Using A Mac In Performance, see title Options

[bradygr]

My post is a simple inquiry...how do I learn of the potential of the Mac in real-time performing. I have seen it used in such diverse settings as avante-gard classical music concerts to djs using it. I would like to explore the possibilities.

Please if you can guide me to this knowledge, I would appreciate it...I took music technology classes in college, but that only focused on Finale, so, as you can see, the schools arnt hip to what is really going on.

I am mainly interested in sampling possibillities, but also sound creation/synthezisers. Also, what kind of equipment do you need both internally, and externally to make this happen...I seriously doubt it is as easy as hooking your speaker jack in the back up to your amplifier.

Thanks,
Bradygroscost@sbcglobal.net

[nate d]

Make that two votes for Ableton Live. A lot of artists (such as The Notwist, the Rara Avis, and John Scofield) are using it to basically play their PowerBooks as an instrument in conjunction with the rest of the band. You can import all of your samples into it and play with them to your heart's content using the Warp feature.

I again agree with CrankThat to check out Propellerhead Reason for sound creation. Soft Synths, Samplers, Drum Machines, Effects....everything you'd ever need!

As for what hardware you'd need, several artists are using their built in sound card without any external interface! I remember reading one of the interviews on the Ableton Live Artists page where they're using two Powerbooks running Live using the built in jack plugged into a mixer. There are several audio interfaces you could look into, however, such as the EMI 6/2, the Emagic PCMCIA line (good for djs; separate monitoring output)...that's all I can think of now. But any audio interface with multiple outputs will do!

Good luck!