Did a gig with 8505 live last night

[ParsonsMatt]

Show went great Load in consisted of me carrying my backpack and two guitar cases into the venue. Set up was turning the laptop in, plugging in the Fireface, and giving the soundman four cables ( Orchestra right/left, guitar 1, guitar 2 ).

It sounded awesome. Our entire band mix was very clear and tight from what I remembered and from what people have told me. Our monitor mix was a little lackluster, but that's probably our fault for not having a better idea of what we needed. Stage volume was really low and the PA was cranking.

Volume/tone automation is so cool. Without any input on my/other guitarists part, right when a clean part or solo would happen, our tone would automatically shift to be optimized, with effects following in time with the music... Makes me want to run the vocal mic into the computer as well for some better control of verb/delay/compression/etc.

The sound guy seemed to really enjoy it as well as the crowd. My back and ears are definitely very happy about it as well. The tone we got was pretty damn good, as well.

The only thing that sucks? Untangling 6 20' cables the day after

 

[Unavailable]

That's pretty sick dude. Wish I could have heard it.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

We should have videos up tonight

 

[kev]

nice one parsons! How do you have the laptop controlling the automation?

 

[Torniojaws]

I wish most of the venues I play had enough oomph in the PA to use amp sim guitars :/ It's always barely enough for vocals and maybe the kick drum.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

nice one parsons! How do you have the laptop controlling the automation?

All of the songs are arranged in Reaper, with it handling the routing. The drummer gets a click track and the orchestra in headphones, and can hear the guitars/vocals through his stage monitors. Then, when the right time comes up in the song, I just used Reaper's effect automation to change settings. Worked great at the show.

I wish most of the venues I play had enough oomph in the PA to use amp sim guitars :/ It's always barely enough for vocals and maybe the kick drum.

Damn :zombie: Most of the venues down here are really small also, this was a bigger place. We're playing a tiny little restaurant next month, that should be interesting.

 

[Metaltastic]

Badass dude, glad it went well!

 

[xturbox]

this is interesting, b/c some ppl on axefx forum were saying that axefx does not pull good sound until you have good PA. High tech metal in town.

 

[Force666]

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Welcome to the 21st Century! haha How are you controlling the Latency introduced with the live effects?

 

[ParsonsMatt]

this is interesting, b/c some ppl on axefx forum were saying that axefx does not pull good sound until you have good PA. High tech metal in town.

Yeah, I can imagine. The tone we got was pretty good, and really, as long as the PA doesn't fuck with the tone too much, it'll be alright.

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Welcome to the 21st Century! haha How are you controlling the Latency introduced with the live effects?

Well, we're getting about 5ms of latency, which is something like.. being a few feet away from the speaker on a stack. So it hasn't been an issue yet.

 

[Harry Hughes]

That's fucking wicked man.
Amp modeling has really proven it's worth.

 

[Ermz]

That's great.

I've always wondered about taking this approach with it. The automation during the set sounds amazingly liberating.

 

[LeSedna]

what is the "PA" ?

 

[kev]

All of the songs are arranged in Reaper, with it handling the routing. The drummer gets a click track and the orchestra in headphones, and can hear the guitars/vocals through his stage monitors. Then, when the right time comes up in the song, I just used Reaper's effect automation to change settings. Worked great at the show.

Brill, just what I thought really. So you have one reaper session for your whole setlist then. Who controls the laptop? For instance, I imagine you're not going to let it run continuously straight through with set gaps as you might have different interactions with the audience etc.

 

[Torniojaws]

what is the "PA" ?

Do you mean what model/make? Or PA in general? Here's PA systems briefly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_address

 

[Erkan]

Holy shit, that's cool but what if REAPER decides to fuck off and crash? :O

 

[LeSedna]

I asked generally speaking. Thank you, I didn't know there was a technical term for such an installation. I would have said "sonorisation system" or something like that.

The reaper session is also one of my ideas to try next time I play live. It's so simple : if you already recorded your songs, you remove the waveforms in the guitar/bass/vox tracks, and that's done. You may remove the master bus processing and you're almost done. All samples are ready already, you may maybe change panning to adapt to venues, and you're done. To have different guitar tones, you simply adjust volume by automation in their tracks. So that you pass from disto to clean with full transparency.

 

[Sunny84]

I had thought about doing a similar thing with a laptop (with Cubase) and XTLive to control the changes for the covers band I'm in...pussied out cos half the time the singer ends up pissing around, and the drummer wouldn't play to a click.

 

[LeSedna]

Erkan, for me, with such a technic, I would definitely have 2 netbooks ready. If one crashes, there is the second, already ON and ready to work. And, of course, always be ready to work "old school"

 

[kev]

Holy shit, that's cool but what if REAPER decides to fuck off and crash? :O

thats another major point!