Ableton to Qlab...?

[Scott M.]

Hello - 

I'm considering moving to Qlab from Ableton for live music/show control. From what I've read Qlab looks like it will do what I need, but wanted to ask some other questions, I know nothing about Qlab.

Is the following possible:

We use ableton to: play backing tracks, and our whole show is open at once, so 45 songs loaded with up to 6 backing tracks per. Patch changes are made on my Axe-Fx (via a midi file I make in Logic Pro). MTC or LTC sent to Jands Vista 2 to control lights. Play music before, during and after our show. Can start and stop show via a midi pedal. And also when I have to hit stop cause our singer gets lost (LOL), it will go directy to the next song so I just have to hit start to play next song. Also when I want to rearrange our songlist, is this easy to do in Qlab?

Looks easy, but how hard is it to do the above? 

Thanks for any input!

[Daniel Perelstein]

That is all easy in QLab.

Dan

Daniel Perelstein                 

Full-service music and sound for the theater

Musical Direction | Sound Design | Composition | Multi-Instrumentalist
Conducting, Arranging & Orchestrations, Vocal Coaching, Accompanying
www . danielperelstein . com

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[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Scott,

Welcome to the list, it’s nice to have you here.

A few thoughts interspersed below:

On October 15, 2014 at 12:37:01 PM, Scott M. (meta...@gmail.com) wrote:

Hello - 

I'm considering moving to Qlab from Ableton for live music/show control. From what I've read Qlab looks like it will do what I need, but wanted to ask some other questions, I know nothing about Qlab.

Is the following possible:

We use ableton to: play backing tracks, and our whole show is open at once, so 45 songs loaded with up to 6 backing tracks per.

I’m not terribly familiar with Ableton, so forgive my inability to make a direct comparison, but yes that’s the kind of thing you could do in QLab. 

In QLab there is a concept of a cue being loaded, which allows you to have very large workspaces where the files are not all simultaneously in memory at the same time.  

In this case you might wish to have 45 group cues (one per song) set to “start all children simultaneously” and the 6 tracks in each group.  Starting the group cue would start all the tracks together and they would play back in sync.

 Patch changes are made on my Axe-Fx (via a midi file I make in Logic Pro). 

A MIDI File cue in QLab can send out midi messages stored in a midi file.

MTC or LTC sent to Jands Vista 2 to control lights. 

The Timecode cue can do that part.

Play music before, during and after our show. Can start and stop show via a midi pedal. 

In the workspace settings you can assign a custom MIDI message to actions such as pause and resume.

And also when I have to hit stop cause our singer gets lost (LOL), it will go directy to the next song so I just have to hit start to play next song.

The cue list of group cues would be played in order, if you are sending a message to trigger the GO on the cue list.  Other options are also possible.

 Also when I want to rearrange our songlist, is this easy to do in Qlab?

If you have the tracks in group cues you can drag the groups to reorder them in the cue list.

Let me know if I can clarify anything.

Best,

Chris

[Scott M.]

cool......thanks guys!....will give the free version a try.....

[Scott M.]

Gave qlab a spin last night....really liking it.....SO much easier than Ableton (where it seems everything I go to do is some work around that requires a bunch of steps, it also does not output LTC or MTC).....couple questions:

1) How do I program a stop from a midi foot pedal where, anytime I hit stop it will highlight the next group to be ready to play?

2) In ableton our drummer triggers some drum sounds that are in ableton, is this possible?

Thanks for your help!

[micpool]

On Thursday, October 16, 2014 12:17:36 PM UTC+1, Scott M. wrote:

1) How do I program a stop from a midi foot pedal where, anytime I hit stop it will highlight the next group to be ready to play?

Is your MIDI foot pedal set up as a GO Button If so, the next group (if that is what you have programmed as the next cue) will be ready to play as soon as  you start the current cue with your pedal.

Pressing ESC would fade the currently running group without moving the playhead from the next group.

Alternatively you could put a fade targeting the currently running group as your next cue So you would press your MIDI pedal to GO on the first song group. The playhead would then advance to the next cue which would be a fade of that song. When you GO on that with your MIDI pedal the fade would run and your playhead will be ready on your next group.

 

2) In ableton our drummer triggers some drum sounds that are in ableton, is this possible?

You can trigger individual audio Cues by setting their MIDI triggers on the Basics tab of an audio cue. However there are no retrigger options, a running sound can't play again till it has stopped, and no velocity sensitivity, so they are not really intended as playable drum triggers.

With a reasonably powerful machine you can run Qlab and Ableton Simultaneously, or you could run a drum pad program like NI Battery or  standalone sampler on the same Mac as Qlab without too much difficulty. You can even send program changes via MIDI from Qlab  to the drum sample program.

Mic

[Daniel Perelstein]

Regarding the drum triggers, you can put them in a separate cue list so that they don't interfere with your running order of your main cue list. There are workarounds to what Mic describes as problems of course, depending on what your content is. For instance, you could have one cue list per sample, and make its corresponding MIDI message be a trigger for the cue list itself instead of for the audio files. Then, you can populate the cue list with a dozen or so copies of the sample (perhaps even with slight variation in level or EQ to "humanize" a bit if you'd like), and autofollow the last one with a GoTo cue targeting the top of the playlist. I've done this with, for instance, footsteps that can be taken an arbitrary number of times depending on actors' pacing, and where the length of the sample may or may not be greater than the spacing between triggers.

There are other solutions too, if that doesn't suit your needs. The nice thing about QLab is it's a very flexible system, where you can make a great many this happen by thing through the basic functions it provides.

Dan

[Rich Walsh]

Oddly, I've done a number of shows where we've used Live with QLab precisely because it is so much better at handling multiple backing tracks than QLab… I'd stick with Live for what you describe; the only limitation is the fact it won't work as an MTC master. It runs rings round practically everything else as a virtual instrument host – although have you considered whether MainStage could do everything you need?

This looks like a fairly obvious solution to the lack of MTC though: https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174143 (ie: Live can be a ReWire master, so use it to control a ReWireable MTC generator). Or there's the Max route…

Rich

[Lucas Krech]

Not being an audio person at all I can't say how to do this but Ableton can send LTC. I've had lighting consoles listening for LTC from Ableton to trigger cues and it worked flawlessly once set up. You can either have as a separate audio track (scene, I think they call it) that sends to whatever needs to listen or can generate directly from Ableton and send.

-L

*insert witty mobile device advertising here*

> On Oct 16, 2014, at 8:20 AM, Rich Walsh <rich...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> work as an MTC master

[Rich Walsh]

Live can not generate LTC; very few things can (Reaper, but not PT or Logic). Were they using this?

http://showsync.info/index.php/tools/clipsmpte/

Rich

[Lucas Krech]

Really? My show where I listened to LTC from Ableton used an audio track. So not generated dynamically in software. But I recently did a show where the sound designer was the guy who writes Ableton's manual and when I asked him about it he showed me in preferences. I can't remember now what it was but I do recall it being labeled very unclearly. Or he and I had a miscommunication as to what I was asking for.

My apologies if I just complicated this conversation.

-L

*insert witty mobile device advertising here*

[Scott M.]

Thanks for all the input!...appreciate it!.....I checked out mainstage, but it won't control my axe-fx. I recorded a LTC file in Reaper and brought into Live, but was concerned about bringing in 45 files of 40 mb or so...I already have a lot in session view.....but my mac is an ssd so it may not matter. Was just kind of looking around for something simpler to setup and change songlist order. I'd also like to add video eventually to our show. I'm no expert in any of this...lol....but I just like that qlab appears to do everything I need, without a bunch of workarounds...don't really wanna use several different softwares to run a show....unless I have to...

[Rich Walsh]

What are you sending to the Axe-Fx that MainStage can't handle? SysEx dumps?

I don't understand why you need workarounds to do this in Live: it sounds pretty trivial in terms of Live's capabilities. Re-ordering songs is as simple as dragging scenes around. You don't need to stripe LTC: use Max For Live and the SMPTE Max patch to generate LTC on the fly. I've run Live with 16 tracks and 300 scenes on the same MacBook Pro as QLab; triggering 400 sound cues in 33 minutes. It is _very_ good at playing audio, er, live.

If you're using virtual instruments then QLab isn't going to be able to handle it all on its own. On the other hand, Live isn't going to be much use for video…

Rich

[Scott Martindale]

Hey thanks....was my understanding that mainstage could not send patch changes to my axefx?........we play 3/4 songs together in blocks and in order to do this i have the Tom Cosm iac loop trick to play the next song when a midi note is reached...so each song has a midi note attached to it....when the order changes the trigger notes need to change to match....i tried follow actions but that was worse imo...lol.  this is all controlled via a midi footswitch.... i only have the int. version of live so id have to upgrade to use max?....ive got songs all setup but now need to tie ableton to jands vista to sync our lights.....can use midi notes to trigger jands but need to do more testing on that......just looking for simpler solution but maybe that doesnt exist for what im tryin to do.....lol...as you say looks like no one thing will do all......thx a lot.....

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[Waschfeld, Maik]

Hi Lucas,

 

> I recorded a LTC file in Reaper and brought into Live, but was concerned about bringing in 45 files of 40 mb or so

 

Did you use 48kHz and 24bit?

;-)

 

If anyone needs 60 minutes LTC-timecode, either NTSC or PAL, you can get it from Dataton/Watchout.

 

Go to < http://www.dataton.com/watchout> , then click on “Watchout Downloads”, it’s on the far lowest position, and scroll down to “TIMECODE AUDIO FILES“.

> This folder contains two audio files with approximately 60 mins of recorded LTC timecode. One file is SMPTE (NTSC) non-drop

> timecode and the other is EBU (PAL) timecode.

> Use in WATCHOUT to synchronize external equipment able to sync to LTC timecode.

IIRC, these files are WAVs with 8bit on 22kHz.

And they did work on every receiver, I used it on.

 

Regards…

 

…Maik Waschfeld

(at work)

 

 

[Rich Walsh]

Or just go here:

http://elteesee.pehrhovey.net

Rich

[Lucas Krech]

That is what we used. In two parts since there is only a 90 minute limit per track. 

-L

*insert witty mobile device advertising here*