Cueing chunks in live performance

[murphymusic]

I've just finished sequencing he entire score for the musical "Sweet Charity". I used DP 5.12 and 2 Garritan Libraries: Jazz & Big Band and Personal Orchestra. The score sounds fantastic!! I'll need to be able to trigger each music cue (about 60) accurately as I will be conducting a bunch of people in the pit as well. Many of the sequenced cues come out of vamps that will be played live, so the timing must be flawless. I have done this many times in the past using Performer and my K2600, using a footpedal I triggered each cue through the remote transport commands and the response was immediate!!
I upgraded to DP in December mainly because I wanted to take advantage of the awesome sounds of the Garritan libraries. The sounds are far superior , however, I do not get immediate response w/the footpedal triggering the cues remotely. I am beginning to think that life is slower in the VI world (latency). There is a slight pause. In most live applications this would be forgivable, however, not for what I intend to do.

I am using a Digi002 as my interface, there is a footswitch port on the back. I messed with it a bit but with little success. I've also tried leaving the transport controls in wait mode and automatically advancing & playing the next chunk, this has the effect of advancing and waiting for a MIDI event or controller event. This works well, but I don't want to drag the massive 2600 into the pit just to trigger chunks. Also, with this method I am afraid of "ghost" MIDI events being sent & firing sequences prematurely. I can often get these "ghost" events while recording in wait mode.

There must be a way to flawlessly fire sequences in tempo and in time. I could do it w/Performer. Can anyone shed some light on this Perf. comes up in 3 wks.

[daniel.sneed]

I've used DP for live shows in the most straight way :

Just set an auto-stop at the end of each individual sequence and chose the "chain chunks option" thru the transport pannel button.
Plug a momentary footswitch to my 828 interface.
In command window, set the footswitch to "play" and voila.

Daisy chain the footswitch with one or two others, if needed at different places on stage.

Could this help ?

[murphymusic]

Yeah, that how I've done it before w/Performer & my K2600. Response was immediate!
But..now w/DP & the Garritan libraries there is a very, very short pause before the sequence rolls. Although the delay is slight, it is enough to make matching a downbeat quite awkward. Anyone find a work around for this issue? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

[daniel.sneed]

Of course, you DID set ON the Prefill Buffer setting option ?
Changing the prefill duration could help ? Default duration is set to 40ms.

[murphymusic]

Studio settings says that the buffer for quick start is set at .20 seconds. Is this not set properly? I'm not familiar w/this, I don't think it was in my last version of Performer (MIDI only). By the way, I went to your myspace, music sounds great! Thanks for your help.

[PrimeMover]

Are you sure you're not experiencing a hard disc delay? Also, how imperative is it to actually be playing the MIDI versions... I'd recommend freezing the tracks first. I'm not sure I yet trust soft-synths yet for live performance... but that's probably just me.

[murphymusic]

It is crucial that I use the MIDI tracks for several reasons. Tempo changes requested by the director or choregrapher. If I have a musician that misses a performance (or is weak) I can use the MIDI track. I can change balance to fit the moment. I will be balancing human players w/virtual players, I need the flexibility of MIDI to do this. I am comfortable doing this and have done it many times before. I want advice on the delay issue. Is it because I'm using virtual instruments? This is the first time I've used them. They sound great, but, is it part of the problem. Using Performer 6(no MIDI) w/ my K2600 produced no delay. None. I could match downbeats all day, no problem, But, the K2600 is an external piece of gear. The delay I am experiencing is very slight, but awkward for marrying live performance and sequenced material. Can anyone tell me more about this pre-fill buffer thing?

[Shooshie]

I'm using a Roland footpedal -- the FC300 -- for controlling DP, as well as for expression and various other controls in many of my VI's; especially the Garritan libraries. It connects directly through MIDI, just like my K2600 (which I've also used as you do). You're right that the VI world is a little on the slow side compared to rack gear. There's no changing that. The delay depends, of course, on how many instruments you have active at a given moment, and how your buffer is set. It may also depend on your MIDI interface; I don't know about that. I use the MOTU MIDI Time Piece AV. It's hard to beat, and it has a port for footpedals, though I don't use it that way. I use the Roland device.


Roland FC300 at Sweetwater (ask for Brad Lyons at extension 1362)

The Roland pedal unit has 9 footswitches and two expression pedals. With my feet I can engage the WAIT button, the metronome, the countoff button, play/stop, record, rewind, and enter a location into memory. On top of that, I can send sustain, sostenuto, unacorda, and expression pedals for various VI parameters. This is all with my feet alone. I use it for recording while my hands are busy playing instruments. It has sure enhanced my workflow.

As for the live performance aspect, I've made a substantial part of my living over the past 20 years as music director of two different stage shows that toured coast-to-coast in the USA. One of those shows included 5 Yamaha Disklaviers on stage, four of which were driven by MIDI. Through the use of an elaborate click track that included countoffs for tempo changes, I was able to deal with the 1/2 second delay that was required by the Disklaviers. It was tricky, especially in the early days, but I managed to cover all the bases and make it work as I conducted live musicians and cued Digital Performer. One of the secrets to preparing music for a delay of that magnitude required a feature to be added to Digital Performer. After years of my begging, I was finally able to get MOTU to see the light when I persuaded them that their film aspirations would require the same feature. They finally provided me with this feature in December of 1997, and it's been there ever since. You can see this feature in the "Shift" dialog and the Adjust Beats dialog. It's the "Preserve Realtime Performance" option. Saved me hours and hours of work, but I won't go into that. You'll either find you need it or you won't.

If the delay is significant enough to be troublesome, I think you could do it with a detailed click-track. The trick is to incorporate a click-track that gives YOU a count-off for the countoff that you give the musicians.

The "ghost" MIDI events that you're getting can probably be tamed by setting the preference in the Transport section of the prefs (the last thing in the list) so that the WAIT command responds only to NOTES. You can also set it to respond to NOTES or CONTROLLERS, which gives you a little more flexibility, but those controllers are usually what get you in trouble. It just takes a pedal or a touched pitch-bend or something, and your sequence is up and running away without you!

In some ways, I think my situation of dealing with a full 500 milliseconds may actually have been easier than the tiny delay you're dealing with. You're caught in-between, such that your delay is almost real-time. Almost too close for a click-track, yet too far to do by ear. Still, I think the click-track is your answer.

You may be able to make it work with the built-in click, since it's going to be in time with the music. The click options in DP make that a very powerful feature.

••••••••• Please take a look at this mini-tutorial on using the built-in click features •••••••••

If you end up having to create your own click-track, you're going to become very familiar with the "preserve realtime performance" option I mentioned above, because as you shift the click-track in real-time to compensate for the delay, this option is what will save you endless hours of work at every tempo change. You're probably wondering what the heck I'm talking about. It won't make sense to you unless you try it. Set up a series of drastic tempo changes, just for illustration's sake. Make a simple click-track to go with it. Now, using the Shift command (Command-L), move your click-track by some REAL-TIME amount without using the "Preserve Realtime Performance" option. You'll find that as the tempo changes, your click track gets farther and farther off. If you use the Preserve Realtime Performance, it will work properly.



One other option to consider is being sure that you have a fast computer. An old G4 is obviously not going to handle a load of VI's without a fairly good-sized wait. The Intel MacPro quads or octals are going to handle that load much faster.

What you want to do can be done; it just depends on whether you have the guts and stamina to do it. It's not for the faint of heart. I don't recommend making real-time changes as you describe, but if you're comfortable with them, then power to you. You may find that the footswitch helps. I'll always use my Roland FC300 in the future.

Good luck with it; break a baton...


Shooshie

PS: Feel free to ask, if you have more questions.

[Tim]

Can you use Wait Mode in this situation? It will afford faster starts.

[daniel.sneed]

Just a thought.
Sorry, it will come to late for your project, but :
DP6 will include some sort of *VIs pre-rendering*.
Would help much in this case, I guess.

[murphymusic]

thank you all for your replies.

I'm not sure I've been extremely clear. So.. how about an example:

Sequence starts...no problem...footpedal triggers and we're off... get to middle of tune...into dialogue vamp. current sequence ends and cues up next sequence (meanwhile, vamp is played by all available humans in pit). All is good so far. Then comes the dialogue cue to continue music. Hit the footpedal "in time" and experience "close, but no cigar" timing irregularity when bringing in next sequence. I got a response from Dan that referred to the "pre-fill" buffer, I've not yet had a chance to mess w/it. Mine is set for .40 seconds. Should it be set differently?! Might this help?

Thanks

[dpatridge]

Hi there - Did you ever get a solution to your issue? I have a friend who uses chunks for a similar live situation and he told me that he was having a lag at the top of "play". I'll check to see whether he has some VIs as well. Have your tried to reproduce the problem using no VI to eliminate that as a source of the problem?

[murphymusic]

Thanks for your concern. Yes. I did find a solution for the lag issue. Using a pedal through the remote control part of the program to "play" was totally unacceptable. The lag was slight but not workable for a live situation like I was in. I did end up heaving the mighty 2600 into the pit but I couldn't trigger chunks through it because it was being played by the pianist. In wait mode chunks a triggered by MIDI key data or controller data. While this is a cool function, it would be much cooler if you could specify WHICH controller. As it is, it responds to ANY controller data...so the pianist would have been triggering chunks all night. My workaround.....not elegant....but it worked. 2600 was there for piano only, didn't put a MIDI cable into it. I found an old drum machine in my basement (circa mid-80s). It sounds like total crap but I noticed it had footpedal ports. I put in a footpedal and coonected it to the 002 with a MIDI cable. I put transport in "wait" mode, set it to advance to the next chunk and wait. Operation was seamless and perfectly in time...every time.
Again, thanks for the follow-up

Jim