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Author Topic: Laptops live?
joe
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Posts: 224
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Post Laptops live?
on: July 28, 2012, 23:45
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Are there any other masochistic idiots forward-thinking players using laptops onstage?

Just when I think I have it dialed in, ftttt — a gig with crashes every ten minutes.
joe
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 10, 2012, 13:27
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Jeez — am I the only idiot who does the live laptop thing?

I'm thinking of trying a Mac Mini for live, using an iPad as a remote via a screen-sharing app like Splashtop.
bear

Posts: 153
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 10, 2012, 20:14
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You'd probably get more action on this in an electronica forum. I'm watching with interest, but with my limited time I'm too busy doing fingers on strings to mess with hands on mouses.

The Peavey Muse box is kind of interesting as a ready-for-stage stable PC, but the closed environment is a downer.

Oinkus

Posts: 236
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 11, 2012, 06:00
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I can't afford gear of most any kind ,just borrowed an old tascam 8 track and a boss micro br to play with for a few days.
Jim-
Williamson

Posts: 23
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 12, 2012, 06:21
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Still working up the nerve to show up with my laptop at rehearsal -- thinking to replace the two pedalbaords of stomp boxes currently in use rather than replace amp + speaker cab.
Right now my options are running GarageBand or MainStage on a next-to-last-generation MacBook Air (at 1.6ghz, a bit underpowered, right?), or GarageBand on a 1st-gen iPad (which still works even though it can't run the current OS).
Decisions...
smgear

Posts: 170
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 12, 2012, 08:20
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just to clarify Joe, what apps are you running live? I think that the ipad coupled with one of the Alesis i/o's is a pretty powerful (and stable) combo for an increasingly large range of applications. I'm waiting for someone to develop an open vst host app - which would be sweet because it's really easy to write vst apps these days. I'm crossing my fingers that windows 8/surface will be able to run a lot of the old apps and provide some good opportunities to reliably incorporate desktop apps in live situations. Someone just gave me a Nexus 7 and I see that some hackers have ported ubuntu onto it. So I might play around with that. If everything runs smoothly, it might provide some good options for portable processing.

mwseniff

Posts: 149
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 12, 2012, 09:34
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Quote from smgear on November 12, 2012, 08:20
just to clarify Joe, what apps are you running live? I think that the ipad coupled with one of the Alesis i/o's is a pretty powerful (and stable) combo for an increasingly large range of applications.

I use an iPad in an Alesis IO dock live as well as two iPod Touches to generate sounds, play found audio tracks and also as a midi device. I have never had one crash (knock on wood) while playing. One thing I have found is that you need to stop the apps from running in the background (I do this during breaks to keep memory clear). I have been very amazed at how stable the iOS devices are. I have considered using my Win7 laptop live but am a bit chicken of crashes. But I must admit it would be cool to process audio with Speakerphone live and also to use the chopper in Acid as a weird looper. Unfortunately I have been a computer support tech for many years (among many other duties) and that left me a bit paranoid. That being said there are many performers these days that rely heavily on laptops live especially some solo performers from the UK. I may try it on a session of The Dits in my basement studio if I can figure out the crashes I have been having lately.

Litos

Posts: 3
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: November 19, 2012, 14:45
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I did use a laptop on a couple gigs, mainly triggering loops (both pre-recorded and live) with Ableton Live. It was a terrible mess to say the least: since I play only small clubs, the P.A. leaves a lot to be desired, and all the tone sculpting I'd done at home was useless live. Everything sounded middy, some frequencies were lost, and I had to fight the house's 3- band EQ to make things audible.

There was also the problem of not quite being able to monitor the laptop's output with the spartan means at the venue, and I'd frequently find myself missing queues in the pre recorded stuff and losing the structure of the songs.

So... Is it interesting? Sure, but watch out for all the ways it could go wrong, because it will. It was using a laptop that drove me to solo acoustic for all my gigs from then on!
bear

Posts: 153
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: December 4, 2012, 13:55
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There's a Craig Anderton article in the current Electronic Musician (Deadmau5 cover) on gigging with laptops. A Windows tilt, but most of the tips are platform agnostic.
joe
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Posts: 224
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Post Re: Laptops live?
on: December 15, 2012, 16:04
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Craig always has a Windows tilt! Which means he never writes about the Apple-only software I worked on! 😉

Thanks for chiming in, guys. In answer to upstream tech questions:

I'm using a MacBook Pro with a Solid State drive for live shows, running only Apple's MainStage, but with a LOT of third-party plug-ins.

My work laptop is a MacBook Air, also with an SSD. I love that thing — it's the best computer I've ever owned! But it's just not powerful enough to run the massive MainStage sessions I use live. Loading a 45-minute set's worth of the sounds (maybe 50 or so patches) I use with Mental 99 absolutely maxes out the Pro, and the Air chokes every time you change patches. It works fine for recording, where you can dial in a sound, wait for the CPU to fart, and then play merrily away. But it's not quite there for live, where you want to be able to change patches without a glaring interruption or freeze.

I agree with Litos: If you are used to playing with an amp, and then show up at a rehearsal or gig with a laptop, you are almost certainly screwed. It sounds different. It feels different. You fumble things under stress. And then you crash. It took me many months of low-pressure, unpublicized gigs before I felt comfortable using a laptop live.

I feel another laptop post coming on...
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