[LAU] Synths for live use

[david]

IIRC, Ken Restivo on this list ran linuxsampler live on a netbook with 
great results.

On 11/18/2012 01:26 PM, James Stone wrote:

> Any thoughts on running linuxsampler live on a netbook? Would this be
> pushing things too hard?
>
> On Nov 18, 2012 9:43 PM, "Luke Peterson" wrote:
>
>     On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Louigi Verona
>     <louigi.verona at gmail.com <mailto:louigi.verona at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Fluid Synth is VERY difficult to work with in a live situation,
>         even as QSynth. I tried it many times and I don't advice it.
>
>
>     For years, I regularly used Fluidsynth+qsynth in parallel with
>     Bristol, live at shows running off a netbook with an Atom chipset.
>     Dell Latitude 2100.
>
>     (Somewhat outdated, but conceptually accurate) details here:
>     http://lukepeterson.com/2010/02/07/arriving-midi-keyboard-live-rig/
>
>     The trick was to set Bristol up as my hammond emulator on midi
>     channels 1 and 2, then various patches including a Rhodes, a D6, a
>     piano, a few other things up on channels 3+ ... I set up Bristol to
>     listen to the knobs and sliders on my keyboard (M-Audio Axiom 61),
>     and then could change patches by flipping the global channel for
>     that keyboard up and down. It took me half a dozen shows to work out
>     all the bugs in performance -- for instance, I'd run into trouble
>     every now and then if I'd change channels while holding a key.
>
>     The most overloaded this rig ever got was a show where I had my
>     X-Box keytar running through a M-Audio MidAir wireless midi unit,
>     fixed to channel 1 on a high-distortion D6 patch, my Axiom 61 as a
>     multichannel workhorse playing any patch I wanted with the knobs and
>     sliders set to the hammond, and my old Yamaha P80 which was a pain
>     in the ass to change the channel on set to channel 4 for my piano
>     patch. So 3 controllers in total.
>
>     Our encore was Baba O'Riley, for which I created a QArp arpeggio on
>     the D6 that mimicked Pete Townshend's Lowrey autoarpeggio intro.
>     After our set, I ran a shell script to kick off QArp to control
>     channel 1, and then started the song from the crowd in front of the
>     stage on my wireless keytar. It worked great until I made my way
>     back to stage and tried to hold the arpeggio on the keytar while
>     also then playing the first 3 piano chords on the P80. The
>     five-fingered piano chord along with the arpeggiating D6 overloaded
>     the memory on my little netbook and sent a ton of nasty artifacts
>     through the venue's PA, and then I had to kill a bunch of processes
>     and re-load the rig. But it was pretty f--ing cool right to that
>     point. The sound tech and the rest of the band covered as best they
>     could and we did a fairly exciting trainwreck of an encore, which we
>     medleyed into something else. God bless beer and 2am crowds!
>
>     Anyway, I guess my point is, if you are just looking to play a fixed
>     fewer-than-16 patches and don't need to change any of their settings
>     mid-show, QSynth should be a fine solution. Pre-load each onto its
>     own channel and just change the channel on your controller to switch
>     from patch to patch.


-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/