Gigging with your laptop

[rahul_mukerji]

Hi:

I have this idea of taking my laptop to gigs and playing off samples using Ableton and a small Midi keyboard. I thought a little industrial samples / tabla beats / indian drones might add a little more to our sound.

Its just a thought, and I've seen the band 'Battle' from NY do it on some sites.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone on the forum does this sort of thing and if they have any pointers as such. Any pointers on software / routing etc is appreciated as well.

 

[Demeyes]

My brother brings his desktop to gigs. He uses an interface and amp sims as his preamp.
Generally he keeps the the stuff out of eveyones way so no one walks on it or knocks it around. He makes sure he as nothing running in the background that will slow down the performance.
So far he's had no problems with it, he'll be trying it out on my laptop soon to see if it can handle the job.

 

[synrgy]

I do it all the time, in a couple of completely different ways:

I recently started using Serato for my live DJ sets, and a laptop has to be the heart of that. If you have a solid machine and you keep it out of the way of arguably retarded clubbers and dont' let ANYONE set a drink anywhere NEAR it, you should be just fine.

For guitar, I decided a laptop was too flimsy. It's one thing for me to have a laptop, backpack, a few Serato records and a thumb drive. It's another to manage that safely in line with all the guitar gear I've got, knowing how that gear gets handled generally speaking. IE, you can be a lot more rough with a 4X12" cabinet than you can be with a laptop.

SO, I bought a rackmount PC. It's RAD.

You can make it work, for sure. Just be careful with it. That being said, for the purposes you say you're aiming for, I think you might be far better suited with a hardware sampler. It'd be a sturdier and more reliable solution for you, I think.

IMPORTANT -- If you *NEED* your laptop for any purpose other than this, I wouldn't recommend it. The laptop I take to DJ gigs is strictly for gigging and light sequencing when I'm not at home. I don't do any 'work' on it, or have any files on it that I don't also have backed up on another machine. IE, if you're a student and your grades could depend on your having or not having this laptop, you probably shouldn't take it to a gig -- just too risky..

 

[darren]

We do exactly this, triggering loops and samples in Ableton Live using a Behringer FCB-1010 pedalboard.

We looked at getting a rack-mounted PC, but a cheap laptop was more cost-effective. Plus, this allows two of my bandmates to use it at various times for loading and tweaking new stuff as well as getting setlists organized.

 

[Konfyouzd]

ok so this isn't something that's frowned upon? i have thought about doing this but i was hesitant to do so because i didn't wanna catch any shit for it.

 

[synrgy]

ok so this isn't something that's frowned upon? i have thought about doing this but i was hesitant to do so because i didn't wanna catch any shit for it.

Anybody who would give you shit for trying to add another element of creativity to your music should be shot on sight.

But seriously, they should.

We do exactly this, triggering loops and samples in Ableton Live using a Behringer FCB-1010 pedalboard.

We looked at getting a rack-mounted PC, but a cheap laptop was more cost-effective. Plus, this allows two of my bandmates to use it at various times for loading and tweaking new stuff as well as getting setlists organized.

Worth a mention that you can gut any regular PC and toss it into a $100 rackmount case, for the budget minded.

+1 on the FCB1010. Not fun to program, but once you get it programmed right it's the bee's knees for triggering Ableton clips and such.

 

[darren]

If we were going to go with a rack-mounted PC, we would have built it from the ground up to our specs, and we wanted it to be a 1- or 2-space unit, and that adds up pretty quick. We couldn't have got a rack enclosure, power supply, motherboard, drives, RAM and operating system for less than what we got our laptop for.

 

[rahul_mukerji]

Thanks everyone for all the insight and replies !

synrgy I have a spare laptop that I wanted to try this thing with. So its not my sole laptop for work or such. Thanks for that advice tho !

Konfyouzd:

With respect to your comment: I've seen drummers use samples and triggers in most of the bands I see live. Also, recently I got to see a solo artist perform his set, using a laptop as a backing band !! And it was really nice. It wasn't any cheesy midi output.

So with that in mind, I dont think you'd catch flak for this, especially if you can do creative things with it like add loads of interesting synth and sample sounds.

Laptop musicians have been around for sometime (Rave and Trance artists) and recently there is a surge of "Laptop Orchestras" and a lot of live bands like Radiohead and others using laptops. So I would absolutely push you to try something new and exciting: sometimes with new things you get rap-rock and sometimes you get Symphonic Metal a la Within Temptation. Its a 50-50 chance of getting good results !

I'm pretty excited about this. I think I'll try this at my bands next practice.

 

[Konfyouzd]

the laptop as the backing band is pretty much what i was going for since it's hard for me to find other musicians to play with. i always get people saying "oh! you need a drummer? (second guitarist, bass player, etc) my friend is really good! you should play with him!" and the guy turns out to either play a style that i'm just not into or--not to make it sound like i'm anything special--their skill level just doesn't seem quite up to par

so to make a long story short i compose everything myself on my computer and i'd like to be able to perform it whether i have a band or not once i get the balls to get out there and do it...

 

[rahul_mukerji]

I think thats a great way to go especially if you can't find any band members who are into your style.

There's tons of good drum software (Addictive Drums and EZDrummer come to mind) and good plugins (GrooveMonkee) for metal and progressive loops and stuff that are not insane expensive. As long as you get a good bass line going and make some interesting compositions, I'm sure you'd be able to play out.

You should start doing small gigs at friends / relatives houses, just to see the response and get comfortable with the Laptop setup. Then once you're fluent with switching songs and getting a smooth set flow gig at your local coffee shop / watering hole and see the response.

At that point I'm pretty sure some people will offer their services as bass / drums / laptop musicians. It wont happen overnight, but I'm sure you can pull it off.

But yeah, absolutely go for it. At worst you'll get rejected from pubs, but at least you'd know that you tried and you might even get picked to be in a band or some sort of similar exposure through the experience; and that beats sitting in your bedroom going "if only I had some sort of band ....." laments.

I'm going to try out this experiment this Thursday and let people know what I did and how it turned out.

 

[Konfyouzd]

i think this is definitely my favorite thread so far... and please do keep us posted! good luck

 

[rahul_mukerji]

So last night after work I upgraded my laptop (dell x300) and maxed out its ram at 1GB (really old model). I installed xp sp3 and an old version of ableton. The hdd is 28GB (25 after xp) which is more than enough for my purpose.

I installed my Axiom 25 MIDI drivers and opened up abelton.

Right off the bat, I find its slower than my desktop which was expected. The samples take a little time for live preview. But once you load a set and start it, there latency is not a kill factor. So far so good. I dont think this should affect while playing live.

I have a good deal of loops on an external hard drive that I will use. My next step tonight is to set up a live set that I can use with the band in our jam session. Since our bassist is away for work, I'm gonna load a couple of bass loops, some tabla loops and some industrial / synth loops. Then I'm gonna hook it up to my amp and see if I can jam with the loops while switching between them using the MIDI keyboard controller.

I'm pretty excited at this point with the possibilities.

 

[synrgy]

Then I'm gonna hook it up to my amp

Be really careful about what kind of amp you're running through. Some of the lower frequencies found in many of your samples could possibly damage a regular guitar amp head/cabinet which are only designed to push guitar frequencies. (which is why I bought a PA and run through that now instead..)

If a guitar amp/cab is your only option, I would strongly suggest using some of Ableton's EQ units (like the EQ 8 for example) on the master channel to cut out the lower frequencies headed toward your amp.

 

[rahul_mukerji]

Hey synrgy, thanks for that advice. I hadn't thought about that! I might have to run this through a PA in that case.

I'm gonna fiddle around with the Master EQ and test it on my practice amp (Fender 15W) to see what it sounds like.

Thanks again for that !!

 

[rahul_mukerji]

So I tried this last night. I took my laptop and midi keyboard to practice. I had already programed a set into Ableton (bass, drums, tabla, synth: yes cheesy rave music).

I was able to kick in and kick out the audio as desired without issues. I could play the entire set, or just pieces: just bass or just tabla etc.

My band mates said that the audio quality wasn't very good. Thats because I took the output of the laptop to the amp (the amp had an aux channel). I'm guessing if I end up using an interface it would be better.

But it worked really well and they said if I could get a decent sound from it, we could use some samples and such.

I was able to crank out a metal jam with a rave backing ... sounded a little like Rammstein.

So I see it as a do-able solution. I just need to learn to handle the MIDI a little better and program it so that there's minumum delay between things.

 

[synrgy]

So I tried this last night. I took my laptop and midi keyboard to practice. I had already programed a set into Ableton (bass, drums, tabla, synth: yes cheesy rave music).

I was able to kick in and kick out the audio as desired without issues. I could play the entire set, or just pieces: just bass or just tabla etc.

My band mates said that the audio quality wasn't very good. Thats because I took the output of the laptop to the amp (the amp had an aux channel). I'm guessing if I end up using an interface it would be better.

But it worked really well and they said if I could get a decent sound from it, we could use some samples and such.

I was able to crank out a metal jam with a rave backing ... sounded a little like Rammstein.

So I see it as a do-able solution. I just need to learn to handle the MIDI a little better and program it so that there's minumum delay between things.

woopty woop!!

An interface will certainly help. Factory laptop audio cards aren't exactly renown for their clarity.

It should also help your MIDI latency issues.

You shouldn't need anything terribly fancy. Mine is a PCI card (doesn't help you on your laptop, I know, but..) and it's about as simple as it gets -- 2 sets balanced 1/4" outs, 1 set balanced 1/4" ins, MIDI in, MIDI out. Practially ZERO latency from that MIDI input.

As previously mentioned, the amp/PA you're running through will also make a big difference to the overall sound. Guitar amps/speakers are designed for guitar frequencies, and are not particularly dynamic in terms of trying to push anything other than guitar frequencies through them. They're going to be pretty lacking in both top and bottom end. Not noticeable when playing guitar through them, but certainly noticeable when you try to run a full mix through them.

 

[yingmin]

If anyone's interested, I have a 2U computer case with four SCSI drive bays I'm not using. You could not only use it for things like sampling or running soft synths, but if you had a Firestudio or comparable interface, you could even record all your live shows.