Huge thanks go to following people without whom my live wouldn't have been possible - Oskari Tammelin (Buzz's creator) for making Buzz - Machine/plugin coders Oskari, Geonik, Arguru, Rout, SurfSmurf, Dex, Zwar and Joachim who made the plugins I created my live with. - Azo for borrowing his synth for midiknobs and borrowing his hands for tweaking those knobs. ********************* The following two mails were posted to buzz_talk. I hope they give some light on the problems I had with my first live performance. ********************* Date: Sep 17 2000 12:13:23 EDT From: Mikko Apo Subject: [Buzz] The live experience On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, Dorian Mode wrote: > if i recall correctly, you told you did a live Buzz performance? if so, > could you elaborate somewhat, it just interests me, what kind of event it > was, what kind of sound system, any problems, audience response or comments, > did you record/tape it etc? Uh, this mail got real long, but it's a pretty complete description of the whole process for the live. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The live was a week ago at a local rave. There were 11 other clubs/happenings that night in Helsinki area so the small scene was even more divided then usual. About 250 people came to the event. I was playing from about 4kw sound system with the other half of it standing 1 meter away on my left side so I had to use ear plugs under my head phones (I use those that look like a christmas tree because I can't afford those pro ones and the really cheap ones are way too crappy). My equipment was my computer and a synth borrowed from my friend to be used as a midi controller (it has lots of knobs). I setup my monitor, keyboard and mouse on a huge speaker (which wasn't in use) and that was a really good platform because I didn't have to crouch over the keyboard (the speaker is about 1 meter tall) -> no back pains and it was really sturdy too so I could lean to it. I put the computer to the right side of the speaker (away from the magnetic and infra/sub waves from the speaker tower on my left) and I masked it with black plastic (the box is one of those not-so-cool-looking grayish boxes). I setup the system as stable as I could. I changed the latency setting in DX output to 100ms, I used Microsoft's TweakUI tool to remove menu animation and tooltips and other useless effects which might cause the sound to stutter. I had disabled screensaver and hd idle timeout. I didn't rip my F1 key from my keyboard because I trusted that I wouldn't touch it while playing (and I didn't). I had also taken lots of rca-wires and plugs and one power cord for all my power needs. It narrows the problems down if you're as self-sufficient as possible. The ideal thing is to have everything with you and you just give the organizers the end of your output wire and your power cord's plug part. If you think that "I think they'll have enough electric plugs for me too" you'll probably notice at the venue that you can't plug your monitor to anything. Oh and a little spotlight is nice too if you want to make sure you see something ;) Ok, back to the setting up process: Now my problems started. I hadn't memorized the output ports of my sblive so it took a while until I got sound to the mixer that was used by the other live that performed there too (my friend who borrowed the synth was part of that live). They were practicing their act so I couldn't practice mine (no way to listen to the output of my computer). When they ended their stuff I connected the serial midioutput box to the other serial port of my computer. This was the problem #2. I hadn't checked if the system worked properly before the evening so of course the serial port was disabled and didn't have a free irq. Good thing the organizers had screwdrivers because I had to open up my computer and rip out the isa network-card to get a free irq. After I got the midioutput box working we (me&my friend) assigned the used midi knobs to the correct parameters in Buzz. Setting up the system to fully working status and handling the problems took more then I had expected, almost two hours. Most of the problems so far could have been easily avoided by proper planning. Now I'll explain a little bit about the setup in Buzz. I had decided that I'll make one huge tune which contained all the songs for the following reasons: 1. some machines crash while loaded 2. some machines jam the computer while loading 3. no need to load any tunes so I could make the live flow from one song to the other 4. the system wouldn't be doing anything else then playing the song -> more stable. I make monotonic techno so I was able to do most of the songs with a pretty simple setup. Two Rout 909s for drum tracks (like the real thing Rout909 is pretty fast to edit on the fly, I didn't want to mess around with matilde tracker with 9 tracks or something like that), something to make the acid bassline, one matilde tracker for filtered breakbeats and one matilde tracker for speech. Two 909s because I put the drumtracks thru limitter and bassdrums have a bad habit of making the hihats disappear when the sound goes thru a limitter. I used lots of eq-3s to get each signal path to sound right and then connected all the sources to "jeskola mixer". When I made the tracks I noticed that when you stopped the song, because the 909 is not coded properly, the cpu usage of Mixer could rise to 40%. This because the Mixer doesn't like zero signal 909s and other machines sometimes produce. I fixed this with strategically placed "cheapo fixers" (noise level set to -120dB). I imported one song to be used as the last track and that had almost the same amount of machines as the setup for the rest of the live =) I had decided that I would tweak the main sequence live. I created 16/32 tick long patterns for drums, acid and speech. I made patterns for each tune which contained the settings for the tune, so I could put the pattern to the main sequence and the machine would have right settings. The main idea behind "tweaking the main sequence" was that I would have a skeleton main sequence ready before the live. During the live I would loop parts of the main sequence, edit them how ever I wish and when I would want to move on I would move the bottom limit of the loop and then the upper limit too. I asked my friend (who had loaned the synth) to handle the acid&909 instrument volume tweaking with his synth and I counted on that to make variations to the basic patterns (I didn't record any filter tweaks on separate patterns). I finished making the patterns six 6am in morning before the rave. I slept enough, started packing my stuff around 6pm and I was at the venue around eight. It took me two hours to setup my system so at 10pm I was almost ready, BUT I DIDN'T HAVE MY MAIN SKELETON SEQUENCE READY (I hope you learn from this mistake ;) and my live was going to start at 11pm. Setting up the computer took much longer then I had expected so I had one hour to make the sequence. I had it ready about ten minutes before my live was going to start. After the last track from the dj ended I had a little silent moment before I pressed F6. The speech unit said "bitstream" then was a long silence untill the first deep acid bassline started. The live itself went pretty smooth. These are the problems I encountered: 1. Midi knobs & Buzz parameters are not synched in any way. If I used my tune preset patterns to set the parameters to certain values, moving the midi knob made the parameter jump to the value defined by the midi knob. One time the 909 cymbal ride to come out distorted and at full volume from 4kw sound system and that is a REALLY LOUD SOUND. Here are two solutions to the problem (I've talked to Oskari about both of these): a) Some kind of parameter ranges for machine parameters. If I would have been able to limit 909 cymbal ride volume to values between 0-40 it wouldn't have blasted out that loud. b) Some midi controller boxes can adjust their knobs if the parameter is changed elsewhere (www.ibk-midi.de 10control for example) but currently Buzz doesn't support this. 2. Not enough variation. The patterns which I had made were too simple and too short. I wasn't able to jam enough because I was too busy fixing up the drum tracks (there were six tracks dedicated for all drums in sequence editor). For the last track I had made 512 tick long filter sweep which was a real relief after having to deal with 16 tick long drum patterns. So in the future I will make longer drum tracks and I will special patterns if I want special sounds. 3. Time problems. I went too fast down the sequence and I had two songs left when my friend said that "Yea, 12minutes done!". I really had no idea that I had went so fast and I paniced for a moment, then I calmed down and we continued the live and jammed away =) Making the main skeleton sequence more precise would have helped in keeping the live in schedule. (And having the main sequence ready more then 10 minutes before the show would have helped too ;) btw. the live was 30 minutes long, just a suitable length for a first try =) 4. Recording problems. The guy who was supposed to record the thing forgot to press "rec". Yep, first five minutes are lost. I already said that the live went ok and I'm pretty happy with the experience. I've been a techno DJ for over 3.5 years now so performing in front of an audience wasn't a new expience for me, but I was stressed out before the live =) The problems I had increased the stress factor but once I got the live rolling I forgot to stress. The live itself didn't really go the way I had planned it because I was in such a hurry when going thru the main sequence but the people seemed to like it anyway. The dancers stayed on the floor and I've gotten positive feedback after about the live itself and the mp3 I made from the recording. The mp3 will be available soon on mp3.com/thebitstream and I've been planning on making "this is how the live should have sounded" version too. I hope this post gives some clues about what do to and what to avoid when preparing for a live. -- "I saw the sun, I did I did!" Mikko Apo * +358-9-4682937 * http://www.iki.fi/apo Date: Sep 18 2000 15:12:45 EDT From: Mikko Apo Subject: Re: [Buzz] The live experience > What's your system (Cpu, HD, RAM, AUDIO card...) ???? Cel366 running at 550 (rock steady). SBLive running with EMU APS drivers, but I used the DX output driver in Buzz because there is no latency setting in the Buzz ASIO drivers. The APS DX output seems to work better then SBLive DX (12ms seems to be the absolute minimum limit, below that stutters are guaranteed). 192MB ram, 100mb swap, 7200rpm 20Gb IBM IDE hd. The reason why I optimized my system so much is the fear of possible stuttering. Nothing breaks the good feeling better then malfunctioning equipment. > I should not have this problem if I use my old SB 16, right ? > Are there lots of benefits using a SB LIVE with buzz ??? With EMU APS drivers you get to enjoy two different stereo output channels. The output drivers are better then the SBLive drivers so this improves the overall system performance. > > connected all the sources to "jeskola mixer". > is it a specific machine or the master ?? "jeskola mixer" comes with the buzz12betas -> jeskola.com/beta/ > > I asked my friend (who had loaned the synth) to handle > > the acid&909 instrument volume tweaking with his synth and I counted on > > that to make variations to the basic patterns > didnt you use the knobs to variate cutoff/resonance and things like these in > the bass/acid lines ?? I think that's just what I said: "the acid" and "909 instrument volume" tweaking -> "the acid tweaking" and "909 instrument volume tweaking" > > b) Some midi controller boxes can adjust their knobs if the parameter is > > changed elsewhere (www.ibk-midi.de 10control for example) but currently > You mean the knobs rotate automatically as you change the parameters on the > PC ?? No. The knobs show the values in the LCD screen above them. The midibox doesn't need to turn the knobs, it just updates the LCD screen and internal values. Visit the url I already gave, there's information about it. > what BMP did you use ??? 145bpm 4tpb. The previous dj played at 144 so they matched nicely. I created the songs in a way that allowed me to change the speed to anything I liked (I cut the breakbeat to individual samples so the breakbeat streched when I changed the bpm). > When will you reach MILAN in your european TOUR :)))))))))))) ??? When someone holds a rave there and gives me some money ;) Seriously, I'm planning on buying an ibk 10control, but I want to make more and better sounding material before I really try to break through to the real music business. -- "I saw the sun, I did I did!" Mikko Apo * +358-9-4682937 * http://www.iki.fi/apo