![]() I recently had a director come up to me, who worked with another sound designer, and asked me if the following was true or not: One of the big drawbacks of SFX and QLab is that once it's programmed it's difficult to change things. We have a Novation Launchpad connected to Ableton with a bunch of sound effects on it, so that the operator can respond quickly to the performer. Both shows involve a degree of the performers playing things differently each performance. In addition to running the music side of things, Ableton is also taking care of some of the spot effects. We can also do live volume automation, filter sweeps, xfade to reverb, complex audio effects processing simply by sending MIDI control change information from QLab. All we have to do is send a MIDI note from QLab or SFX to Ableton and Ableton takes care of the rest. Ableton Live can very easily handle all that vamping and changing of tempo with minimal programming and does it in a musical way. The pieces of music are often at different tempos and time signatures too. Over the course of 5 minutes we'd go through maybe 15 pieces of music, vamping sections as needed, then moving into the next bit of transitional music leading into another holding loop, and so on. So we split the music in sections, a mix of holding loops and transitional bits of music. We knew that we wanted the music to flow through the show and transition on the beat. There is a degree where the performers are working off the audience's reactions so sequences never last the same amount of time. These shows have recorded music running continuously through the piece. To take Cat in the Hat and Beauty and the Beast, both at the National Theatre, as examples As an analogy, SFX & QLab are most closely related to multiple linear playback devices like CD players whilst Ableton is closer to a sampler. and I pretty much always use it in combination with QLab or SFX, because it does things that they just can't do. I'm afraid I'm not sure exactly in what way but I have an idea he used to integrate it with SFX.Ībleton Live is immensely useful for theatre performance. I have a vague idea that Gareth Fry (the only London sound designer to win two Olivier's for Sound Design) uses Abelton as part of his work flow. I suppose there is a time-saving to be had if you don't have to take files form your creating programme and load them into your operating software, so this might be an argument in its favour. I just want to hit a big button marked "GO" when the DSM tells me to! (cheaper than a B77 too - even without allowing for inflation!) I'm not a gigging musician, and I have no desire to be a DJ. cheaper than SFX and Ableton Live, easier to operate, clearer interface). It is a more recent software version, so maybe that is something to do with it.īut for a theatre operating system, give me a B77 anyday. Why the laptop wouldn't do this, I don't know, and as far as I know, nothing special has been done to the new software on the Mini to enable this facility, it seems to be the default. ![]() The crash issues are now resolved, (it still crashes when we load the show, but you empty the cache and reopen, and it works until the next time you shut it down) so we swapped back to the mac mini today, and I must say this is a major improvement - bigger screen, easier to read, and we now discover that the cue list will sequence - just hit return and the next cue fires. The theatre had bought the software and loaded it onto their mac mini, but there were some crash issues, so for safety, the designer left his machine behind. Initially using the sound designer's laptop, which was a macbook with a tiny screen - not the easiest of interfaces. which is nothing to do with the software of course. ![]() But no mishaps, though a couple of instances of misunderstanding the cuesheet, meant we had no interval music. Luckily not a complicated or fast moving show, as there seemed to be no cue sequence facility - each cue clicked on individually to start. I ended up doing the show cold, as my colleague's partner went into labour a week early on the day he was supposed to teach me the show. Well I've now done a few performances of the show using Ableton, and it does a job, but wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list as far as I'm concerned.
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