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Feature
Mark Kelly
Using VST instruments live
»
keyboard rig at my disposal, but it weighed
next to nothing.
I
was
left
with
a
dilemma.
For
the
first
time, I had access to all the sounds I wanted
without
resorting
to
that
32-ton
truck. But
the means for running them — and, in
particular, running lots of them at the same
time — was far from suitable for stage use. Of
course, many VST instruments are capable of
running as stand-alone applications, and it
would have been easy to tuck away
a
portable PC somewhere on stage, but
I
found that running and controlling more than
one of these at a time was problematic. I
needed a program that was capable of
managing all the audio and MIDI routing for
my multiple VST instruments.
I started to experiment with Steinberg’s
V-Stack. This allowed me to play multiple VST
instruments simultaneously, but it wasn’t able
to store patch and routing settings for recall
during a gig, so it was quite unsuitable for
what
I
needed. At
this
point, I
seemed
to
have hit a brick wall, but I couldn’t believe
that I was unique in my needs, so I spent
a
few days searching the Internet and
downloading various bits of shareware and
freeware, with
no
luck. I
was
close
to
resigning myself to sampling the sounds I’d
created on my soft synths and taking my old
hardware rig back on the road, but when
I
was on the point of giving up I came across
Brainspawn, a small US software company,
and their
Forte
Live Performance Workstation
(only available from www.brainspawn.com). I
can’t say that I was too inspired when I read
on the web site that the staff “spend an
inordinate amount of time relaxing in a hot
tub, and maybe, just maybe, release a product
or two”, but I downloaded the demo to see if
Forte would
do
what
I
needed.
Pretty
soon
I
realised that they spent less time in the tub
than they claimed.
Forte seemed to be just
what
I
was
looking
for.[Ed: Forte has also
been used in the Open Labs Neko instrument,
reviewed in Sound On Sound January 2005.]
Forte on
the Road
Despite my horrific experiences with the Atari
ST, I prepared yet again to take a computer on
the
road. Once
I
had
determined
that
this
was the way forward, I decided to build my
own rackmount computer, so that I could be
confident that it would be powerful and
reliable
enough
for
touring. In
the
end, I
built two: one for regular use, and the other as
a
permanent
backup. Inevitably, I
needed
a
high specification to handle the number of
VSTs that I wanted to run simultaneously, so I
chose a motherboard with a 3.2GHz P4 CPU
and 3GB of RAM.This specification would
easily allow
Forte
to host and run 18 VST
instruments through six stereo busses, which
would be adequate… for now.
The user interface of Forte is an on-screen
representation of a rack of modules, referred
Forte 1.5 showing Mark’s rack file from the Marbles tour.
to as a ‘rack file’. There are various choices
of
skins, none of which look great, but beneath
this unappealing exterior
Forte
has a set of
features specifically designed for live use.
Before taking Forte on stage, you create as
many scenes’ as you need to represent your
songs or, if they are complex enough to require
this, parts of songs. Forte scenes are
reminiscent of automated mixer scenes: they
give you the ability to recall an entire setup
with a simple press of a button or footpedal. A
scene change can do a number of things to
your rack: change the settings and sounds on
each VST plug-in, alter your MIDI routing and
filtering, modify tempo for sync’d effects, and
change a VST instrument’s audio-buss
assignment. Furthermore, it
can
do
all
of
this
from a single MIDI
program change. This
allows you to set up a
complete set list of
scenes, each named
after a song or a part
of a song, and run
through them with
little
or no interaction with
the computer on stage.
You
can
even
configure Forte to start
up when Windows
loads, automatically
Forte’s
Scene View,
offering on stage prompts
for the band’s set.
loading and selecting the first rack file and
scene
you
need. So
by
simply
turning
on
the PC you can be ready to play the first song
in your set. This was exactly
what I was
after: there’s no need for a keyboard, mouse,
or even a display, which is something that I
was keen to avoid, because I want to look like
a
musician on stage, not a computer geek.
Forte has a very simple but useful featu®e
called Sceneview. This is a full-screen,
high-contrast display of the scene list,
displayed in a huge font so that you can read it
in
the
most
adverse
conditions. Even
on
the
tiny monitor that I use on stage (see ‘More
About Monitors’ box), I can see the previous
scene, the
current
one
and
the
next
one. It’s
like my own personal prompter, letting me
14
SOUND ON SOUND LIVE
May 2005