I'm just trying to gather any information about rocking the 303 in a live setting. I'm about to start working on a project involving just a drummer, sampler and a keyboard (cLOUDDEAD/Boards of Canada/Four Tet kinda style)

I have just the one unit, and one card (assume I'm gonna need to pick up a few more cards?) Any experienced live users kind enough to share any wisdom or advice?

KH

hey man

at the moment i am trying to use my sp-404 as a live instrument.

here's a video i made of one track:
viewtopic.php?t=1627

using a combo of effects, one-shots, and drum tapping, there's a fair bit you can achieve with the SP. you've got to jump around between Pattern Mode and Sample Mode, and keep a good track of which effect is on which pad (and be swift at using Remain to re-assign). but it's great fun.

i'm gonna try to up a new video soon, in that first one was i was just getting the hang of it.

That's a pretty cool video mate.

How would this work if you were doing a whole set I wonder? I'm not sure on the memory specs for the 404 but I'm assuming you'd need more memory cards to perform say 30 minutes worth of material?

that whole song, both samples and Pattern pads, fitted in one Bank.
so you could get about 8 songs onto a CF card, depending on their size

so it'd be ideal to have something else playing when you switch cards and have to turn the SP off

i've got a QY-70 which i play melodies and chords over drums/bass playing from the 404. so i'd probably use that to cover the silence

Yea you just need to work around that I suppose.

Look forward to more live videos from you, maybe one from your perspective would be really helpful to get a clear picture of what is going on, just a thought....


BTW, props on the Bill Hicks quote, man was a genius.

yeah man, i had to represent for Bill : )

i'll definitely try to get a better camera-angle next time. i'm just using a dodgy old digital camera though, no tripod or anything. i've also gotta try to get better sound recorded with the audio

let us know how using the SP with your band goes, i'm interested in getting involved in something similar.

keep us posted

i do a solo thing - using the 404, a loop pedal, guitar and sing over it all. my advice is to balance "getting to the point" (ie: don't do 10 minutes of build up) against allowing yrself the range to move back and forth (ie: switching between pattern and pad mode). i think that balance comes with time. i've been recording some practices as i build up the songs, break them back down, etc., and listening back to see if it holds my interest. its a good barometer.

the OTHER thing i've found is that i'll be working away on a song, and then weeks later suddenly realize i've been overlooking a good arrangement idea or whatever. so i guess the advice there is to mull it all over a lot, and give yrself time to work out how you work w/ the sp.

sounds interesting fauna, do you just use the SP for beats?

sorry for the delay - a blissful weekend away from the computer.

i use the 404 for beats, bass and pads mostly. generally a build up sort of thing, then guitar & vox o'er top, then break down again. the pedals and looper allow me to add some textural stuff on guitar, then frees up my hands to hit some 404 pads and tweak stuffs. change pattens. de-select pads.

gotta say, some days it aw worx great. other days it REALLY feels like a work in progress. biggest issue is getting a nice blend of sound, so its possible to hear everything through the PA. fuckups don't matter too much, cuz you can always just hit a different pad at the next bar's start.

Like you advised I have been mulling over how I could use the 303 and I think it's most accurate to say I just don't know yet. I think I'm gonna just spend each day 'playing' the thing and see where I go with it.

I don't wanna be the next Madlib/panda bear etc, so I guess I just have to find my own style before anything else.

I would like to hear your music though, dya have a myspace?

playing a 303 live is easy once you have some sort of tape loop/ feedback/ digital delay to make transition between pads more fluent. people sometimes get pissed when they watch a set that a monkey who learned how to push buttons could play, so be sure to crouch awkwardly and intensely over it for extra mystery

haha I'll get practicing...

ha ha - that's a good point. "man, he must be doing SOMETHING, look how intense he is!"

i actually find w/ all the gear and real-time use, its harder to look like i'm NOT doing something. most of the time i feel like a tap dancer or an old-tymie switch-board operator.

re: myspace - i gots nuthin of interest up right now. i'll let all y'all know when i have some stuffs posted tho. thx for yr innerest tho...its always informative to hear how others are using the boxes.

and yeah - keep the live ish discussion going, cuz as you say, its important to dvlp yr own sound, and discussion / ideas can help. i've had my own thing going for years, but these days the biggest issue is transforming that into real-time performance, via the sp- and aw that (and of course, the overall sound changes in the process).

peas.

I actually have a show tonight with my friend, and I'll be playing all the beats live from my 404.

I set it all up on a 1GB flash card. I saved most of my shit as loops, so I'll have like a bass loop on one pad, then a a melody loop on another pad, then a variation on that melody on another pad etc. Then I either have a few different drum loops, which were recorded on my MPC and sampled into the 404, or single shot drum hits, depending on the track. When I was sampling all my loops into the 404, I set the tempo ahead of time, so that way they all loop perfectly. I also used the "start recording when it gets to a certain volume" feature as well to make sure the start points were perfect. As long as I hit the bass and melody pad at the exact same time they'll loop pretty much perfectly, and I can play the drums over that, or trigger a drum loop in sync with the music and them fuck with the effects or whatever. If I hit a pad a split second too late and something's slightly off beat, I'll just cut that pad and wait til the loop comes back around. I'm not using pattern mode at all.

We've been practicing the set for the last week or so and it sounds pretty damn good. I've got the beats for the rap songs we're doing, and a then a few interesting instrumental interlude type things too to do in between a few songs to keep the music flowing. There's a few songs where I rap in addition to my homie, so for those ones, I just sampled the entire beat as a stereo sample on one of the pads. I'll trigger that, let it play out, and rap my parts.

This will be the first time I've used my 404 in a live setting, so it should be pretty dope. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully there will be a little bit more of a live feeling rather than just playing the beats straight up off a CD which most MCs tend to do around here... Now it's just a matter if I can remember which pad is which and on which bank. haha.

Yeah, whoever asked about the time, our set is like 30-40 minutes, and I have room to spare on my flash card (1GB). I used mono whenever I could though and most of the drums are sampled in lo fi mode.

sweet. have fun, bro. break some legs. let us know how it flows.