Blog for Gear Related posts.

Hookin’ it all up! A Laptop and IEMs on stage…

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Ok, so you decided to jump head first into using a laptop with Ableton Live, or similar software, on stage… Or you just got these really snazzy in ear wireless monitors and you’re not sure how to include them in your setup? Maybe you’re just curious about this sort of stuff…

Whatever the case may be, its always helpful to visualize whats going on. So I included a little drawing I made of our on-stage setup. Its nothing fancy, and probably not the “best” way to do these things, but you work within the resources you have available.

Anyhow, if you stare at this long enough it should make some sort of sense to you. Its sort of messy on paper, but it works out pretty well on the stage. The splitter, the wireless transmitters, the direct box for the laptop, and the monitor mixer are all in one single enclosure.

So here is the rundown. Everything runs into the splitter (Microphones, guitar setup, keyboard and computer) The splitter… um… splits… the signal of each of these to both the stage snake (which feeds the main console not shown) and the monitor mixer. From there, the two aux sends on the monitor mixer output two seperate mixes for the two in ear monitor transmitters.

As for the laptop; the software is setup to output the main output to the left channel and the click track to the right channel. The main audio from the laptop gets sent to the splitter to go to the FOH (Front of House) mixer and also the monitor mixes. The audio from the right channel (just the click) goes into the monitor mixer so that the metronome sound doesnt go into the mains (what everyone else hears).

Pretty straight forward, however, if we had the resources there are a few things we would do differently.
1) There would be a seperate monitor mix for each band member, but this would mean a much nicer mixer with more than 2 aux feeds, and additional transmitters.
2) Use an audio interface such as the presonus firebox to get more than 2 outputs from the computer. We could output each recorded instrument on its own output to give the sound person more control. We would also need a larger splitter to do this.

Hope this helps someone out.
Feel free to leave comments.

Ableton Live in Worship

For those of you who dont know, Ableton Live is a music program with features designed around live performances. What makes “Live” different from the other offerings is its focus on the ability to dynamically move from one area of a song to the next seamlessly.

We have been using Ableton Live for quite some time now, and I thought it would be a good time to do a dedicated article in the new gear blog about how we use live.

We got turned on to this idea by a service called interactive worship live, however, the tracks didnt really sound like us and each song was rather expensive. This got me thinking… We could record our own backing tracks, it would feel more authentic, and be a WHOLE LOT cheaper.

So here is how it works:
We decide on a new song. We find a version we like, and usually model our arrangement on that. We run through it in a few different keys, usually just acoustic guitar or piano, just to make sure we choose the right key.

The next step is what takes the most time… I listen to the song…A LOT… and when I feel fairly comfortable with it I load up a session in ableton live, match the tempo of the session to the original song, or the tempo we decided on, and I start recording parts. I usually lay down the guitar part first, and then put drums and bass with it. If the song requires multiple guitar parts I’ll track them all out, then remove the most prominant one which I plan to play live. I do this all in what ableton calls “arranger view” which looks like a standard DAW recorder. Arranger view is completely linear. We tend to be very structured in the way we arrange songs, so we dont jump around much…. The ability is there we just dont use it yet.

After I have all the parts recorded I bring it to the next practice and we try it. I run ableton live from a laptop. The stereo line out from the laptop is split into left and right and run into two direct boxes. All the instruments are assigned to the left channel which is split into the the monitor mix, and the main console. The click track (metronome) is assigned to the right channel, which is only routed into the monitor mixes (in ear monitors) and not the mains.
We get a count off with the click track prior to the start of the song.
This also allows us to setup the tracks so that the drums can drop out completely in parts of the song if needed, and we dont loose our timing when they come back in.

After we practice it, we usually discuss the arrangement, I make any changes the following week if necessary and we try it again the next week. Sometimes this whole process takes less than a week, and sometimes it takes several weeks, depending on how complicated the song is, and how much free time I have to work on it.

So thats basically how we use Ableton Live in worship. It works great for what we need at the moment, and there is enough flexability that it could be a great tool even if we add a drummer and bass player in the future.
We thought it would be too rigid always playing with a click track, but we love it now. It makes the music extreemly tight and allows us to add additional instruments we need to make the song work. The beauty is, if someone else joins us in the future and fills one of these parts, we have a reference for them to learn their part, and can just mute it when they are there, and have it as a backup incase they miss a service.

I just picked up an M-Audio Trigger Finger, and have been playing around with mapping triggers in ableton live to the touch pads. Looks like it could be really interesting to let the keyboard player trigger events in songs. This could be extreemly usefull when playing with a drummer. The keyboardist could use session view to start the click track, trigger loops and instruments for different sections of the song and fire off  “one-shot” sounds. We could also continue to use arranger view, and use it to “jump back” to a predefined point in the song if we need to extend it.

Christmas Parade

Vision was asked to participate in the Shallotte Christmas Parade on behalf of Open Door Baptist Ministries, but we were not able to participate due to the weather. We hope to try this again next year.

Video Gallery

We have just added a new video gallery section at http://visionmusicministries.org/?page_id=207
Look for some new videos in the future.
As always, you can still find full videos of our church services at http://www.opendoorbaptistministries.org

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