Using DP for a live concert

[jlaudon]

I will be the band leader for a big concert (2 nights in the Coliseum) here in HK (Canto-pop) in April. We will be doing about 40 songs (!), and for a number of them, I plan on running DP along with the band (I'll be using my G4 laptop and DP 5.13, mainly running one stereo mix of extra synth/string parts and a click track for the drummer - using my 828mk3). I also plan to bring my G5 Quad to use (either Mainstage or Jambalaya) my VIs.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how this should all work (will it work, stable, etc)? How should I set up DP (each song as a chunk, click track only to the drummer or the whole band, etc?)?

Thanks for any input.

[spirit]

I will be the band leader for a big concert (2 nights in the Coliseum) here in HK (Canto-pop) in April. We will be doing about 40 songs (!), and for a number of them, I plan on running DP along with the band (I'll be using my G4 laptop and DP 5.13, mainly running one stereo mix of extra synth/string parts and a click track for the drummer - using my 828mk3). I also plan to bring my G5 Quad to use (either Mainstage or Jambalaya) my VIs.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how this should all work (will it work, stable, etc)? How should I set up DP (each song as a chunk, click track only to the drummer or the whole band, etc?)?

Thanks for any input.

A biggish question.
Thoughts from someone who has never done what you are doing:
First of all - run throughs- as many partial or whole dress rehearsals as possible with DP sync'd. If not all players are available, get some of them to work out the kinks in advance, you can run through first yourself before subjecting other players to working out how it will work.
40 songs is a lot of chunks for one DP session-just that many chunks might push the otherwise stable CPU to become overly taxed. You might consider making a strategy of where you can take breaks to open a new session with the next set of chunks. Definitely use V-rack if you are using multiple chunks in order to minimize CPU usage. Or is ALL the VI work going to be in the G5?
You might as a back up to the G4 laptop additionally have a version of your DP sessions on the G5 harddrive ready to go that have all the MIDI data and everything so if the G4 goes down you could always try to run it all on the G5.
Make sure you have good power, all connections are secure and not subject to getting jiggled (a firewire cable loosened by a subwoofer blast could panic your whole setup).
The internal sound output of the G5 is probably weak, so have an interface for it's output that is better than the built in sound outputs.

It sounds like this is the first time doing this for you in a critical situation.
Basically- try it in practice as much as possible, think of everything that can go wrong, secure things, have backups and be prepared that the unexpected could occur (have a backup plan), and have backups readily available- extra cables, drives, even spare interfaces and computers if you can borrow them- and test and retest your setup with them. Have backups of your files readily available.
There are pros doing this sort of thing, and more complicated, on a regular basis. But it appears they work it out on their own, then bring it to rehearsals, then have a complete backup system (there are products specially design to automatically switch over if one system goes down). But then a Madonna tour or Cirque Du Soleil has a budget to minimize the chance there will be an interuption of the show.

Good luck

[Shooshie]

I will be the band leader for a big concert (2 nights in the Coliseum) here in HK (Canto-pop) in April. We will be doing about 40 songs (!), and for a number of them, I plan on running DP along with the band (I'll be using my G4 laptop and DP 5.13, mainly running one stereo mix of extra synth/string parts and a click track for the drummer - using my 828mk3). I also plan to bring my G5 Quad to use (either Mainstage or Jambalaya) my VIs.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how this should all work (will it work, stable, etc)? How should I set up DP (each song as a chunk, click track only to the drummer or the whole band, etc?)?

Thanks for any input.

Simplify as much as possible. If there is anything that causes trouble, remove it. Don't try to do effects in the box; save them for your soundman. Some exceptions may qualify there: Trim is often useful, and rarely causes delay or problems. Minimal MOTU EQ (not masterworks, but the regular kind) tends to be easy on the CPU and little delay.

Do entire show in one file, or at least entire sets. If you have a break for more than 15 minutes, you can load a different file. Have one short sequence output to headset for testing, just to see if everything is working. Then stop.

Use Chunk Chaining to cue the next chunk. Have it cue and stop. Then you trigger start with whatever way is convenient for you. Click track goes to conductor, but 2nd pair can go to drummer. Do a preparation click (3-4 beats) for each tempo change, fermatas. etc. Do that by creating 4 beats in the first measure of the new tempo, then shift backward with "preserve realtime performance" checked in the Shift dialog. This may take some trial and error.

If your lighting guys are up for it, you can do the light cues from DP. It's a lot of work, but it makes everything precise. Chances are your lighting guys won't like that idea, anyway, not to mention the hours of input time it will take to get it set up. Their instruments set up the cues. You just send out "go" commands for their cues. Each lighting instrument documents their MIDI cues in the manual.

I always ran a 2nd machine for redundancy. Never had to switch over, but it was there and ready for it in case one machine failed. We rehearsed banter for the audience while the MIDI director is frantically changing over to the other machine. Madonna's MIDI guy came up with a method of live switching so that she would vamp with the audience for a beat or two, and he'd call video and tell them to restart their timecode at xx:xx:xx:xx, and then they'd go on his cue. It was an elaborate setup with some proprietary boxes he had made for that, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, his setup and methods were quite different. I just started each song on cue, and I never had a failure of any kind. But that's why I recommend keeping things simple.

Rehearse. I've done this blind with artists who didn't want to rehearse. It'll give you religion. Say no to guys who want to skip the rehearsal. Rehearse until you're comfortable.

Check cables before each set. You never know when someone has stepped on one, kicked something, yanked something, or powered off something. Check those cables. MIDI Time Code or SMPTE may or may not be necessary, depending on what you are doing and what machines must be synced to you. If you need it, study the sections in the manual on time code, and in the MTP-AV manual especially. Code is easy to do, but you've got to know what you're doing. the guys who will be receiving your sync will MOST LIKELY have zero idea of what you're doing or how it works. You may have to show them how to slave their machines to SMPTE, which usually isn't hard, but requires a few practical guesses. Once you've got speed, it's easy.

Anyway, it's easy to get carried away with the possibilities, but live and studio are two different things. Live has to work first-time; every time. You will not get the chance to "try it out" when the audience comes in. You've got to have faith in your system. Simple is good. I've changed things 3 minutes before showtime, because I knew my system and knew what I could do. If you do lights, and you re-order your chunks, you may find your lighting cues all screwed up for the next song. Just think everything through a dozen times and you'll be fine. Make that a dozen and one.

When there are stage events that must coincide with timing, insist that you're the guy who calls them. You've got the time right in front of you; they don't. I've had ego clashes with stage managers over that before, in which I always gave in rather than start a fight. The results spoke for themselves, and management would then step in and demand that I call the shots. If you can manage to get that control without a clash, it's always best for the guy with absolute accuracy to call the shots. MIDI time is absolute.

I often closed all windows except the Chunk window. Less chance of screwing something up. My chunk window was all that was on the screen, so I made it a full-screen window. The COMMENTS section beside each chunk gave me a place to write in dialog cues, or other cues, so I'd know exactly when to hit "play." Sometimes I needed to follow a part so that I could tell in advance where the tempo changes were going to occur. You should rehearse this to the point that you don't need to look.

Test your latency. Hitting play doesn't always mean the song starts right then, but hitting "pause" first, then play, then "unpause" will give a precise start when needed. If the band has to start on 1, then give yourself a blank measure for a clicktrack countoff. On several tours for which I was music director, there was a Yamaha Disklavier on stage. The soloist wanted something subtle to guide him at times. I came up with the idea of Controller 67, which invokes the shift pedal -- the unacorda. It shifts the keyboard, and he can see it, while nobody else notices anything. Plus his foot on the pedal gave him more confidence. Anything to help! Maybe there are MIDI lights that could flash with the click; I always wanted some, but nobody had thought of it yet, so we had to use other methods.

Just remember: practice for performance, and you'll be ok.

Shooshie

[jlaudon]

Thanks guys for the quick and detailed responses. I'll take a lot of your ideas as things move forward - they're very helpful, and stuff I wouldn't have thought of. Thanks again.

As more details emerge (the gig is in April), I'll be clearer on my setup - as it stands, I'll have a drummer, percussionist, 2 guitars, 2 synths (I'll play one - minimal parts), and a piano/ep, as well as two background singers. I'll try to arrange most of the parts (and songs) to be played live, but I can still envision at least 10-15 songs will include the computer parts, as a lot of these pop songs are very densely arranged (as well as the dance stuff). Should be fun .

[David Polich]

Shooshie posted what is pretty much the "bible" about this subject. To his extensive amount of info, I can only add the following -

remove or "flatten" the EQ's for any tracks playing back, particularly guitars and percussion and vocals. Thinning things out for a mix is a good idea, but for live it's a bad idea because thin-sounding tracks will literally disaapear or will sound like they're coming from a transistor radio. Get rid of any reverb effects - the room you're in will provide that. Sometimes delay efx are okay to leave in, especially if they're necessary to a rhythm part or backup vocals.

Be prepared to adjust your mixes "on the fly" during rehearsal - you'll find that some things pop out too much and others are not loud enough. At rehearsal, as well as live, everyone else's sound is a wild card - keep in mind that you mixed against sounds you tracked and chose. Live, you have no idea what kind of amp sounds, bass sounds, or drum sounds you'll actually have to fight with - and I do mean fight with.

Run your "loops" out of a separate set of outputs on your 828 MK 3 and feed those as separate sends to the house. And work with the soundman to get the loops CRANKING.
The biggest pet peeve I've had with soundmen when doing gigs with my laptop is that they don't get the concept of where the loops should be in the mix - they should be almost as loud as the drumkit. More often than not, soundmen treat loops as "little sprinkly stuff" to be put in the background, behind the guitars and drums.

If a song calls for a powerful club-type kick drum, let the drummer play it, or play it from your laptop, but don't have it played back from your laptop AND the drummer. If you do that, you'll have flamming all over the place because drummers aren't machines. Most of the time I just remove kicks from loops and let the drummer play the kick parts. Get used to the fact that the drummer's kick at rehearsal will sound like a flabby cardboard box next to your heavy sampled kicks - and don't worry about it, because live the P.A. will do the work of adding low-end beef to the kick drum.

The drummer will need a music mix and a really loud click. The click has to be louder than the music mix. There should always be four bars of click at the top of each tune - two for the drummer, and two more for him to count off for the band. Do NOT feed the band the mix of what is coming from your laptop, unless ALL the backing parts are coming from you. What you send to the drummer should not be routed to the house. Get ready for the drummer to complain about either the click not being loud enough, or too "constant", or that he can't hear the rest of the band. And when he does, tell him that's how it works, unfortunately. Unless you have a hired soundman who knows the tunes and a system that will distribute separate monitor mixes to everyone in the band. But whatever you do, you cannot have that click in anything but the drummer's phones.

[spirit]

Sort of a footnote regarding interfacing line level audio with house soundsystems:

The venue you are playing sounds like they will have pretty professional soundmen and equipment. In smaller venues sometimes it happens you might get overload or distortion if you feed a line level output (like from an 828) into the snake their board may not have pads on it's mic inputs and the soundguy may not have cables or knowledge to repatch the snake to a line input. A couple of quality direct boxes usually take care of this in most situations. In smaller venues occassionally they run out of house direct boxes, so having one's own could be a back up precaution, a long with a back kit of cable adaptors that hopefully won't have to be used ( the admonition to keep it simple is well advised- but one might consider being prepared as a backup in case the house sound guy isn't). If the direct boxes require phantom power make sure you let the house sound person know, and if things are not working remind them. A backup precaution would be to have spare batteries if the DI will run on them, and put in new batteries at the last minute that will allow you to line check them before the show. Phantom power will give the DI's a little more headroom with some DI's. Transformer DI's bypass this problem, but good transformer boxes (most important for deep bass) are usually expensive. Make sure everything is in phase- i.e. there is a small risk that if you use two different brand adaptor cables or DI's that occassionally one brand will wire the pins of the XLR different causing the two sides of your stereo mix to partly or largely cancel each others sound out (can sound like hollow distant sound, funny or no bass etc.) An astute soundman with a pro board might rectify if a phase reverse switch is available on the board. Unless you are the main act and get there early for soundcheck expect soundcheck to be rushed. Try to schedule as much dress rehearsal time or soundcheck time as you can to work through bugs in system, get everybody happy with the mix and monitoring. And particularly if you are going to have to tear down after soundcheck you can gain an extra measure of confidence if there is still time at sound check by breaking down your computer rig and resetting it up and testing at soundcheck to make sure you can do it repeatedly without making a mistake. If you don't have to break down between soundcheck and performance, keep and eye on your stuff and don't presume nothing has changed before you start. Frequently People casually move stuff without thinking about it on stage, and on the mixing board for guest artists in the interim. Powere goes on and off and your computer or 828 may reset.
Just thinking of many things that can go wrong, usually don't , but sometimes do. The broader the amount of things you know can go wrong and have given a little thought to how to deal with them the less chance they will make much difference. For example the idea about having stage banter ready in case some changover takes longer than expected etc. If you don't know what to do, the time can be a real interupption to the show, but like another poster pointed out even Madonna is prepared to cover for tech issues and probably hardly anybody ever noticed if they occured (other than her crew that was probably sweating and stressing for a moment pretty fiercely).

Good luck.

[jlaudon]

Thanks spirit for the helpful thoughts.

Another question - I will have another laptop as backup with the main laptop - is there a way to have them running together, and a way to switch over in case something happened - or is it manual unplugging stuff, etc?

[Shooshie]

The only times I've had trouble on the road as MIDI/music director had to do with lighting instruments. You would be surprised how many theaters in this country (USA) have substandard electrics. In the 1990's, Intellabeams were big for light shows, and we had 14 of them, along with about 80 conventional instruments. There was a board for the conventional instruments that required some kind of voodoo to start up and sync with MIDI. Then there was the Intellabeam controller. It was voodoo on drugs. I finally learned to have the lighting guy start it, set it for MIDI, then restart it without touching anything; then it would magically sync up to MIDI. Otherwise, you could sit there and fiddle with its menus for an hour (and we did, at first) and not get MIDI to sync. Consider restarting when all else fails.

But the biggest, baddest problem was house electrics. Theaters are often old. Even when the front of house has been renovated, the stage is still usually stuck back in Vaudeville. We'd watch the Furman, and power was often dipping down to 80 volts. Not good. Miraculously, the Mac didn't care. Nor did my MIDI gear. But the lights just went berserk anywhere lower than about 90v, and often required restarting in the middle of a song! The conventional lights would remain in their last cue, fortunately, but those intellabeams had to be rebooted, and that goes through a lengthy and noisy process. If you're going to get serious about this, you'll need some heavy-duty stage-quality power regulators. That's out of my field of expertise; just look into it.

We were crammed into a dinner theater near Anaheim, California for a special Yamaha event during NAMM, back in about 1996. We offered to pay for another theater which was available, but no, the Yamaha guys owed this dinner theater owner a favor, so we had to build a stage in there and hang our own lights. We were all ready for curtain when BAM... everything went dark. It took us 15 minutes to get rebooted and ready again. The culprit? The theater had turned on its coffeemakers in anticipation of intermission. 5 coffeepots had knocked out our whole show. Ahhh... the joys of live shows.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Thanks spirit for the helpful thoughts.

Another question - I will have another laptop as backup with the main laptop - is there a way to have them running together, and a way to switch over in case something happened - or is it manual unplugging stuff, etc?

The answer is yes and no. I used the latter method. All I had to do was swap serial plugs from one MTP-AV to another, but this was before audio. For audio, you're going to need some custom gear. I suggest you read Mike McKnight's setup:

Mike McKnight on tour with Madonna and DP

Read slowly. What he's saying makes a lot of sense, but he's custom-built a lot of his rig. The essential piece of gear for audio switching is a 72-in/24-out switcher. Don't know if you want to go that far. Sometimes you just have to take chances. Something I've always wanted to try, but haven't had two firewire boxes to try it with, is to have two identical systems, with, say, a MOTU 896 plugged into each. Then, try hot-swapping the to 896's to their opposite computers. Since they ID themselves in the order booted up, and since there would only be one 896 per computer, they'd both have an ID of 1. So, if you swapped cables, would the computer notice that it's now plugged into a different 896? Would DP notice if the 896 was only "missing" for a second? If so, would it allow you to continue with audio after reselecting the 896 in the Hardware Setup dialog? Sounds dangerous, but I've always wanted to try it. Obviously, the safer way to go is to have a 72/24 audio switcher (for 3 computer redundancy) or 48/24 audio switcher for 2 computer redundancy.

I've seen a lot of shows that used no redundancy at all. If there were a problem, I presume that the artist would toss out jokes about it until reboot was done. That's another reasons to keep it simple and keep plugins out of the boot-up process.

Just stuff to think about...


Shooshie

[dpdan]

I have done this before and it was a breeze with DP 5.

I suggest a few things...
make absolutely sure that the drummer can control his click volume himself.
I fed the drummer's click track into a Yamaha MV802 mixer on stage next to him. The MV802 has a very convenient VCA input on the back that allows a Yamaha volume pedal to control the stereo output master. The output of the 802 mixer fed the monitor console, this way the drummer could use the volume pedal with either his foot or hand to turn up or down the click in his headphones,.. very cool! A Yamaha MV802 mixer and volume pedal can be purchased for about a little over a hundred bucks on Ebay.

I sampled a pair of drum sticks hitting each other,,, and had DP trigger that sample from Gigastudio and I recorded the clicks to a "click" audio track, I did not allow DP's clicks to be heard.

I used a separate audio track with these "count off' clicks to feed through stage monitors, but only the monitors in the back of the stage near the drummer. This way, the whole band heard just the count-off, and from the audience's perspective, it actually sounded like the drummer counting off with his sticks. A separate click track was used for the drummer for the entire song. The common sound of a drummer clicking his sticks just before the song eliminated the evidence of a "computer" clicking. I thought it was a cool idea, and it was elegant. I have the click sample,,, if you want it, let me know.

I used my laptop sitting next to the sound console, and used my Traveler's eight outputs to connect directly to the console's inputs. If memory serves me correctly, I had drummer click, band click, strings, shaker and some brass.

I also recommend getting a long enough VGA to VGA cable that can connect to your Mac's second monitor out, and use a monitor on stage for the main person (whoever that is) to see where the DP project is,.... in my case, it was the B3 player who could see a "mirror" of my laptop DP's SE window.

I used chunks, and could instantly cue any song and not have to be tied to a song order.

Dan

[Shooshie]

I used chunks, and could instantly cue any song and not have to be tied to a song order.

Dan

By coincidence, I just added a post in the Tips Sheet Thread about choosing chunks remotely. There are quite a few ways of doing this, so I've listed at least 4 methods. Maybe more. Just thought your post would make a nice segue to the tip on Chunk Selection.

Shoosh

[dpdan]

just glad to share a tidbit of what I know about the great DP
Thanks Shooshie!

Dan

[monkey man]

By coincidence, I just added a post in the Tips Sheet Thread about choosing chunks remotely. There are quite a few ways of doing this, so I've listed at least 4 methods. Maybe more. Just thought your post would make a nice segue to the tip on Chunk Selection.
Shoosh

I saw that, Shoosh, but didn't want to crowd the tips sheet with another "thank you", so... thank you!

IMHO, it's great to see that you're dabbling in it again, as you said you would.

[Martini Hill]

Hi Shooshie! It looks as if the screen shots in your "remotely cueing chunks" tip are from DP 6. Are there any changes/improvements with the chunks options DP 6 versus DP 5.13?

Jeff

[kwiz]

Thanks spirit for the helpful thoughts.

Another question - I will have another laptop as backup with the main laptop - is there a way to have them running together, and a way to switch over in case something happened - or is it manual unplugging stuff, etc?

The answer is yes and no. I used the latter method. All I had to do was swap serial plugs from one MTP-AV to another, but this was before audio. For audio, you're going to need some custom gear. I suggest you read Mike McKnight's setup:

Mike McKnight on tour with Madonna and DP

Read slowly. What he's saying makes a lot of sense, but he's custom-built a lot of his rig. The essential piece of gear for audio switching is a 72-in/24-out switcher. Don't know if you want to go that far. Sometimes you just have to take chances. Something I've always wanted to try, but haven't had two firewire boxes to try it with, is to have two identical systems, with, say, a MOTU 896 plugged into each. Then, try hot-swapping the to 896's to their opposite computers. Since they ID themselves in the order booted up, and since there would only be one 896 per computer, they'd both have an ID of 1. So, if you swapped cables, would the computer notice that it's now plugged into a different 896? Would DP notice if the 896 was only "missing" for a second? If so, would it allow you to continue with audio after reselecting the 896 in the Hardware Setup dialog? Sounds dangerous, but I've always wanted to try it. Obviously, the safer way to go is to have a 72/24 audio switcher (for 3 computer redundancy) or 48/24 audio switcher for 2 computer redundancy.

I've seen a lot of shows that used no redundancy at all. If there were a problem, I presume that the artist would toss out jokes about it until reboot was done. That's another reasons to keep it simple and keep plugins out of the boot-up process.

Just stuff to think about...


Shooshie

Yes, Mike is the man and a really nice guy. I've gotten a few tips from him in the past and I run a dual system for Beyonce. We're currently in production rehearsal for her upcoming tour.
jlaudon, if you go into the commands window you can assign MIDI notes to your chunks and quickly select chunks using a MIDI controller. This will save you time when switching from song to song just in case you don't want to run DP in song mode.