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auditory hallucinations
14-09-2005, 02:02 PM
My setup is just getting outa control and what's worse isn't giving out any results at the moment - the main gear I've got is:

TR909 - main clock source, used for programming drum loops and also to trigger E-mu sampler and Juno synth through Ext Instrument mode (really basic midi spec - sends on one channel only)
Emu Sampler (can receive midi from the pc & the 909 via midi merge box)
Juno 60 (gets midi through a convertor)
TB 303 - synced to the 909
PC - can run Live and Cubase sx, can receive clock from the 909 and also send midi out

So I start off programming a synth line on the Juno from the 909 step sequencer, get it sounding good. If I wanna put another synth line over the top of that, I need to sample the Juno in to a) free up the 909 sequencer & b) cos the Juno isn't multi-timral

But to trigger the resulting audio loop in the sampler, I need to run Live in sync mode and have it sending basic midi to the sampler. This is kinda ok, but Live isn't too stable in sync mode and you get a lot of midi errors (missed notes, hiccups etc).

If I just put the sampled loop into the sampler (on the channel that the 909 fires it on), the new synth loop in the Juno will respond to that trigger, which is bad)

But doing this frees up the 909 sequencer (it only sends on one channel) so I can build new patterns on the Juno or the sampler (I have one midi channel in the sampler set up to receive triggers from the 909)

I mean this kinda works, but it's a long process and I was wondering if anyone with experience of using hardware setups and in particular the 909 could think of any other ways to go about using the stuff? Obviously you could say "ditch the hardware, use the computer for everything" and yeh that's valid but not the way I wanna work…

The other way of doing it would be to use Cubase, but of course they removed the option to sync to an external clock so you'd need to sample the drumloops into Cubase, but that's hard to get them spot on and get the timing back

At the moment even just sorting everything out seems like so much hard work and I just don't seem to be getting much fun out of it all, which is the whole point really. I've read this e-mail back and totally confused myself all over again...

Thanks for any advice, much appreciated :)

grain
27-09-2005, 04:39 AM
I have a different set-up, but similar in ways...

Yamaha RM1X drum machine/midi sequencer
Access Virus Indigo 2 Synth
PC running Live

So, hardware and software, similar in that respect... this seems to work for me -

RM1X midi out > Virus midi in.
Virus midi out > RM1X midi in.
Virus midi thru > PC midi in.

I program everything on the hardware, as i suspect you do, then Live picks up the midi clock signal (sync mode set to midi clock) and the EXT button is activated...
Set this up so live is synced.
(you press start on your hardware and Live kicks off. It will be badly synced till you go into pref, while your hardware plays a simple 4/4 kick and have Live play a simple 4/4 [say, closed hat] on every beat, then adjust the sync delay while it plays back till its proper synced [mine is set to -24ms])
Now Live is synced to your gear and this means if you have a line running into your PC from your mixer, you can for instance, start the 909 and Juno (live will now kick off too of course) but have just the sends from the Juno channel running into a new audio channel on Live, hit record on the Live channel - there goes that loop into Live, then start a fresh sound with the Juno while still playing back the recorded loop and 909.... and just keep layering your sounds as you create them and your hardware can always be in the mix and it will all be in sync with the audio running on Live...

Eventually you will have enough audio in Live to compose your finished track, then when you have plenty of songs finished just cut them up and throw them all into a new Live set, and still be able to jam all your original hardware patterns over the top...

I dunno, this method seems to be sweet with me at the mo...

You mentioned some kind of unstableness with Live, check you are running the ASIO drivers if you have them , I think they are the best.. Although you were saying about midi notes being dropped and all - this method just uses Live as a synced sampler, dealing with just audio - not using the midi editor, but you can also use it if you have extra midi ins.

Hope this might be some help

;)

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