Feels so good! Finally rehearsing again for the upcoming gigs with my band Powerlord.
This is my key rig for practicing with Gig Performer 4 in the band studio.
I’m using my vintage Korg Wavestation as a master keyboard only, because of it’s unsurpassed synth action keybed. MIDI out of the WS goes into an Edirol Roland PCR-300 keyboard controller velcro-flown on top of the Wavestation. From there, MIDI USB goes to my laptop (Clevo PB51DDS, Win10) in the side-fill, running GP4. Keyboard stand is a K&M Baby Spider Pro, with ducts for hiding all cables, avoiding cable chaos on stage. Only one USB MIDI line and one AC power line go from my key rig to the side fill.
All GP actions are remotely controlled from the PCR, like song changes or switching variations, and using MIDI CCs to modulate sounds during performance by widgets. So the laptop can be hidden several meters away safely located in the side-fill. (No cupboard on the real stage, of course). For visual feedback, I only need present and next song IN LARGE LETTERs. This is solved by the external API “GP Selector” from @rank13:
Main VSTs are Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2, NI Kontak 6 with various 3rd party libraries, and Steinberg HalionSonic as well as the old Hypersonic, jbridged to 64bit.
Audio interface is a RME Babyface Pro, run reliably with 96 samples buffer at 44.1kHz. The interface is poviding one line out to my own stage monitor amp (Behringer Ultratone KDX12), and from the XLR outs a stere sum of my sounds go to the FOH mixing desk.
Real stage and live impressions hopefully to come, starting from May.
Final checks for my first gig tomorrow, after 2 years of pandemia.
It will be my first gig with Gig Performer, too, after making the switch from Brainspawn Forte to GP last year.
Fingers crossed!
I quick report from the field:
Yesterday I played my first gig since two years, the first with Gig Performer.
No pictures or videos yet, unfortunately.
As expected from testing and preparing and from the band rehearsals, all went perfectly well. Not a slightest feeling that something could go wrong, anyway.
The thing I noted most positively, also in comparision to my previous live host Brainspawn Forte, is the low latency and more important, the very low latency jitter at a given buffer size.
I tested this once under laboratory conditions here:
And now I can confirm this also for myself in a live situation.
We don’t use click tracks for tempo on stage, as well as no audio or MIDI file playbacks. For many songs I trigger looped rythm samples or synth arpeggios by hitting a key at every first beat of a bar, in sync with the drummer. Because of the low latency jitter in GP, this gave us a really tight timing and groove.
Thanks for sharing. Seems you have a great setup there.
For me - this is the most important thing about using GP on stage. I can concentrate 100% on my performance. That’s why we have our slogan “Own The Stage ®” - hard to do if you have tech issues or have to worry if your software will break on next patch change
Well, I have been doing so since 18 years now … and not problem up todyay. Even while using real HDD instead of SSD in the past. The magnetic field of the speaker is concentrated around the magnet, and the laptop is suffiently away from it.