Hi Paul…They all hate computers. I am still explaining it repeatedly to the same people. I mean really, how long do I have to listen to this. In one band, I’ve played with the bassist for maybe 6 years. He knows how it all works, but just can’t understand why I choose this over a 2-ton workstation keyboard. In his mind, I should use one keyboard with 4 sounds on it…organ, piano, horns,and e-piano, and switch between them. BUT, his cockamamie rig sounds like dreck. I never comment about his Chinese Bass, and Amp, and home made pedal board. A new drummer I’m working with is still commenting about my wiring harness. To that, I could comment about his constant use of his iPad, but I don’t.
Good thing is a new guitarist I am working with was curious about my amp sims. He has been a part of the local scene for over 50 yrs. He brought up the fact that he always wanted to play thru a Dumble, but they are ridiculously expensive and rare. I pulled up a Dumble sim. and his jaw dropped. At least, he doesn’t criticize my rig.
Hi.
Some people are asking for parts to build their own Keyboard. So I quickly added the parts to a shop-website:
DIY Keyboard Parts are available in the shop:
https://shop.frontpanels.de/navi.php?k=67&lang=eng
Some infos:
@Corky My band does really like @Torsten’s Live Prompter. I run it on my Cantabile machine and it brings up words and chords. I cobbled together a couple of 27" monitors and used Hercules acoustic guitar stands to make floor mounts for them. One of the guys bought a monitor holder and rigged it to his mic stand. I used a little HDMI splitter that can drive up to four screens. They haven’t really bothered me about the wires since. Although, they just can’t get that the sounds come from the tiny little computer on the floor. And they are of the mindset that real and old are better. The guy’s house we practice in is like a museum of ancient sound gear. He’s really proud of it. I think he has almost 100 guitars and maybe 20 yuge amps. Like that Acoustic bass amp I really dug back in the day, couple of Marshalls, Fenders, etc. That part’s kinda cool (but too heavy), the decrepit (ed. not decrypted) Cerwin-Vegas, not so cool anymore.
Unfortunately, my house is the same…quite the museum. 
I’ve offered using individual monitors to bandmates in the past, and a few thought it to be a good idea, but they had differing notes or lyrics from mine. I could have found a way, but they offered no help in making it happen. The drummer I mentioned above is “married” to his iPad. If someone wants to hear a song not on our list, he goes into action pulling up lyrics. He did ask if I could use an iPad to make my sounds, which of course I could. But, I told him there are limitations, and frankly, I am not going to purchase an iPad. It’s like his iPad is superior to a crappy laptop. Trying to convince people to accept technology is like pulling teeth…no one wants to do it. I am quite sure most of us here are alone in a world of old school musicians. I usually stay silent when the “comments” begin.
Thanks to @brad for making me an outcast! 
Yup 
Just one pointer here: LivePrompter has a couple of features for this. It allows you to have “custom comments” in your song files that are for individual musicians. In your settings in LivePrompter, you can then select which custom comments to display (ShowCustomComments=x), so the bassist sees different notes from the guitarist or the singer.
Same with “custom capo” (chords are transposed only for the acoustic guitarist) or “custom picture” for sheet music snippets for signature brass licks for the keyboardist that the guitarist couldn’t care less about…
So one band can work from a single set of song files, with customized views for every band member. I’ve found this extremely helpful to have everybody playing from the same basis - no more discussions about the sequence of verses, bridges and choruses…
BTW: there have been a number of little additions to LivePrompter over time - definitely worth heading over to the News page now and then…
Cheers,
Torsten
Nice prog. Torsten, did you develop it?
Yep. Torsten Live Prompter. This is in my studio.
And this is the guitar stand I appropriated to hold it:
(You will notice there ARE wires)
I actually had Live Prompter in mind for that, but, as I said, there was very little interest. I will feed this again to my 3-piece, and see if I can persuade them. The other bands will be a hard sell. Didn’t know you had some new updates, but glad to see them.
Corky
Yup, I built it a couple of years ago for my own needs. I found the stuff that is available just a bit too inconvenient - most other solutions need too much attention; LivePrompter is built to set up and just run with minimal interaction.
Not looking to make money from it; just hoping others find it useful as well.
A number of changes / enhancements have been suggested by users across the globe, so I’m profiting from giving LivePrompter away for free…
@Corky Monitors. I used to work for Compaq/HP. HP split in half and I now work for the Enterprise side–big iron. In any case, I’ve worked from a home office for over 20 years (visiting customer sites frequently). Compaq used to send us equipment all the time. HP, not as much but I had 6 or 7 unused 27" monitors. They are kind of the “entry-level” type, but they are HDMI or DisplayPort. And, I have a drawer full of adapters to go back and forth. The only thing I had to buy was a little HDMI splitter where one HDMI from the computer goes in, and it has ports for 4 to come out. It was ~$20 on Amazon.
I think it took one Song List binding to send a PC to Live Prompter. Our band had a hard copy notebook of songs (iPad would be waaaayyy too high tech), so all I had to do was find ChordPro versions, match them to the book, and it worked.I think I had one or two questions to @Torsten, but it was pretty straight forward.
The trigger thing for me was the singer had his face in the notebook all the time. Putting monitors on the floor worked great for him–easier to see, much improved. I started out with a footswitch so he could scroll and control them himself, but he didn’t use it. I got most everything to fit on one page. I think “One Headlight” didn’t fit on one page (lot of words in that really sad song), but he was OK with it.
Long answer to a simple question!
Richard
Thanks for the info Richard.
There are actually a lot of 19, 20, 21 and 22 inch rectangular monitors floating around as they were replaced by 24’s and now 27’s. The earlier monitors usually were often 1440x900 or 1600x1050 so back in the day running at native resolution things were kind of small. Windows 10 does a better job scaling so in my opinion increases the usefulness of those early monitors.
I read this entire thread today. All of it. Don’t tell my boss pls…
There’s more collective knowledge on this one thread than in, er, lots of others…
I’m still comfier with keys that can make their own noise at a push. Just one more jack lead. Maybe it’s because I work on a PC all day 
To manage the scores and the song changes on C3 I use Camelot Pro for iPad ([Camelot Pro | Audio Modeling]) loaded on my iPad Pro 11".
These are my setlists (on the left) and the songs from the selected setlist (on the right):
This is the screen showing the layers of a song: the first two are the two AU plugins (loaded on the iPad) used in the song (a good backup system in case of PC crash); the third layer launches the program change to C3 to recall the chosen song (and if you use also hardware gear the Camelot Smart Maps deeply communicate with your hardware instruments as well):
This is the score screen (also available on multiple pages and with the page change triggered by a CC message).
I am very happy with how it works!
Giovanni,
What are the advantages of using Camelot with Cantabile when, in theory, they both do the same thing? I own Camelot, but Cantabile does everything I need (plug-ins and performance audio tracks) except display my sheet music (which I use “forScore” on my iPad for that). Your ideas may offer something that I might be able to utilize.
Thanks much,
Doug
Hi Douglas,
I use Camelot Pro on my iPad and Cantabile 3 on my computer. Both are connected to my audio/midi interface (an iConnectAudio 2+).
I am playing in 3 bands in very different situations and in different types of gigs.
In my opinion, the advantages of my setup are having the best of both worlds and maximum flexibility.
Camelot Pro is definitely the best performance software for the iPad. The computer version is also very good, with very good management of plugins and audio tracks, as well as of any external hardware instrument.
But, although it is used by many musicians, even professionals, Cantabile 3 is superior, especially because of its bindings system. For example, I use a Behringer X-Touch Mini as my personal mixer: thanks to the bindings of my “background rack” the knobs of the X-Touch are always perfectly aligned with the gains of the various racks of each of my songs and at any time I can see on the X-Touch the movement of the audio levels of each rack while I’m playing.
So, in a normal situation, my iPad with Camelot Pro is the centre of my setup: from there I choose the songs to play with Cantabile 3 and read out my sheet music. In addition, using the excellent AU plugins loaded on the iPad, I have a great backup system in case of a computer crash, without the need to carry around another backup computer.
If I decide to use my own hardware setup, based on a Nord Stage 3, the iPad is ready to drive that as well without the need for any changes.
If, for various reasons, I decide, as has happened to me several times, to play only with the iPad, there is no problem: everything is ready, even if clearly some plugins on the computer are superior to those loaded on the iPad.
I don’t want to say that mine is the only solution, there are probably even better ones, but it is the one that fully meets my needs.
And Camelot Pro for the iPad costs only $19.99.
Let me know what you think about it.
Hi
Giovanni
Giovanni,
Thanks for taking the time to answer my inquiry. I have, basically, the same setup at my fingertips (Cantabile 3, Camelot Pro [for Windows & iOS], Korg nanoKONTROL2, keyboard controllers [for me & my wife], Roland Integra-7 [can’t afford a Nord] and forScore [sheet music display]). Also, we each use an iConnectMIDI4+ to provide the connection for our individual station.
Camelot has been “in storage” since I acquired it, because it’s operation, to me, has a learning curve that I didn’t feel the need to learn at this point (Cantabile with forScore does all I need to perform). Your post made me curious as to what I could do with Camelot on my iPad. If I understand correctly, you have Cantabile set as your Host and Camelot set as your “remote” controller? Right now, Cantabile has our backing track running through a Media Player. The nanKONTROL2 is the Transport control, Song selector, Rack selector and Gain control. I use forScore to handle our Performance Set List and it loads the Songs from the Cantabile Set List (Cantabile will also load the correct Song on foreScore).
I’ll need to spend some time with Camelot to see if there would be an improvement to my work flow.
Thanks,
Doug
I’ve been a Camelot beta tester since I started using Swam vsts sometime back. As you guys replied, I also find it to be light years behind Cantabile. Never thought about using it in that way, but I totally understand. I do not use backing tracks or have a need for sheet music, and have no additional external devices beyond a foot pedal to keep up with. Since I gig a lot, setup and teardown time is essential in many cases, which is why I spent lock down last year downsizing and modernizing my gear.
I use Cantabile show notes for lyrics and song maps. It works great. The future of Cantabile looks amazing, as Brad is taking it to a much higher level. Can’t wait to integrate it into my system.
Thanks for sharing…it’s always a learning experience seeing how others do their thing. 