What a computer can add to your live rig...

So of course I've heard about the possibility to play along to a playback but the ampsettingsswitching was new! :)
How did you set that up? A Midi-Track in your sequencer? Can you switch more than one setup with one computer?
 
Did a couple of solo shows (vocal + guitar) with a laptop a couple of years ago and luckily had my old minidisc multi in my gig bag as a backup. True to form the laptop crashed at both gigs and it was never used again.
 
HeadCrusher said:
So of course I've heard about the possibility to play along to a playback but the ampsettingsswitching was new! :)
How did you set that up? A Midi-Track in your sequencer? Can you switch more than one setup with one computer?
Click to expand...

Yes, you assign your amp to a MIDI track, and you program it in or record yourself "performing" with your foot controller (which I highly recommend quantizing if you do that.)

You can control as many amps or pieces of gear as you have MIDI I/O ports. MOTU has a lot of great USB MIDI interfaces on the market, as does M-Audio, highly recommend either company. Keep in mind that MIDI is EXTREMELY EASY for computers to do, as it was developed in the 80s. MIDI is also extremely powerful and underused these days.
 
Yeah, I noticed that yesterday. When I got my FirePod I had the first chance to try out the MIDI functionallity on my old Roland keyboard and hell, it's way more fun to play the synthies with real keys than to program them in Cubase and it's really fast.

I haeven't used a computer in a live situation but I'm a pro-technology-guy so I'd probably go for it if I had the need to! There's so many guys around here who always praise their Macs for stability and now you are afraid that your computers might crash live? ;)

I could imagine that it would be really great to play along with your actual recorded+mixed session of a song muting only the tracks that are played live plus adding some switching MIDI tracks. In that case (assuming who have for example 3 synth tracks in your arrangement that are played back by the laptop) how many tracks would you send to the FOH? Three and risking that the engineer might bury one or the other of them or just one that has all the relative volumes set right?

I've heard about the Mulitrack MD-Players and bands using them but to be onest I couldn't find any of these... Can someone point me to a specific model, I'm really curios... :goggly:
I work at a radio station and we also had Mini Discs and Players dying in the wrong situation so using one will not save you from Murphy's Laws! ;)

How do you integrate the Computer in the In-Ear-Setup btw?
 
HeadCrusher said:
How do you integrate the Computer in the In-Ear-Setup btw?
Click to expand...

Just like any other instrument. Just add a soundcard with the necessary outs. I use a EMU 1616m with my 12" laptop as a sampler for loops/intros/noices/guitarfx and so on. 1 stereo out for the pad sounds, 1 Stereo for the rythmic stuff. Balanced outputs to a rack mounted 4 di box, and voila.
 
Talk about thread resurrection...I've been designing my live setup, and personally I'm with DSS3; I'll just bounce tracks from the song sessions with the respective instruments muted or unmuted, burn 'em on an MD, and send one to the drummer and one to the house (quite honestly, I can't see myself wearing an in-ear monitor with a click going through it; I and my bandmates are tight enough to follow the drummer, so as long as he has the click we're aces).

The next question is, will I need any kind of DI box or whatnot to get the signal from the MD player to the snake?
 
Oh yeah, and I second Headcrusher - any multitrack MD player recommendations? Or any other inexpensive multitrack solution (a flash player, perhaps)...
 
Ugghh, I don't wanna have a mono keyboard track going through the PA, though (but yes, I realize I should rephrase the question, so any 4-track player recs.?)
 
yea were about to start with sampling and stuff live. Our drummer is playing to a click track with little Walkman cd player for practice when we jam. Its cool except one song were we have an off time click track part, so the songs needs to start in a certain spot on the click ( drummer is having trouble with that) and if we add samples in the mix our drummer is going to have to start every song at a certain point so all the samples play in the right place. Its easy when the song is a consistent 190bpm click and there is no samples cause our drummer just waits till he wants and starts but..........

How do you guys get so the drummer knows when to start exactly?
 
Just bounce the song with 2 bars extra of click at the beginning, and whenever he's truly ready, he presses play, waits a bar, then counts in you crackaz for the next bar, then you all start at bar 3...insta-sync
 
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