[LAU] (Live) Music made with Linux: Sebkha-Chott @ Brutal Assault Festival (Cz) + Description of the live setup

[ORL]

Hi!

I already told you about Sebkha-Chott several times on this list, 
usually speaking about our releases (always under GNU/Linux, from the 
beginning to the end).

Actually, Sebkha-Chott also uses GNU/Linux on stage to manage sound, 
lights and video of the whole show (see details below).
I usually don't post shows list or tour schedule here (maybe I should), 
but this time it's a big and international festival, so it might be that 
some of you will be interested in it.

So Sebkha-Chott will play at Brutal Assault Festival #20 in Jaromer 
(Cz), for the third time, but for the first time, we will use the 
GNU/Linux live setup they have on tour. The final schedule is not known 
yet, but it will be between 5th and 8th of August. If some of you live 
near Cz, are metalheads, that's the place you should be (if you ask me, 
this year's line-up is really great, the best I've known since I know 
this festival).

http://www.sebkhachott.net/15-years-of-sebkha-chott-kourt

Here it is (please note the video and lights part of the system won't 
probably play at Brutal Assault due to very tight changeover schedule).


*Description of Sebkha-Chott's live setup*

*Distribution*
All machines, including RPI, are running Debian systems, mostly Jessie.
http://www.debian.org

*Session Handling*
Session handling is managed through ladish and on some control machine 
small shell scripts.
http://ladish.org

*Audio*
/Routing/
All the routing is managed through ladish, jack is configured with the 
restrict self-connect option.

/Mixing/
The mixing/processing of any audio signals coming from the instruments 
on stage or from "virtual sources" inside the machines (synths, 
samplers) is done through a bunch of Non-Mixer (probably not uptodate) 
instances, running independently one from the other. All these 
Non-Mixers finally ends up in the FOH mix or on of the three monitors 
mix (which goes to in-ear monitors system). We highly recommend 
Non-Mixer for this type of setup, as you don't need a timeline, and 
Non-Mixer is really lightweighted, OSC controllable, and flexible. 
Ecasound might have done the job too, still.
http://non-mixer.tuxfamily.org/

/Live Looping/
The "instrumental line-up" contains 2 basses, 2 guitars, 3 vocals and a 
drumkit, each of them goes to a single looper (for the drums, we only 
loop a stereo submix). We use Sooperlooper (probably not uptodate, and 
(uglily) patched so that Jack Transport Synchronization with SL as a 
master works with it and is recalled when at session load).
http://essej.net/sooperlooper/

/Synths/
Additionnally to the physical instruments, 5 synths are running, 3 of 
them polyphonic, 2 of them monophonic. We use Alsa Modular Synth 
(probably no uptodate) for this. You might get the patches on github 
(see below)
http://alsamodular.sourceforge.net/

/Samplers/
A virtual drumkit is also used, with really-non-drumistic sounds. We use 
tapeutape (patched not uptodate version) for this purpose.
http://hitmuri.net/index.php/Software/Tapeutape

/Clic/
We use Klick to send clic in every monitor.
https://github.com/dsacre/klick

*Lights*
Lights are controlled using QLC+. We use four profiles projectors and 4 
LED "barres", which are split into 8 RGB segments each, each segment 
mightbe controlled independently from the others.
http://qlcplus.sourceforge.net/

*Video**s*
Videos and Moving images are displayed on three V-form screens. Those 
videos are displayed using a self-developped software called PytaVSL 
(derivating from VSL, a set of pd patches we used on a children show) 
and based on Pi3D. This runs on RPIs (old ones, not the big beasts you 
might get for 30$!!!).
This lays on a mapped-layers principle, each of them might be mapped 
with images or videos, the content can be changed with OSC control, and 
you can move or change properties (including visibility/inivisibility) 
of a layer using OSC too.
By now, PytaVSL is not recommended for anyone except us (or you will 
have to put your hands in it, and you'll see then we're no real devs!!!).
https://github.com/orlammd/pytaVSL
https://github.com/tipam/pi3d

*Controls*
/MIDI/OSC Routing/
The whole thing is controlled via a centralized OSC/Midi router. We use 
Mididings for this purpose, and we highly recommend it, it's a really 
good piece of software which makes everything possible in such a setup.
The version we used has been patched to be able to route/filter/manage 
OSC messages too. I propose this dirty patch to Dominic and I know he 
has worked on this, but I couldn't tell what's the current state of the 
software, as we do not use an uptodate version on this neither!

/PedalBoards/
We use DIY pedalboards to trig the sequencers, loopers, and to change 
instruments sounds (including synths). These pedalboards are made of a 
"règle de maçon", push-buttons and a Teensy2.0 programmation board. It 
basically sends an OSC message /pedalBoard/button #number when you press 
a button. These messages are then managed by Mididings. There are two 
pieces of software for this, one on the board, one on the receiving 
computer.
https://github.com/AMMD/Poly_PedalBoard

/Touchscreen Interfaces/
All the mixers, the LASDPA plugs, and in some case the synths are 
controlled using touchscreen interfaces. We've developped a programm for 
this purpose called Ghislame. Initially developped in C++/Fltk, we 
ported it to python/kivy and finally it now uses a JS engine. Initial 
versions controlled more things (loopers, synths, mixers, lights), but 
in a quite weighted way. Current version (JS) only controls Mixers and 
Plugs, but does it much more fluently.
One of these touchscreen interfaces is placed at FOH, so that mix of the 
show might be done from FOH. The other ones are sprayed on stage so that 
musicians might control their monitoring and some other things easily.
https://github.com/jean-emmanuel/oschtmlgui
https://github.com/AMMD/kvGhislame
https://github.com/AMMD/Ghislame

/Visual Monitoring/
Several small laptops are placed on stage with LiveDings (Mididings 
frontend) and slgui (SooperLooper GUI) running on them.

*Sequencers*
/Midi Sequencing/
seq24 in a really really patched version is used to sequence MIDI. It's 
used in matricial mode, and the patches we've done acts on many things: 
arbitrary number of beats in a measure, abitrary number of measures in a 
sequence, n-tuples, 16x13 matrix (instead of 8x2), play/stop 
controllable by Program Changes, and other crappy things. I really don't 
recommend our patched version which contains many bugs we learned to 
prevent! It's the very first software we've been patching, and.... 
wel.... seq24 is synced to Jack Transport as a slave. As far as I know 
this doesn't work anymore with more recent version of seq24, and as a 
result, our version is not uptodate. We will certainly change about this 
when we'll have time. We attend much from Non-Sequencer on that point! ;)

/OSC Sequencing/
Over the Midi Sequencing, OSC sequencers are running. One controls the 
lights, one controls the videos, another one might send messages to 
audio machines (including seq24), and one runs over them all and might 
send the BIG SEQUENCE messages!
We use a self-developped software called pyOSCseq. This sequencer can 
run looped sequence (as any other sequencer) but also can send on-shots 
sequence (many uses in theater context).
https://github.com/jean-emmanuel/pyOSCseq

/Jack Transport/
Jack Transport is used to synchronize every tempi/triggers and so on. 
Sooperlooper is Jack Timebase Master, and the other pieces of software 
that might be sync to are slaves. Considering that Sebkha-Chott'music is 
composed of many sequences in many metrics and tempis, with highly 
contrasted way of passing from one to the other, this point was a very 
critical point at the beginning of our work with machines (in 2008).

-- 
ORL
AMMD - Freak & Free Arts Coo[r]p
www.ammd.net - 095 234 72 48

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