Concerning Playing Keyboard Live

[Elysianhero]

Ok, so I'm working on "living the dream", so to speak. I've "struck up the band" and we've played good music together. I sing as well as play guitar and keyboard. The first two are relatively simple when it comes to performance and/or recording (I generally use adobe audition for recording of guitar and vocals). As you can imagine, I write my own keyboard parts, and all of the "theory" aspects to our recorded demos.

I have performed before as a guitarist/vocalist. No big deal, plug the stuff in, set up the pedals... I'm ready to go. But... I've never performed keyboard on stage. While having access to a Grand Piano would be great, I don't. Also, a grand piano unfortunately can't simulate the effects I use in the recordings.

Ultimately... I am at a loss!

I was curious if anyone could offer some help, or perhaps a point in the correct direction to find help.

As for what I've already looked at, I thought that Native Instruments Kore 2 might be what I was looking for. It has a large selection of samples, hardware, and I've have good experiences with NI in the past. Plus, I can use the VSTs that I already use. Only... this is where the confusion comes in. Let me explain where I'm confused.

(skip this part if you'd just like to, graciously, supply some general help)

I use a Line6 TonePort KB37 audio interface for recording and midi sequencing. If I wanted to play live, would I have to hook the Line6 into my (crappy) laptop, load up FL Studio, load my samples, and then play? If this is the case... what if FL Studio crashes on me, as it sometimes does (that would be embarrassing!)? My latency isn't always the best, and it would sound choppy (the answer there is probably to get a new laptop... huh? even though this one is pretty much brand new ><). The problem there seems to be that I'd need to bring a laptop, and my junky keyboard to stage. (don't get me wrong, I love it... for recording in the studio). If I were to use Kore 2, would I have to have my laptop, plus the Kore hardware, plus my Line6? And how would I hook it into the venue's speaker systems?

Ahh!... As you can see, I have no idea what I am or should be doing! I've tried to research it on the internet, but I haven't found anything. o_o

If I need to buy equipment (a new keyboard/other hardware), so be it. I have a bit of money set aside for this exact purpose. I'm also content with "playing" the things that I've already written (I assume... I'd hit a button, and it would play... of course, timing and computer lag is an issue... I think!)

The point is, I'm at a complete loss, and I apologize for this frantic, lengthy post. Any help of any kind will be greatly appreciated, whether it's a suggestion of a helpful book, website resource, or if you can explain it to me right here.

Thanks again, OCRemix friends.

[Elysianhero]

Hmmm. No one's done this in the community? haha. I did some more research into this cool thing called a midi controller. Good one's run about $500 (better than a good keyboard which is $3000 easy). The difference is that a midi controller is sort of like a stripped keyboard. There are no samples built in, and the only think you can do with it without a computer is beat your head off of it. But, it also has more buttons and a better interface for computer use, be it real time, or in the studio.

Also, looking into computers, Macbook Pro, or Mac Pro seem to be the way to go. Anything with lots of ram! Being a windows user, this will be quite the jump.

Still, if anyone has any help concerning the original post, or feedback on this one... I still need help!

-E

[Kanthos]

Sorry for not replying sooner; I just saw your post today.

I've been doing this for a year, so I have a pretty good setup worked out. Right now, I'm more of a classic keyboard player (B3 and other organs, rhodes, wurlitzer, and of course acoustic piano) than someone who uses a lot of keyboard synths, but it shouldn't be too different from what you want. I'm in the middle of changing my setup to include a good keyboard, but I'll talk about my previous setup and then why I switched.

I play at church or on my own (no band yet), so I had two MIDI controllers: a M-Audio Axiom 61 and a M-Audio KeyStation 88es. Both are semi-weighted, because my background is playing classical and jazz piano and synth-action (next to no resistance on the keys when you press them down) just doesn't do it for me. I'd be fine with a small synth-action keyboard to play leads on, but semi-weighted is my preference.

The only real difference between a "keyboard" and a MIDI controller keyboard (there are other kinds of MIDI controllers; I recently sold a footpedal, the Behringer FCB1010) is that a keyboard actually produces sound; virtually all modern keyboards also send and receive MIDI data, so I could use a controller with a keyboard and have the keyboard produce sound for both.

I don't recommend using a DAW like FL Studio or Cubase, and *highly* recommend Kore. Kore has two big advantages over a DAW: it's standalone (so you don't load Kore into FL Studio when you're playing live; you just launch Kore, which saves you memory if you don't need the features of a DAW) and it's a VST Host, so you can launch Kore and load existing VSTs.

While Kore certainly has additional benefits for someone who tweaks individual sounds a lot, I haven't really used it for that purpose yet. I use it mainly as a great way to organize a performance. What I do is make a new Kore performance with all the VSTs I'm going to use loaded. It takes a while to start up, but when it does, I can instantly switch between presets in the performance. I mute most of the instruments for each preset, which means that although they're loaded into memory, they don't require any CPU power, and for each preset, I only unmute the instruments I want to sound. Within a preset, the unmuted VSTs are listening for data on one of two MIDI channels, so I can change for each preset whether my top or bottom keyboard controls a given VST.

Organizing a performance then is simply putting Kore presets in the right order and stepping through it. With each preset change, some instruments get muted and some get unmuted, and I'm ready to go. On stage, I do the change through the Kore Controller, so I have to press only one button on hardware that I always keep in a convenient position rather than have to go to my laptop and click and hope I don't click the wrong thing. Between songs, that's not as much of an issue, but it's *essential* if I want to change sounds for the bridge of a song or something.

With regards to your questions about lag and about how to get sound out of your laptop and into the venue's system, I'd think that the TonePort KB37 or any other audio interface (a sound card for your computer that usually is external (for a laptop, it'll definitely be), with have line and/or mic inputs and usually line outputs) should solve that problem. You set Kore or FL Studio to use this as the sound card of choice instead of your laptop's onboard sound card. In addition to letting you connect to a DI box or something similar, this also lets you record instruments or vocals if you ever have an interest in doing so. A decent audio interface (mine is an Edirol UA-25; it has two guitar/mic combo inputs and a 1/4" stereo output pair) will also take care of your latency problem. There are several types of audio drivers, but for PC, ASIO is the best by far. I get about 44 milliseconds latency with my onboard card (and find somewhere between 10 and 15 ms to be the point where I notice the lag) but get only 4 ms latency from my UA-25, with other things properly configured.

My setup on stage then looks something like this. I bring my laptop and have my audio interface connected via USB. If I'm using my own keyboards, they're both connected via USB; if I'm at church where I use theirs and mine, theirs is connected via MIDI through my audio interface. My laptop is running Kore as I described. I use a Line6 PodXT for effects (not necessary, but reduces the CPU load on my laptop), so within Kore, I use panning to affect the processing. Hard left is clean, hard right is fully processed, in the middle will send sound on both the left and right channels, etc. I have a 4-channel mixing amp, a Roland KC-150. I run the left output from my audio interface directly into the amp and the right channel into the PodXT, with the output of the PodXT going into the amp. This way, I hear the fully processed signal. Then, the line out from the amp goes into a DI box, which runs into the system.

[Kanthos]

Double-posting to keep posts a manageable length.

To answer some of your other questions, you'll probably need/want to get the following:

1) A better laptop (I'd go PC, not Mac)

2) A larger MIDI controller. 37 keys is not very much if you're a competent keyboard player.

3) Possibly a better audio interface if you're going to record more than guitar, but you probably won't need one.

4) Kore (although you can use your DAW; you'll just find Kore to be *much* easier).

I'd get a PC-based laptop because you're already an FL Studio user and probably have a lot of other PC software you'd want to use. Although, if you're using the new laptop *only* for playing, then make sure all the VSTs you already have are available in Mac-compatible versions (anything by NI is by default), and you could go the Mac route. If you keep your computer well-configured and don't install any useless stuff on it, particularly processes that use CPU power and take it away from your music, you should be able to go either way.

With a larger MIDI controller, you could use the TonePort KB37 as a second keyboard for playing lead lines or something similar. This would also mean you'd have to switch presets less often since you'd have access to two or more sounds at once instead of just one. My Axiom 61 retails for $320 or so; I managed to buy it new for $240 due to a pricing error in store when I bought it (they had priced it at the same price as the Axiom 49 which is identical but with less keys). You could also look on craigslist (free online classifieds) if you're in or near a reasonably large city. In Toronto when I just sold my Axiom, there were at least 3 other posts concerning Axioms in the last week. You can definitely get a good MIDI controller for under $500. Also, a number of people here recommend the Axiom, including djpretzel himself, so it's not just me

The KB37 is fine as an audio interface for playing live; it's only worth looking at something else if you want to record. There are a few threads on OCRemix about that kind of thing, probably under the Remixing section of the forums, and I can only really recommend the one I have.

The main thing Kore gets you is the ease of performance. With a DAW, you'll still have to load all the VSTs at once, but you won't have an easy way of muting some instruments and not others. This means that the only way to have more than two sounds loaded is to assign each to a different MIDI channel and switch the channel your keyboard(s) are sending on. Depending on the keyboard, this can be complicated and will certainly introduce a delay where you're not playing because you're pressing buttons on the keyboard. Pressing one is fine, pressing several is usually not in my experience.

[Kanthos]

And one last post.

I mentioned I was switching to a keyboard-based format. Well, for what I'm typically doing now, hauling around all this gear is a pain. I discovered the Nord line of keyboards and have ordered a Nord Stage. It has a dedicated organ module emulating the B3, Vox and Farfisa, a dedicated piano module (with samples of a few grands and uprights, rhodes, wurlitzer, and clavinet), a fairly simple synth module, some onboard effects, and the ability to use 2 synths, 2 keyboards, and 2 organ manuals at once. In most situations where I don't need synths or complex layering, this keyboard alone will be perfect, and I can always bring my laptop and some of the other gear (I've sold my Axiom and the PodXT since they won't be doing much for me in the new setup and I need the cash for the Nord Stage).

So why use a conventional keyboard setup versus a laptop setup? Well, I think simplest is best, and if I can get nearly everything I want in one keyboard and add my laptop for more synth sounds or other VSTs on the few occasions when I need it, that makes sense to me. Plus, given that I don't have a really good setup in my house for having my laptop on a desk (I do have a studio, but it has no Internet access and my wife and I usually hang out in the family room anyway), having the knobs and dials for the synth, organ, piano and effects modules under my fingertips is a good thing compared to having my laptop in some awkward spot, so I'll be able to handle the sound design part of being a keyboard player much easier.

A laptop setup (or adding a laptop to a keyboard-based setup) is the way to go when you have more sounds than you need and can't afford an expensive keyboard with large sample memory (like how Jordan Rudess of Dream Theatre will sample the sounds he wants from other keyboards and load them all onto a Korg Oasys on tour so he's only dragging around a few keyboards instead of 10+). Lots of artists do tour with laptops as part of their setup though, so it's not uncommon; you just have to take it into account.

So...hopefully I've answered all your questions. If not or you want to discuss stuff, please PM me or preferably post again here so others can learn from the thread too. I also have a few posts on my blog (link is in my signature) where I go into more detail on my setup; feel free to check those out as well.