about Kraftwerk, have you heard that there is another Kraftwerk touring the UK? My missus tried to get me a ticket until i heard it is not the Kraftwerk.

Saw the Pet Shop Boys on the british television with a laptop on a nice stand. Does anybody know of a good keboard stand for a laptop and controller keyboard?

Wasn't Aphex in the habit of wandering onto the stage armed only with a large cigar and a laptop?
Co-incidently (or not) he was at the Kraftwerk gig too.

I use exclusively soft synths.

I saw David Sylvian live in Moscow about a month ago. Two mac laptops + a keyboard (couldn't recognize what exactly it was, some sampler)
And the Uncut review of the latest Todd Rundren album states it was recorded using "various virtual synthesizers"

When I saw Coil, they used a Powerbook, a Kaoss pad and AirFX and Thighpaulsandra was doing the nasty with a Nordlead.
The hurdy-gurdy wasn't virtual, though. Oh no.

Groet, Erik

I went through my customer database recently and indeed found like 10 familiar names... dunno if all of them really use that stuff, but I know at least 2 or 3 who use virtual synths regularly, i.e. for albums and motion picture soundtracks.

Cheers,

Urs

PugFace wrote:

Does anybody know of a good keboard stand for a laptop and controller keyboard?

Got this pic from http://www.daviddas.com/ :



Don't know what stand it is, but it looks nice

/megl

Also Röyksopp

megl wrote:

PugFace wrote: Does anybody know of a good keboard stand for a laptop and controller keyboard? Got this pic from http://www.daviddas.com/ : Don't know what stand it is, but it looks nice /megl

That's a Ultimate Support Systems Apex:

http://www.ultimatesupport.com/keyboard_column.html

Hm, interesting. Although I'm not famous , I'm in the process of building a Powerbook / MIDI keyboard setup for live gigs. With some extensive kludging and hacking, I have managed to build a Logic song that allows me to change songs (mainly to get correct delay times) and sounds from the keyboard without any audio glitches. My goal is to be able to handle everything from the keyboard, no need to touch the laptop during gig.

Logic is not exactly made for this purpose, so making it work was a little difficult, and how well it works in real performances is yet to be seen.. Since we are on the subject here, any idea of what software people use for this purpose ("live" plugin hosting)? I know V-Stack, but since it's made by Steinberg, it only accepts VSTs.. AUs would be nice too. Any others?

Telefon Tel Aviv

I heard Rick Wakeman uses Model-E in the studio, not sure about live. And either he, or someone of that ilk uses M-Tron studio/live too - which is eminently sensible!

hardware synths what is that ?

Just a short plug for brainspawn's "Forte", which is probably the best live performance VSTi host in existance.

"Karsyn" which is the VSTi host shipping with the Open Labs "NeKo" uber-virtual-workstation is really just a custom port of Forte.

Of course there is always Muse's Receptor ... if it ever gets out of vaporware mode. (hint hint)

tetraplan wrote:

When I saw Coil, they used a Powerbook, a Kaoss pad and AirFX and Thighpaulsandra was doing the nasty with a Nordlead. The hurdy-gurdy wasn't virtual, though. Oh no. Groet, Erik

same thighpaulsandra who works with julian cope ???

(heehee - could there be 2 of them ??? )

if so - i guess i have to check out coil

slainte rob

PugFace wrote:

Saw the Pet Shop Boys on the british television with a laptop on a nice stand.

I nearly forgot about the PSB. They seem to be doing their live stuff with a Powerbook and a MicroKontrol controller. I remember seeing an interview with Neil Tennant where he said they've gone back to a more electronic sound because it's so much easier to work with virtual instruments these days.

I remember seeing Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran with a couple of Powerbooks in his setup.

I saw Wolfsheim live and they were running stuff off a Powerbook augmented with a Virus.

(Staying on top of my synthpop.)

Kipper (Sting's #2 key player and band manager) uses a Logic setup for Sting's live gigs. If you watch the latest Sting DVD you can see him cueing up songs. He basically has all the songs loaded into one big arrangement. He's using a bunch of VSTi's including Absynth, Atmosphere, Stylus, FM7 and a bunch of others. He also discussed the setup in a recent mag interview.

pHz wrote:

tetraplan wrote: When I saw Coil, they used a Powerbook, a Kaoss pad and AirFX and Thighpaulsandra was doing the nasty with a Nordlead. The hurdy-gurdy wasn't virtual, though. Oh no. Groet, Erik same thighpaulsandra who works with julian cope ??? (heehee - could there be 2 of them ??? )

Yep, same one.

Quote:

if so - i guess i have to check out coil

Absolutely.

Groet, Erik

Neubauten also uses a laptop on stage, at least they did in Paris last month.

Jerome

isdjan wrote:

Anyone knows Nena? Her two keyboard players were mainly using laptops, except for the rhodes - during the last tour, that is.

And if you want to know more about this just ask derek directly, he´s a kvr member and tiptop dude ..

putte

putte wrote:

isdjan wrote: Anyone knows Nena? Her two keyboard players were mainly using laptops, except for the rhodes - during the last tour, that is. And if you want to more about this just ask derek directly, he´s a kvr member and tiptop dude .. putte

Really? I always liked "99 Luftballons". Hope I spelled that correctly. I recall as a teenager that the video was weird because you could see the Nena-armpit hair. Strange to Americans then and now, I suppose.

-Shane

You do have armpit hair in the US? I'm sure you do - I saw the video for "Get Into The Groove".

clueless wrote:

You do have armpit hair in the US? I'm sure you do - I saw the video for "Get Into The Groove".

But do we actually claim her, even though the stuff with William Orbit was great?

Or perhaps it's just that she's hanging off the armpit hair rather than the other way 'round?

-Shane

[lead to this thread by resident hun]


i do not comment on armpit hair issues


(that was before my time anyway )

Herbie Hancock uses the evp88 and a bunch of other logic synths live.

Gambay

I heard that Peter Gabriel uses the PMI Bösendorfer Plugin on his tour. Of course, i didn´t realise that but i could see that they did some sequencing using Logic. Mostly atmospheric sounds and string arrangements which they couldn´t play live. Band has to be very tight to be in time when the sequencer suddenly starts to play, i think.Sound and show was the shiznit...

Merzbow....

derek wrote:

[lead to this thread by resident hun] i do not comment on armpit hair issues (that was before my time anyway )

Which dude is you, Derek?

btw, Nena still looks hot after all these years.

-Shane

Basically, most backing bands for the women (Britney, Kylie, Janet, etc.) are using vsti's and laptop sequencers for their "live" tours.

Face it, the future is now.

megl wrote:

PugFace wrote: Does anybody know of a good keboard stand for a laptop and controller keyboard? Got this pic from http://www.daviddas.com/ : Don't know what stand it is, but it looks nice /megl

That looks like one of those "Ultimate" stands - or a copy.

They're GREAT..!



Glad I bought one..!

Oops..! Just read the whole thread and realised Scott Solida beat me to it...

Scot Solida wrote:

megl wrote: PugFace wrote: Does anybody know of a good keboard stand for a laptop and controller keyboard? Got this pic from http://www.daviddas.com/ : Don't know what stand it is, but it looks nice /megl That's a Ultimate Support Systems Apex: http://www.ultimatesupport.com/keyboard_column.html

Damn you, beat me to it! I have one collecting dust in my closet right now.

Devon

Sh@ne S@nders wrote:

Which dude is you, Derek? btw, Nena still looks hot after all these years. -Shane

heh, thats not a picture of the band, but a picture of an allstar charity project,
so those are all singers (except jasmin tabatabai in the middle, who is an actress, but also does some music and is a true rocknroll girl )

i dont think there are any "official" pictures that include the live band. thats how it usually goes, and thats absolutely ok cause i dont have any hunger for stardom (i would have hardly become a keyboarder if i had any, at least that wouldnt have been a very smart choice in that case )


and jup, my boss looks great that picture doesnt even do her justice IMO.

Quote:

Basically, most backing bands for the women (Britney, Kylie, Janet, etc.) are using vsti's and laptop sequencers for their "live" tours.

fwiw, we play live (as in live and not "live"). why else would we have two keyboarders

we do have a lot of sequencer-ish stuff, but its all played live, either by i.e. chromatically playing recycled drumloops (the things you can do when you have two keyboarders = 4 hands...) or the drummer triggers them in realtime. hes got a very clever setup how to start and stop loops in realtime with various trigger pads, which also is necessary because the shows usually involve a lot of improvisation and arrangements that arent fixed but are based on cues by the boss
plus, we definetly push the whole laptop thing to the limit, huge samplesets, often every key does something else and you couldnt even play jingle bells with the patches we use.

we do use cubase SX as host though, so far i havent found the time to look into the specialist softwares there are. but using SX isnt too bad anyway, each song is a track thats assigned to the songs patch, between songs we switch sounds with the cursor down key, during songs we switch sounds with vsamplers and kontakts "start on key" feature. and having the songs as SX tracks also makes a nice drag and drop setlist as side effect

seamoss wrote:

Telefon Tel Aviv

From what I've read, TTA mostly use outboard gear, feed it through Reaktor and then sequence in Pro Tools.

I could be wrong though.

Also, FWIW (and at the risk of destroying the thread and turning it into another verbal bashing of the artist I'm about to mention) BT has professed a love of Rhino and he also used Kyma extensively on his latest album. I'm aware that Kyma is not actually VSTi, but I know I wish I had one! (and the skills to use it as well )

-s
(ducking for cover)

Derek wrote:

i dont think there are any "official" pictures that include the live band.

?

http://celldweller.com uses vanguard, reaktor 4, absynth 2, vokator to name a few. Check it!

thats arne, the other keyboarder

also, thats a playback TV gig, which i usually dont do (and dont miss)

often even the entire band isnt the "real" one, i.e. the drum and base players come from NY and it doesnt really make sense to fly them in just to pretend theyre playing

You mean they're not really playing?



I guess that pic is completely off-topic then. He's not even pretending to use VSTs.

BTW, that pic was grabbed from a TOTP appearance with Kim Wilde. They both look even better today than they did 20 years ago.

anyone using the "receptor"?

<<BTW, that pic was grabbed from a TOTP appearance with Kim Wilde. They both look even better today than they did 20 years ago.>>


OMG kim wilde, dont get me started...


...i mean, erm, yes kim wilde is god. or at least something close to god how often does it happen in your life that you meet a teen idol of yours and she turns out to be a totally nice person...

i consider playing kids in america live with kim wilde on stage one of the biggest archievements in my life. that was really cool

smp wrote:

seamoss wrote: Telefon Tel Aviv From what I've read, TTA mostly use outboard gear, feed it through Reaktor and then sequence in Pro Tools. I could be wrong though. Also, FWIW (and at the risk of destroying the thread and turning it into another verbal bashing of the artist I'm about to mention) BT has professed a love of Rhino and he also used Kyma extensively on his latest album. I'm aware that Kyma is not actually VSTi, but I know I wish I had one! (and the skills to use it as well ) -s (ducking for cover)

Did someone mention Telefon Tel Aviv without calling on me?! Hehe!

Anyway, they use Reaktor in the studio with Pro-tools (as mentioned!) and try to use as many live instruments as possible. Then Reaktor is used to mangle the sounds. So they use a live Rhodes, guitars, drums, bass etc.

Speaking to them after their London gig they said when touring the US they take a live rhodes with them and have much more of a band set-up, but for the sake of their gigs over here they were using a Nord Lead for the rhodes sound. Other than that they had live guitars for bass and lead and a couple of laptops sequencing the bulk of the songs.

I reckon some soft-synths were involved in their gig though for playing live, but not very often...I only saw what looked like a controller keyboard being used during 'I Lied'.

I think.

Derek, you've actually played with Kim Wilde!

I'm so jealous of you, she is the one star I'd like to meet and to work with. (Add Kim Basinger to that list also but she doesnt' sing AFAIK. Do I have a fixation with blonds called Kim?)

I'd really like Kim Wilde to get back to some serious recording again, her voice is very special. If Mrs Minougue can get her career back on track and she doesn't even sing well, shouldn't Kim be able to get someone (maybe not her brother this time) to write a few good songs and get her back in the studio and the hit lists again?

Sorry for hijacking this thread... I'm sure Kim would be using VSTis live once she get her career back on track again.

hiihihi derek ..

VNV Nation

"Since this album I have not used a single external piece of hardware unless it was absolutely vital"

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/page.php?id=reaktorartists_us

derek wrote:

Quote: Basically, most backing bands for the women (Britney, Kylie, Janet, etc.) are using vsti's and laptop sequencers for their "live" tours. fwiw, we play live (as in live and not "live"). why else would we have two keyboarders we do have a lot of sequencer-ish stuff, but its all played live, either by i.e. chromatically playing recycled drumloops (the things you can do when you have two keyboarders = 4 hands...) or the drummer triggers them in realtime. hes got a very clever setup how to start and stop loops in realtime with various trigger pads, which also is necessary because the shows usually involve a lot of improvisation and arrangements that arent fixed but are based on cues by the boss plus, we definetly push the whole laptop thing to the limit, huge samplesets, often every key does something else and you couldnt even play jingle bells with the patches we use. we do use cubase SX as host though, so far i havent found the time to look into the specialist softwares there are. but using SX isnt too bad anyway, each song is a track thats assigned to the songs patch, between songs we switch sounds with the cursor down key, during songs we switch sounds with vsamplers and kontakts "start on key" feature. and having the songs as SX tracks also makes a nice drag and drop setlist as side effect

I'd like to know more about this - can anyone else smell a CM or SOS article?

clueless wrote:

I'd like to know more about this - can anyone else smell a CM or SOS article?

I certainly smell it too ... anyone know someone at CM or SOS?? Then go tell them

TonyVanDam wrote:

Basically, most backing bands for the women (Britney, Kylie, Janet, etc.) are using vsti's and laptop sequencers for their "live" tours.

There was a great feature last year in Keyboard Magazine with Mike McKnight explaining how he set up everything for Madonna's Drowned World Tour. He also has a monthly column I think.

/megl

invitia wrote:

(Add Kim Basinger to that list also but she doesnt' sing AFAIK. Do I have a fixation with blonds called Kim?)

I thought she got all hot for Prince and they did something together.. I seem to remember somebody saying that she can actually sing...

Here you go.. seems he wrote her a few tunes.. Wonder what they sound like

http://home.earthlink.net/~getwild/prince/otherouttakes.html

Quote:

I'd really like Kim Wilde to get back to some serious recording again, her voice is very special. If Mrs Minougue can get her career back on track and she doesn't even sing well, shouldn't Kim be able to get someone (maybe not her brother this time) to write a few good songs and get her back in the studio and the hit lists again?

definetly! i think this is mostly because of herself. she seemed to come from a very happy and fullfilled life far away from her old business. i think she did toy around with the idea of doing it once more and recorded something at some point (3rd hand info at best), but all in all it seemed like shes so happy in her life that she doesnt care either way.

having said that, when she did come for that one gig, she was instant punkpoprock at the press of a button. and she sounds exactly like on the records. i always suspected that doubling was a must to get that certain kim wilde sound, but nooo...shes got the doubling feel built in

Quote:

Sorry for hijacking this thread... I'm sure Kim would be using VSTis live once she get her career back on track again.

i absolutely agree. and now i promise to stay on topic

Quote:

I'd like to know more about this - can anyone else smell a CM or SOS article?

i doubt that many people would be interested what we two have to say when youve got the madonna keyboader writing columns

and it aint rocket science what were doing. just a healthy dose of nerd-ness


@putte:


there, now look what youve done . böser putte! böser böser putte!

derek wrote:

i doubt that many people would be interested what we two have to say when youve got the madonna keyboader writing columns

on the contrary!

derek wrote:

and it aint rocket science what were doing. just a healthy dose of nerd-ness

maybe not, but people do frequently ask how to take music out of the studio and onto the stage.

to darn tootin we do,but CM did run an article about going live,didnt they?


anyway can i just say that 99 red balloons is my favourite "grandtheftautovicecity"moment ever

derek wrote:

Quote: I'd like to know more about this - can anyone else smell a CM or SOS article? i doubt that many people would be interested what we two have to say when youve got the madonna keyboader writing columns

I agree with clueless - they should do a feature with you derek!! I sounds like you have a somewhat different approach to it, and I know a lot of people are curious on this matter. What about computer crashes for example - seems like on of the topics many are concerned with - have you experienced any when playing live, and how do you deal with it?

derek wrote:

@putte: there, now look what youve done . böser putte! böser böser putte!

Watch out ... some of us non-germans understand a little

/megl

Kim Wilde? She's some top gardening expert now isn't she. Column in the Guardian etc etc. Gardening, the new rock and roll....which is why the weeds in my 'garden' are about 2 foot tall.

Quote:

Derek, you've actually played with Kim Wilde! I'm so jealous of you, she is the one star I'd like to meet and to work with. (Add Kim Basinger to that list also but she doesnt' sing AFAIK. Do I have a fixation with blonds called Kim?)

Kim Basinger sang a duet with Ozzy on one of the versions of Was not Was's Shake Your Head.

lsd wrote:

anyone using the "receptor"?

It needs to be out first.

Devon

Quote:

maybe not, but people do frequently ask how to take music out of the studio and onto the stage.

i can answer the questions right here

Quote:

I agree with clueless - they should do a feature with you derek!! I sounds like you have a somewhat different approach to it, and I know a lot of people are curious on this matter. What about computer crashes for example - seems like on of the topics many are concerned with - have you experienced any when playing live, and how do you deal with it?

i swear by god, i havent had a single crash yet *knocks on wood*.

ive played two and a half tours now with this setup, which hasnt changed much since i never find the time to update it - im still using my stone age 900 mhz inspiron laptop and even the software is totally outdated (SX 1.something)

what i usually do when creating new patches is testing how much polyphony my old inspiron mule can take with that particular patch, so as a test, for each new patch, i hit all keys with my two arms and reduce the polyphony to the point where it doesnt ever create a dropout (usually somewhere between 40 and 90 voices, depending on how much fx and filters are used).

a rather rude method, but works pretty good

the only crash i actually had was a "hardware crash", in a way. during a gig, my laptop fell on the ground. almost two meters, and it hit the ground with the edge of the display.

and as unbelievable as it sounds, it survived that. it looks very punkrockish since that gig, but it still works . it actually didnt even crash then, it was there on the floor and cubase was still running, as if it were saying "did something happen just right now?"

ever since that happened, the running gag of course is "even if it crashes it doesnt crash" among the crew...

of course that was pure luck. it may have helped that those old inspirons were rather heavy, large, ugly but stable laptops and not some fancy ultra-slimline designer thingy, but id rather not try this again


so, aside from being lucky, id say the one thing thats needed is to stay on the conservative side polyphony wise (surprise...). but with the above mentioned method i can run my ugly 900 mhz punkrock laptop to about 85 percent at 6 ms latency without the slightest dropout. good enough for me.

and fwiw, if it would ever crash: we usually use some random rompler keyboard from the rental service as master keyboard. so in case the laptop would crash, wed just pull up its volume fader and help ourselves out with its bread and butter sounds until the laptop has "recovered". thats the official plan B. the one we thankfully never needed so far.

and of course theres always the mark 1

Quote:

Kim Wilde? She's some top gardening expert now isn't she.

yup. shes totally into that. i cant really comment because my english vocabulary doesnt really cover the details of professional gardening, so whenever that was the topic i understood almost nothing


a bit like that one evening during the musikmesse where we sat in a restaurant and i listened to the plugin programming mafia making shameless nerd conversation deluxe 2000 pro rev B

megl wrote:

What about computer crashes for example - seems like on of the topics many are concerned with - have you experienced any when playing live, and how do you deal with it?

What I know some are doing is running two concurrent rigs synced, then flip the fader if it crashes.

Devon

First of all: thanks a lot for your reply!!!

derek wrote:

the only crash i actually had was a "hardware crash", in a way. during a gig, my laptop fell on the ground. almost two meters, and it hit the ground with the edge of the display. and as unbelievable as it sounds, it survived that. it looks very punkrockish since that gig, but it still works . it actually didnt even crash then, it was there on the floor and cubase was still running, as if it were saying "did something happen just right now?"

That's amazing!!!! Don't try that at home kids!

We've been thinking about using a laptop for backing tracks ... just a little percussion, loops and stuff like that solely as audio tracks - and I guess this would put an even smaller load on the computer than running soft synths.

/megl

DevonB wrote:

What I know some are doing is running two concurrent rigs synced, then flip the fader if it crashes.

Yeah - I read about that in the Mike McKnight article ... unfortunately, I don't think we have a budget for that kind of setup So the poor of us just have to hope for the best

/megl