Methods for live performance?

[decrepitude]

Hello Numerologists!

I'm an electronic musician who has been through a lot of setups over the last 5 years. Starting with a computer/software setup and midi controllers, but eventually shifting the setup over to mostly hardware. For many LivePA artists like myself, Ableton Live has been the weapon of choice. But many of us have gotten bored with audio loops and Ableton was never very excited about integrating midi into their program. They did so reluctantly and even after several years of development, the support (and worse yet stability and timing) of midi is still lacking. The main gripe about Ableton Live being integration of synced hardware devices still remains a challenge.

So after a lot of experimentation with several hardware sequencers (Emu Command Station, MPC 1000, Korg Electribe) I was enjoying good solid midi sync and timing again. I now have a setup which I'm very happy with.

But I still believe that a software based performance setup is possible and ultimately has the potential to go beyond the capabilities of my current hardware setup. Working with hardware is fun and satisfying (especially after staring at the computer all day) but the process of developing sounds, patterns and songs is obviously not as fast, not to mention the difficulties of saving and recalling.

I've been playing around with Numerology these last few days and I must say I'm very impressed with the possibilities for performing electronic music with it. I forsee FINALLY being able to have a hybrid software/hardware setup!

I'd be interested to hear how any of you perform live using Numerology and your methods of working for preparing material. Examples of signal flow and control methods would be helpful. Thanks to all ahead of time!

~Mark

[jim]

Here is a basic description of my current performing setup -- not that I'm all that great of a performer, but at least I know the software well... ;)

MacBook Pro running Numerology with these plugins:
- GuitarRig, Zebra, Augustus Loop, CrossFade Loop Synth, Battery, various Mike Norris plugins, various Apple plugins (the reverb & pitch shifter be very handy...), and a few 'unpublished' Numerology audio-processing modules... :D

Hardware includes:
- MOTU 828 Mk2
- Novation Remote 25 SL
- Moog Voyager
- Axon AX 100 guitar-midi converter
- PRS Custom 22 guitar w/ a Roland GK-3 hex pickup added
- Mackie 1402-VLZ

Also, I usually end up running the PA, which is:
- A pair of Mackie SRM 450's
- Mackie 15" sub
- DBX Drive Rack P.A. (totally awesome for dealing with room EQ problems)

I did a few shows in Albuquerque last summer with a frequent collaborator, a talented guitar player in town. We are both heavy into live loop improvisation, though, of course, I'm also heavy into sequencing. So my Numerology projects for live use are a mix of looping and sequencing. At one point I was using several very 'prepared' tracks that I would perform as live arrangements, but these recent shows focused more on improvisation.

There is a main 'Rig' stack I use for live guitar processing, the signal chain goes like this:
- Guitar into 828 mic input, then audio routed in to the Rig stack.
- GK3 pickup into Axon, whose MIDI is routed into the Rig stack.
- The Rig stack has both a Zebra and the CrossFade Loop Synth, those are driven by MIDI from the Axon.
- The audio output from the plugins and the dry guitar signal go into GuitarRig.
- The output of GuitarRig goes into a couple MikeNorris plugins, ExpertSleepers phaser & Apple's MatrixReverb. Those plugins may be on or bypassed depending on the stack preset.
- I use a single GuitarRig patch that is controlled by a series of FaderBox & ParamMod modules. Instead of changing patches on GuitarRig, I instead customize the FaderBox settings based on the Numerology stack preset. This gives me both a custom UI for controlling the GuitarRig patch, and 'cleaner' preset changes. All of the FaderBox controls are mapped to knobs and faders on the Remote25.
- There are about 20 presets for the Rig stack, each brings up a different 'sound'. Those presets are mapped to keys on the laptop, so I can bring up different sounds directly. I could have mapped them to a foot controller, but I wanted to avoid carrying one around.

The looping setup is pretty simple right now: A single "Aux" stack running AugustusLoop, with a compressor on the output. A FaderBox and 4 ParamMod modules are also used here to build a custom UI, with params also mapped to controls on the Remote25. Once I get some time to develop a set of techniques for using multiple loops, I plan to add a second loop stack to match this one.

There is a stack for sequencing the Moog: A mononote seq with MIDI feed through the Remote25 to the Voyager. Audio from the voyager goes to the Mackie mixer, an aux send feeds some of that audio back into Numerology via the 828 into the Moog stack, where I add some delay -- usually the traditional dotted-eight setup used in the first Numerology Techniques video. This stack is pre-populated with various patterns that I use as starting points for improvisations. One of them is basically the Rubicon pattern, the others are various types of basslines.

For percussion parts, I have been using a DrumSeq and Battery, though I'll probably move to the DrumKit for any type of 'synthetic' drums.

Overall, I try to keep the load on the CPU well under 75% -- I use both Numerology's CPU load meter and the OS X Activity Monitor to keep track of things.

I was pretty lucky, despite some 'hidden' bugs (which have since been fixed!), I never had any crashes while performing.

A few tips:
- It is important to 'know' your setup -- A day or two before a gig, I get everything running and play around with all the things I expect to use. Familiarity greatly helps to avoid unexpected surprises. This was particularly important for me last summer, since I was working with software that I had not used in live performance before. (Previous gigs were with Numerology 1.4)
- Whenever using the Rig setup, I come up with ideas for changes, I make notes of these and set aside time later to implement them. I read an article once in a music mag about clearly separating "techy" studio time from "musicy" studio time, and I always try to follow that guideline.
- I always use a mouse with the laptop when running Numerology -- it's much easier to control than a trackpad in a live situation.
- I try to keep the number of hardware controls to a minimum. My Remote25 setup has 3 'pages' of controls, but I mostly only use one of them, half of it for the Rig stack, the other half for the Looping stack.

Cheers,
Jim

[decrepitude]

Thanks for the helpful reply!

Are you sending midi clock sync out to anything? Or have you tried to in the past? Reliable external syncing of hardware is extremely *important* to me.

[jim]

I didn't use sync for these recent gigs, but I have used sync in the past, usually to sync Numerology on another computer, or to sync an echoplex to Numerology. The only issues we've had with that always boiled down to a faulty cable.

Cheers,
Jim

[decrepitude]

Is there any way to compensate for delay in the midi clock signal coming from Numerology or the Motu?

Also, will Numerolgy support 'lag' so I can time certain signals to be fired after a short duration? (e.g. send a program change first, then a param mod to a midi switch a few millisecs later?)


Thanks for being patient with my stream of consciousness-like questions!

~Mark

[jim]

Is there any way to compensate for delay in the midi clock signal coming from Numerology or the Motu?

For that situation (two separate computers, or a hardware device), I've never noticed any lag. The only time it seems to be an issue is when sending MIDI notes from one program to another on the same computer, and that can be handled by adding a small 'buffer' delay (see this thread: http://five12.net/showthread.php?t=156)

Also, will Numerolgy support 'lag' so I can time certain signals to be fired after a short duration? (e.g. send a program change first, then a param mod to a midi switch a few millisecs later?)

I do have plans to implement a CV delay, but you can probably implement that behavior now with preset changes or other tricks. If you give me a specific use case I can work something up...


Thanks for being patient with my stream of consciousness-like questions!
~Mark

No problemo!

Cheers,
Jim

[Per Boysen]

...), and a few 'unpublished' Numerology audio-processing modules... :D

Nice leakage! Wonder what those modules do? ;-)

Over here I do mostly on-the-fly looping of audio created by playing traditional instruments as guitar, flute, EWI, sax. I have set up some live looping rigs around Numerology but not yet settled for a good strategy. My main concern is that I want to create the general tempo by the first audio loop I record - in the AU looper Mobius - and then have the host (Numerology) follow that tempo in sync by MIDI Clock passed through OSX by the IAC Bus. That's a lot to set up and tweak, so I'm still working on it.

My recent performance set up, that I use at concerts, is Mobius hosted by Mainstage. The reason for using Mainstage is simply that it was so easy to create an awesome instrument sound with those lovely Logic plug-ins (and those synths for the EWI playing). A lot of the loop mangling in the Mobius looper plug-in is related step sequencing (I write scripts for series of looper commands) but at some time in the future I'd really like to use Numerology as my main "looper command sequencing engine".

One eventual problem might be the lousy sync over MIDI Clock, but I need to try it out more. It is possible to quantize action commands in Mobius and if I set Numerology to send out the MIDI data a little early in general it would work around the swaggering tempo of MIDI Clock synchronization. Well... still just plans and dreams, only partly taken to the drawing table.