FIELD GUIDE

HOW TO BUILD THE PERFECT LIVE RIG

By: Jeremy Spurgeon Building the perfect live rig can be a daunting task. In this monthʼs field guide we show you how to get everything in sync.

Last month in the Field Guide we discussed how to plan your rig, some things to consider when connecting your gear, and how you might use an iPad to control an external synth. This month letʼs discuss how to sync your gear so that it plays at the same tempo and starts and stops on the beat.

What time is it

Once you decide which devices you want in your rig, you will need to determine how best to sync them to the same tempo. There are many ways to achieve this and each device may have multiple options. Letʼs discuss some typical ways to connect your devices together. I began my journey into electronic music back in the early ʻ80s. Back then there wasnʼt a standardized way to synchronize the tempo between two instruments. Modular synthesizers used control voltage (CV) and gate connections and other synthesizers used different means. It was Ikutaro Kakehashi of the Roland Corporation who first proposed a standard connection that would allow electronic instruments from different manufacturers to communicate with each other. That connection became known as MIDI (musical instrument digital interface). By 1985 it was standard on many synthesizers and other electronic instruments. Today, you will encounter devices with the typical MIDI connections, sync in and out connections, USB, and CV/ gate connections. Some instruments, like the Volcas, have MIDI and sync connections. While others like the Modal Skulpt have MIDI, sync in and out, and can send and receive MIDI over USB. For the mobile musician trying to fit as much gear as possible into a small case, these connectors are quite useful because they use a 1/8” stereo jack or mini USB connector instead of the larger 5-pin MIDI connector.

The missing LINK

Mobile devices like the iPad and laptop computers can be synced with LINK, a technology developed by Ableton that allows LINK-enabled

apps to sync with each other on the same device or on different devices over WIFI. Obviously, if you are using an iPad in your setup, LINK is extremely useful for syncing your apps with each other. There are many apps that support LINK these days, allowing you to set the tempo in one app and all of the other apps will follow that tempo. There are other apps that allow you to sync MIDI and LINK together such as, MIDI Link Sync, Link to MIDI,and my favorite Korgʼs SyncKontrol. These apps will either convert an incoming MIDI signal to LINK or vice versa. This is invaluable if you have external synthesizers and LINK-enabled apps that you are trying to sync together. In that case, you could use one of these apps to convert LINK on the iPad to a MIDI signal that you could send to your synthesizers. Depending on the connections you have on your synths, you could sync the rest of them through MIDI, chaining them together or by using the sync in and out jacks to chain them together by connecting the sync out of one synth to the sync in on the next one.

Which side are you on

I have even used the SyncKontrolapp on my iPad to send a sound pulse out of the audio jack to a device that doesnʼt have MIDI, like a Pocket Operator or Volca Modular. Sometimes you may not want to use a WIFI connection to sync your devices wirelessly. You might be outside in a remote area and WIFI is just not the best solution or you want a connection that is more solid. In this situation, you can split your stereo output into two mono signals and use one side for the sync pulse and the other for the audio. See Figure 1 on page 52 to see how you would set this up. I use an audio cable that has a stereo jack on one end and two mono jacks on the other. I plug the stereo jack into

Figure 1, audio sync with iPad

the headphone jack of my iPad and one of the mono plugs into my mixer. The other mono jack I plug into the sync in jack of the synth I want to sync with the iPad. From there I can simply chain all of my synths that have sync in and out connectors. On the iPad I will use LINK-enabled apps using LINK to sync the tempo between them and the Korg SyncKontrol to send the sync pulse out of the iPad. There are settings in the app for which side of the stereo field you want the pulse to play on, so I set this to the same side that I have connected to my external synth. The only thing to be sure to do is use an app like AUM to pan all of the other apps to the opposite side, so that you will hear the audio in your mixer. This is the option that I use most often because it allows me to sync my iPad with any device that has a sync in jack, without using WIFI. This same method can also be used with vintage gear, like tape decks or synthesizers that donʼt have sync connections. For tape decks, you could record a sync pulse on the left side of the stereo field and record your musical part on the right side. Then split the output signal and run the left side into your sync in jack on the device you want to sync and the right side to the mixer. This will allow you to sync your synthesizer to the tapeʼs playback speed. This could come in real handy with cassette loops, for instance. Same thing for synthesizers that can play more that one sound at a time. You could program one sound to play a sync pulse, like a simple ¼ note pattern and pan it all the way to the left. Then program you musical part and pan it to the right. Split the signal going out and send one to sync and one to the mixer.

Team players

Syncing all of your devices together can be a frustrating task. Each device has different types of connections and individual settings that have to be just right to make it all work but, the results are so rewarding. Today devices are much more flexible than the synths of the ʻ80s and can have multiple options, making syncing much easier and if you use your imagination and experiment, you can probably sync up more than you expected. Once you have everything synced up and playing together itʼs time to just jam and get lost in the music.

Win a Tracker MT16

This palm-sized multi-track digital record is a great addition to your portable rig! Enter to win at: https://www.mobilemusicianmagazine.com/giveaway Winner will be announced in our March issue.