Modplug Live

[tvdude]

Hello everyone.  I've touched on this briefly in the past, but in the coming year, I plan to perform some of my compositions live.  Any suggestions as to how I can use modplug on stage and make it interesting?  What have you done with modplug live?

[Really Weird Person]

I have heard of Windows Live, but Modplug Live? That sounds a little bit different! And guess what, now you get to see Daisy all day(si) (:lol:)!

[Sam_Zen]

I've done quite a lot of playing modplug realtime, last year, with two other musicians in some improvisation concept.
Since I don't use VST's in my works, I can run an old laptop with W98, dedicated for this task.
Copied all my tracker files on it, so I can choose instantly a new song.
I can't give advice to make things interesting, that will depend on your performing skills.

The preparations :
1) If I knew which songs I was going to perform, I usually made a special 'condensed version' of the module.
Meaning that, normally, there is no need for duplicate patterns in the pattern row anymore, because one
can set an actual pattern to repeat itself by ticking the 'Loop Pattern'.
(The playing live GUI is of course the Pattern tab)
Another simplifier could be the fact, that only once the series of patterns with the refrain is necessary.
Every time a chorus is ended, one could jump to the start of the refrain, and after that to the start of the next chorus, etc.
2) When opened a song, but before playing, it could be desirable to mute some set of channels first,
because you want to introduce them later. Or don't use them at all.
In my case, I often muted my own solo-sounds in the song, because another person was going to play the solo.
3) Because it's no longer just a straight playback from start to finish, the playing no longer have to start at pattern 0.
One could choose a pattern at any row-position with any set of channel(s) to play some kind of intro, before jumping to 0.
4) Another thing to consider, is the way you want to 'control' the live playing. Because it is a matter of taste,
whether to do it with the mouse, with keyboard shortcuts, or a combination of both.

The conditions :
5) In this live use I consider MPT as a single instrument, not as a playback-util.
A special property of this situation is the fact, that playing doesn't mean playing single sounds or notes,
but defining 'moments of change'.
(this is why I call such electronic instruments "autophonic". They will make a certain sound, until e.g. you stop it.)
6) While playing, these moments should be in sync with the playback. Unmuting a channel in the middle of
a pattern while running gave unpredictable results in the earlier versions of MPT.
A jump in the patternrow was leading to a distorted, limped rhythm.
Thanks to Relabsoluness the 'transition' function has been implemented, which means that changing a channel setting,
or a pattern-row position, will wait to be executed until exactly after the last row of the current pattern.

The playing controls :
7) A sync jump in the pattern-row : Ctrl+Left-click. As a waiting indicator, the name of the pattern gets an underscore.
8 ) (Un)mute a channel : Also Ctrl+Left-click on a channel button
9) Two more aspects can be played : 'Solo channel' and 'Unmute all', both available with R-click of the channel-button.
A) Of course the 'Loop Pattern' function is already synced per definition.

The extra live tools :
B) At the Pattern tab one can choose a 'Main instrument', normally the one to write some code in the pattern.
(Mind having the record button disabled) This sound is directly available at the PC-keyboard to play with.
Several layouts are possible here to assign keys, but it's always a smaller area than the total octave-range.
So maybe, before starting to play, one could preset the Octave value in the main bar.
It's even possible to press several keys simultaneously, so you can make 'chords' of sounds.
With different duration of course.
C) If one finds a realtime improvisation too 'unsure', it is possible to write a score for such a performance as well.
It will probably not be a 'musical' notation, but more a 'script' to perform the changes in the playback.
One could write lines like :
~ jump to pattern 17 with Loop=on, after 3 times unmute channels 12 and 13 and disable Loop, so proceed with 18.
~ in pattern 18 set the jump back to pattern 2 after the second repeat, while muting channel 1 and 2.

Some examples :
The original tracker is serving more as an accompaniment to the other players :
D) By by politicrats - Original module  -  Use in session
E) Surfduh - Original module  -  Use in session

F) Anything goes

[Really Weird Person]

What do you think of my new signature? It is quite nice. I like how you used hexadecimal numbering! How about you take it a step further and make it base-256!

G) All of the above
H) None of the above

BTW, how do you look ten feet into a five foot deep well? Here's how, have the evil queen from enchanted push you into it!

[Sam_Zen]

The princess is cute.
Base-256 would mean :
10) All of the above
11) None of the above

[Really Weird Person]

Indeed, and she has no difficulty staying on my mind! As for the base-256 part, why would it be (10? Base-256 accepts every character as long as it does not exceed 255 (ÿ) (like how hexadecimal accepts up to 15) (F). Though, I am not sure if base-256 numbering runs the same way because of the character scope that it can handle. For example, in Hexadecimal, you would get a result of 0 if you tried to convert Princess Daisy into decimal because hexadecimal only goes to F, however, in base-256, Princess Daisy = 1,631,657,408,196,016,889,226,823,721,382,777 That is taking into account the fact that the P and the D are capitalized, all of the other letters are lowercase and it takes into account the fact that there is a space.

[Saga Musix]

oh damn, please remove this picture or at least make it a clickable thumbnail. it's really no fun to scroll a whole screen to the next posting.

[LPChip]

oh damn, please remove this picture or at least make it a clickable thumbnail. it's really no fun to scroll a whole screen to the next posting.

Done

[Really Weird Person]

Apparently Jojo was not as fond of it as Sam_Zen was (nor was LPChip)! :lol:

[Sam_Zen]

I just quickly commented the picture.
I am not fond at all of how you disturbed the topic with this material.
You tresspass the 'silent' netiquette conventions. A signature is not the place to use a movie of 30 seconds.

What's next to be weird ? A nick with 86 times the same name ?
But that's up to the admin. So I support LPChip by removing it.

Also, because I think this item has a potential to be a TechDoc, so I don't want nonsense in it.
But it's already too late for that, I'm afraid.

[Really Weird Person]

I suppose that it was quite large. And we all know how much the admin of the forum loves large pictures (especially if they are signatures obviously). :lol:

[BooT-SectoR-ViruZ]

some answers can be found here:
http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=1632.0

you might also want to check this new feature,
which comes in handy if you have a midi-controller:
http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=2015.0



P.S.:

something "live" i'm really enjoying lately is to meet with some friends who use other music software or just hardware and start a jam-session. interesting results, a lot of new ideas and you get a basic feeling of what it's like to do stuff live...

[mrvegas]

The newer versions support midi learn for VSTis?  Wow, I'll finally have to upgrade.

Thanks guys.

[Relabsoluness]

The newer versions support midi learn for VSTis?  Wow, I'll finally have to upgrade.

At the moment, only in the latest buggy test build(version 1.17.02.50) - I don't recommend using it.

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Ah, as a developer, Relabs is required to say that. I've been using it quite happily since it came out. No major problems yet.

That being said, if you *do* decide to use it, make sure you save often, and enable backups and autosave.