Live tracking — performing with a tracker

"You cannot perform tracking live" (Behemoth, 1997) drew four answers that together describe how sceners actually did it: pattern switching on cue, live instruments over the module, channel muting, and playing a keyboard through the tracker.

Techniques from the sources#

• Pattern switching on visual cues. xiagox pre-programmed the sections of a bass-and-drums techno set in scream-tracker-3 on a 486dx2/66 and "played" the computer on stage by changing patterns when the band's cues came; the song's structure was decided live, the material was not (source: s-tw114-live-tracking). Maz names the same trick as "a nice ST3 feature": hacking patterns while other patterns play (source: s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate). In LSDj terms this is what live mode is for — see lsdj.
• Live instruments over the module. xiagox's line-up around the PC: synth, guitar, tin whistle, marching-band bass drums, recorder, a Speak & Spell (source: s-tw114-live-tracking); Dilvish: sequenced acts perform because "that's why the mixer was invented" (source: s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate).
• Channel cuts and loaded patterns. Mark Bradley's gabber-set plan: many pre-recorded patterns to load, an organised sample library, "quick use of channel cut outs"; Nasenbluten played Amigas into a cross-fader with a DJ scratching (source: s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate).
• Keyboard through the tracker. With fasttracker-2 2.08 Exxon played samples and his daughterboard's synth sounds from an input keyboard over a running jungle beat (source: s-tw115-tracking-semantics).

Earlier and later practice (1995 and 1998)#

• The earliest live use in the sources is esper-division (Montreal, 1995), a two-man band that performed shows with lyrics sung over tracked pieces — "that's the main purpose" of the band (source: s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-esper-division).
• Mental Floss's method (February 1998), the most detailed account in the archive: one pattern per song, all channels off except one, then channels on and off as parts enter; effects layered from a guitar-style pedal board; a Yamaha CS1x played along; two PCs (a GUS Classic and a GUS PnP with 8 MB) cross-faded; Cubase, ReBirth, impulse-tracker and iPLAY in one set; some parts pre-sequenced because "some techno is just too intricate to play live". The Toronto drum-and-bass act Sourfly played with two computers and two copies of fasttracker-2, muting and unmuting channels — "A mixer is pretty much a given". The weak spot: "tracking programs don't cue well" and BPMs differ between songs — bridge with ambient sections, or stop the song and let the FX box's echo trail out; he asked ModPlug's author for "Denon-CD player style mixing controls" and wanted to start and synchronise IT from MIDI for console mixdowns (source: s-tw119-interview-mental-floss; see sync and midi-in-trackers). His POTS RealAudio concert of 24 January 1998 drew about 120 online listeners (same source).

Improvising the whole tune: goto80 and defMON (2007–)#

The furthest point on this page's spectrum is goto80's C64 practice: not performing a finished module but typing the tune into existence on stage. "I mostly improvise by typing on a keyboard. It's similar to live coding but where they use programming languages, I use a dedicated music software on Commodore 64 called defMON … I can start a show with nothing and build every sound and harmony with the audience watching." He started jamming in 2007 (a Game Boy-only set when his laptop broke — per Wikipedia he had already made one of the first LSDj live performances in 2001; lsdj), moved from the JCH editor to defmon in 2008, and shaped the program in weekly two-C64 jams with frantic; the Dataslav project let the audience hand in requests mid-improv (sources: s-goto80-site-defmon-posts, s-wikipedia-goto80). defMON's live features grew out of this: no fixed instruments ("what gives defMON its spiritual power" — goto80), sync to drum machines and Game Boys, a one-tick tempo nudge "to stay in sync with your local brass band", and two-C64 start-sync (sources: s-chipmusic-defmon-thread, s-goto80-site-defmon-posts).

The sid-wizard side of the same idea is m64's sid-wizard-vessel: MIDI-clock-slaved playback (Vessel interface, NMI) with a performance grammar of four keys — cursor UP/DOWN repositions in the orderlist while the running pattern finishes, F3 holds (loops) the current pattern, F1 releases it toward the cursor position, SHIFT+1–3 mutes — with the oscilloscope colour as stage-visible state (green = held, purple = advancing), and MIDI stop/re-arm so "all devices will play together from start again" (source: s-sid-wizard-vessel-readme).

What live mode actually adds (LSDj)#

Precisely one thing, according to the chipmusic-org thread that argued it out: "the only thing that makes live mode unique is the ability to start and stop channels live" — soloing, muting, panning and editing parameters all work in song mode too (source: s-chipmusic-lsdj-live-performance). The thing that matters follows from it: chains are queued per channel, independently, so PU1 can be playing the chain at song position 01 while PU2 plays the one at 2F, and jumps happen without glitching or losing sync.

Chain-loop islands are how a save is built for that. The sequencer in live mode stops rewinding as soon as it meets an empty step, so blocks of chains separated by empty rows become islands: each channel cycles inside its island until told otherwise — "you can be assured that a bassline will only cycle through the parts you want it to, rather than continuing on and advancing through the rest of the song. Until you TELL it to" (Bit Shifter).

Vamp sections. BR1GHT PR1MATE's method is to write several chains of different lengths over the same harmonic material on PU1, PU2 and WAV and let them cycle freely: "you can get amazing resultant harmonic/melodic textures that you never would have planned for … quite beautiful, string quartet-like". Chains given different rhythmic lengths with H cycle against the song's straight 16ths for polyrhythm — "I suggest being subtle with this, otherwise it can sound like utter shite" — and a 5/8 drum ostinato underneath completes it. Live parameter edits belong here too: "altering Q in wave instruments while a song is playing is a lot of fun for sweepy type stuff" (Lazerbeat). One trick doubles as the thread's cautionary tale: switching sync from master to slave mid-note drones the sound, deliberately or by accident (sync).

Preparing a save for the stage (LSDj)#

Three habits from pain-perdu's live sets (source: s-painperdu-05-shortcuts-and-workflow, with the stutter from s-painperdu-03-isometric-sav-walkthrough):

• Mark the song screen — pressing B three times marks a block, "in the manual but not a lot of people know about it" — so intro, break, riser and drop are recognisable at a glance mid-set. The number of marks is limited; do not mark everything.
• Leave empty rows between sections. Besides airing the screen out, each block then loops back on itself, "so if I'm looking for the next section to jump to, I have time to decide" instead of triggering something that starts unsynced.
• Transpose live, on release. Holding A and pressing the arrows on the project screen's transpose (or tempo) value applies the change only when A is released, so a key change lands on the bar line — he uses it instead of cloning a section into a new key. Watch for L commands and pitch bends reacting differently, and low notes wrapping an octave.
• The select+start stutter: in song mode, holding SELECT and then START retriggers the selected row over and over, at a rate that follows KEY DELAY/REPEAT and the tempo (76 around 120 BPM, 75 around 130 in his settings). Easier to keep in time on hardware than in an emulator.

The defMON side of the same practice#

The keys that make it possible are ordinary editor keys: F1 plays from the cursor, F5 toggles follow, and [, ], = mute the three tracks (Ö, Ä, * on a Swedish keyboard) — muting and unmuting channels over a looping arrangement is the C64 equivalent of the tracker sets above (source: s-defmon-wiki-defmoning-101). For playing with other machines there are three levels, none of them automatic: Scannerboy's user-port adapter, which outputs lsdj sync, Nanoloop sync, MIDI clock, DIN sync or "a clock signal with adjustable resolution from 24ppqn to 2ppqn for Korg Volcas, TE Pocket Operators, Arturia Microbrute"; defSYNC over a serial cable between two C64s (2020-10-08); or manual BPM matching — set the CIA timer from frantic's defBPM table and nudge it by one tick live with CTRL+F5 / CTRL+F7 when the drift shows (sync, defmon; source: s-defmon-wiki-sync-and-stereo).

The Game Boy as the rig's clock — and as its drift#

Two ways of putting a Game Boy at the centre of a live setup, both from little-scale (sources: s-little-scale-syncing-things-to-lsdj, s-little-scale-sync-options-for-game-boys):

• LSDj as master. In master sync mode the link port's clock line carries 32 transitions per sixteenth-note step, which a 4040 counter divides into every power-of-two subdivision at once. He drove an LED from it, then a step sequencer running a C64 filter. No microcontroller, no MIDI, and the Game Boy sets the tempo for everything else — the direction almost no commercial sync box supported. See sync.
• Deliberate un-sync. Three Game Boys, start buttons wired to one switch, no link cable: they begin together and drift apart at the rate their crystals disagree, and the drift is the piece — "a glitch of sorts" (2006). He separates it from failure: "LSDJ syncs very nicely to another LSDJ. The timing is great." A phasing instrument built from identical hardware.

The slave side, in operating order (little-scale's own procedure, the only place it is written down): power the sync box and give it a clock source; set lsdj to slave sync in the project screen; pick the position in the song and press start — LSDj shows "WAIT"; start the clock, and it follows, tempo changes included. The trap is the stop: pressing stop on the clock source stops LSDj, and to start again from the same place "you will need to manually select it and press start" first — MIDI CONTINUE does not put it back where it was. Rehearse that. On a DMG the usable external-clock range was measured at "around 35 to over 200 beats per minute", and one AU$15 box drives six copies of LSDj and six of Nanoloop, or 15 Game Boys in LSDj-only mode (source: s-little-scale-arduino-gameboy-sync-boxes). The 2011 rebuild is a $16 Teensy that the computer sees as a class-compliant USB MIDI device — two wires per Game Boy, no drivers, no power supply — and its DIN sync 24 output (24 ppqn, 3 ms pulses; 5 V while playing, 0 V stopped) puts analogue gear on the same clock (source: s-little-scale-teensy-usb-midi-sync).

For a live rig with more Game Boys than sync outputs, a passive splitter (Low-Gain's 1x3 DMG-07 mod, daisy-chainable) multiplies one clock into three; little-scale's own Sync Tank drove 15 in LSDj slave mode, with coarse and fine tempo pots for hands-on tempo (source: s-little-scale-sync-options-for-game-boys).

Caveats the sources give#

The result may be "no more live than a DJ with a crate full of records, but it still had the crowd rocking" (source: s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate); it works when the tracker is "a part of a larger picture" (source: s-tw114-live-tracking).

Related#

commercial-tracking · scream-tracker-3 · fasttracker-2 · lsdj · nanoloop · game-boy · little-scale · sync · defmon · goto80 · sid-wizard-vessel · esper-division · mental-floss · midi-in-trackers

Sources#

s-tw114-live-tracking · s-tw115-tracking-semantics · s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate · s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-esper-division · s-tw119-interview-mental-floss · s-goto80-site-defmon-posts · s-chipmusic-defmon-thread · s-wikipedia-goto80 · s-sid-wizard-vessel-readme · s-little-scale-syncing-things-to-lsdj · s-little-scale-sync-options-for-game-boys · s-painperdu-05-shortcuts-and-workflow · s-painperdu-03-isometric-sav-walkthrough · s-chipmusic-lsdj-live-performance · s-defmon-wiki-defmoning-101 · s-defmon-wiki-sync-and-stereo · s-little-scale-arduino-gameboy-sync-boxes · s-little-scale-teensy-usb-midi-sync