I'm starting a new band to play live. I've been creating in the studio for years, and this will be an all original performance unit to play the music I created using Cakewalk.

Since some of the voices employed include SI electronic keyboards (and other plug ins), the thought occurred to me to use CW X1 (expanded) as sort of a live performance library that could call up a multiple keyboard configurations to be played live -- routing voices and plugins via midi (and distinctive audio outputs via the MAudio sound card) to four separate keyboard controllers at the click of a button on a per song basis -- each change of configuration from song to song to be played live by loading the CW project and having all the voices set up accordingly.

It was as I was going about trying to make this happen that I hit the wall I didn't anticipate. In CW, the only keyboard that comes through live appears to occur only on the highlighted channel. I'm not sure if CW, then, can be used in this fashion.

Is anyone using it as I want to? Is there a way to make CW do what I desire?





 

I'm sure you can get several keyboards through, just check if you have the monitor activated ... and check your prefs (if it just monitors the highlighted channel or the one(s) you select manually)

I haven't used it live ... I'm tempted to but wouldn't take my studio gear to a beer festival and building a second really beefy rig is costly ...

Good luck anyway - and let us know how the live experience went!

Cheers

i've played live using cake several times now.  my approach is a combination of the matrix view and vst instruments and pre-recorded audio tracks.  basically i set up vsts on a per channel midi basis. i'll usually be running a combination of about 3 nstances of rapture, 3 of dim pro, 3 of z3ta+2 and 3 miscs of either aria engine or massive/kontakt rigs.  i have fx that i control via midi as well.  so, with each synth on a separate channel (or same for multis) i choose the channel output via my keyboard (m-audio oxygen 49) which effectively acts as a bank/program change.  i've recently started using the nanopad2 to have a dedicated controller to trigger cells and columns in the matrix.  i have backing tracks running in audio tracks so the only thing i control there is fx.  i've also started building sfz files to work in rapture and dim pro that include keyswitching parameters so i don't have to change channels as much.  i've had as many as 24 tracks going at the same time.
it works like a charm and my system is pretty mediocre.  i've never had a crash in an hour long performance.  i did test the hell out of it beforehand to see if it would hold up, and i would recommend you do that as well. 

cheers!

the way you get around having more than one keyboard live doesn't depend on the highlighted channel, it depends on whether or not you have input echo on for those channels.  when playing live, enable input echo for all of your midi channels and you won't run into problems. 

You're the person, ST, I need to chat with. I'm a CW user back to "Pro Audio 5" ... but I've NEVER used it for this purpose. You apparently have figured out what I need to know. I hope you don't mind my questions as I attempt to gain your knowledge as I try to make, what you suggest, actually work.

What I'm getting from what you're saying is that if input echo is alive on every channel, then CW will route midi accordingly mindless of channel highlighted?

The added layer is that I'm sending signal not out through each individual keyboard device, I'm sending plugs through 4x computer soundcard output.

I'm still experimenting with setup ... but I appreciate that you claim what I want can be done.
   

right, so my oxy 49 has 16 channels.  say i route chan 1 to dimpro channel 1 input chan 2 to rap channel 2 input... and so on down the line.  i usually leave matrix view to be triggered by channel 16. on the oxy 49 there are 8 buttons. i'll map those to columns / cells to trigger.  the thing that takes the most time is STANDARDIZING everything.  work out what the common denominator between all the songs are and build all your midi programming around that.  i also find clear markings on the keyboard help.  i use colored construction paper (lol) and tape them down on the keys.  so blue maps to, say, chords and red maps to sample triggers, and yellow maps to arpeggiations etc.  for the sliders i standardize everything so one will control volume lfos and one will control cutoff etc.  it's all about planning, finding the common denominator and setting that to a fixed set of controls and then the ancillary, song dependent, controls get mapped last.  send me a pm and i'd be happy to convo.

i think a lot of people are afraid of "what if sonar crashes?!!" that's why i test thoroughly.  in my experience it takes me less time to reboot my machine and get sonar running again as it does for a guitar player to change a broken string or 2. ;)

I'm not that afraid of crashes, and I'll have the whole rig on a power conditioner/battery backup.

Sonar isn't really "working" that hard by running two or three plugs at once ... and primarily is acting as an automated midi setup on a per song basis. It's not "running" and trying to play/record.

Conceptually, it's faster (I'm hoping) to have a centralized "library" system rather than having to change things manually between songs on the fly. 

All you have to do is have your set list with the individual voicing for each song stored in a project file. Then when opening the project, have the individual keyboards assigned to consistent midi channels (i.e. keyboard one is always on midi channel one etc...), and once the project opens, it automatically sets each individual keyboard to its appropriate settings by loading the voice and assigning the routing.

What I was uncertain of was whether multiple keyboards could be played at once ... or whether you'd only hear the one where the midi channel was highlighted. We're going to have 4 separate keyboards with multiple people playing multiple parts at various times, so the ability to have Sonar play multiple plugs by multiple people inputting at once is critical.

I know that it's going to take some trial and error to figure out exactly how to make things work, but I'm glad to know that if I invest the time doing so, that it is possible. 

swamptooth


i think a lot of people are afraid of "what if sonar crashes?!!" that's why i test thoroughly.  in my experience it takes me less time to reboot my machine and get sonar running again as it does for a guitar player to change a broken string or 2. ;)

 

 
never looked at it that way, hmm...