Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Hey all, some one on the 505 list asked about how I set up my live sets, 
here's a copy of my reply.  Thought it might be interesting for a few 
people, so I posted it here too:
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I know how hard it is to set up a Live PA, and how helpful it can be to 
read other people's methods, so here's mine: 

The XL-7 is the main device, 95% of the tweaking and playing I'm doing 
during my sets are on that machine.  The SP808 really is only functioning 
as a sample playback unit, and occasionally as an effects device for those 
samples too.  It's not even synced via MIDI except to provide MIDI clock 
information for the effects.  As this is largely a hit and miss affair in 
terms of the effects actually syncing to the XL-7's tempo properly, I may 
not even bother with that MIDI cable in the future. 

Tracks 1-7 on the XL-7 are my main percussion parts, BD's, snare's HH's, 
and other drum stuff.  Track 8 is set up to Trigger samples on the SP808 
(more on this in a bit), and tracks 9-16 are my instrumental tracks.  The 
key here is that every Track has the same type of instrument for all of my 
XL-7 Patterns.  This makes it very easy to know what each track is playing 
while doing the live thing, and it also means I can switch to pretty much 
any Pattern and know how it's going to be laid out. 

All of my XL-7 Patterns are 8 measures long, I've tried other lengths, but 
this one seems to work the best for me.  If I make them shorter, I don't 
get to program that much variety into each one.  If I make them longer I 
can add more variety, but it makes switching Patterns that much more 
difficult for me.  I may set up for this really dramatic Pattern change, 
only to find out it still has 8 (or 12, 16, etc) more measures to go 
before the switch.  Then I'm just sitting there waiting, not much fun. 

In addition to the 16 sequenced tracks available in each Pattern, I also 
set up custom Triggers in my XL-7 too.  These are basically like the RPS 
function on the 505's, I have 16 of them that can be Triggered at any time 
during the set, regardless of what Pattern I'm playing.  Most of these are 
simple arpeggiated ethnic and tribal drum sounds, though a few are snare 
and HH based too.  These allow me to drop in different percussive elements 
during the set, which serve two purposes: 

1. They allow me to give the entire set more of a cohesive feel.  Since I 
use a lot of the Triggers more than once in the set, they add a subtle 
background element that helps give the whole thing sort of the same feel. 

2. They help me maintain some semblance of continuity while switching 
Patterns.  Because my Triggers are independent of the Pattern being 
played, I can switch Patterns and have the same percussion sounds still 
being sounded.  Helps to make transitions more seamless IMO. 

The SP808 has two main roles; it plays back sequenced loops and other 
samples that compliment the XL-7 Patterns, and it lets me manually drop in 
vocal samples when I want to.  The sequenced loops were originally 
constructed in Reason, using breaks I've collected or occasionally 
modifying a refill here and there.  Because Reason can act as a MIDI 
slave, I'd set the XL-7 to be the master and create my 8 bar Patterns in 
the Redrum and Dr. Rex modules.  Once I was happy with how the loop was 
complimenting the XL-7 patterns, I would set the L and R locators to 1 
measure, and export these as audio files.  So my 8 bar Reason Pattern, 
would in effect become 8 separate 1 bar audio files.  The downside to this 
is that the tempo of the Reason stuff can't be changed after the fact, so 
you have to decide on your Pattern/set tempo ahead of time.   

At this point, I would use the 808 conversion software with an external 
ZIP drive to transfer the samples to the SP808.  Each SP808 sample bank 
corresponds to an XL-7 Pattern, with the 8 samples forming the loop being 
placed on pads 1-8.  I would also place some random vocal samples on Pads 
9-16 as I saw fit. The last two songs in the set use guitar fills which I 
had recorded in Cubase SX, and then imported to the SP808 on the last 8 
pads for that Sample Pad Bank. 

As mentioned earlier, Track 8 on the XL-7 controls the SP808.  Because 
each Pad Bank in the Sp808 can be recalled via simple program changes, I 
just inserted the appropriate PC message at the beginning of each pattern 
on that track.  The XL-7 has a GREAT feature where events placed at Tick 0 
in the XL-7 are NOT repeated each time the pattern loops, so I didn't have 
to worry about the samples reloading each time the Pattern loops.  This 
way, every time I change patterns, the Sp808 automatically updates to the 
correct Sample Pad Bank.  Then I inserted CC#7 (volume) commands to 
control the volume of the Pad banks, since they varied greatly Pattern to 
Pattern.   

The last step was to insert note events at the beginning of every measure 
that would trigger each of the 8 loop pads sequentially.  Why 8 pads for 
the loop instead of just one?  Because this way I can mute the drum loop 
from the panel of the XL-7, without having to wait until the pattern loops 
around again before it starts playing again.  The most I have to wait now 
is one measure.  I did have to play with the sample start times in the 
SP808 to get everything to sync up correctly.  I think the data 
compression Roland uses messes with the sample accurate loops I had set up 
in Reason, though I can't confirm this. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with the set up, it's flexible, small, and now 
that the pre-production work is done it's pretty easy to set up and play.

rEalm 


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