Recording from live gig
Yesterday was my first time performing live with a wind controller setup and it was lots of fun.
I played mostly Sample Modeling instruments with my WX5 wind controller and a band I am a member of called The Jazzatolas. I had no regrets leaving my alto sax at home and had lots of fun! Here are some recordings done on my Zoom H2 featuring SM instruments:
Let me know your feedback,
Kobi
I played mostly Sample Modeling instruments with my WX5 wind controller and a band I am a member of called The Jazzatolas. I had no regrets leaving my alto sax at home and had lots of fun! Here are some recordings done on my Zoom H2 featuring SM instruments:
Let me know your feedback,
Kobi
Comments
Good trombone, clarinet, and sax work with the SM instruments, and a nice-sounding band and singer. I've also used my Zoom H2 to record the band I play in. It's pretty amazing for anyone who lived through the analog tape era. Thanks for your entertaining post.
Dick
Thanks for sharing you & your band!
-Perry-
GREAT !
Could you post a photo, as well ?
Thanks,
-Michael
Thanks,
Kobi
In fact I am piano player in a similar band over here in Germany. We have a singer (f), bass, guitar, vibes, drums, and me. But no brass or sax. I intend to dig out my old WX7 (untouched since 20 years) and try it out with swam Sax. I do know how it might sound if I do enough practicing, but I have no idea how it looks like
-Michael
Kobi
Using a tablet for the Lead-sheet is great as well. Do you just show pages of chords and/or notes or do you run "Band in a Box" or something similar to act like a prompter ?
-Michael
Kobi
Many thanks for this interesting informations.
-Michael
https://www.icloud.com/journal/#4;CAEQARoQWPcDxqcdadA5iCO33Qws6w;F164DA9A-55FE-4071-8D1F-2E62D6424FEB
Kobi
Great !
Is the inscription Hebrew ?
Thanks
-Michael
Kobi
https://soundcloud.com/kobirivlin
Kobi
Very good to see and hear! Thanks for posting and enjoy your visit.
Dick
Also like the idea of an ipad as a score/ setlist prompt. Thanks for posting.
How are you doing ?
As finally a customer payed his bill, I hope I now am able to get further with my musical equipment intentions.
So I am about to buy a computer system for live performance. It will be a decent PC (Intel 4 core, 16 Gig RAM, SSD) in a half-19" housing with no-noise passive cooling.
Similar to a "Muse Receptor", I intend to have it run "on stage" without Computer Keyboard, mouse or screen attached, (completely controlled by MIDI), but using the "BrainSpawn Forte" software as a VST Host, instead of Muse's propriety system.
Of course - being a piano player - I will begin with installing some Piano / E-Piano and Organ VSTs and play with my Master-keyboard.
When that works, I desperately hope that my old WX7 still is workable and - this provided - I will try the SampleModeling SAX collection.
At that point, I hope you might provide me (a newcomer to sax playing, and SampelModeling) with some tricks and tips, as your WX5 supposedly is not that different from a WX7.
Thanks for listening,
-Michael
P.S.:
We just found a saxophone player (f) for our new Band, intending to do "Latin" songs (a Brazilian singer (f), a Brazilian Guitarist (her husband), (Contra-) Bass, percussion, and keyboard (or second sax in future
I showed her some of the songs you recorded in the cave and live. She was decently impressed
-Michael
Interesting machine you are building.
Before I bought my Lenovo laptop, I was considering buying a Mac Mini. I thought I would configure it via my iPad and do quick switching via midi, but then I realized I don’t want to depend on Wi-Fi network and have no battery backup. It ended up cheaper and simpler to buy a Lenovo ThinkPad T430U laptop with 128GB SSD.
After using the laptop for a few month, I can tell you that I love having the visual feedback to know I switched to the right instrument or setting. Sometimes in live setting, I need to do quick transpose for a song or change the reverb mix to fit the room sound and that would be hard to do blindly with midi. I think Muse Receptor have some buttons and knobs for these type of configurations. Will your machine have something similar?
Good luck on configuring your new setup and let me know if you need any assistance.
Kobi
If I might see that I need some visual feedback (that Forte has some special fullscreen "scene view" functions for) I might plug in some kind of monitor.
I will not add some knobs / LCD displays to the main box (like Receptor has) as the box one day (when I am a professional
If I will find that I need more realtime controllers than my master-keyboard offers (e. g. for fully lagacy realtime-handling of organ drawbars, I would need at least 9), there are lots of versatile MIDI/USB controller boxes with (motor-)sliders, knobs and pushbuttons. (I'll think about this when I am a professional.) As I am a microprocessor engineer I also could rather easily do a full custom USB device with LEDs and/or knobs. Using a mouse(-pad) in a live situation is out of question for me; I likely would break the complete setup.
Regarding drawbars, Forte can do complex Midi functions so that I supposedly can program a blend between two presets with a single slider of the masterkeyboard. I doubt that I ever will need more drawbar-freedom.
Quick transpose should be doable with a single button pressing followed by pressing the desired key. I am positive that Forte will allow for this. (If not I will find a VST or do one myself.)
I'll keep you posted.
Thanks for the offer to help. I'll certainly be back on this issue once I add the WX7 and SampleModeling Sax to the setup.
-Michael
Hi Kobi,
I just ordered the computer hardware.
I can start using the Forte Demo-Version and install and test the (keyboard-sound) VSTs I already have.
To test if my old WX7 still works, and if I might be able to play with it in a somehow decent way, I would like to install some appropriately "compatible" realtime-playable VST, producing a wind-instrument sound. Unfortunately (AFAIK) there is no testing version of the SampleModeling instruments available.
Do you know anything that I could use for free to test whether I might be able to become a saxophonist ?
Thanks,
-Michael
http://www.patchmanmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3744&p=22118&hilit=Free#p22118
Kobi
-Michael
In the Reaper forum, I just learned about Jeffos Live Configs ( -> http://sws.mj-s.com/download/S&M_LiveConfigs_Ed2.pdf ) as a port of the free SWS extension to Reaper ( -> http://sws.mj-s.com/ ).
Do you use this for your live setup with Reaper ?
-Michael
No. I don't use it and it looks like it could be more flexible than my setup. When I have some time, I will try it.
Thanks!
Kobi
Hence I already was planning to do a VST that can do this, after researching that with Reaper this in fact seems to be possible.
Finally I got a post in the Reaper forum recommending SWS Life Configs. I'm going to try it ASAP.
Let me know what you find ...
-Michael
The Documentation is rather outdated, as the software was greatly improved since it's release, so I needed to ask a lot of questions before it now starts working.
For my use with a keyboard I need program change Midi messages to do the "extended program changing" that involves activating / deactivating of tracks in Reaper.
Astonishingly this is not provided out of the box by "Live Configs". It does not listen to Program change messages, just CC messages are accepted.
It is decently possible, though, but to make it work you need to install two additional Plugins: a VST called "MIDItoReaControlPath" and a JSFX called "PCtoCC" .
BTW.: If you don't use "MIDItoReaControlPath" (as your hardware controller sends CC messages to switch sounds), you in the Reaper options need to set the "Enable input for control messages" of a Midi hardware device, to route such messages to "live Configs".
-Michael
Thank you for sharing your excellent playing. Your posts have been very helpful, too.
I have few questions for you if you don't mind. I had recently purchased WX5 using for VL70m synth. But I also have EWI 5000 and most of sample modelling instruments.
1) Can you please tell me when you choose WX5 over EWI for SM instruments? Did you find the one can make better expression than the other , maybe depending on SM instruments?
2) Can you share your WX 5 setting for SM instrument? I am sorry if you have already posted on this somewhere in this forum. Do you set vibrato, growl to CC 16/17?
Thank you so much.
Best,
Min (pddoctor@gmail.com)
I actually switched completely from WX5 to EWI.
I had two issues with WX5 that EWI solved for me:
1: key delay speed - WX5 have only two modes: fast and slow. The slow eliminates glitches well, but creates sluggish attack and transitions, the fast requires accuracy in fingering well beyond my saxophone and without perfect fingering you get these annoying glitches that are very audible and kill the realism of the sound of any virtual instrument. EWI allows you to setup the exact key delay that works for me on a numeric scale (8 is what I use today), but even on higher setting (e.g. 10), the response sound much more natural than the WX5.
2. Breath resolution and sensitivity: EWI allows to change breath velocity so I can play low velocities more easily and not jump quickly between levels. Also, the curve is much smoother on EWI. Especially with sample modeling instruments the EWI responds to breath much more naturally for me, without sudden jumps.
It took me awhile to adjust to the touch keys, but now I prefer them and I changed the bite sensor on EWI to do pitch down, so I now have nice pitch control on bite, even more accurate than WX5 (again can be set with numeric scale, instead of extreme loose lip setting in WX5).
Overall, expression is much better and natural for me on EWI and I pretty much stopped playing my WX5 completely and will likely put it on sale in eBay at some point...
Regarding mapping my WX5 has the pitch buttons mapped to CC 16 and 17 and I setup my EWI pitch plate the same. in my sample modeling instruments I map CC 16 (upper plate) to growl on swam instruments and to extreme vibrato on trumpet and trombone. I map CC 17 (lower pitch plate) to vibrato depth.
I do some other tweaks using midi plugins you can find on my live reaper preset (will soon add my new and improved OS X reaper setup).
Kobi
2. Breath resolution and sensitivity: EWI allows to change breath velocity so I can play low velocities more easily and not jump quickly between levels. Also, the curve is much smoother on EWI. Especially with sample modeling instruments the EWI responds to breath much more naturally for me, without sudden jumps.
As you might remember I switched from a WX7 to a TEC BBC.
The BBC provides perfect Breath resolution and the sensitivity is a little bit slower than I could get with the WX7. But the WX7 had a very bad stability (e.g. regarding environment temperature and time it is being played). With the BBC I can set a low pass filter for the sensitivity speed, but even the most fast setting is slower than the WX7, so I can't anymore do a decent "growl" by a "rrrr" in my throat (maybe a queer idea, anyway).
With the BBC I can set a breath power -> midi value curve in a perfect way. Nonetheless with the SWAM Flute I can't play really soft. I always get a rather harsh attack when increasing the breath pressure very softly. (I id try lots of parameter settings.)
Does the EWI output "high resolution midi CC" (14 Bit resolution rather than 7 Bit) ? Unfortunately neither the current Swam instruments nor the BBC provide that feature. I think this would be very appropriate for breath controlling the sound.
-Michael