Using DP live

[Yawnstrosity]

Hi everyone--

I'm getting ready to dive into playing VIs live with my laptop (MacBook Pro, 2.53 Ghz). My main concern is stability, and after that, ease of switching between sounds on the fly, with all the potential problems of viewing a small screen in a hectic club setting. I know there are some big-time users of DP live, but I wonder whether any of you have experience in a more humble setting (no backup rig should the program crash, for instance).

Thanks for any input you may have!

[Yawnstrosity]

Sorry for the double post--

I should have added that I will be using an Apogee Duet as my audio interface, but frankly, I'm a little worried about how easy that precious and portable piece of gear will be to steal while I sit at the bar nursing a beer and waiting for my set to begin. Will the headphone out of my MacBook be good enough, or will the sound quality be insufficient?

[kwiz]

Although I have a lot of experience using DP live with sessions containing up to 50 chunks, I never ran DP live with VI's. In the manner that I use DP, it has been rock solid. No crashes during a show that were caused by DP. (knocking wood) As long as you have enough ram with some headroom to spare, I think you'll be fine. As far as the Duet is concerned, it will sound better than running it instead of the headphone outs, but maybe you should disconnect it and throw it in your bag until you're ready to do your set just to play it safe.

[Yawnstrosity]

Thanks for the advice, kwiz. I read your interview on the MOTU site. You are the man!

[kwiz]

Glad to help, thanks!

[daniel.sneed]

AFAIK, any HD is more likely to fail than a computer motherboard .
And human error is an eventuality.
So, bring an external safety HD to your gig, with everything duplicated on (system, app., project, samples).
SuperDupper does this fast and easy.
Test the safety HD at home, cause of authorization process, though.

In case of an unlikely motherboard wreck, you'll even be able to run your setup on any same generation Mac, but you'll need your authorization datas (discs, and/or serials).
Proceed to tests with a few Macs, just for sure.

Make your setup, and your project, as light as possible, keeping as few as possible windows on display.
I generally keep a *full* project and build an alternate *live* project.

If high quality sounding is not required, built-in audio may be fine. But 3.5 jack is always a *suspect* connection, though.

[David Polich]

I've had plenty of experience with DP for live use, run from a laptop.

Regarding the audio interface question - a rackmount audio interface
solves the problem of people trying to steal it. I recommend you
have a separate rackmount audio interface for your live show. Leave
your primary audio interface at home. Have a spare audio interface for
your live show if possible (they do fail, and usually right before you're supposed to start your set).

Any VI parts in my sequences, I record as audio tracks for a live show.
Then it's just a matter of playing along with the audio playback on my
hardware keyboards.

If you have no backup laptop setup, and your laptop goes down - well, I have a saying...it means the show's over, and you can make it back home in time to watch Jay Leno.

[Yawnstrosity]

Thanks, Daniel and David! Advice well taken.

[dewdman42]

I guess a lot of people use Mainstage for this type of situation. Anyone care to comment how they have been able to setup DP to give similar results as can be done with Mainstage?

The issue for me is about how to set things up so that basically I don't *HAVE* to look at my computer screen most of time. I want to send single program changes to the Host and have it setup all the sounds with the program change to play how I want...and with minimal delay between programs. Myself I am setting up a mac mini for gigging and plan to use a small touchpad screen that will be sitting on top of my MIDI controller to occasionally control the mac if I have to, but most of time, during a set, I just want to send program changes and use CC's to do everything from the MIDI controller without having to control the computer to do anything.

Some guys I know are actually bootcamping into windows with their macs to use a program called "Brainspawn forte" which has a number of compelling features for live gigging that even Mainstage doesn't cover very well.

I agree with others about reliability issues. have a backup of your HD's ready to go just in case. This is not only case it fails. You could have a system configuration issue that messes up your setup the afternoon of the show. make sure you have a restorable image of a clean working setup, and make sure you have a spare HD ready to rock. If the entire computer goes down, which is about as unlikely as your entire MIDI keyboard going down, then I say, oh well, grab the tambourine. Another thing you can do is to use a MIDI keyboard which has enough basic sounds onboard that if you had to you could get through the rest of the time with crappy sounds.

[Prime Mover]

Someday I would like to take my VIs and sequences on the road... I don't have a good portable computer to do it now though. But there doesn't seem to be a definitive source for good ways to do that, especially with DP. I know people have been trying to initiate individual posts and questions here, but I think the larger issue is that there's really no manual or overall tutorial on how to work live with DP. It would be really great if someone who had some experience using DP in a live setting would sit down and create one, even if it's short and overly general.

[daniel.sneed]

[...]It would be really great if someone who had some experience using DP in a live setting would sit down and create one, even if it's short and overly general.

I feel your pain, but each case is unique in this matter, I believe. There are so many ways to play music in live situations. And DP is such a deep software...
I use no recorded parts, only live playing. My main tip is using different sequences to setup each part of the show, including VIs, levels, eq, effects, and so on...
There is a part on each sequence indeed. In case I brake my finger just before the show (!), or forget what to play after a year-long pause.
I use a MIDI pedal board to call each sequence when needed. I've set a MIDI program change for each sequence in Command window.
During the show, I'll only give a look to the Mac, if something goes weird.

[Prime Mover]

I feel your pain, but each case is unique in this matter, I believe.

I guess I wouldn't even really know where to start, though. For instance, simple keyboard splits, or patch changes? I guess if I were going to do something in DP, I would want to do EVERYTHING from there, sending only one MIDI channel from my controller, and having DP do everything else, that way I could program different toggles such as regional patches, right in DP, and not worry about doing any weird things on my QS.

Currently I use an Alesis QS8 for all my live stuff. If I have multiple patches in one song (which is common), then I create multiple versions of a patch with various on/off actions that are toggled by using a slider or foot controller. Then I split them to different regions, and choreograph my performance so that I'm able to do everything I need while being able to continue playing.

I really think that my next synthesizer will be a MacBook Pro, but I'm uneasy about how simple it will be to do program switching and patch splitting.

[Yawnstrosity]

I tried setting up my whole palette of sounds in Reason, then I tried going with Mainstage, and that has worked the best so far, mainly since I can use my third-party VIs and not just the ones that come with Reason, but also because Reason looks so tiny on my laptop and accessing the crucial features (such as volume changes and keyboard splits) requires more mousing. I'm using a Casio Privia 88-key as my one and only keyboard, partly for the reason that Dewdman pointed out -- it has a basic soundset that I can fall back on if everything goes to hell. I'm using an Evolution UC33e for on-the-fly sound tweaking. Programming the latter has also turned out to be easier with Mainstage than with Reason.

Sorry to go off-topic into DAW comparisons. I would like to see MOTU come out with an application like Mainstage that's oriented toward live performance. It would be nice to see it done with MOTU's intellectual flair.

[Michael Canavan]

Mainstage to me is unwieldily for Live use.
V-Racks are the way to go IMO.

I've been using Live for live use mainly, but I'm going to use DP7 as well in the future.
Chunks with all your audio tracks and program change messages in them, V-Racks with the soft instruments you use live in them. IMO Mainstage is much more unwieldily in this regard.

For software instruments I use Kore 2, you can set up instruments to be bypassed with program change messages, this save CPU big time, and allows you to use for example three or more instruments live. Kore and Live or DP IMO is a far more intuitive solution than Mainstage.
Only reason to use Mainstage IMO is Logic's Sculpture, love that synth.

I haven't gotten to that stage yet, but I believe it's possible to assign the same MIDI CCs to different Chunks, which would for example free up an Expression pedal for different uses in separate songs/Chunks. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's possible to have a software instrument filter on one song controlled by the expression pedal, and on another the expression pedal controls volume etc.

[mjmoody]

[...]It would be really great if someone who had some experience using DP in a live setting would sit down and create one, even if it's short and overly general.

I feel your pain, but each case is unique in this matter, I believe. There are so many ways to play music in live situations. And DP is such a deep software.. .

Still, there are some basics that it would be nice to have some tutorials on. Here are some situations that are common in live situations that I don't know how to do in DP:

1. Be able to vamp a section at will - then be able to jump to a new section at a LOGICAL point - for instance the ending of a section, or measure. I have found ways to instantaneously jump to new sections in DP - but what good is that live?? The millisecond I press the command to go to section B it goes to section B - no matter where I am in the form or measure.

2. The ability to loop more than one section of playback. This would include a glitch-free method to disable the loop (memory-cycle) function whenever it has been decided to go on to the next section.

Being able to line up all the chunks is great. A complete set list is right there - but I can't see how you can do anything creative on the fly except to just play back the sequence. I know that DP has been used to run countless live shows, but the interviews I have seen involve two Macs and a person dedicated to syncing with whatever is going on on-stage at the moment. Wonder if you are just a keyboard player, or drummer, trying to do something spontaneous (like a vamp, or maybe one more chorus for a jazz solo) and you are controlling the sequence with a foot controller or something - while keeping track of the form and keeping playing something? I can't see how to do it. There is nothing in the manual that I can find, and beyond testimonials of how wonderful DP is in a live performance setting - I can't find any answers on how to really do anything in a live context.

So, I'm with Prime Mover on this - it would be helpful to have someone who uses DP in a live context to give a few brief tutorials - maybe even as part of this thread. . .

John