Direktor
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Greenland

Good day, ladies and gentlemen.

I was trying out a set up for a live show, but as of now, I am stuck. I want to sync my game boy with ableton live, in order to play chains on the game boy and recorded chains in ableton's session mode. Above all, I want to use it to transition between songs smoothly.

When I press start in LSDj while in song mode (sync mode: MIDI) and then play in ableton, it works fine. Then I would switch to live mode. But in order to smoothly transition between songs, I need to be able to start an LSDj project in live mode while it is keeping synced with what is playing in ableton. When I start a project in live mode right now, the volume is really low, and, because of that, very noisy. It's not even synced to ableton. LSDj just starts playing the moment I hit start.

I would greatly appreciate any helpful input.

UPDATE: I use an arduinoboy by RyuX (this one: http://chipmod.blogspot.co.at/2012/08/w … boy.html).. The difference in volume between starting in live mode and song mode is a bug related to the LSDj version 4.6.2. I just loaded 4.6.9 onto my cart and the bug was gone. It is still not synced, though.

EDIT: If starting songs out of life mode does not work at all, I will flip my shit, then record every chain and play them back with ableton. But what kind of Game Boy musician does not use Game Boys on stage?!

SOLUTION: It just dawned on me that you can sync LSDj and ableton manually. You have to press start on your Game Boy at the right moment and then maybe fiddle with track delays in ableton. ME IS DISCJOCKEY.
My arduinoboy apparently not receiving midi data is another matter entirely, I will look into that in the future.

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 7, 2013 1:24 am)

herr_prof
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Which sync device do you use? If its an aboy you might want to use sync map mode instead. This way lsdj chains will work pretty much the same way as abelton clips and you can control everything from abelton or with a grid controller.

Direktor
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Greenland

I use one of RyuX's arduinoboys. Which one is sync map mode? I am using the only mode that seemed to work.
UPDATE: Now I know what sync map mode is. I would have to download an unofficial LSDj version. Would sync map mode resolve the syncing issue, though?

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 4, 2013 4:19 am)

nickmaynard
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rochester, ny

I'm pretty sure you just use MASTER mode and not MIDI.

Direktor
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Greenland
nickmaynard wrote:

I'm pretty sure you just use MASTER mode and not MIDI.

You mean I put the arduinoboy to master mode and should switch it to MIDI mode? But why does LSDj wait for ableton to start before LSDj playback starts? Also, it seems to be impossible to determine which arduinoboy mode you are actually using, if not by trying out what it actually does.

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 4, 2013 7:24 pm)

Direktor
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Greenland

SOLVED! Kind of. Look at the first post.

Downstate
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shanghai
Direktor wrote:

SOLUTION: I just dawned on me that you can sync LSDj and ableton manually. You have to press start on your Game Boy at the right moment and then maybe fiddle with track delays in ableton. ME IS DISCJOCKEY.
My arduinoboy apparently not receiving midi data is another matter entirely, I will look into that in the future.

thats a bad solution man. its fucking hard to do that tight in a live enviroment. a milisecond off and its gonna sound like shit. i had to do that once for a live improv thing with a friend and it was a stressful 45 minutes thats for sure. and it sounded pretty shit.

Direktor
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Greenland
Downstate wrote:

thats a bad solution man. its fucking hard to do that tight in a live enviroment. a milisecond off and its gonna sound like shit. i had to do that once for a live improv thing with a friend and it was a stressful 45 minutes thats for sure. and it sounded pretty shit.

Thank you for your concern. But, I believe that the importance of miliseconds in a transition between songs is not that great. I found that when i fiddle with track delays, 10 ms do not make a big difference. It is of course a different matter if you, say, want to match bass drum and bassline for the whole song in this fashion. Still, in the end it comes down to how well you time the pressing of the start button. If you know how to play a "real" instrument, you should be able to do it, given some practice.
Also, with ableton, you can match the tempo BEFORE the audience hears how you messed up the timing of the start press.

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 7, 2013 1:22 am)

Downstate
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shanghai
Direktor wrote:
Downstate wrote:

thats a bad solution man. its fucking hard to do that tight in a live enviroment. a milisecond off and its gonna sound like shit. i had to do that once for a live improv thing with a friend and it was a stressful 45 minutes thats for sure. and it sounded pretty shit.

Thank you for your concern. But, I believe that the importance of miliseconds in a transition between songs is not that great. I found that when i fiddle with track delays, 10 ms do not make a big difference. It is of course a different matter if you, say, want to match bass drum and bassline for the whole song in this fashion. Still, in the end it comes down to how well you time the pressing of the start button. If you know how to play a "real" instrument, you should be able to do it, given some practice.
Also, with ableton, you can match the tempo BEFORE the audience hears how you messed up the timing of the start press.


whatever works for thou.
i wouldnt say pressing start is quite as straight forward as playing keys intime to a tune though. it has a delay definately but if you can get used to it and its not much for beat matching then in essence you can just do as you say, like a dj would to get it in time and you should be fine.
mine we were trying to do a live with micro modular drums on his and percussions on mine and it was mental idm so it was a fucking headache to get tight.

herr_prof
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Also lsdj clock is gonna drift on its own. Its not rock stable and will drift under heavy cpu load. Slaving it makes it a wee bit tighter.

basspuddle
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washington

you can also use the lsdj tap tempo function

on the project screen, just put the cursor over tempo and tap a to ableton's tempo.

damelday
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Direktor wrote:

SOLUTION: It just dawned on me that you can sync LSDj and ableton manually. You have to press start on your Game Boy at the right moment and then maybe fiddle with track delays in ableton. ME IS DISCJOCKEY.
My arduinoboy apparently not receiving midi data is another matter entirely, I will look into that in the future.

No offense, and I too have been giving this quite a bit of thought, but how could this be a viable solution?  Manual sync seems like a disservice to any material you care about.

herr_prof wrote:

Also lsdj clock is gonna drift on its own. Its not rock stable and will drift under heavy cpu load. Slaving it makes it a wee bit tighter.

I suspect this is a hardware issue, and the problem would not carry over to emulators.  Is that the case?

Last edited by damelday (Apr 28, 2013 7:40 pm)

SketchMan3
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NC in the US of America

I suspect this is a hardware issue, and the problem would not carry over to emulators.  Is that the case?

It drifts when I run it in BGB on my computer (which isn't a very powerful one). Sometimes I'll record wav output of the same song twice, and one will be a bit longer or shorter than the other.

Manual sync seems like a disservice to any material you care about.

From what I'm reading, he's just using it for transitions, so if he can make it work it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. You've got to work with what you've got, especially when there's no other solution.

Last edited by SketchMan3 (Apr 28, 2013 10:06 pm)