Stage Performance System

[DunedinDragon]

I've recently mentioned this system a few times over the last couple of months while I've been working on it, and this is the weekend we go live with it...at least for a few songs.  I knew there's a few in here that have put together some pretty impressive rigs, so there might be something in my effort someone might appreciate and learn from.  I know I learned a lot building it.

First some history.  After the COVID lockdown the band I was in for about 10 years went from 7 member down to 2, so we went into the process of pretty much rebuilding from the ground up.  The two members were myself (lead guitar) and the drummer.  I was able to recruit a bass player and his wife who is a singer.  But in order to be able to bring over more of our traditional material we needed more than just bass and guitar.  Fortunately the drummer is a decent guitar player, singer and a good front man so he left the drums behind and became our acoustic guitar player and singer along with the other three of us in the group.  We elected to replace the drums with a Beat Buddy which I ran via MIDI from the Helix with custom drum tracks for each song which were coordinated with my presets for each song.  But it was always in my mind we could do an even better job taking greater advantage of some of the amazing tools available on the market and the following is the result of my studying and experimentation for developing a system that can be used to incorporate any type of additional instruments into any song and will automate and coordinate all of the instruments and their settings both live and recorded during any song with no intervention from anyone other than starting the song via a single MIDI command from a footswitch.

Excuse the messy picture, but that's basically what the live rig looks like, but the diagram will be easier to describe what's going on here.  The core of the system is based on an Ableton Live system using a number of available high quality samples from actual instruments in a studio.  I use the session view of Ableton to organize four tracks for each song.  There is an Audio track containing the additional instruments for the song, an outbound MIDI control track over USB to the Morningstar MC8 for coordinating actions on the Helix and on the BeatBuddy during the course of the song, an inbound MIDI track over USB for commands from the MC8 to Ableton used to select the correct song and play it, and an internal MIDI command track to send commands to Ableton to stop playback of all tracks when the song ends.

The net effect on stage is I simply select the appropriate bank on the MC8 for the song we're going to play, which automatically coordinates the correct Ableton scene, the correct Helix Preset, and the correct drum song on the BeatBuddy.  I then have a single footswitch on the MC8 that launches the song.  From that point all of the stage actions on that song will be automated so when I get to the part for a lead or tone change for a bridge or chorus, it's all done automatically and switched back when the lead or chorus ends.  I literally just concentrate on playing the song and never touch a footswitch.

The most common question is, what's the difference between this and just using a backing track?  The real answer is there is a lot of our material that doesn't need any additional instruments and we can do a fine job with just the Helix and the BeatBuddy as we've been doing.  In that I still have the option of running a song manually with footswitches on the MC8.  Actually I could use an Ableton track to automate those sequences as well, but there are also a number of songs where we might have long interludes that might vary in length such as talking with the audience during a song or a break where a singer or singers or bass player or myself might be doing something special without any other instruments playing, so we need to have the ability adapt on stage live to those situations.
 

I guess that's about all I can think of for now, but I'll be happy to discuss any details anyone is interested in if you have them.

[rd2rk]

What, no light show? Lightweight! ;-)

 

But seriously, kudos to you for pulling this all together. From my own just-for-the-heck-of-it dabblings with Ableton, trying to do something similar in a one man band context, I know that this is no small task. The more complex the configuration, the harder it is to track down that one little glitch that always seems to sneak in just when you think you've got it nailed.

 

ROCK ON!

[DunedinDragon]

Thanks rd2rk!!  I know exactly what you're talking about.  To make things even more challenging in that regard, I'm brand new to Ableton, Kontakt and even my experience with the MC8 is only about 4 months old so I'm swimming in ignorance with a lot of these tools.  I also believe I uncovered a bug in the Helix as it pertains to inconsistent triggering of snapshots via MIDI.  That one kept me scratching my head for a day or two.....