The XT Live Performance Thread

[Exit Zero]

[Edit: "Stuck" by DarkStar]

[unstuck by Jens]

Moderators, could we make this thread sticky? I think there are enough of us here who are using XT on stage to warrant it.

This post was born from this discussion:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&start=75

So......


Please share your experiences, tips and generally discuss how you use Energy XT as a live performance application.


~Exit Zero

[Caleb]

Cool Exit.

I will be keeping a close eye on this thread and compiling the tips,tricks and warnings on the Energy eXTra website.

Caleb

[Klemperer]

And as there are still many questions concerning the live-mode, a sticky AND a compiling of Caleb on his website would be much appreciated. If there are questions and answers to be "extracted" I'll add them on my FAQ-side too, but I think this topic needs an own sticky or some special place.

[flanneljammies]

Everyone keeps telling me I NEED to use Live to perform live... Convince me otherwise...

[Exit Zero]

Everyone keeps telling me I NEED to use Live to perform live... Convince me otherwise...

Glad you asked! Live has/is:

HORRIBLE midi editing functionality.

Less processing headroom for VST plugins.

Non-modular approach to signal flow.

Oh, did I mention... 300% more expensive than Energy XT!

Finally, you NEED Ableton Live if you are just plain lazy and mainly wanna take found loops out onto the stage and want it all to be beat matched and synced. Just about anyone can throw a bunch of loops into the session view and have them all sync up. While this can be a wonderfully beautiful experience for someone new to music composition (a miracle really!) working in Energy XT is more of a craft and takes more skill. I think this is a good thing.

Energy Xt is NOT for everyone. And again... This is a good thing.

A more philisophical question might be: Do you just want to be like the rest of the sheep making musical "stone soup"?

Or, do you want to create compositions from scratch which are uniquely your own?

To be fair, I am a HUGE fan of Ableton Live. It is a landmark program on the landscape of progressive audio technology. Also to be fair, Ableton Live has EXTERNAL SYNC. And it is rock solid. But I myself, prefer to use it as a utility because I refuse to be tied down to any rigid signal flow. I much prefer apps like XT (or similarly Reason or Plogue Bidule) where I can adjust the signal flow to my liking. It is essential in configuring a signal flow appropriate for live performance. (My 'production' signal flow is very much different.)

[I'll be detailing my varied signal flows in this thread eventually.]

Extra note: Check out LivePA.org for discussion from artists who use both hardware and software to perform live. http://www.livepa.org

~Exit Zero

[flanneljammies]

Yeah, I've been hanging at livepa.org and one person was pretty encouraging about XT, but everyone else is all about Live.

I've been creating songs in Tracktion and I'm perfectly happy with my work flow there. However, I don't think T is really suited to live performance.

Here's what I want to do: I plan on rendering loops from my Tracktion projects. I don't need to beat match loops on the fly. I'd like to set up various loop regions and improv with VSTs (like Supatrigga) and outboard effects; and play guitar and VSTis (using my keyboard controller). Then I'd like to switch to the next loop section and improv some more.

I guess I'm really after setting up an arrangement with some parts of it loopable and being able to drop in and out of loop mode and jump between loop sections. Is this doable with the XT's live mode functionality?

[Exit Zero]

Yeah, I've been hanging at livepa.org and one person was pretty encouraging about XT, but everyone else is all about Live.

I've been creating songs in Tracktion and I'm perfectly happy with my work flow there. However, I don't think T is really suited to live performance.

Here's what I want to do: I plan on rendering loops from my Tracktion projects. I don't need to beat match loops on the fly. I'd like to set up various loop regions and improv with VSTs (like Supatrigga) and outboard effects; and play guitar and VSTis (using my keyboard controller). Then I'd like to switch to the next loop section and improv some more.

I guess I'm really after setting up an arrangement with some parts of it loopable and being able to drop in and out of loop mode and jump between loop sections. Is this doable with the XT's live mode functionality?

Sure is. I essentially am doing what you are describing. I have mini sections of music which I engage freely in Live mode in an improvised fashion and then I perform lead parts over the top of certain sections. I also engage one-shot samples throughout (movie soundtrack stuff, field recordings, swirly pads, etc.) So basically I have signals coming from the sequencer for my mini music sections being engaged in live mode, and then I have another section of Xt dedicated to signals coming from lead synths. Obvioulsy, custom routing of midi channels (so easy to do in XT!) will be neccessary for this kind of setup as well.

So it seems to me you will be using a combination of:
- Audio snippets from Traktion, easily thrown into the sequencer. (Tip: You can chop up audio for tempo sync using Xt Sampler's slicing function.)
- VST instruments and effects.
- XT sampler one-shots (You can go to town with XT's sampler. It's a very powerful and very CPU efficient sampler! I often use mulitple instances with no problem.)

Btw, I was the one over at LivePA.org. Many of those guys are anxious that I put together a review of XT over LivePA.org.

[seamoss]

I couldn't imagine using anything but XT for live.


XT is the fastest and most reliable thing in my band...hehe


damn....vintage synths


two thumbs up for XT

[flanneljammies]

Thanks Exit Zero. I'm going to keep watching the forum here and over at livepa.org and once I get enough material developed, I'll grab the demo and a try porting my stuff into XT for live use. I'd much rather support and independent developer than Ableton (AND save some ca$h). You haven't seen the last of me yet...

[Caleb]

Just out of curiosity - do you XTLive guys create XT Sampler patches of your synths before taking it to the stage?

I imagine the CPU advantages are fairly significant and I don't know if people would really hear the difference in a live setting except for the most demanding of synth patches.

I have WusikStation and I think it's main advantage for live play would be its very low CPU hit - so this could also be used very effectively I imagine.

I'm just wondering if people take these sort of measures at all?

Caleb

[Aj@uma]

Hi all. Nice to see XT being well represented in a live environment.

Just out of curiosity - do you XTLive guys create XT Sampler patches of your synths before taking it to the stage?

Caleb

Though I've not used the XT sampler yet I do tend to sample some of the more CPU heavy or less than rock solid soft synths for use on stage.

AJ@UMA

[declassified]

Though I've not used the XT sampler yet I do tend to sample some of the more CPU heavy or less than rock solid soft synths for use on stage.

AJ@UMA

[Sorry for OT] So how do you do it? [/Sorry for OT]

[Aj@uma]

Been using an old Akai hardware sampler - but gradually moving everything over to software so will be looking at the XT sampler (or similar). Still fairly new to XT so not sure of the full capabilities of all the comps. Anyone used the XT sampler live?

[Exit Zero]

Been using an old Akai hardware sampler - but gradually moving everything over to software so will be looking at the XT sampler (or similar). Still fairly new to XT so not sure of the full capabilities of all the comps. Anyone used the XT sampler live?

The XT sampler has never generated a program exception for me. Not once. But, I've not really tried to either. I've not yet loaded any massive multi-layered samples as well.

But that is not to say I haven't pushed the boundaries of the sampler. I have loaded multiple 24-bit one-shots, many of them above 20mb each, and some as large as 50mb (These are usually long pads or FX.)

Mainly I use the sampler for creating multi-layered drum kits from one-shot samples, and then I also use the beat slicer mode for drum loops.

The sampler is being continually developed, and so you will find a few unfinished features. Despite that and perhaps not as pretty an interface as something like Halion, the XT sampler is indeed an app ready for prime time.



So far, my experiences with the XT sampler have been solid as a rock.

[BONES]

I hate sticky threads. My eyes immediately scan past them to the first proper thread.
And I see that already playing live has been defined as DJ'ing. As I've said before, I would hope that when I go to see live music I am presented with the best possible version of each song, not just really, really long versions of the songs the idiots down the front, who are invariably the only ones you can see from the stage, go nuts to. For my live performance I have absolutely no need of live arrangement tools and could never imagine being entertained by someone who was focussed on doing that. What I need are tools that allow me to focus on performing. Ideally, I would only touch the computer once, at the beginning of the show to start playback. From that point everything should be done from some kind of instrument that allows you to perform like a trained monkey with ants in his pants. Unfortunately I am yet to devise a system that will work like that in a useful way. i.e. I know exactly how I could do it right now but it would be such a convoluted process that it would become as inflexible as a backing CD-R.