Slightly OT, but any ideas on how I can do this ?

[Aneng]

Hi,

Here's the plan... My band are playing a 'mini festival' gig in two weeks. I'm a lead guitarist with ropey keyboard skills. I would like to perform Tasmin Archer's "Sleeping Satellite". I've got the guitar parts sorted, easy enough. However, I wanted to be able to play the keyboard solo live, and having spent most of the weekend practising it, I've only managed to get the first few bars done - and not quite at full speed either.

I'm realising that there's little chance I'll learn it in time, and have it embedded enough in my brain to be able to play it live, possibly under the influence, without making a total balls up of it !

So... my question....

"Plan B" is to have a midi solo set up in a sequencer ready to go, to be activated by my keyboard when I hit a particular 'trigger key'. So far, so good. I can manage this in something like Cubase (unless Tracktion has a 'remote keys' function ?). However, my big problem is tempo... as the rest of the band are truly 'analogue' (i.e. human [ish !]), I can't guarantee that we'll be playing at the correct tempo when I trigger the midi solo.

So, I have this idea that maybe I could set the tempo by tapping another trigger key, say on the four beats running up to the solo start, then hit the 'play' trigger key. In theory, this would set the tempo in the sequencer then start the solo at the right speed.

Does anyone have any idea of how I can achieve this ?

Failing that, my "Plan C" is to have some sort of 'visual metronome', flashing the beats on the PC screen so I can (try !) to control the tempo of the rest of the band, so we're in sync when the solo starts.

Any other thoughts anyone ?

If all else fails, it's "Plan D" - dispense with the drummer and do them in the sequencer too. That would make sure we were in sync, but I'd rather do the song as 'live as possible'.

Thanks for reading this...

Cheers,

Aneng.

[Jeremy_NSL]

you can probably set up some sort of tap tempo thing with Cubase - sorry don't know how.

But I'd probably just trigger the midi without it. Your band should only take a second or so to drift to the right tempo - unless you are TOTALLY off to begin with.

[lowkey]

If you have a drummer what about recording her/his kick drum in rehersals? When you have a take your happy with you could download a midi version of the track and adjust the tempo to your kick drum track. The next rehersal you could practice with the tempo adjusted keyboard part. In theory it should work because the bands tempo would have contributed to the keyboard part tempo.

You can make a groove template from an audio track in Sonar. I dont know if cubase has this feature. EnergyXT will have audio to groove eventully but even Jorgrn might not have it in time for your gig.

Have a look at this...

http://www.beatcreator.com/English/frames.html

It may help. It can slice your kick drum track and export it as midi. Again I dont know if Cubase can take groove info from midi. Sonar can and EXT will.


Hope this helps.

[Aneng]

unless you are TOTALLY off to begin with

...you don't know my band!

(that's me on the end !)

[Gwydi]

What about sending your drummer a click track, even if it's just for that song? That way the computer is controlling the tempo but he's playing live.

G.

[simondsouza]

You can tap in a tempo to T - click on the bmp bar at the top of the screen - then you see 'click here to tap out a tempo' - use your left mouse button to do this. Then click apply. This is still subject o human error (you or the band), so may not be best solution.

Logic Audio used to have a feature called touch tracks which meant that you could continually tap out the tempo and the computer would change it's tempo according to your tapping. I don't know more than that though.

One other idea would be to render the solo to wav, split it up into short phrases, import the phrases into T's sampler and trigger each one sequentially (e.g. 1st phrase on C1, 2nd phrase on C2 etc).

[unknown user]

Tap your foot and generate MIDI clock and MIDI start on the downbeat with this.