robert_e_bone


This is off topic - couldn't help myself.

I had submitted a volunteer form online a couple of weeks back, to play piano/keys for one of the presidential inauguration balls they will be having here in DC at the end of the month.

Last night, I got an email from the White House - I got selected to play for one of the balls! :)

So stoked - anyways, I had indicated I had a computerized rig and all of that, and I will get to bring X2a to my jam there!  I have some projects set up that I will play along live with, having drums, bass, etc on midi tracks.

I'll try to get a picture of me, the computer screen showing Sonar up and running, and the background of the ball room, and will post it and also send it to the Bakers for their scrap book.

Too cool - had to share, hope the tux and my waistline get along.

Bob Bone

Cool Bob!
 
Send regards to the president from all of us at the forum!
 

"President" version of X2!

Congrats on the White House job. I just want to inquire about how long it takes between songs to load the next song and it's plugs. My problem performing with Sonar live has always been the time it takes to get the next song up and running. If you use playlist, when the first song ends the second song song starts and some of the instruments are still loading. Thus, several parts are missing when the song starts until everything gets loaded. If you load manually, it takes a good 30-90 seconds to load all the samples in those instruments. I was used to using an old Yamaha W5 for years where you just load a complete set worth of songs and hit play. Non-stop music for 45 minutes to an hour. I tried Sonar in live situations and the only way I have found to get seamless back to back performance from song to song is to use the Tts-1 as my tone generator. It sounds okay and gets the job done but will never touch the sound of my using Kontakt, Toontracks, Garritan, etc. I am interested in how you get such quick load times between songs if your using Sonar for your sequencer/playback. Any help from anyone would be appreciated.

Congrats Bob!!! Great gig!

  That's Fantastic. Congrats Bob!!!! You should be very proud to even be considered for a gig of this magnitude. Good Karma may have played a part with how helppful you've been around here. Once again Congrats!!!!


Rocky

Bristol_Jonesey

robert_e_bone

cliffr


Hey congratulations Bob,

what a way to start the year !.


I see in your reply to 'The Mighty Konrad', you use Forte by Brainspawn for live performance.
...
Hey Bob, hope you have fun at the White House.
I'm sure it will be a night you'll never forget :-)

... and I'll be keeping an eye out for those pics you promised.


Cheers - Cliff

Peter Banks on guitar, if memory serves, for the Yes version of America.


Here is a link to a YouTube clip of Yes actually in the studio RECORDING America.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ia8_Lav32c


Cheers, 


Bob Bone

Pretty sure it was Steve Howe on guitar

You're right Jonesey, Peter Banks played on all the other tracks of the "Yesterdays" album which was mostly a compilation.
 
Funny ... I remember being about 9 or 10 years old, my older brother and his mates introducing me to this music, the stereo blasting and my father walking in the room ... and he says "What's that racket ... it's not real music".
 
Dad did change his mind though, after he got accustomed to the "Noise" :-) 
 
Cheers - Cliff

Bristol_Jonesey

robert_e_bone

cliffr


Hey congratulations Bob,

what a way to start the year !.


I see in your reply to 'The Mighty Konrad', you use Forte by Brainspawn for live performance.
Looks very cool indeed for performing.

With Forte, are you using the producer or standard edition ?
It looks like you'd only need the producer if you 're running external MIDI hardware, or want to run it on multiple PCs.

Looks like a good piece of software kit though.
I downloaded the manual to take a peek.

I couldn't help but notice in the manual on the first few example pics of the "Scene View", using "Close to the Edge" by Yes.
One of my favourite albums from the day.

I always really liked the Yes version of America (Simon and Garfunkel) from "Yesterdays" if I remember correctly.
Ahh, have to pull out some of the golden oldies out when I get home from work tonight just for fun :-).


Hey Bob, hope you have fun at the White House.
I'm sure it will be a night you'll never forget :-)

... and I'll be keeping an eye out for those pics you promised.


Cheers - Cliff

Peter Banks on guitar, if memory serves, for the Yes version of America.


Here is a link to a YouTube clip of Yes actually in the studio RECORDING America.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ia8_Lav32c


Cheers, 


Bob Bone

Pretty sure it was Steve Howe on guitar

OK - You just helped me to clear up something that has bugged me since I first owned the Yesterdays album.  Peter Banks is the listed guitar player on that album, which is where America appeared, but I always thought the approach in that killer solo sounded SOO much like Steve Howe.  Anyways, after your post, I dig it all up on the web, and sure enough it was Steve Howe on this tune.


What happened was that Yes released Yesterday, a collection of older tunes, in 1974, shortly after Close to the Edge.  What I DIDN'T know, was that there were 2 songs on that album that were recorded LATER - America, and Dear Father.  I don't know when Dear Father was recorded, but I learned that America was actually recorded AFTER Close to the Edge, and was simply included on the Yesterdays album, leading to my believing it was Peter Banks.


So, WOW!  Thanks for clearing up that corner of dust in my cranium.  Now, if I could only do something about that GIANT pile of lint in the REST of my head.....


Bob Bone

Sidroe


Congrats on the White House job. I just want to inquire about how long it takes between songs to load the next song and it's plugs. My problem performing with Sonar live has always been the time it takes to get the next song up and running. If you use playlist, when the first song ends the second song song starts and some of the instruments are still loading. Thus, several parts are missing when the song starts until everything gets loaded. If you load manually, it takes a good 30-90 seconds to load all the samples in those instruments. I was used to using an old Yamaha W5 for years where you just load a complete set worth of songs and hit play. Non-stop music for 45 minutes to an hour. I tried Sonar in live situations and the only way I have found to get seamless back to back performance from song to song is to use the Tts-1 as my tone generator. It sounds okay and gets the job done but will never touch the sound of my using Kontakt, Toontracks, Garritan, etc. I am interested in how you get such quick load times between songs if your using Sonar for your sequencer/playback. Any help from anyone would be appreciated.

Gee Sid, you're using firefox aren't you !.
 
How many VST instruments are you playing at once (in one song) live then ?.
Whatever you're not actually physically playing with a controller should be bounced down to audio, so the only VST sample that have to load are for instruments that you physically play during the song.
 
You should be set up so that there shouldn't be much sample loading going on at all.
 
You may also want to check out Forte that Bob mentions in post #28.
 
Cheers - Cliff

@Bristol

I forgot to answer your other question, about Forte.

I use the Performer Edition, just have no need for the more expensive one.

I CAN tell you that Forte has been my GO TO live performance software for years now.  It has some amazing capabilities, the 3 principal ones for me being:

1.  Super easy building of incredibly complex presets - doing so by allowing inclusion of all kinds of VST synths (and effects), and then taking snapshots of each combination of settings from each synth - also which plugins are muted or active, and also zoning and routing, and all of that.

2.  Each of the saved presets is INSTANTLY switchable to another, as it includes an ability to have for instance an instance of Kontakt loaded with a giant piano sample, and you can tell it NOT to load samples when it comes back to that preset - so it leaves those samples in memory, making switching to that piano preset instantaneous.  And, its memory management is superb, keeping a small footprint for each preset, allowing massive synth racks to be set up without killing performance.

3.  Once the bank of presets is loaded, you can trigger preset changes from any midi event - for me I use a Behringer FCB1010 midi foot pedal board to switch between presets, so it is all done hands free.  Additionally, once you are in performance mode, that list of presets is displayed in giant font size on your computer screen, so it is super easy to see the presets without having to bend over to look at the screen.

The above may not seem like much, but our band prided itself on having the ability to instantly and seamlessly switch from one complex sound to another, and we could transition without a break in sound from faithful covers of diverse songs, like from Floyd's Money, to Baba O'Reilly, to Won't Get Fooled Again, to Genesis's Firth of Fifth.  That ability ROCKS!

Bob Bone

robert_e_bone


@Bristol

I forgot to answer your other question, about Forte.

I use the Performer Edition, just have no need for the more expensive one.

I CAN tell you that Forte has been my GO TO live performance software for years now.  It has some amazing capabilities, the 3 principal ones for me being:

1.  Super easy building of incredibly complex presets - doing so by allowing inclusion of all kinds of VST synths (and effects), and then taking snapshots of each combination of settings from each synth - also which plugins are muted or active, and also zoning and routing, and all of that.

2.  Each of the saved presets is INSTANTLY switchable to another, as it includes an ability to have for instance an instance of Kontakt loaded with a giant piano sample, and you can tell it NOT to load samples when it comes back to that preset - so it leaves those samples in memory, making switching to that piano preset instantaneous.  And, its memory management is superb, keeping a small footprint for each preset, allowing massive synth racks to be set up without killing performance.

3.  Once the bank of presets is loaded, you can trigger preset changes from any midi event - for me I use a Behringer FCB1010 midi foot pedal board to switch between presets, so it is all done hands free.  Additionally, once you are in performance mode, that list of presets is displayed in giant font size on your computer screen, so it is super easy to see the presets without having to bend over to look at the screen.

The above may not seem like much, but our band prided itself on having the ability to instantly and seamlessly switch from one complex sound to another, and we could transition without a break in sound from faithful covers of diverse songs, like from Floyd's Money, to Baba O'Reilly, to Won't Get Fooled Again, to Genesis's Firth of Fifth.  That ability ROCKS!

Bob Bone

Hey Bob,
 
that sounds awesome, Forte is headed for the top of my shopping list !.
 
I'm not playing live these days, but that could change any time.
I've had a few invites, and there are times I'd like to, but I need to get a decent laptop set up and Forte sound like it really does the business for live gigging.
Sounds like we're the same generation too with similar likes.
 
I find it funny talking to the young ones sometimes about music, you mention bands like Yes, and even Led Zep and you get a blank stare ... because they don't have a clue who you're talking about.
 
Cheers - Cliff

robert_e_bone


@Bristol

I forgot to answer your other question, about Forte.

I use the Performer Edition, just have no need for the more expensive one.

I CAN tell you that Forte has been my GO TO live performance software for years now.  It has some amazing capabilities, the 3 principal ones for me being:

1.  Super easy building of incredibly complex presets - doing so by allowing inclusion of all kinds of VST synths (and effects), and then taking snapshots of each combination of settings from each synth - also which plugins are muted or active, and also zoning and routing, and all of that.

2.  Each of the saved presets is INSTANTLY switchable to another, as it includes an ability to have for instance an instance of Kontakt loaded with a giant piano sample, and you can tell it NOT to load samples when it comes back to that preset - so it leaves those samples in memory, making switching to that piano preset instantaneous.  And, its memory management is superb, keeping a small footprint for each preset, allowing massive synth racks to be set up without killing performance.

3.  Once the bank of presets is loaded, you can trigger preset changes from any midi event - for me I use a Behringer FCB1010 midi foot pedal board to switch between presets, so it is all done hands free.  Additionally, once you are in performance mode, that list of presets is displayed in giant font size on your computer screen, so it is super easy to see the presets without having to bend over to look at the screen.

The above may not seem like much, but our band prided itself on having the ability to instantly and seamlessly switch from one complex sound to another, and we could transition without a break in sound from faithful covers of diverse songs, like from Floyd's Money, to Baba O'Reilly, to Won't Get Fooled Again, to Genesis's Firth of Fifth.  That ability ROCKS!

Bob Bone

Great information Bob - thanks very much.

But... it wasn't me that asked about Forte