[ddots-l] Re: some opinions
- From: "Mike Tyo" <mtyo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:00:52 -0400
Hi Dave,
When I build tracks for live-playing, I do 24-bit wave files and place them on
a portable device. That way I just patch it into the PA system or the
instrument that I'm playing on and go from there. I prefer to use uncompressed
audio for my tracks.
Several years ago, I was a concert artist for Panasonic Company; I used to be
able to create custom styles on Technics organs and keyboards to use them in
concert, etc. The instruments had a Composer feature that had tracks where you
could build drum parts along with bass and other accompaniment parts that would
follow chords as you played them in the left hand. They allocated enough memory
to that feature so I could create decent length patterns and make them so you
couldn't tell when it looped back to the beginning of the pattern. Since there
are no more new Technics instruments being manufactured, I've had to retool
things and move to building audio tracks that I can use on anything that has
stereo line inputs. It certainly simplifies my operation to do it this way -
and as long as I've got decent mixes, it sound's great.
I don't have to worry about having to deal with hardware that's pretty much
inaccessible.
I'm an organist, and one of my gigs is that I play on a Roland console organ at
my church. The instrument has Roland's version of a Composer feature, but the
only way you can customize it is by creating midi files and converting them to
the format that Roland uses for that feature. The only problem is that the
software used to do that isn't available to consumers; so needless to say,
creating custom accompaniment tracks is out the window. It's not all bad as I
can take advantage of the power of Sonar and soft synths and do some decent
tracks that work well in performances. The only disadvantage is that you're
limited to the structure of the tracks. When I was able to create these custom
accompaniment styles, I could use them for different songs that worked well
with these style. I miss being able to do that very much as it allowed
flexibility for live-playing.
I recently purchased a new product that Freedom Scientific released a few
months ago - the Plextalk Pocket, which is a Daisy reader. It also plays all
sorts of audio file formats, including 16 and 24-bit wave files. All the data
is stored on an SD card, and you can use up to a 32-GB card. It's completely
accessible as it has a voice guidance feature that has its own volume control
independent from the rest of the output signal. This should allow me to lower
the guidance volume so that it isn't too noticeable during live performances. I
have to pay attention to what's going on with it because it's configured to
play all albums and tracks sequentially; so I just have to build my tracks with
enough silence at the beginning and end of the track to give me time to stop
the machine or scroll to whatever track I want and either stop it or let it
play after the guidance has announced the title of the track. Prior to
purchasing this unit, I was using an Edirol R09 HR recorder, but I never knew
what track was up; consequently I ran into a situation on my last show that I
did where I had trouble getting it to the track I wanted to use at a point in
the performance. Needless to say it was embarrassing, hence my moving to the
Plextalk Pocket. I believe that Olympus has some units that have voice guidance
features as well, but I don't know how much accessibility you have. The
Plextalk will tell you everything, so you can be assured that you're doing what
you want to do with it. Since I'm primarily patching it into the organ, I have
to tweak the mix on the tracks so that I get a good clean crisp sound as
there's no way to adjust the EQ on the line inputs.
It might be worth looking into if you're considering using an audio device for
your tracks. Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Hillebrandt
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 18:21
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: some opinions
I can see a lot of advantages in having a laptop on stage but understand what
you mean in regards to the pc doing all of the work. I would like to take that
just a step further as wonder why some choose to have computers play drum
machines and synths via midi rather than simply recording the parts and playing
along to an mp3. I realize some do that as well but just wondering the
advantage of using the midi verses recording parts and making an mp3 out of it
to play with. Would think that having extra midi stuff would take up more room
than an mp3 player if you aren't actually playing all of the parts. Thanks for
any input as curious to hear opinions. Dave
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