KVR Audio

Wopelka · Post by **Wopelka** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 10:37 am

Hi everybody,

I've been asked to join a rock band to make the electro-synth part. That's very exciting, but I've never played live yet and i've no idea how to do it actually.

I guess my basic set-up will be a laptop, my USB soundcard and my midikeyboard.

Now I'd like to hear you about your way of playing live (i mean: which host do you use, what gears, what external controller, what is pre-programmed and what is created live, etc.?)

Please share your experience and ideas.

Thanks in advance

Cheers

dekky · Post by **dekky** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 11:10 am

i nearly use the same setup you are planning to use.

athlon 2000 laptop
emagic esi 2/6 usb card
big old motu timepiece hooked to the parallel port
and my old poly800.

the only software i use onstage is kontakt in standalone mode.

i sampled everything i need for the songs.
some chords that are too tricky for my big fat fingers to play live are layered on one key so i can play them with one finger prettending to be a chord virtuoso.

the laptop stays in the 19" case, i bought a 10,4" tft on ebay which is taped to the poly800, a laptop onstage with a rockband always looks kinda weird

.

putte · Post by **putte** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 12:15 pm

hi wopo

being a 100%-software bugger at home, i am a 100% hardwaresucker on stage.
I use 2 Roland SP808´s groovesamplers (soon to be replaced by roland´s new sp606), and feed them with samples i did at home. Then there´s the 3rd member of the pu&ed band, the boss voicetransformer vt-1. and of course sir edgar´s drumming .. that´s it.
We´re not doing any sequencing live, its just combining and shooting loops and samples.

and it goes like this:

http://www.we-are-billions.com/putte/ze ... EW_live.rm (big file ..

)

putte

mystahr · Post by **mystahr** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 1:18 pm

I don't feel that far yet, although I do have the intention of trying to record a fully live played CD and the idea is taunting me

So I'll certainly stick around this thread and read up

great thread, and it hasn't even started yet

Wopelka · Post by **Wopelka** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 2:17 pm

thanks a lot for your first replies, guys

for a start, i'll have to check out these Roland groovesamplers and other mentioned pieces of hardware...

naive question maybe, but to go further, i'd like to know how it goes between hardware on stage and the main sound system...

(the vid is toptoptop, putte !

)

cheers

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 2:36 pm

In case you're using software on stage I'd make sure to use a host properly reacting to program changes and controllers. I would also think about not using a big sequencer if you actually don't need sequences to be played back. Bidule, Chainer and the likes come to mind.

In case you would like to play some sequences in addition things may become more difficult as the drummer would have to listen to your loops/backings or whatever. In that case you may need a small mixer to send the drummer some monitoring signal. Maybe you'd even need some more outputs to setup a separate monitor channel for the drummer (in that case you may not need the mixer but could do it through your host's routing).

As far as mixing goes:
The front mixer would just grab your signal through a pair of D.I. boxes - usually you don't need to care about that part.
Monitoring is another issue... very often in smaller locations you won't find a proper monitoring system, so you may need to get something by your own. Believe me, in a rockband it's becoming a tough job being a keyboarder in case you only use the place's monitoring system. Usually in small clubs and the likes they only have 2 monitoring ways, most of the time one is used for the drummer, the other one will be placed frontstage to serve the singer(s). The only thing you could get then is a link from one of them, with the drummer's signal being useless for anybody else in 99% of all cases and the front monitors having TONS of vocals on them which will just drive you mad.
So, try to buy some keyboard combo amp or another sort of active monitoring system. Roland is making some rather good ones, but the keyboarder I'm often playing with usually gets away fine with a very small Montabo, but that might not be fine when playing rock stuff. For monitoring only things don't even need to be stereo, so you better get something loud and mono instead of anything more expensive in stereo which might even be less powerful. And while stereo imaging might be nice for the audience, for monitoring mono signals often are way more useful because they're more direct.
I'm really serious here - without your own monitoring system you may experience some very unpleasant gigs, so you should defenitely think about that.

t-willy · Post by **t-willy** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 3:38 pm

Wopelka wrote:Hi everybody,

I've been asked to join a rock band to make the electro-synth part. That's very exciting, but I've never played live yet and i've no idea how to do it actually.

Cheers

sorry no advice, just excited you might be joining a ROCK band!!

lates

t-willy

lalo · Post by **lalo** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 5:11 pm

Try Energy and Bidule they are the best in a live enviroment!
BTW i'm trying to go toward a almost live-composed stuff, with minimal stuff pre-composed just a few samples and sequences....and the idea to make a cd stuffed with live improvisation is tempting me a lot

lalo

amiga909 · Post by **amiga909** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 7:26 pm

hi all
this is what i said to myself:
if you want to really make music on stage, rather than getting bored by urself just hitting loops at the right moment or click some effects in ableton
-> do everything live on stage. and the computer is the least sexy instrument, so id like to keep it a t home. you will not be able to program aphexTwin-like 200bpm live from scratch without any mistakes. sure. but there is help! the answer is MIDI programming. to generate enough MIDI data (notes, CC, etc.) to have a complete song you have to work very fast, impossible. my idea was to reuse exisiting data(ALL data is created while the show is running), process and remap it.
get into the (narrow) world of midi effects. i ll wait there for you to follow

leave ur laptops at home (;

ps: if somebody is interested how exactly i work, i ll discuss it further.
rom

Wopelka · Post by **Wopelka** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 10:56 pm

@ Sascha

thanks a lot, very very useful information and pieces of advice, i'll read this post again and again. cheers

@ t-willy

yeah, they are somewhere between radiohead first albums and pj harvey (BTW female singer, great voice and presence on stage) - but if i can do something for them i'll try to lead them to a sort of radiohead last albums sound... which is hardly rock anymore

@ lalo

thanks. i've got Energy but i must say sometimes i have some crashing prolems with the stand alone version... so i'm a bit cold here.

@ amiga909

i am interested to know exactly how you work, please go on.

mckenic · Post by **mckenic** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 11:27 pm

Hi guys,

Might not help but I thought I'd chime in anyway

I have just started playing live guitar again with a budy playing bass. Trying to do minimalish guitar stuff a la Tortoise, Mogwai. I bought a Yamaha A3000 to fire off drumloops but to be honest we dont use it.

We are recording also so what we do is lay down the backing guitars, synths and drums in the studio (read: my bedroom), load the lot on a powerbook with an M-Audio firewire 410 and play along to the backing tracks played out through DSP-Quattro.

The FOH guy just D.I.s the stereo outs and feeds everything back to us through the monitors. The only thing we cant hear is the live guitar/bass

Its a BASTARD staying in tune with pre-recorded guitars tho... especially the tuneings we use

I'd much prefer 3 more guitarists and a real drummer but this works for us.

Just my experience.

HTH

Dave

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 4:19 am

Given the Radiohead/PJ Harvey references I would suggest that hardware is possibly the best solution for you, unless you're envisioning dance remix sounds of the aforementioned. I recently picked up a 2nd hand Yamaha CS1x for less that US$300 and it has a great range of on-board sounds, is reasonably programmable and has a very good arpeggiator for all the bits that are too fast for you to play.
On stage I think it is far less important to have exactly the right sounds and compromising will usually not affect the overall perception of the band. We use very different live arrangements with far fewer parts than recorded versions of our stuff, mostly because its much harder to keep everything clear and separated through a PA so we try to get the essence of each song out, stripping out all the filler that seems necessary in the studio.
One essential piece of advice - ALWAYS make sure you get time to do a thorough sound-check so that you can be sure that front-of-house is as you want it to be.

Shmoe · Post by **Shmoe** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 5:12 am

I'm a drummer, and I used to use a lot of sequenced midi stuff live, but a couple of years ago I switched to triggering audio files instead. Live midi can be a little dicey. I feel more confident with audio files, plus you can condense a huge midi rig down to something as simple as a CD player. Do the drummer a favor, though: Record a click track and send it to him/her. It sure makes it easier for me, plus I can record cues and counts into the click track

Shmoe

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:46 am

Btw, even if quite a lot of people seem to recommend getting some hardware instead of using a laptop live, I can't exactly see the drawbacks of doing the latter.
IF I allready was a live keyboarder and IF I allready had some hardware basically designed for live useage, I would perhaps just keep it like that, but in case this isn't so, PLUS you allready got all your software, I can only see advances in using a laptop on stage.

- You will have all the sounds in one convenient package. No matter whether it's your sampler, your favourite VA, your most loved FX - everything is just there in place, no need to cable racks, mixers and the likes.

- You will be able to use loops, backings and whatever live easily. Using hardware this is becoming a tough job as you'd need another thing to playback these, at least some digital multitrack because you'd need a click-out for the drummer.

- Using multiple outs (for the above mentioned drumer click-track for instance) again doesn't cost you a fortune, all you need is a card with more than a stereo output pair, then you could just route a click/loop track to the drummer's monitor (either straight away or through the front mixer, whatever you prefer).

Yes, I know, it's all about stability - but I can only say that recently (since XP) Windows computers have become pretty much stable. My laptop simply doesn't crash at all, unless I'm using strange plugins (and that might even be Logic's fault), but these I simply sort out and there we go. Of course you would have to have a relatively dedicated machine, virus scanners running in the background certainly aren't something you want for a live machine...

Of course, a laptop is still a less rugged thing than dedicated keyboards, but with a proper case that you don't put beers on and whatever it should be possible to minimize risks.

It might also be a clever thing to look for performance overhead. While it might be OK to run your machine at 80-90% CPU taxing at home, it certainly isn't in a live context. So, in case you'd want to use backings coming from the laptop as well, I would just bounce all the synth parts in the backing to audio files, to keep the CPU load as low as possible.

With all that in mind I really can't see too much problems in using a computer live - I mean, if a lot of pros allready do so, there must be a reason, no? Yes, you could argue that they're using Macs - but these days a well maintained PC laptop isn't any less stable.

amiga909 · Post by **amiga909** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 2:57 pm

computer vs. hardware

i should note at the beginning that we are looking here more exactly at
windows/osx/linux-Software |vs| sequencing software on hardware gear.
15 years ago computers could make nice chiptune tracks. compared to what at that time an affordable synth (DX7) can do, computers audio synthesis was weak. thus computers realm quickly became standard for sequencing (=composing act of making music).

computerSoftware has one drawback compared to most hardware devices. inconcistency. this results in a overwhelming complexity of error situations. be honest, how often did you react wrong to an unwanted interruption when playing live?

but i hope the time will come when we got our own operating sytstem, like an ultra tight audio-only "linux-cubase"(compatible with not less than every existing plug format)which perfectly fulfills all dreams of stability and performance(synchronization)(;

does any1 know about steinberg and linux?

tkx
rom

The great Playing Live thread:what & how, ideas & ex