Live performance with Midi keyboard

Support & discussion regarding DAWs and MIDI sequencers.

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folderol
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by folderol »

You might be better of creating your own voice patches with the multi-layering built in. I.e. in kit form, then just using program change. Careful use of note ranges in the kits can give some very dramatic results.

There are other ways to do this sort of thing, but the two projects start to diverge at this point.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
Frank Carvalho
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by Frank Carvalho »

I use both layering and keyboard splits in my live setups. All configurable in MidiLayer.

/Frank
Vox, Selmer, Yamaha and Leslie amplifiers. Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Segovia, Yamaha and Fender guitars. Hammond, Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Crumar, Ensoniq and Mellotron keyboards. Xubuntu+KXStudio recording setup.
ace214
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by ace214 »

Can you change between presets that aren't adjacent or do you have to go up or down?

I'm considering the Nektar Impact LX61, and I want to know if I could use the pads as preset numbers.

Ex: preset 1 is soft pads, 2 is a lead, 3 is loud pads, and I want to jump from 1 to 3 instantly
Frank Carvalho
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by Frank Carvalho »

Both. The presets appear in a list, and cursor up and down will switch to adjacent preset. But you can click on a preset directly. You may also send a PRG change to MidiLayer, which will then change the preset in MidLayer, and not the presets of Carla/host if you use filters corretly. The presets of the hosted instruments should be programmed into the MidiLayer preset, so a preset change will change all instrument preset simultaneously.

/Frank
Vox, Selmer, Yamaha and Leslie amplifiers. Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Segovia, Yamaha and Fender guitars. Hammond, Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Crumar, Ensoniq and Mellotron keyboards. Xubuntu+KXStudio recording setup.
ace214
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by ace214 »

Is there a way to mute/unmute a single element in MidiLayer from a MIDI event? I see how to do it with a mouse, and I was able to match a slider to the volume of each element, but I can't find how to set a button on my keyboard to hard mute.

It seems like I could load about 8 instruments and control them with sliders, but it's probably easier to jump around in the bank with my drum pads.

BTW, I'm hoping to not have to do any computer input during a performance...
Frank Carvalho
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by Frank Carvalho »

The thing I miss the most with MidiLayer is a possibility to "increment program by one", assigned to one button. But it may be possible to map a MIDI signal to cursor-down and cursor-up, which would have the same effect. I need that feature myself, and will report back if I figure out how to do it.
For volume, I have my setup programmed in such a way, that volume on keyboard 2 (MIDI ch 2) is always routed to the volume of the Hammond preset. The easiest way to do this is to make a separate tab for the volume routing, and reuse that tab in every preset, so the volue routing always work the same from the keyboards. That could be done for any MIDI channel or keyboard.
It think it would be possible to map a specific button to a MIDI volume message. ML has features for remapping of messages.
There is also a possibility to add small sysex messages to entry and exit of preset, so that you may pre-program volume levels for each instrument in a patch, which is something I have done a lot for my Hammond presets.

Frank
Vox, Selmer, Yamaha and Leslie amplifiers. Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Segovia, Yamaha and Fender guitars. Hammond, Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Crumar, Ensoniq and Mellotron keyboards. Xubuntu+KXStudio recording setup.
ace214
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by ace214 »

Frank Carvalho wrote:The thing I miss the most with MidiLayer is a possibility to "increment program by one", assigned to one button. But it may be possible to map a MIDI signal to cursor-down and cursor-up, which would have the same effect. I need that feature myself, and will report back if I figure out how to do it.
Do you mean scrolling within the bank window on the left of MidiLayer? Sending program changes does this for me.
I was finally able to configure buttons on my keyboard to send specific program numbers, so now I can jump between the presets within MidiLayer.

For some reason, Yoshimi is not showing up as an output for me in MidiLayer. Is there a particular trick to this? I could just use midithrough, but I'd like to be precise.
caonoize
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by caonoize »

Oddly, this is something I've thought about extensively. I have a number of keyboard controllers and a 4x4 pad. Two of them (Korg Kontrol49 and PADkontrol), can use SysEx messages to alter on-board indicators. I'm chugging along on a LuaJIT engine for routing/transforming MIDI and launching/tearing down instruments/effects. I have fsthost/WINE on my boxes, so I'm interested also in handling VST as well.

At this point, it's a few chunks of code in a git repository. I'm dealing with the session management aspects of ALSA and JACK, since this would need to do the same stuff that's done by patchage and qjackctl. While I say this, I'm not sure it will ever get beyond "works for me" stage. I'm basing the ALSA on Billam's midialsa code which has a lot of compatibility hacks, and I don't want a rat's nest of ifdefs. Nonetheless, early experiments suggest the GC won't be the latency issue I though it would.

I'll likely wind up with a system that loads a Lua (or trivially related DSL) script, and acts on MIDI messages received. I'm envisioning something of the form "if you see this message from this controller on this channel, do this." Actions might involve loading other Lua. I've no concept of a non-programmed interface at the moment.

More noise as it happens, though no promises at this time.

Also, if this is word salad, please forgive. I need to get back to sleep.
Frank Carvalho
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by Frank Carvalho »

ace214 wrote:
Frank Carvalho wrote:The thing I miss the most with MidiLayer is a possibility to "increment program by one", assigned to one button. But it may be possible to map a MIDI signal to cursor-down and cursor-up, which would have the same effect. I need that feature myself, and will report back if I figure out how to do it.
Do you mean scrolling within the bank window on the left of MidiLayer? Sending program changes does this for me.
I was finally able to configure buttons on my keyboard to send specific program numbers, so now I can jump between the presets within MidiLayer.
There is a difference between sending a specific PRG and incrementing current PRG. Sending a specific PRG is stateless in the sense that it does not depend on the state of the patch manager. But incrementing patch by one does. During performance I want to say "go to the next patch", for whatever patch I am currently on. In a live setting I do not have time to press key combinations to send "go to patch 56". There is no MIDI event (that I know of) that means "increment current PRG by one".
On the other hand, if you have a keyboard, floorboard or whatever that has a current PRG, increments PRG by one, and sends that PRG as a MIDI message, then that is all you need, but I don't have a board that does that.
ace214 wrote:For some reason, Yoshimi is not showing up as an output for me in MidiLayer. Is there a particular trick to this? I could just use midithrough, but I'd like to be precise.
Some programs need the a2j-bridge. Could that be the reason?

/Frank
Vox, Selmer, Yamaha and Leslie amplifiers. Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Segovia, Yamaha and Fender guitars. Hammond, Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Crumar, Ensoniq and Mellotron keyboards. Xubuntu+KXStudio recording setup.
ace214
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by ace214 »

Frank Carvalho wrote: On the other hand, if you have a keyboard, floorboard or whatever that has a current PRG, increments PRG by one, and sends that PRG as a MIDI message, then that is all you need, but I don't have a board that does that.
On my Nektar, the Octave and Transpose +/- buttons can be changed to be Prg +/-. Perhaps yours has something like that?
Frank Carvalho wrote:
ace214 wrote:For some reason, Yoshimi is not showing up as an output for me in MidiLayer. Is there a particular trick to this? I could just use midithrough, but I'd like to be precise.
Some programs need the a2j-bridge. Could that be the reason?
I'll look into that, thanks!
Frank Carvalho
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by Frank Carvalho »

Frank Carvalho wrote:The thing I miss the most with MidiLayer is a possibility to "increment program by one", assigned to one button. But it may be possible to map a MIDI signal to cursor-down and cursor-up, which would have the same effect. I need that feature myself, and will report back if I figure out how to do it.
Now I found out how to do this. First I looked at an ancient program called mid2key. It compiled, but was so poorly documented, that I could not figure out how to set up mappings, and frankly not even how to connect a modern MIDI port either.

But then I searched Carlas plugins, and found "midi2qwerty16", and this one does exactly what I need. With this plugin I am able to map a MIDI message to a key signal for the active window. This way I am able to map notes C7 and C8 on MIDI channel 16 respectively to DOWN and UP. Setting MidiLayer to accept program changes on channel 16 means, that when I enter the right mode (which sends on ch 16) on my foot pedal - a MIDI bass pedal board - I can use low C to select previous patch and high C to select next patch. So all patch changes may now be controlled entirely by the foot pedal.
Midi2qwerty16 also supports a stateful PrgChg+ and PrgChg-, based on the previous PRG send made, so possibly, after an init PRG send it will also support this mode of changing programs, but I haven't researched this yet. For the moment I am content with the remapping to cursor up and down.

/Frank
Vox, Selmer, Yamaha and Leslie amplifiers. Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ibanez, Washburn, Segovia, Yamaha and Fender guitars. Hammond, Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Crumar, Ensoniq and Mellotron keyboards. Xubuntu+KXStudio recording setup.
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by tramp »

Frank Carvalho wrote:I can use low C to select previous patch and high C to select next patch. So all patch changes may now be controlled entirely by the foot pedal.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, but that reminds me on the guitarix preset-picking feature.
Picking a bank and/or a preset with the strings from your guitar. :)
https://sourceforge.net/p/guitarix/wiki ... -pick-mode
On the road again.
progwolff
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by progwolff »

I might just add an application I wrote for myself through the last two months: https://github.com/progwolff/performer

This application allows you to assign a Carla patch for each song in your setlist, so you can create layers and split zones in Carla. You can then let Performer load these songs one by one . You can also assign pdf documents or images to the songs to have notes or chords shown while playing a song.

GUI elements like scrollbars and buttons are MIDI learnable.

It was not tested yet by anyone other than me, but it seems to be quite stable.

It is written primarily for KDE using Okular for viewing Documents, but Qt5 and Jack suffice. Without KDE documents will be shown in a QWebEngineView.

Please feel free to add bug reports or feature requests.
sethwid
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by sethwid »

Hi progwolff, Performer looks fantastic! I will install and start testing when I get home :D
progwolff
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Re: Live performance with Midi keyboard

Post by progwolff »

Glad you like it :)
Please let me know how it's working for you.

If you tested it yesterday and had problems with song switching, please fetch the latest commit. There was a bug I fixed in the evening.
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