Powerbook for live playback of sequences...?

[Nep2ne]

I have a powerbook (Lombard, 400MHz) and would like to incorporate some sequences and stuff into live music with it. The band that I play in is primarily acoustic, so the samples, etc. would be very low-fi and under the radar.

Pardon my newbie-ness, but how is this accomplished? I could simply play AIFF files on the thing, but I'd like to know which apps work best for doing so.

I also just bought a midi/usb keyboard and would like to use it to play live, if at all possible. Can I use this to trigger sequences in Logic/Cubase? And can I also play along with those sequences on the keyboard?

Sorry if there are too many questions. Plenty of thanks in advance.

[F30N1X]

Hey...
You need two things. 1) get familiar with midi, and 2) get familiar with sampling. If yiu are attempting what it siunds like, then you are going a good route by using a powerbook. I have an industrial band and wwe rely on midi control of instruments and effects. What i would sugest is to either use the keyboard you have to trigger a sampler, or to go the high tech route and look around for an additional foot controler. If you have a guitarist in the band yiu can lots of times use thier effects processors as triggers, so you can preserve the keyboard to actuly be played. as far as a samplers go, i would utalize the powerbook and get a software based setup. They are typicaly easy to set up and there is less hardware to fool around with, and while your at it you could also configure he computer for live recordings. I can give you specifics on the triggering because that is to device related, but what i can tell you is to make a bank on the sampler that just plays the appropriate audio file / sound when a specific key is pushed on the keyboard. You can also configure foot controlers to send "note on" and "note off" messages which do the same thing. Hope that helps. If it dosnt make sence just email me and ill try to clear it up. Anyway, yes, PowerBooks are the way to go for live audio/performances.

[F30N1X]

Oh, i forgot...
as far as software, keep it simple. I love cubase for recording, but for live audio there are to many variables. I would go with the simplist sampler i could find. theres a really basic one called Vsamp that is pretty decent for just playing back samples.

Now if I got it wrong and you are trying to play entire "sequences" live, i would stray away from that all together. Anything that is "tempo based" will give you hall live. But, if you absolutly must have tempo based sequences live heres what i had to do.

Find someone who programs. Tell them that you need a program that calculates beats per minute in real time based on the tap of something (ie computer space bar). Then tell them to have any tempo change reflected in the output of a midi "CC" message to the device playing the sequence. This will keep the tempo updated in real time and you can then use it for live applications, although you do need someone to tap the tempo. I sugest getting a friend to play "sound tech".

Although I dont sugest it if you dont have the time, sometime writting your own software is the only way to go.

If you do go down that road I would suggest wriitng the program in C++, primarilt due to the fact that there are plenty of midi librues readily available online, so you wont have to mess with the complicated device i/o stuff to write the program.

Again, hope that didnt make things more confusing.

[Nep2ne]

Hey thanks a lot for the answer(s). I'm completely new to the entire process of using samples and sequences live, and I appreciate the time you took in replying to my question.

My band BTW is made up of myself playing acoustic guitar and another guy playing bass hammer dulcimer, and for being a purely acoustic setup it's oddly very heavy and LOUD.

What I'm ideally thinking about is, at least initially, using the PowerBook in a kind of drum machine setup, where it would play these low-end/low-fi beats, sometimes just below the surface. I wouldn't mind triggering them on and off, because a lot of the time Pete & I don't really play for a standard length of time. Sometimes songs are 5-6 minutes, and the next day they're 10.

Later on, I'd like to get more experience in composing and adding layers of stuff over/under the beats but for now I'm really looking for something simple. I know there is drum machine software to use as VST instruments, but I'm having a rough time learning how to sequence things.

Let me know if this makes sense. And thanks again for your help!

[jan NI]

try out www.ableton.com (http://www.ableton.com)
there Live audio sequencer is really cool, easy to understand and could fit your needs

[bombastique]

i agree, LIVE would be an excellent bet for what you want to do. you can set it up to trigger audio via midi note messages, too...