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

You could help me alot in detailed description on how do you prepare your 
live sets:

>>>Live sets to me are 90% about the preperation, and 10% about the 
performance.  I think there's two main schools of thought when it comes to 
playing live, planning so you can improvise, and planning so that you give 
the audience a repeatable performance.  I personally am the former type, I 
like constant threat of chaos when I perform, though certainly I plan on 
some sort of back up plan too. Please keep in mind that anything I list 
below is JUST MY METHOD of doing things live, there's certainly many, many 
ways to do it. <<<

How many patterns you're using for a song.

>>>For live stuff, typically only one.  I tend to think always think of 
each Pattern as it's own song, or shall I say the fundamentals of the 
song.  All the parts are there, and it's up to me to perform it in a way 
that adds variety and interest.  That being said, I do keep my past XL-7 
contest songs in the XL-7 for use in case things go south (er sudden trips 
to the bathroom too), as I can just load those up and press play and know 
that everything is done already and I have 6 minutes to grab another drink 
or get rid of one.  Not that I would do this for a larger show mind you :)

Anyway, right now each of my patterns is 16 measures long, though I'm 
toying with the ideal of shortening this back to the 8 measures I used to 
use in the past when I did live sets.  16 is nice because I can program 
more variations within the pattern, but it's a pain when I go to switch 
patterns and realize I've still got 15 measures to go too.  Each of my 
User Banks is organized by type so Bank 0 is 4/4 and trance stuff, Bank 1 
is breaks, Bank 2 is DnB, Bank 3 is downtempo, etc.  Bank 8 contains the 
Pattern data for any of my Songs, so I'm free to change up my Pattern 
order in any of the other Banks without worrying about affecting my Songs. 
 Additionally, if I'm going to be playing out somewhere, I copy all of the 
Patterns I want to play in the correct order to Bank 7 and use that Bank 
live.  I think of it as a set list, and it's easier to switch to the next 
Pattern than having to jump around between Banks, though that is obviously 
still an option if I think it's appropriate. <<<

I'm asking this because my top notch patterns are 32 bar long some are 
even 64 bar long (yes it works ! bar counter stays stuck at 32 but you 
hear it all !!!):

>>>HOW did you pull that off? :) <<<

Do you make your patterns to fit only in their respective song or to be 
blended with another ones? 

>>>Well, I consider each Pattern as an independant Song.  To help 
facilitate blending and switching between them all, I stick with a set 
Track/Mute layout.  IE, BD is always on Track 1, Snare on 2, bassline on 
9, Pads on 10, leads on 11-12, etc.  That way I know where everything is 
instinctively when I'm X-mixing between Patterns. <<<

Do you work on pre-defined transitions or just rely on improvisation?

>>>Always improv.  I'll do a trial run of the set first, just to make srue 
things aren't glaringly out of key or to get some rough ideas on what 
works between two Patterns, but that's it.  Additionally I made custom 
Presets that act as drum RPS phrases in the Triggers (via arps, lots of 
info I posted on this if you search the message archives from last year), 
and I use these while doing transisions too.  That way, when then switch 
Patterns, there's another level of consistancey playing.  This topic could 
be a whole nother email though.... <<<

rEalm
 


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