Could you give me your advice on performing live with VCV? I have 5 patches, due to system restrictions, I cannot include them all in one massive patch.
My question: What is a seamless way to close one patch and open the other without cutting the music off completely? What would you recommend I do? I’d like this to be one long, 75/90-minute ambient drone set.
If I can achieve this, I do not need to carry my Soundcraft MTK12; otherwise, I will have to lug it because I can hook up my 0-Coast to it to run a drone while I close one and open the other patch. I would want to avoid this at all costs
if you have the Pro Version you can load one VST instance per track and mute the ones that are not playing.
a different scenario could be having one (let’s call it DEFAULT) patch and then importing selections when needed. these selections are your previous patches, just saved in a different format. just plug a couple of cables in the mixer of the default patch and that’s it. if the sysyem struggles you can eliminate the sections that are not playing anymore.
I know there could be some Stoermelder utility modules that could help yourself as well but I’m not an expert so I can’t give you my advice about that
You could try my Venom Bypass module that allows you to bypass (turn off) entire sections of a patch via manual button or CV control. Bypassed modules consume very little CPU
The Stoermelder module for this is Strip and Strip+. It works similar as with the Bypass module of @DaveVenom: you can turn selected modules of or on with it. It works nice and saves a lot of cpu.
Venom Bypass has some advantages in that the bypassed modules can be remote, identified via a cable, and you can choose which neighbors are bypassed, none, left, right, or both. Also, a single Bypass can disable multiple regions of your patch.
There is also the Blocker module to prevent neighbors from being included that works with both Venom Bypass and Stoermelder Strip.
Yes I prefer your Bypass module actually!
The cable method is very straightforward and no “mistakes” in grouping or leaving a gap, which you have to keep in mind with Strip.
If you don’t have Rack Pro and/or your system can’t handle more than one patch at a time (I don’t know how complex they are), another solution would be applying transition effects between tracks. You can achieve that by routing audio to a DAW (Reaper works great for that). That way you can create a wall of sound with loopers and delays while you switch patches and then slowly bring up the next one.
I’m running a similar situation this week, and can’t warmly enough recommend a VCV pro licence. Loading concurrent instances is so much easier than anything I’ve tried prior.
Of course, this is indeed not always an option. If I didn’t have that option I would probably recommend Daves bypass module strategy. I have previously messed around with routing audio into Reaper via Blackhole. It does work, but I did not find it to be stable enough that I would want to rely on it for live use. Made horrible screeches on me, rarely, but regularly enough that I consider it a non-starter. This is also on an M1 mac. Perhaps the situation has improved since, I know Blackhole is under active dev. So do check it out if you wanna take that route.
But yeah, there should be a way to do what you want with that Venom module anyway.
Thanks! We did a first WIP showing tonight and it went really well. First larger performance on Sunday.
It’s a folk music/circus show in which I mostly do pretty traditional dub mixing (scratch style) but with modern effects. Basically I get sends of an upright bass + 2x violin + some voices, and return a stereo mix of echoes, filter trickery, reverb etc. Most of the echo effects are VCV rack. And also all the filter effects either are VCV, or get sent into a VCV instance to do auto-pan effects etc etc. Also some long free-time loopers (based on stochastic memory). Etc etc. It’s pretty fun!
It would definitely have been possible to do all this in one VCV instance. But keeping stuff on separate tracks in reaper has its advantages. For one, opening and closing individual VCV instances is annoying, which is good because that ends up encouraging me to look away from the screen more! Keeping one big VCV instance open, I know I would get caught looking at it, editing things with the mouse etc… Mapping the controls I need to some MIDI controllers and hiding everything in tracks helps me be more present in the room.
I’m sure glad rack exists in this situation. You could do all of this stuff with Reaper alone but the combination feels way better.
use a macro pad to switch between projects in reaper or other daws with the capability to host multiple open projects. i can directly access as many open projects as i have buttons to assign them to. the projects that are not in focus take no cpu in reaper. many other things can be controlled with these devices. i think this could be a perfect solution for many performers.
Well I can try to record some tomorrow. I need to ask the others if they’re fine with that, but I am guessing that they will be.