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Using BeatMaker as sampler live?

LudvigLudvig
edited August 2009 in General
Hello everyone! A friend and I have been making electronic music for a couple of years and we are thinking it's time we start doing live performances. However, with next to no money, we're very limited as to the equipment we can get a hold of. We would like to get a sampler, simply to trigger different parts of the tracks with (i.e. triggering a drum loop when we want the drums to kick in etc), but we can't afford a hardware piece. So then I thought, heey, would it be possible to do this with BeatMaker?

So what I want to know is if BeatMaker can trigger samples that are several minutes long and if one can have saved different presets of samples for different songs, stuff like that. And also, is it stable enough to use live? As I said, we don't have much money, so I feel I want to know this stuff before purchasing.

I'm very new to all of this stuff, so if I don't make any sense, I appologize.

Comments

  • diceman93diceman93
    edited 7:57AM
    The short answer is no... at least it's not quite there yet for what you want to do. But there is a sort of work around way you could maybe do it....

    It's not very good with loading long samples and it's not totally reliable for live situations. The first time I reloaded a project that I had worked on, all my samples turned crunchy sounding and became slow. Read my post called "Recording loops" to see the tedious nature of sampling in Beatmaker. Even for an 8-bar loop it's complicated. But when you do get a loop loaded properly and synchronized, you still have to have a way trigger a pad to change from one loop to another.

    The only way I can conceive of doing this is to either 1) Preset the changes by programming pattern changes in the sequencer. But this might be too rigid for a live situation or 2) Having one loop on each pattern. Set the play mode to infinitely loop. Then switch into the mute on/off mode in pad view to turn on/off your loops. This should do what you want it to do, but I think it's limited to 5 samples at a time so it may cut out....

    Might be worth a shot, but let this be a warning. All in all I like the app if you don't put too much demand on it!
  • speak_onionspeak_onion
    edited 7:57AM
    I use Beatmaker for live shows all the time; it's the cornerstone of my setup. I load up all of my loops into the pads, and I make patterns that I'll want to bring in and out. Usually it's one loop per pattern, but if there's two loops that always go together (like a certain bassline, and a corresponding sub-bass thing), then I might put them together in one pattern. Anyway, set up the loop brace for 8 bars, and let it loop while I bring patterns in and out. Sometimes, if there's big changes in a song, like a bridge into a drastically different part, I'll program that ahead of time after the 8 bar brace I had been playing with, and then when I turn off the infinite loop mode, it just goes into that part, and while it plays I set up the loop brace in a new part and turn on looping once the playback gets there. Then I continue bringing patterns in and out.

    I wouldn't use only Beatmaker for a show, but with a mini kaoss pad and a mixer and a ton of FX, I think it works really great.

    Here's a video, and there's tons more on the Immigrant Breast Nest youtube channel.

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