Going live with SFP & the lot

Compare notes on how to get the most from Scope devices, etc.

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at0m
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Post by at0m »

Hi,

In a month we will do a live performance for about 3000 people. I'm playing together with a friend musician and a visuals guy. I want to make a decent fail-safe yet flexible setup.

Here's a hardware gear list, stuff we have:
-21 CW DSP w an extensive soft library,
-Peavey Pc1600x and Phatboy MIDI remote,
-Roland MC-505 groove box, D110 sound module, JX-1 and Juno keyboards,
-Yamaha A3000 sampler

I'd like to ask for an additional 16/24 track mixer, for hands-on mixing. Tomorrow I'll know if I can use an ATARI, hope it'll make a solid sequencer, if not we'll use the 505. We prefer not to use software on the computer. We want to use DSP as hardware devices, controlled by the sequencer, keyboard and remote controllers.

One of the problems will be that all songs will be on one and the same SFP project, so all old projects have to be merged and optimised for DSP and RAM usage.

A possible way to go is use sequenced hardware sounds, DSP effects and modular remotely controlled and tweaked, a live juno and the lot mixed on the hardware mixer.

The hall has a wide stage and good infrastructure. I've worked there a couple of times and seen some gigs there, so I know the place and people quite well.

We'll do the gig a couple of times at home first, replug and rebooting the lot, do some time checks etc. Maybe invite some friends for a small party at home, rehearsing the gig.

Experience with and hints on going live are greatly appreciated,

at0mic.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2003-01-29 16:45 ]</font>
ds-sound
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Post by ds-sound »

Been there, done that, it was horrific. :smile:

SPF is a bad gamble when dealing with realtime live performances.

My best advice to you is to have a full playback on a CD-Player right next to you, so if the lovely blue screen on death come and visit with vivid error messages, you'll be able to fake the show until the computer will finish to REboot REstart REload (and REason, REactor, REbirth as well!). :wink:

May God be with you, for he totally forgot about me...
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spacef
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Post by spacef »

you sould try to make it with 8 tracks audio (1/2=stereo mix without drums, and the rest is drum parts, in order to allow yourself to adapt the mix to the room you play in).
Then on this arrangment, put 1 or 2 midi tracks for SFP synths for your live controls.

The best is to use an external hardware mixtable.

With all this you already have enough to worry about.... :smile:

The advantage is that it allows to make the whole session with a single project, with 2/3 synths max instead of having to reload a project, which can take time, etc...

16/24 tracks is crazy, imho...., unless you have a sound engineer who knows your music.

Just my two cents, but it's a "tested and approved" technique, at least for trance stuff (bass/bd "have" to be mixed on stage).
but I don't know what kind of music you intend to play ...

Moreover, the audience is more interested in having fun or listening music than your performance as a live player : you could fake playing and its the same for most of them (again, its a tested thing). Especially 3000 people.

So you must be realist privilege the flow of music.

On ANY computer system, the ressource load should be small enough to leave, like, 2/3 or 50% of available ram.

With all this, i can tell you that you will have enough to play with a few controllers and to keep you buzy....

It can depend on your music but i say is widely used....

good luck, and happy Live..

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2003-01-22 02:53 ]</font>
Spirit
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Post by Spirit »

Computers are twitchy, yes. It's also a given that what worked perfectly at home will inexplicably malfunction outside of its home environment. I don't want to sound all mystic, but I do think in some way machines have a sense of what is "normal" and that goes for location and who's pressing the buttons - they get used to a certain way.

In the years I played live we only had an audience of more than 1000 peoppe maybe twice or three times. Usually it was 50 - 300.

That said, years ago in a band I played with we used an EMU Drumulator drum machine (anyone remember them ?) which had enough memory for exactly *half* our set. So midway through the show we had a 45-second droney-synthy break while we loaded the second set of drum patterns via a tape memory dump on a walkman ! But we did have backup: a second tape and second walkman ! :lol:

We used all sorts of technology like that and it didn't so much get better over the years, it just changed.

I used a EPS-16 live for about 18-months and a couple of times it just refused to load something which before - and after - loaded perfectly. It happens.

Are you using your blue-rack PC ?

Some of the biggest problems with had with relatively delicate gear were:

* vibrations - bouncey stages were terrible. sometimes caused by us jumping around, sometimes by actual floor movement caused by the audience

* liquids - sweat from us, drinks from us, drinks from crowd, sweat from crowd. luckily never spit from crowd !

* environment - smoke, humidity, temperature. It could get sooo hot and the machines would be almost scalding to touch.

* lighting - couldn't see readouts, LCD screens or disk labels. Strobes were the absolute worst - if they weren't properly synced it would completely throw off my rhythm as well as making it impossible to read screens.

* power supply - in small venues sharing power points or overloading. In some places gaffing extension cord leads across the floor and hoping no one would rip them up. generally I think this is a very important issue: is the power good quality ? And how long does it take to boot something up ? By that I mean from a complete power loss when can you start making some kind of "emergency fill-in sound" ?

* the idea of CD backup is good, but how in practical terms would you handle this ? Do you just start on the next track with the CD while all the band members are wandering around looking behind compuers with torches and shouting in each others' ears ? This will look odd. maybe it would look better to make sure you have a DJ in the box ready to fade in something OK (not too good !) while the problem is sorted. But this must be solid deal with someone you can trust, otherwise when problems strike he just won;t be there or will misunderstand what's going on and you'll never get started again.

Alternatively is there a "back-up" song you can have if one part of the system falls over ? Sometimes a sort of weird piece works well if it's not too long, then there's no need to go to a full CD or DJ option. In one band we had a deal where each of us could play something "passable" by ourselves for a minute or so if everyone elses gear failed.

But failure is very rare, no need to get too paranoid.

For your test though I'd recommend going off-site.

Just a few thoughts . . .

_________________
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spirit on 2003-01-22 04:24 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spirit on 2003-01-22 04:26 ]</font>
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Post by spacef »

most computer used on live are laptop
- Mac titanium / 512 mb ram + digital performer (actually other solutions exists but that's what is used around me)
- i use a toshiba celeron 1.8 ghz 256 mb ram, for the moment i only mixed (10 hours on winamp and 3 djs, not a single problem). for live music i'll have to go 512 mb ram. Cubase sx could be enough but not yet fully tested. (toshiba is the builder of most things you find on HP and Compaq stuff). now, I want to plug a noah to it. :smile: ...
- your own computer should be fine, but it's important to make your songs Light on ram/cpu usage. Make it even better by using only 1 dsp card.
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Post by spacef »

i just wanted to add that we mixed strictly CD, which are generally more subject to problems than mp3 for example.
Spirit
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Post by Spirit »

My IBM T22 laptop on XP Pro is way more flakey than any of my desktops, better to transport I suppose, but not more reliable in software terms.
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spacef
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Post by spacef »

I wasn't saying that a laptop is better than a desktop, but if a laptop can do it, a desktop can too, i think.... my toshiba is rock solid but lacks ram, so i won't do any live with it for the moment....

Now that i remember, Acid must be a good performer (I had 24 tracks on a Compaq p3 1ghz 256 mb ram, not a live but for a recording session abroad. too much tracks began to cause crackling and such...
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

Thanks a lot for your input, guys! It's got some things I had not thought of :smile:

Depending on how stable the preparations will be, more or less will be multi-tracked. For now, we choose to do everything by sequencing and automation. If things go wrong during preparation, we'll record and stream more from disk.

We have a Pc1600x, Phatboy and mc-505 for automation control. The Pc1600x is doing software mixes and Reason/SX, Phatboy controls Yamaha A3000 and 505 controlling DSP synths. So we'll have plenty of opportunity to tweak sounds live.

A friend called me this week to come setup his pc for DAW. He's a great mixer, as a return favor I asked him to mix us. :grin:

Anywayz, I try to get a 16-24 track mixer. No pre-mixes on DSP, we want hands-on play. We can use up to 20 outs on the CW board, plus sampler and keyboards outputs, so a 16/24 track mixer would be nice.

Also, with the external mixer -cheers Spirit- we'll each prepare a piece that can keep people busy in case of a pc crash. We could put a CD next to the mixer, for worst case scenario. Magne will play live on his Juno, no need to process that, plus he can keep them busy for a bit with that machine only. The 505 will have some sequences, also for the sampler.

Hey spacef, why take only one DSP card? To be more stable? My compu can handle heavy projects quite well, also on longer runs. 45-60 minutes are peanuts compared to some 8-14 hour home sessions. About twice my pc crashes during these long runs, 90% caused by (un-)loading DSP or CPU devices or programs that won't run during the gig.

My pc should be capable of running projects that take 384MB RAM (i don't use samples except small stuff for drums), 80-90% DSP and 40-50% cpu. As said before, only crashes occur on loading devices. We'll see how far we get with live synthesis and try the set 4-5 times at home. If we see stuff get's lost, we'll multi track and tweak effects on the fly.

This far, we're doing drums in Reason. Minimax and Three-0-Three are very stable, so they're going live (1 voice only). Probably a lead from Prisma and Lightwave (4-6 voices each). And Sonic Attack or Micro3 for some freaky sounds.
Celmo's Bassman and Deep Blue are great bass synths, but here's why they don't go live: when saved with CC# (ADSR, filters etc), the knobs seem de-coupled from preset lists. They become quasi unuseable for going live, we can still sample them. There's many great sounds in SFP, but an important part of devices misses the edge to be taken live. We'll need them to have a reliable preset list, automation, etc to get most out of them.

Now we're busy making new tracks, or better, one SFP and one SX project to cover the whole gig. If we get short in time, we'll multi-track 1 or 2 older songs. I'm very curious about how it will be in the end :smile: Playing a cd is not an option, lol.
more has been done with less
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spacef
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Post by spacef »

>>>> Hey spacef, why take only one DSP card? To be more stable? My compu can handle heavy projects quite well, also on longer runs

I use only version 1 board, may be that's the problem? as far as i'm concerned, my system is more stable when i remove my Pulsar 1 and use only the Scope board. At least that was the case on my old pentium. Now it could be different.
Also what i posted is experiences from trance bands, touring a lot in various countries. It is more quasi mix performances than real live, but for these kind of music i find it perfect. In addition to and 8 track mix (connected to a mixer), they use samplers and exteral synths (provided by the rganisator).Having such a setup generally avoids the risk of running a CD (which may not sound good anyway). Also, the performance is much more than 45 minutes( 1/2 hours generally).
On the other hand, in another century, our guitarist managed to break a string during a song, so ....
I have no experience with desktops.
Myself i would be scared to do everything on one computer and experience what ds-sound experienced (in french we wall this "teasing the devil's tail") but well, i guess you'll do fine.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2003-01-29 18:38 ]</font>
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Post by spacef »

it also very personal but the word "should" is banned on my part :smile: . But i guess with tests etc you'll make it a "can".
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

The live act is over, Spacef you gave me the best advice but I thought I knew better. :wink: I took the wrong approach: wanted to do all live and then see what had to be multi tracked. I should have put it on multi first, then see what was to do possible live. Lost too much time trying to have all sequenced with MIDI.

During the last week of preparation, I had to import multi tracks from the songs. We had a guy on drum computer, playing 'live'. I tweaked effects, a third guy was on the mixer.

We ended up using the following gear: my pc, streaming multi track from SX to SFP. Sync'ed a Yamaha RM1x to it (the last song has sync problems) for the live feel. I used Pc1600x to control SFP effects. 2 hardware multi aux effects and the behringer mixer were played by Magne.

Mp3's are to follow soon.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2003-03-18 03:36 ]</font>
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Post by spacef »

ah well, at least it happened :smile: there will be a next time and a next, and a next and you'll be better and better etc etc...
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Post by spacef »

(has been read when needed)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2003-03-20 13:28 ]</font>
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Post by spacef »

AtOmic : how did you record your live performance (it sounds pretty nice for the ones i heard until now). with a mic or .. ?

I wonder if compressing at the end output, with an optimaster or whatever compressor can improve the sound (especially in the basss frequencies) or if the problem lies somewhere else, like in the balance or ??? ....
thanks

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2003-03-20 14:32 ]</font>
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Post by at0m »

Hi,

There's some extracts of the live act on http://users.pandora.be/at0m/live .

The recording's done with a minidisk from the P.A., I cut some of the total recording and put some multi band compressor over it.

Enjoy :smile:
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Post by Michu »

atom,

is this the same dump we did using timeworks?
i love to listen to Magne's mixer work :grin:
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

yeah it's the M-S compressed mix, plus a multi band compressor. too bad the original was mono band compressed, which almost removes bass in some parts etc.

michu, thanks again for the compressor :wink:

greetz from Trois Vallees, France, where sun's hot and the mountains our playground :cool:
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