Well, I did it. I’m no longer a frightened schoolboy. I bit the bullet and lost my hardware dependency this evening! Oh, I had a rack with me but left it in the van.
Just a MIDI accordion, interface, laptop, and powered speaker. And a microphone. All vocal processing was done in a Cantabile rack. I’ve spent the last two days building racks [with states] and testing. Tonight I live tested it on an audience. It went OK. They didn’t notice anything different
I have a bunch of tweaking to do to my racks. And I have a lot of prayers and wishes for the vocal processing so I may go back to hardware for that until I get happy with adjustments to the vocal rack in Cantabile.
The thing that was the most problematic for me was not having a MIDI controller to adjust individual rack/ instrument volumes on the fly. Other things need easier control, too.
Someone please recommend a MIDI controller with knobs, faders, buttons, etc that will work well for me. Doesn’t need a keyboard. That would have made it much easier for me. As it was, making adjustments took too much away from the performance. I’ll get it right though.
I at least found the goodness of performing with just a laptop, as well as the caveats that need fixing.
That’s awesome! I will say this- you will alleviate much stress if at some point you can get a duplicate machine to have ready in case your main one crashes. I’d also say that just based on what (little) I know of vocal processing I’d probably just stay with the hardware on that. (I use a Voicelive.)
I use an Akai LPD8 live, which gives you 8 knobs and 8 switches that can be configured as momentary/toggling (and they light up!). It works really well with Cantabile for me; I have bindings set up for the switches for next/previous song, song state, toggling live mode etc.
I use the Novation LaunchControl - 16 knobs and 8 big fat friendly pad buttons. Great for selecting sounds and adjusting levels. Plus, it’s pretty robust - I never really warmed to the NanoKontrol, kept losing fader caps…
I like this one, especially since it has 9 sliders instead of the 8 sliders most have. Will match up better with organ drawbars. Have you tried it Steve?
Corky…I have. It’s ultra simple and works great with an organ rack or synth. The transport controls work very well if you want to use them for mp3 control. Used the learn feature of C3 to create bindings…recognized everything with no problem.
