I use a Fender Mexican Strat going through a Line 6 Spider II, a Yamaha bass DI'd through a Joe Meek Compressor, a Meinl Cajon, Wood Flutes and a Jaws Harp.
The cajon is miked with a Shure PG52 and SM57 and I use either a Sennheiser e845 or an EV967 for the flutes.
The mics and lines go through a Mackie 1202 desk (I once used a Soundcraft 328) into a MOTU 828MkII (or M-Audio 1814), into a 1.83GHz Macbook with 1 GB RAM running Ableton Live and Max/Msp with a custom built foot controller and a Playstation 2 game pad.
The set up enables me to give more control to the front of house engineer sending 8 individual channels to the main desk. These are - Cajon, Mic, Bass, Guitar, Electronic Drums(Stereo), Synths and Samples(paino/congas etc. Stereo):
A brief walk through of the pedal I built from start to finish:
First off I got one of these from here: http://www.ultimarc.com/ipacve.html
Then a load of these from here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=34489&doy=26m3#overview
A couple of these from here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=35032&doy=26m3#overview
And some of these from here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=35737&doy=26m3#overview
Then the wiring is basically like this for the ordinary push buttons (non-latched or momentary action). They make a connection between one of the connections and ground:
Then to wire in a SHIFT button that will give all your other buttons a different action (letter/keystroke) you wire in a latching switch to either the shift button that the computer recognizes as shift or to the iPac's built in shift function (see ultimarc.com).
Then to wire an LED to this switch to give you an indication of whether it's on or off the following wiring is required:
The Max/Msp patch for Playstation 2 Contorller essentially routes the inputs straight through to Ableton Live. The LR buttons are used to route the analogue sticks to different places so I can control many different things in Live. The 8 pad buttons play an octave of notes or drum sounds.
The main window with visual feedback on button presses and joystick movements.
This shows all patcher windows.
'analog' patcher is for the analog sticks and l/r buttons
'pad' patcher is for the d-pad and x circle etc.
These both receive signals from the gam pad and route them straight to MIDI as well as the visual feedback in the main window.
'keymenu' patcher routes start and select to change up or down the key in which the pad keys play, this also selects their drum state as well as updating the display:
'display' patcher opens a jitter window displaying which key or drum mode the pad keys are in. Unfortunately I've not been able to make this hover above the Ableton window so it sits in the corner.
I will talk about my Ableton Live setup in future posts....
I will talk about my Ableton Live setup in future posts....
