Live Synth Setup

[msrecprod]

Hey guys, I'm new to the world of using synths and MIDI onstage. I'd like to put together a setup were I could use a Motif, Nord, and Ion on stage, along with a laptop that is running softsynths. I'd be great to have a foot switching system (midi pedal) to control them all. Can anyone tell me how I would acomplish this, any info on the best midi pedal sytem would be helpful as well.

[Baubie]

Wow. That's an elaborate set-up. I admire your ambition and good luck, but you've got a long road ahead of you. It took me a while to get a set-up going just using two hardware synths along with two drum machines and a sequencer. Either I'm slow, but there will be a lot of trial and error involved, so don't rush yourself and expect to do this for a gig in the immediate future. This will only lead to frustration and chaos. But your patients will be rewarded.
For starters. Give me an idea of your concept. Are you a synth player in a band, or are you solo and want to do live sequencing, mixing, playing? - Rb

[msrecprod]

Yes there's a full band. There will be no loops or drum machines onstage what so ever (although that would be cool), just the different synths and a laptop. During the set I need to be able to swith patches of multiple synths all at once. An example would be a song were during the VERSE I'm using the Motif for a pad and the ION for a Lead line, and on the CHORUS of the song I need to change the Motif to a B3 organ, and the ION to a different Lead sound, and during the BRIDGE I want to be playing just the ION, but having it control the laptop soft synths as well.

[Dave Peck]

Originally Posted by msrecprod

During the set I need to be able to swith patches of multiple synths all at once. An example would be a song were during the VERSE I'm using the Motif for a pad and the ION for a Lead line, and on the CHORUS of the song I need to change the Motif to a B3 organ, and the ION to a different Lead sound, and during the BRIDGE I want to be playing just the ION, but having it control the laptop soft synths as well.

What you are describing is called MIDI Program change mapping. Most synths have a midi page in their menu and this is where you will usually find this feature.

You use one keyboard as your master for both playing the keyboard and sending patch change commands to the other synths. If you don't alter the settings on the mapping pages of the slave synths, when you change to, say, patch 14 on the master synth all of the other synths will also change to patch 14. But you can use the mapping pages to change this so that when you change to patch 14 on your master synth, the slave synths "map" this command to patch 31 on one of the slave synths and patch 58 on another slave synth. I used to do this years ago with a large live synth rig. Press one button on the panel of the master synth and the entire rig changes. Viola!

DP

[Baubie]

Ok cool. Well, as far as all those bank changes are concerned, you can't use foot pedals. Maybe you can but I think your better off step editing the MIDI program change. Since MIDI specification is only 0-127, and modern day synths have way more patches than that, you first need to program a Control Change Message. This is not a universal number. Well, some are. But to find out which CC is for your machine's bank changes, you need to look in each of your synth's manual. And then, immediately after the Control Change Message, you program the program change message. It might be a pain at first, but once it's done you won't even have to turn a knob or press any buttons for this to happen. Just run your sequencer! But first thing's first. You need to have your synth on there own seperate MIDI channel. And you need a thru box, cause you don't want to daisy chain and run into delays. I use a MIDI MAN 3x8. It's small and has proven reliable to me over the years. I hope this helps. There's other ways around this I'm sure, but that's the only way I know how. Actually, since you're in a band, this might not be ideal for you. Unless you use a MIDI start/stop footswitch to start those pre-programmed sequence of events via your synth! Hmmm, now that got me wondering. I'll save the detail for if you decide to go that route. Get other people's input first. Good Luck! -Rb

[Baubie]

[quote=Dave Peck;1100358]But you can use the mapping pages to change this so that when you change to patch 14 on your master synth, the slave synths "map" this command to patch 31 on one of the slave synths and patch 58 on another slave synth.

Gee. I wish I knew that method. It would have saved me some aggravation in the past. Better late than never!

Can someone please tell me how to properly quote? Thanks

[pr0gr4m]

I had the same sorta thing...minus the lappy.

If you are using the laptop, the easiest solution would be to use it to manage all of your patches on each computer/VSTi. I don't know what software you use but if it allows you to store and transmit midi data, you could probably configure and manage everything easier in that than anything else. Of course, if the lappy aint around you on stage, then that makes it tough.

I used to run a live rig for a friend...who for some reason wasn't able to push A->8 for one song then D->13 for the next and so on. So what I did was to take each sound that he used and move their locations on each synth so that when he changed the program on the master keyboard all the others would change to the appropriate corresponding program. --I wasn't doing any remapping of the program change. I set up all the programs for one song on the same bank/program number on each individual synth. This way, he could turn on everything and play. Program A1 selected all the sounds for the first song. For the next song all he would have to do is push the button for the next program (A2) and that would send a signal to all the other synths and load in the appropriate programss. Of course, setting all this up took some time because each synth has a different MIDI setup with banks and whatnot but once it was set up, it worked like a charm....until they changed the set. But then I just named the program on the master keyboard with the name of the song which made it easy to scroll through them.

And adding to what baubie said, if you don't use a sequencer on the laptop, you could always use the sequencer in the Motif to send out those bank/program changes.

[Dave Peck]

Originally Posted by msrecprod

be great to have a foot switching system (midi pedal) to control them all. Can anyone tell me how I would acomplish this, any info on the best midi pedal sytem would be helpful as well.

When I was doing this with my rig, my master synth had it's own "patch advance" footswitch that allowed each patch to change to some other predetermined patch, and I used the mapping functions in the other synths to make them change to their correct patches, so I never had to use a separate footswitch controller for this. But there are lots available. Here are a few I just found:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...dal?sku=701180
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ler?sku=151319
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ler?sku=700759
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...dal?sku=150842


Hope this helps.

DP

[msrecprod]

Thanks guys for all the great advice. The laptop is running some backing tracks using Pro Tools and a Digi002. It is also spitting out a click for the drummer to lock to. So you guys are saying I could use Pro Tools to map the patch changes in all my keyboards? How would I go about doing this?

[robd]

You should have no trouble using a foot pedal. Roland makes a decent one, if you can find it used it's a great deal, cause roland's stuff is really solid. Behringer makes a crappy knockoff of it. (a used roland will probably serve you much better than a new behringer) Yamaha also makes one, but I've heard that it has over 100ms of latency, which might not be a big deal if program changing is all you want to use it for. The above pedals are all reasonably versatile, but if you are willing to be limited to only sending program change messages, there are a couple of other options out there. Unfortunately, as far as I have been able to discern, there are no really great midi pedals in production right now.

This is not really helpful, but I always try to keep the setup as simple as possible for live stuff. Of course, you can get away with different levels of simplicity with different music, but I hate lugging around a huge pile of crap and having to plug in dozens of wires for a show. (To be honest, though, for most of the shows I have done, a couple of small acoustic insttruments and a mic was all I needed, so you can see where my prejudices in that regard might come from.)

[robd]

I forgot about the laptop. You might want to check out a program called plogue bidule. It is a vst and au host, so you can run your softsynths in it, and, among many many other things, it is very very good at processing and filtering midi data to and from a lot of sources. It's also cheap, and that midi processing is the least of it's abilities.

[vartan k]

Originally Posted by Dave Peck

What you are describing is called MIDI Program change mapping. Most synths have a midi page in their menu and this is where you will usually find this feature.

You use one keyboard as your master for both playing the keyboard and sending patch change commands to the other synths. If you don't alter the settings on the mapping pages of the slave synths, when you change to, say, patch 14 on the master synth all of the other synths will also change to patch 14. But you can use the mapping pages to change this so that when you change to patch 14 on your master synth, the slave synths "map" this command to patch 31 on one of the slave synths and patch 58 on another slave synth. I used to do this years ago with a large live synth rig. Press one button on the panel of the master synth and the entire rig changes. Viola!

DP

Theres your answer