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Old 04-18-2017, 11:45 AM   #15
DarkKman
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Join Date: Nov 2016
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Firstly, thank you for all the inputs folks... Really good stuff here and I'm seeing how Reaper's flexibility *could* be the holy grail for me but some testing still to do... I know I'm being very demanding with what I want from my performance setup so I don't mean to sound difficult - just playing devil's advocate. Although, having said that, the situations I describe are situations I need - this is in part as I play with several different bands where the needs vary a little (some more VST synth performance, some more "live" mixing stems, some a combination of both, some including receiving patch changes from other devices to trigger other events etc)... Anyway...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
I suppose using LiveConfigs and swapping project tabs is kind of mutually exclusive. Swapping Project tabs might be a good means - but supposedly not the only one - to manage "background tracks", but it will kill the possibility to decently live-playing VSTi instruments by Masterkeyboard or using VSTs on live audio streams.
This is a concern of mine using project tabs; how can I manage switching of patches, muting VSTs, changing keyboard splits/layers of VSTs during a song? This (LiveConfigs) is how one would imagine Reaper can emulate the non-break switch between sounds (so a pad can carry on playing on the right hand as you switch bass sound for the left). I will see what happens when I set up tabs and LiveConfig - it may be possible if the track structure is the same? But with wildly different VSTis expect to hit some issues - more to come this weekend!

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
For the backing tracks I could imagine either using something like a sampler (which seemingly would need to feature multi-channel output), or user Reaper tracks with the appropriate "song" placed at a certain time position, with having Live-Configs place the play cursor there and start the playback.
I actually tried using a simple sampler in Forte (SAM!Solo and the multi-out version) however for rehearsing this is not practical as you cannot e.g. just run through the chorus with the band. However using all the tracks in one project is an option but then you lose that modular type setup that using Reaper tabs would provide (i.e. for each set you'd need to align all your stems for each song and change the play positions) this seems a little unwieldly - but not impossible.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
You can use up to 8 LiveConfig tables in parallel. (I use two, one for each of my masterkeyboard) they can set to react on different Midi Channels. So maybe you could ue one for managing the patches, and another one to manage the background tracks.
This might be an option to cure the above. It kind of depends if LiveConfig persits accross tabs... TO be investigated further...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
I don't know "PIP". Maybe you can report here what you find out about same. I suppose this is something to allow a behavior like Ableton Live, e.g. loop-based live-playing. This in fact might help here. (I already did mention the - not yet existing - "Live SubProject" Reaper feature, PIP sounding like something similar...).
I will do... I believe PiP is a feature that used to exist in Reaper by default but was turned off and needs to be "reactivated" in the config file(?). I've lost where I saw how to set this up but this is an interesting thread which could probably save all my issues (particularly the "explode" PiP feature request) - I could then see using LiveConfig action to explode a PiP so I can "mix" it... But until this feature exists I'll keep experimenting.
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=50248

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
In fact "Live playing" seems to be considered two very different things by different persons: Using VSTs in Reaper "stop/monitor" mode (which I do: "Forte-Mode") and controlling Reaper's play mode in a live performance (e.g. for loop based performance: "Ableton-Mode"). You seem to need both at the same time.
Yes. Exactly. If we go back to hardware, I used to use an ADAT for backing with a small Mackie mixer which also mixed my Ensoniq ASR10 (sampler and sequencer), Korg N5 (synth), and a rack of reverbs, delays, gates and compressors. So the only time-consuming prep I had to do was bounce the backing from one ADAT to another to sequence the set... Software has made this infinitely more simple (well clearly not infinitely, but A LOT). If I could emulate this, with a way to have "modular" songs this would be perfect i.e. I have all the features of LiveConfig but with the ability to just load up the stems I want for each song (like with tabs) that would be great.

IN FACT, there is a tool which a demo'd which IS very close called "Cantabile" which is very much like Forte but more configurable and includes a Media Player so with 5 Media Players loaded I got 4 stereo stems, 1 MIDI track (for click triggering). Just a shame the Media Player couldn't play more than one item. Have you heard of Cantabile? Thre thing that stops me from using is price ($200 for the full set of features which, of course, it what's needed for this setup)

Last edited by DarkKman; 04-18-2017 at 12:56 PM.
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