Saving a song across multiple equipment

[Chisel]

Here's a question I'd like to throw out to all of you who use a sequencer, sampler, sound module combination to make music... I don't have any problems composing with my sequencer and controlling all my other equipment with it. The problem is deciding the best way to save everything into a "package" that can easily be loaded back into the equipment when it's time to perform the song. I can think of three different approaches. I've tried all three of these and I'm wondering what you all do. Here they are:

1) Write down the settings of the patches/presets/roms/ etc... of all the exernal equipment and load and configure everything manually before playing the song. [This is quite tedious, but is necessary for loading sample banks from media devices]

2) Record sysex midi dumps of all the arrangements (on the equipment that supports this) or controller data to the sequencer and play that back to the equipment at the beginning of the song. [This is my current method]

3) Record all the MIDI riffs back into a phrase sampler (i.e. MPC) and simply trigger the phrases from the sampler. [This is the all-audio approach]

What approach do you use? Is there a fourth, fifth, sixth approach I'm not thinking of?

BTW, all the equipment mentioned above is hardware-based.

 

[afriquedeluxe]

when u say perform, do u mean live on stage , like in a band?

i use reason for all the sequencing, so id say having a midi file done is the choice id take. if theres stuff ive recorded off my keyboard or guitar, or ive sampled a record , i jus use the self contain feature in reason, but i do have backup copies of everything i used in beats in a special sample/wav folder

 

[Chisel]

Actually I just have a mini home studio so when I say "perform" I really mean to just playback the final song through all my MIDI equipment. I like the idea of a self-contain feature. Unfortunately, that's one of the trade-offs of using different hardware devices on one song. I just bought a MPC 1000 yesterday and I started using that to sample the riffs that I compose through MIDI back into the MPC! That way, everything is self-contained. This is a total paradigm shift for me as I've been using the RM1x for all my sequences up until now and using approach #2 in my original post to prepare my MIDI equipment before playing a song.

 

[2_nice]

2 is a good approach. but i haven't really had to this. as i sequence in sonar with a kurzweil k2000 i can change my patches and channel program info etc. in my sonar project. you could if you aren't using 16 levels function and a lot of filer change type functions in the step edit mode on the mpc record the midi sequences from your mpc into cubase or whatever and (i use sonar) and save your pgm in your mpc with the same way. i used to do this when i sequenced with my mpc (i know have fully computer based sequencing set-up)
many fixes for your problem

 

[Chisel]

Things were much easier when I only had an MC-303 I love having more equipment to work with now, but it gets overwhelming sometimes. Last night, I used approach #3 and it worked great. My process was: 1) Queue up preset on my ESI-4000, 2) Record MIDI track using MPC 1000, 3) Record the MIDI track back into the MPC 1000 as an audio sample, 3) Assign sample to pad, 4) Repeat. For the drums, I skipped step 2 and recorded a single hit from each drum sound into the MPC. The only con about doing it this way is that if I need to change the MIDI data, I need to resample it as audio each time I make a change. The other way to do this is to use MIDI exclusively and create a new bank on the ESI-4000 containing the presets for the song in the MPC. Or if I'm only using instruments from a single bank on the ESI-4000, then I can add program change message in the MPC so it calls up the correct instrument before playing it. I'm thinking of loading all of my drum samples into the MPC as programs for each category (i.e. kicks, snares, hats, etc...) and using the programs as a palette. Then when I start a new song, I'll load in each program, choose the appropriate sample, and assign it to a pad in a new program. Anybody else use this approach?

Peace Out \/