Do you guys trigger keyswitches live?

[esteso]

I'm thinking of investing in a midi pedalboard so I can trigger keyswitches with my foot while playing a guitar controller. It's a little pricey so I want to make sure it'd be useful.

So I'm asking anyone who cares to answer how they generally approach this. Play it live and memorize the keyswitching as part of the performance, record the complete performance and tweak it later on? Or play the melody with a basic patch, record it and enter the keyswitches by hand later. The first way sounds more musical and intuitive but maybe it'd drive you nuts trying to memorize all those keyswitches for all those instruments. I don't know.

I understand you could do it either way but since I'm relatively new to this kind of idea I'm thinking there may be a gotcha that I hadn't thought about or come across yet.

Thanks

[esteso]

Gotta bump. I'd really like an answer to this. What do you guys do in general? A guitar player doesn't have to answer. It could be anyone who uses keyswitches a lot.

Thanks

[KingIdiot]

depends...

if its improvising, then the only way to do it is a pedal board or a pressure trigger set you mount on the gutiar.

if its a melody where you know where the KS's are going to happen, then why not jsut have them pre programmed in the sequencer

and about adding them aferward AMP will take care of that for you as the library of rules increases.

[jeffn1]

I have used ketswitching with Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition and Vintaudio Guitars. I like to incorporate the keyswitching in real time (but I often slow down the tempo to get the performance right). Sometimes, that does not work, so my fallback (less preferable) is to add the keyswitching later.

jeffn1

[Chadwick]

Live triggering is a hassle on some stuff, so my preferred method is the one King offered - just stick the switches into a spare sequencer track. That way you can concentrate on the performance and the keyswitches follow you automagically

[Bela D Media]

Live triggering is a hassle on some stuff, so my preferred method is the one King offered - just stick the switches into a spare sequencer track. That way you can concentrate on the performance and the keyswitches follow you automagically

You obviously never seen a RUSH concert!

Saved By Technology has been providing synth and sampler tour programming services to Rush since 1983. Most recently, SBT completed tour programming for the Rush "Test for Echo" Tour in 1996 and 1997. Canada's legendary power trio uses an extensive MIDI rig to accurately reproduce material from their 21-album catalog. The band refuses to use a sequencer live, instead all three members manually trigger the samples as part of their live performance using a combination of keyboards, MIDI bass pedals and drum triggers! For every tour since Grace Under Pressure (1984), Saved By Technology has been responsible for sampling material from the master tapes, trimming, looping and mapping out the samples according to which band member will be triggerring them, and tweaking the samples throughout rehearsals and during the beginning of each tour. In addition SBT has provided custom synth programming to the band.

[Alan Russell]

Hi,

Keyswitching is probabaly the best friend to a real time player. I'd rather play it, keyswitch it rather than punch it on to a staff line. This is the only clear path to virtual Jazz IMHO.

Alan Russell

[Chadwick]

'Rush do this", "Rush do that' ...

Sheesh is there anything those guys DON'T do?

[Chadwick]

Esteso is sequencing his parts, so the keyswitches are being put on a track one way or another - it's just a matter of how and when.

I find that having to perform the keyswitches slightly ahead of the actual patches that they are calling up is a bit of a head spinner sometimes - certainly on parts with more keyswitches.

That's why I prefer to put a rough part down, position keyswitches in a track, and then perform the part paying attention to the performance - without having to guide my left hand to place keyswitcehs out of sync to my right.

[esteso]

Hey guys, thanks a lot for all your responses. Even though there is not just one answer it's really helping me to see the scope of what's done. And it is indeed clarifying my thinking on this.

Seems like triggering keyswitching live is a cool thing to do and can lead to some very natural sounding "improvised" phrases. For more structured melodies if you know which keyswitches are needed then why not enter them beforehand?

King, what's AMP?

Thanks again, happy triggering!