Hi all,
I just purchased VST Live 3 and am getting my feet wet with it. The metronome display is a nice feature, but I can’t figure out how to make it visually active before I start a song. It just needs to run at the song’s starting tempo for cases when I play an intro before the backing tracks start. This seems like an obvious need for a live setup, but I can’t find any information on it.
Thanks,
Tom
leave an empty bar (bars) and loop that part infinitely with flexloop, then when you ready send next part command to go ahead with the song!
METRONOME / PRECOUNT (optional +preroll) !! (I use it quite for all songs)
Thanks to both of you for the prompt replies. fkalmus, precount is not going to work very well in my scenario because quite often, I start a song playing live and bring the backing tracks in at some point later. I want the metronome running so I can make sure I start the song at the correct tempo so when the backing tracks come in, there isn’t a sudden change of tempo. Ciro…’s idea is a good workaround so I will mark that as the solution. However, I am amazed that it is not possible to set the metronome to run (visually) with the transport stopped. It’s a pretty common scenario in a live setting to have backing tracks start after the beginning of the song, so having a visual indicator of tempo with the transport stopped is very helpful. I will add this to the feature request thread. Thanks again!
Tom
Well …. 
We are just guessing as we have no idea what kind of intro you meant 
precount is one way for this below:
Sure if you need a continous METRO for ad-lib quantity of bars, a simple cyclyng bars (with or w.o. flex-loop funct) is a possible solution
fkalmus, can you clarify how to cycle bars without a flex loop? As it turns out, flex loop isn’t a good solution for me, because during a flex loop, a ‘next part’ command gets delayed until the beginning of the next measure. I need it to instantly start playing the next part when I press my pedal that is linked to ‘next part.’
Devils advocate:
What if your timing is off and you hit it on a half beat? - should it be quantised? Or should it read your press as beat one?
Are you not able to anticipate that you’d need next part a few beats before you want it?
Can you set the flex loop to one/two beat(s)?
Maybe you can use Marker1 and it’s associated action command for your needs.
I’m struggling to think of any point I would think I want the next part “right now”. Not saying you’re wrong - can you explain some more?
What if you loop a 1-beat Part?
Thank you for the continued responses and ideas. It sounds like I need to explain my situation a bit more…
I lead music at my church. My backing tracks always consist of drums, and sometimes other instruments. I am accompanying one or more singers, and usually have one or more other musicians playing along, as well. I am usually playing keyboards or a real piano. I do not use a click track, partly because I hate hearing them, and partly because we do not use IEMs. Many of our songs will start with piano and vocal, then the drums will come in later, perhaps on the first chorus. I want to see the metronome of the starting tempo of the song so that I start the song at the right tempo. That way, the drums don’t sound too fast or slow when they come in. I want to be able to press my ‘start’ pedal at the moment the backing tracks should start. Pressing it a measure early would be okay, but the point is that when I press the pedal, that moment needs to be beat 1 of a measure. If I use a Flex Loop to give me the metronome before the tracks come in, we will inevitably drift from the metronome somewhat, so when I press the pedal, the playhead could be anywhere in the loop. Then, it will play through until the end of the current measure before it jumps to the next song part, where the drums and other backing tracks should start. This whole problem would be sovled if VST Live simply allowed for the visual metronome to play even when the transport is stopped.
I don’t mean to sound flippant, but am I the only one that ever needs to start the backing tracks mid-song, after some purely live intro? This seems like such a common thing to do, yet it appears I am the only one with a need to have the metronome run with the transport stopped. I am curious how others deal with this. Maybe everyone just uses IEMs and a click, so they play to the click from 1.1.0, regardless of when other tracks come in.
Just simply Left/Right locator and CYCLE, then there is an action to toggle cycle
Did you know you can decrease flex-loop jump time to half bar, or to PartEnd.
No, absolutely not, but - in my understanding - you want to get some logically unusual assistance from VL
What people used to do in such cases:
They start playing freely and at the last bar before BACKINGTRACKS they start PLAY with PRECOUNT
If there is a video, dmx, whatever content during the intro then you need start metronome from the very beginning of the song and as time comes, BACKINGTRACKS will join the song as time comes
Do you use tablet for sheet music? Multiple sheet-music apps can provide some METRONOME blinking. Because from one side, you want to have an exact and perfect METRONOME in the meantime you want to stay FREE (mean jumping to BackingTrackBeginningBeat1 anytime you think… without keeping the METRONOME). Does this qestion / explanation makes sense why isn’t this an obvious one?
No, not at all. It was more a question of understanding your exact needs.
Thanks again, everyone. I do appreciate the responses, and a good support group is a big part of making an application successful! In the end, there are various ways around this issue, but I still feel that it would be much simpler if VST Live allowed for the metronome to run when the transport is stopped. I realize some would not want this, so it would be best if it were optional. I did post this in the feature request thread.