Working with loops and videos on stage

[dorrn]

A solution for bands that work with loops and videos

Hi,
my name is Bernd. For a long time I was looking for a solution that satisfies all the needs of my band dorrn. Finally I solved all the problems with Ableton Live, a virtual midi device and a little tool I developed by myself. I thought that it would maybe interesting for other bands and musicians to share the experiences we made over the past years.
dorrn (http://www.dorrn.de) is a modern rock band. Though we are four people on stage (vocals, guitar, base, drums) we also work with loops, synths, efx and so on. This stuff has to by synchronised with the band. Also we show synchronised video clips that we produce by ourselves with a beamer. So our solution has to satisfie a lot of features:

Stability: laptops tend to stop their drives working when there are too much vibrations (for example from drums or bass amps)
Usability: On stage the handling must be very easy and quick
Flexibility: It should be easy to change the order of songs short time before the show
Monitoring: Our drummer needs a click signal, our female vocalist works with in-ear monitoring
Video: As described before we work with videoclips that are synchronised to the music

The whole solution can be divided into a software- and a hardware part:

Hardware

1. Rack
We use a 19'' case. The front and the back can be removed. It sits on top of a block of foam that is 10cm in height. This absorbes a lot of the vibrations that are produced by a rockband like dorrn is. In the rack there is another block of foam of 3 cm. On top of this there is a small fan especially made for laptops and on top of this there is a normal laptop that is able to process our stuff. The rack also contains an audio interface, a midi interface, a DI box, a little mixer and the sender of the in-ear monitoring system from our singer. All this stuff is fixed in the rack. The big foam block can be put inside the rack so we need no extra space when we are on the road.

2. Laptop
It's a normal Dell laptop with Windows XP that is able to process some audio tracks and one video track. It is connected to an audio and a midi interface (both from emagic) via USB and to a beamer via a VGA output.

3. Audio interface
We use an audio interface by emagic with 3 stereo outputs. It's old but still makes a good job and has all the outputs we need.
1) The first output has all the electronic stuff like loops, synths, efx and so on. It's like as we would play with a keyboarder on stage. The output goes to a Palmer DI box inside the rack. The DI box has a ground lift switch because in some clubs the electric equipment is not in good shape and you can have a lot of trouble with mains hum. I tested a lot of DI boxes but the Palmer did the best job. It has two XLR outputs that will be directly connected to the stage box.
2) The second output is for our drummer. He works with headphones and gets a mix from the laptop with a click signal so that he can play synchronised to the laptop. To make it really relaxing for him he first gets the name of the song that we want to play. So he knows everything is fine. Then he gets 4 click beats for himself to get into the timing and then the next 4 clicks he counts the band.
3) The third output is for the in-ear monitoring system of our female singer. We integrated a little mixer in the rack so that our singer can mix her own signal from her microphone and the signal she gets from the audiointerface. So the stage mic first goes to our internal mixer in the rack. The mixer has a thru output that goes directly to the stage box. With this setup we can use some nice gimmics. When our singer is the one that starts a song the drummer does not have to give her a time signal with the hihat or the sticks because she gets it with her in-ear monitoring system. So for example she can sing on a keyboard pad and is in time without any rythmic signal.
So the mixer in the club has the normal mic signal from our singer but does not have to care for her monitoring signal (and also not for the monitoring signal of our drummer). So even in small clubs where are often not that much monitoring cababilities on stage we are fine with two monitor signals (for me and for our guitarist).

4. Midi controler
Our drummer also uses a midi controller (something from Behringer) that has a lot of knobs though he only needs a start and a stop button. It is connected with the emagic midi interface inside the rack. To make it easy for him he only has to press the start button before the next song and nothing else. He doesn't have to care to jump to the next song, stop the execution when a song is over or anything else. Just the start button - or if something would go wrong he can press the stop button. When he again presses the start button the current song starts from the beginning.

5. Mixer for the In-ear monitoring
As described before our singer uses an In-ear monitoring system. With the mixer our singer can control the volumes of her mic signal and the playback signal that she gets from the laptop.

6. In-ear monitoring system
The In-ear monitoring system from Sennheiser gets its signal from the little mixer in the rack.

7. Beamer
To display the videoclips during our show the laptop sends the video signal via its VGA output to a beamer. In smaller clubs we use our own beamer that is a normal beamer that you also can use at home. In bigger locations there are often beamers installed that we can use. Sometimes the connection to the inhouse beamer of the club are far away from the stage where our laptop resides. For that reason we always have with us a 50m VGA cable. Some people say that a cable longer than 10 meters is a big problem for the quality of the video signal. We never had any problems with that though we use this 50m cable.

Software
As I mentioned before we use Ableton live (version 6) because it has most of the features that we need. Also we use the virtual midi interface LoopBeInternal (Freeware) and a little midi tool I developed by myself. Before Ableton Live we used LogicAudio 5.5.2. This program had great midi-controlling possibilities but had not the capability to play video clips. So we switched to Ableton Live. But also there are some features that we really miss. To understand the problems that we have to manage and our solution I first want to explain our workflow and after that the technical realisation.

Workflow
Before the concert we determine the order of the songs that we play. This happens normaly in our rehearsal room. The songs and their order depends on the kind of location, the expected type of audience and the other bands with which we play together. We do not change the arrangement of a song (play the last chorus twice or anything else). But sometimes we have to shorten or rearrange the setlist short time before our show starts.
During our show we often play the first two or three songs without a pause to warm up the crowd. The other songs are mostly followed by a short break so our singer can talk to the audience or has the chance to take a sip. Our drummer is the one who starts the songs with the midi-controller beause he sits in the back of the others and can see if everybody is ready. To make it the most comfortable and the least error-prone for him he only has to press the start-button of the midi-controller no matter what song comes next.

Realisation
Preparation
Before the show the rack has to put on stage and all cables have to be connected. Then the laptop is started. Windows automatically starts the virtual midi-device software. After that I start the little midi-tool I developed as a windows service. I do not let it start automatically because sometimes it starts before the virtual midi interface and isn't able then to recognice it.

The midi-tool
When the midi tool starts it reads a text file that contains the setlist. Every item in this setlist starts with a number that represents the midi note a song has to start with (in other words: "the Ableton Live marker of this song is linked to"). Then the item contains the song name. This is just for readability to make it easy to change the list. The third entry of the item again is a number that represents the midi note that the sequencer sends when the song is over. And the optional fourth item is the word „stop“ if we want to pause after a song is finished. So when the midi-tool has started it knows the order of the songs and what to do after a song has finished. Another advantage of this solution is that the midi-controler only needs to know the commands (midi-notes) for start and stop. Even if we have new songs no additional programming of the controller is necessary.

Ableton Live
When the midi-tool is started I start Ableton Live and load the project with all the songs we want to play. Ableton Live runs in arrange mode because only there Live is able to play videos. The Live project contains all the songs one after the other. There are a couple of audio tracks (loops, synths, click signal, playback for the singer and so on) and ohne video track. The order of the songs in the project is not necessarily the order of the songs during our show. This order is determined by the text file that the midi-tool reads when it starts.
Every song in the project starts with a marker that is linked to a special midi-note. This midi-note has to be the same as the one in the setlist that the midi-tool loads at start. Also the start and the stop button of Ableton Live are linked to midi-notes. These midi-notes are the one that are send by the midi-controler that is operated by our drummer.

During the show
When the show begins our drummer presses the start button of the midi-controler. The midi-controler sends a midi-note via the emagic midi-interface to the midi-tool. The midi-tool knows what song comes next and sends the midi-note for this song via the virtual midi-interface to Ableton Live. Live starts the song. The first audio signals go to our drummer's headphone: It's the name of the song (so he knows everything is fine) after that 4 click beats so he realises the timing and after that another for click beats to count the band with his sticks or the hihat.
Because Ableton Live is not able to stop playing by itself when a song is finished the sequencer sends a midi-note via the virtual midi-interface to the midi-tool. The midi-tool knows which song has finished. If the setlist contains a stop order after this song the midi-tool sends the stop midi-note back to Ableton Live which causes it to stop. The midi-tool also checks the setlist for the next song and sends the midi-note so Ableton Live can jump to the marker of this song.

This is basically how it works. I hope that I was able to describe my solution in a way that you are able to understand it. If you have further questions or comments please feel free to contact me.
Greetz
Bernd

[bupper]

what are the specifications of your laptop? & what is your midi tool?

[dorrn]

Hi Bupper,
the laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505. It's probably about 5 years old. I'm not really shure about the specifications but that is what I found:
- Intel Core Duo T2500, 2 Ghz
- 15,4" Display
- 1024 Mb DDR2 Speicher, 667 Mhz (2 x 512)
- 120 Gb harddisk
- 8x DVD-/CD burner
- 9-cell Akku
- Radeon X1400
So this one is not really a super computer but it has enough power for what we need.

As I mentioned in my article I developed the midi-tool by myself. I used a development environment called Delphi (from Borland) and a free Delphi midi library which I found in the net. Because I work also as a software developer it was not that hard for me to realise that tool.

Greetz Bernd

By the way: For me it would be very interesting how other people have solved similar problems. Maybe there is a better solution out there...

[zc]

What is the typical prep time, pre-show for this type of setup? Also, do you have any footage of a live show where all this is being done? I took a quick look online but wasn't able to find anything including both live performance and the video being projected from Ableton.

Thanks in advance, and the music is great!

zc

[dorrn]

Hi zc,
thanks for the compliment.
It normaly doesn't take more than 10 minutes to get it all work and to make all the connections to the stagebox, the mic of the singer and the other stuff. After that we have to do some checks like the headphone signal of our drummer or the in-ear monitoring system. So all in all it's maybe 15 minutes.
Cheers Bernd