Running incidental music playlists in GP

Hey Folks,

I’m looking for a solution to run a playlist of incidental music out of my rig before gigs and during breaks, so basically just a file player loaded with mp3s in a rackspace that I can trigger and fade with a song change.

Anyone doing this/have a good solution? I thought I might be able to do it with the built in file player, but on closer inspection I can see that it’s more for triggering backing tracks, and as far as I can see it won’t play it’s loaded files in sequence, plus you can only load 8 files. Fine tool for its intended purpose, but that intended purpose ain’t this.

I could run an external media player alongside GP, but I’m finding that GP tends to want to own the system sound device. Honestly, I’m happy with that behaviour. I’d rather it was totally in charge of system sound while I’m running it and therefore prevented any sound issues at window’s end of things. Also, it would be great to be able to fade incidental music and start playing with minimal computer fiddling, so fading, switching between programs etc I’d rather avoid. If there’s a GP focussed solution that would be my preference.

Use an multiclient Asio driver and you can run GP alongside Otter Audio software

Or Go with Mac :wink:

For that Kind of thing i am using GP to Play my Plugins and Ableton Live to Start Audio Clips whenever I want

With a Little scripting that is very easy to achieve

Also, it would be great to be able to fade incidental music and start playing with minimal computer fiddling, so fading, switching between programs etc I’d rather avoid. If there’s a GP focusse

All that can be mplemented with sripting

And Patch persist verwesen rackspaces and the new exciting global rackspace,

Thanks Paul. Super helpful as always.

Yeah, Multiclient asio is possible, but it makes me a bit nervous in a live context. As I say, I’d rather do it all through GP if possible. I may want to run it alongside Ableton in the future for an electronic project that’s vaguely in the works, but I’m thinking I’ll just add a second computer at that point and run them with a localised Ableton link setup.

That’s by the by though. Ok, so reading between the lines, the answer is there are workarounds to make it happen with the file player (script the tracks to autofollow, load a sequence of file players, script them to also chain one after the other), but that seems like a lot of work and a lot of risk inducing complexity. I’ll have a look around for a vst file player for starters. Might be simpler and cleaner. Especially as I’d quite like to load it up with a large chunk of mp3s and then randomise the playlist, so that I’m not getting the same 12 tracks in the same order before every gig.

That said, if you had an example to hand of such a script, I’d be really intersted to see it. Don’t go out of your way to make one though if you don’t.

Cheers, as ever, for a prompt and helpful reply.

Please Upload a small gig with the Audioplayer and the mo3 files and describe what should Happen,
I can try to make it run as a Proof of Concept.

I use a loopback device on my Mac - so I can route my playbacks or BGM from different applications through GP (and MS before) and mute it - no unwanted side effects so far…

Ah, thanks triple b. That’s an interesting idea. I’ve used similar things before. I suspect it won’t work in windows though as it doesn’t really allow for composite audio devices the way OSX does. I could route system audio into GP with virtual audio cable or similar, but that would preclude using my actual sound interface.

And yes, as Paul suggests I could move to mac, but some of the hardware I use still works fine on windows, but hasn’t been updated for recent versions of osx, so I’d have to replace essential bits of my rig at that point. Plus a surface on a music stand is a pretty neat audio processing solution that I really couldn’t match in the apple ecosystem.

I’ll give a couple of the media player vst plugs a test run for stability etc. If that’s a bust. I’ll just route my phone in to a spare input and play stuff off of that.

Oh and Paul, thanks for the offer, but please don’t go to the trouble. I really just wanted confirmation that there wasn’t an obvious solution that I was missing.

Thanks Y’all.

Ok. Update for anyone else looking for a solution to this same thang. This is the one I’ve come up with:

I found a vst file player made by Mirax labs. Seems to be solid so far, simple and does what I want. It’s here, it costs a tenner. vstPlayer – Mirax Labs

I’ve set it up in its own rackspace, running into a mixer plugin and then out to my outputs. I can set the playlist going, then just shift to my gig rackspace and the sound will fade out naturally, fade defined by the audio tail length. Nice!

I’ve added a button widget controlling the play/pause function and another controlling the next track function. With both of those activated in my rackspace, when I return to the rackspace at the end of a set, the playlist will automatically skip to the next track and then start playing. Also have a slider widget set up to control the mixer volume so that I can moderate incidental music volume to suit the venue.

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Ah, got your point, but there’s a way around, and that’s what I do on macOS as well:

I use an Focusrite Scarlett 8i6. The DAW outputs (1+2) are not routed in the Scarlett Mixer to physical outputs - they go to the Scarlett LoopBack device input. The outputs of the LoopBack device are in my case input 9+10 in GP. So I can process/route/mute them anywhere I like in GP.

Tradeoff: I have to use DAW output 3+4 assigned to physical output 1+2 as my main output - et voila :slight_smile:

I don’t need to work with aggregate devices etc. on macOS!

This should also work under Windows or other sound devices providing loopback?!

BBB

Ah yes! I used to use a focusrite. In fact I still have a saffire 24 dsp that I use with a mac for theatre work.

However these days for live music I use either an RME babyface pro or my somewhat vintage NI rig kontrol for live audio depending on how many channels etc i need. I don’t think either allows for loop back.

However, the vst player fix descirbed above seems to be working elegantly so far. Should do me. Thanks for your feedback BBB!

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