I am considering use of VST Live for a church worship situation as a MainStage alternative mainly due to nice set list/song/part organisation.
However I want to understand how easy it is, during a song, to change the next cued part. For example, if we are in the middle of the chorus and the leader signals a repeat of the chorus or to go back to verse 1, can i easily select this and at the end of the current chorus we then jump to the correct next part and proceed from there? Or I might want to cue a repeat of the bridge as this time we will do it twice. Etc etc. I do not want to instantly jump to a new part but simply cue a different part from the default to play after the current one. As this happens during the song it needs to be very easy to do (or reverse).
Same goes for songs. Is it easy to change the next cued song? Many times the set list is only a guide to what the leader might choose to do. Again I don’t want to instantly jump to the new song but rather change what we will play next.
Thanks for any info on this type of “very dynamic” part/song cueing which is very different to the situation where everything is mainly fixed in advance.
Just to add, a great solution to this might be a display of “Up Next” for both part and song that everyone can see. This “Up Next” choice for both song and part could then be e.g. incremented/decremented/defaulted via MIDI or changed on a control surface accessible to a player like me.
Anyway looking for a product like VST Live with this functionality.
It’s good ideas, but how to exactly do that from a users’ point of view?
Also not sure if you discovered FlexLoops already? Those allow to schedule a Part selection, and loop with count etc.
“Up next” - sounds like karaoke
But seriously, you’re asking to jump out of song sequence which is an interesting concept. Maybe this would be better driven from LiveMods (or another app) if that’s possible. Your leader could have song selection on their device and then you literally “follow the leader”.
In theory you could already do this with one of the many available MIDI apps although pre-announcement would take some working out.
Thanks for reply @musicullum. I think I should download a trial version to play with FlexLoops. But basically I don’t want to modify the current or any other part, just change the “Up Next” part to jump to an earlier (or later) point in the song - depending on what the leader decides. By default, parts would always play in linear order unless the “Up Next” part is changed. When the “Up Next” part is changed, at the end of the current part the song would jump to the selected part and continue from there.
Similarly for songs - the “Up Next” song could be changed which adjusts the next scheduled song. When the new song starts, things would then continue from there according to the set list (which needn’t change).
I guess I envisage an “Up Next” part (and song) display (e.g. in LoveMods) which everyone in the band can see. The “Up Next” part/song could be changed via MIDI or on the computer running VST Live. That way the whole band could see the change even if only one person can make it.
Thanks @CliveJ for your comment. The leader might be too busy to make a part change alongside playing and singing so to me it’s fine for the feature to initially allow change only by the person controlling VST Live. But I guess the leader would have capacity to adjust the “Up Next” song between songs if there is a gap so yes ideally they also could control this too. Re. pre-announcement, I think some kind of “Up Next” display for both song and part would be essential so band members are not taken by surprise.
To do what?
Parts have two purposes: they switch Layers, Stacks etc which can trigger messages etc. This can be done at any time in the Song. Secondly, provided they have a trigger time assigned, they can locate the transport. The latter is not possible without FlexLoops activated.
As for scheduling dynamically, there is still the question how to exactly do it from a users’ point of view. If a sudden change of mind is to be executed, you will need to do some user action anyway (no into-the-future-of-your-mind forward looking AI yet), so selecting the Part in FlexLoop mode and have it chime in at a precise quantized musical position (or the end of the current Part) is best we can offer.
As for Songs, there are playlists, and also remote selecting specific Songs. And again, if you (or bandleader) decides a sudden change, some action is required - so why not select a Song.
There could be an extra function to schedule the next Part or Song. For a Song, that would simply override the “Start Next Song” action with a Song different from the next Song. Maybe ctrl/click the Song to be next? For a Part however, it would need to know when to execute the jump, how to solve for that?
