Doing a live trance show with cubase?

[takman]

My friend was asking me about this last night, and i wasnt quite sure, so i thought i would run it by you guys.

He wants to do a live "trance" show at clubs. Basically, he wants the beat and effects already made. Then hes going to play melodies along with the song on his korg keyboard. This way it has more of an entertainment value, rather than just going to a club, and playing back the music.

So i was thinking that i could just create the songs, export them from cubase, burn them onto a CD, or bring the files on a memory stick to the club...

but the problem is that we need to make something like 20 songs and play them within the next couple months when summer comes. and we wont have time to practice all the songs by heart. He's a really good keyboard player, and he says he can create melodies off the top of his head....

So, if used cubase, and i put a screen in front of him, he could watch the song play in the arrangement window, and know when the breaks are, when the melody should start etc. like a piano player reading sheet music as he plays. if i just play the song with a CD, hes not going to remember when to start playing the melodies in the song all the time....

The thing is that, how could i keep the songs continously running in cubase? at the end of the song, i would have to close the project, open another, and they could takes 10 secs or more. Is it possible to have 2 cubase programs running at one time on one computer? so that i could load one, while one is playing?

or is there a completely different and easier way to do this? lol

thanks

[Nev]

Theres a reason so many producers take their acts on the road with Ableton. Works better for this sort of thing. Set up a lvie set with all the songs already arranged in clips and you can have them cue up one right after another, or mix them, add effects, etc etc.

He will know which song it is on and if he is a good keyboardist he should have no problem keeping pace. Can even view the waveforms at the bottom while they are playing to assure he knows when the breaks are coming. You can also pre-arrange the entire show right on Ableton.

The problem you will face is getting your live elements to sound as good as previously recorded professionally mastered tracks on a club system, good luck with that. Any live electronic act that competes with the club dj will tell you its no easy feat, getting your live synth elements to be compressed, limited, eq'ed and all set while maintaining the songs going and hoping the excessive uses of plugins does not cause a crash. Always good to have multiple laptops, one slaved running a backup set of the first one.

[blue monk]

I second Ableton Live.

It`s important in a club that you can re-arrange depending on how the crowd reacts.
With Ableton Live it`s easy to go to the next track earlies if people don`t dig the one you`re currently playing and you can make certain parts longer on the fly.
You can change the playback speed and you also have the option of a mixture of a live gig and dj set by either using loops from sample libraries or complete finished tracks by other producers.
Very flexible and the risk the gig fails should be lower.

[watari banzai]

so basically you want to do a live show but dont want to bother with the tedious details like practicing and learning the material? make it easy on yourselves: play everything off an ipod and just fake it. get some lights, some scantily clad dancers, an MC and have yourself a show

[takman]

Originally Posted by watari banzai

so basically you want to do a live show but dont want to bother with the tedious details like practicing and learning the material? make it easy on yourselves: play everything off an ipod and just fake it. get some lights, some scantily clad dancers, an MC and have yourself a show

haha.

im not saying not to practice at all.....but lets say we need to make 15 songs.....

it would takes 1 year to learn them all by heart and play them flawlessly live. neither me or the keyboardist has the time as we are working....

and really, part of the idea here is to have the show a little different every time we play ( melodies). Its not like we are going to release an album or something.

[dubnspace]

i've done this before by bouncing stereo mixes and just putting them on one track in cubase one after the other. You set markers between each track and program the tempo changes at the markers.. then i would send out midi clock and it would be in sync in with the stereo mixes to trigger live arps, lfo efx etc. That being said, I wouldn't do it that way again, I would do it in Ableton.

[takman]

i had an idea...

what about playing the song..say in winamp at the same time with cubase?

i could just disable the master output buss in cubase, so there would be no sound.

The thing is that i can start both winamp and cubase pretty close at the same time, but not exactly. if i move winamps start button right next to cubase start button, i can move from one to the other pretty fast.....but there would be a small delay still...

is there a trick so thati can hit a button so they both start at the same time?

[msl]

Originally Posted by dubnspace

i've done this before by bouncing stereo mixes and just putting them on one track in cubase one after the other. You set markers between each track and program the tempo changes at the markers.. then i would send out midi clock and it would be in sync in with the stereo mixes to trigger live arps, lfo efx etc. That being said, I wouldn't do it that way again, I would do it in Ableton.

thumbsup this.

There's a reason we all use Ableton for playing out. Your other option is to have 2 laptops and switch between them while one loads the other plays, I've done this in the past.


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