New To Midi Options

[johnmichaelhruby]

I understand the concept. I just want a few opinions. I want to use MIDI live. So I want to go controller to a rack mount unit? If so... what type of rack units am I looking at? I am curious to know about expensive and inexpensive models. Does the routing then go to a laptop? Is an Ibook good enough to run this? I also wanted a program to run pre-recorded audio during the live performance. Will the ibook be able to handle both? Am I an idiot? Answers to any of these questions is appreciated. Thanks all.

[mortalengines]

Controllers can be as cheap or as expensive as you want them to be- it just gets down to the amount of bells & whistles (or knobs & sliders) that you want. I have an M-audio Oxygen 8 that only cost around 120 bucks & eventually, I may want more, but for right now I am pretty happy with it. It's small & travels quite easily in a gig bag made just for it.

The I-book issue is another thing altogether. You will need alot of RAM & a fairly fast processor & I don't know about the I-book but I have to be fairly conscious of resource usage with my G4 powerbook while running Ableton Live (which is great by the way for using Loops & virtual instruments). However, you will probably be in pretty good shape for using Reason as it doesn't require an outrageous amount of RAM or CPU & if you bought Recycle to go with Reason you can use whatever loops you want in the form of REX files in addition to Reason's pretty good selection of synths & effects.

[johnmichaelhruby]

thanks. how do you scroll through your sounds live? via the controller? or does ableton have some hardware you put into your rack mount? is ableton top of the line? i am willing to spend the money. what is ideal?

[Luke Davison]

I can suggest Abelton Live as your software, for sure, a GREAT program. As for the other things, i've never done it, so hopefully someone with experience doing this will answer for you, but definetely get yourself Abelton, it's the tops of the tops.

This post has been edited by Luke Davison: Sun 4 Dec 2005, 21:18

[mortalengines]

Ableton has a monitor section separate from the main mix out so it would be a simple issue of using a soundcard like an Echo Indigo DJ to audition loops prior to dropping them into the mix- I haven't actually done it but I know it's there to use.