DunedinDragon Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 I've mentioned the performance system I built and use with my band many times but I got in a productive mood this morning and took some pictures to help people see it and understand how it works. The top picture shows the Control Center which is what does all the work. I never really touch it but I keep it on stage just for reference or if there's a problem. The laptop has two USB outputs. One goes to the MIDI Control unit and one goes to the audio interface in the case the laptop is sitting on. The MIDI Control unit controls all aspects of the performance either by me engaging a footswitch such as selecting a song and starting it, or through MIDI commands from the Control Center. Of course one of the main things it controls is the Helix so I rarely touch the Helix on stage other than maybe the volume pedal. The audio output goes to the QSC Touchmix 30 which is our main mixer. As you can see the Live channels for live instruments and voices are separated from the Audio channels which come from either the control center playback or from the streaming laptop situated next to the TM30 and managed by a separate person. If you look closely at the Control Center you'll see it's running Ableton Live in session mode where each row contains a song and each column contains either an instrument for that song, a MIDI control command track, and a stop track to end playback at the end of the song. Those are the commands sent to and from the MIDI Control unit at particular points in the playback of the tracks. Each one of those instrument tracks consists of a single instrument being used within the song being played. If you look closely at the MIDI Control and the Helix you'll see they all have the name of the current song being played. So when I select the next song the MIDI Control system coordinates that action between the Helix and Ableton. So each song is a separate Helix preset and a separate Morningstar MC8 setup. Each song in the live system is it's own .WAV file or a MIDI file. In the bottom left you'll see a screenshot of the studio system where these tracks are created using Ableton in arrangement view along with Native Instrument plugins such as The Gentleman piano. Once completed those MIDI files are all converted down to individual WAV files which are imported into the live laptop system. This avoids a lot of processing and potential problems because live playback doesn't depend on any plugins. That's about it. Hope you find some of these ideas interesting or potentially useful for your applications. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MayPRS Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 Wow thanks for taking your time to gives us a tour on your setup. Really nice setup and workflow you got there. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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