Korg Forums

I currently use an arpeggiator (and gates to other synths to control their LFOs and modulation busses) in a live band situation. Currently - I have to 'force' my drummer to run my equipments clock/metronome through his EIMs during performances. He has to follow me - I'm controlling the tempo - not the drummer of the band.

Can I utilize analog to control the arpeggiator tempo? Running drum/band signal into an a/d creating the appropriate clock?

Has anyone here done this?

Also - any suggestions of a better way to achieve what I'm trying to accomplish here would be appreciated.

Mike

As far as I'm concerned, the drummer should be following the track and not the other way around. He should have a click track or something he can play accurately to in his monitors or headphones. I've tried adjusting my sequences and/or arpeggios ot the drummer and it just doesn't work. Unless the drummer is super humanly perfect, it can't work. The drummer is always going to play a little faster or slower and their meter WILL change throughout the song.

I was just running through the Bus options for IFX for vocoder, not just using microphne to modulate the carrier sound, but using drum beat patterns to modulate the carrier sound.
Of course the drum beat only gets carried through when i press the keys. So the drum can play all it wants without triggering any other sounds, until i hit the keys and then vocoder sound comes through with the drum pattern defining it. It would be fun to mic up a drum kit and have the audio go through vocoder FX and then play the keys along with it.
I was watching a guitarist yesterday sing through a basic TC-Helicon where his guitar plugged in audio route and his mic plugged in audio route. No midi. And the TC-Helicon unit takes his guitar notes sound and uses it to harmonize with his voice. So no matter what he sings, the harmony will stick close to the guitar tuning. It may not be time metrics but the same shceme of metrics is used for harmonizing.

Anyway, seeing how there are ways to get kronos programs to sound in rythm with a drum beat even if it be external drum beats routed in audio-wise, or midi-wise, it seems not farfetched to imagine having an audio signal drummer set the pace for electronically timed pieces.
If your drummer cannot hold a steady beat, its not going to help anyway letting the drummer set the time or pattern for the electronics to follow. But for now, the midi clock system is not accessible for modulation from an external audio source like drums.
The Midi clock can be modulated by tempo from the master clock device but there isn't a way to route tempo modulation to alternate sources and even then Kronos would need to work in a modulation source that modulates according to an external audio input, like vocoder does. There are weird things you can do with bus routing on kronos but i don't know any way to modulate tempo via external audio input.

There are systems that take anything you play on the keys and converts it to sheet music and gives it a time signature and all. That can then be played back. Even if you had a realtime quantize device, it seems it would have some lag behind anyone who couldn't keep a tight enough beat and eventually the person would have to learn to tighten it up until the system lag will close. So then whats the point of going through all that when the drummer has to tighten up to a steady beat anyway? Just get drummer used to following a midi clocked metronome and the band is good to go.

***
Here is something from youtube that takes audio in and works out a BPM rate from it and sends it out as Midi clock signal and it modulates BPM/tempo automatically according to what the audio signal is doing.
It gives off flashing lights to follow as well. So i guess it is possible but i think it can actually complicate things if being used by a drummer who cannot hold a steady enough beat. The thing will change every time the drummer changes and then the drummer may get thrown off by the mirroring of her/his own changing and get stuck in a wobble cycle of clock changes.
No substitute for a drummer holding a tight beat, but here is a youtube link showng what you are asking for.

https://youtu.be/2JRpExKYumM

Hi, I would say some automated BPM device will work best if you can give it a feed of kick and snare only, but how is it going to cope with songs where drums drop out, etc? We certainly have a few of those.

Personally, as Jeremy says above, I would advocate your drummer just getting used to it. There is the argument that natural timing variation of a real drummer adds to the vibe, but if you play in a band where tempo sync is vital then you need a click. You can always program the click in a live host like Cantabile to have the tempo variation if you want it, which is what we do. We make the click against the live tracks we are playing. There is enough variation then to make it swing a little.

E.g. to play Pink Floyd, you will not get the right sound unless the guitar delays are tempo matched within a few BPM, and if you play to the wrong tempo then songs like "Another Brick In The Wall" and "Run Like Hell" just do not work.

We used to play the last one live as we never had a click track for it until recently, and the drummer (brilliant drummer by the way ) would usually end up playing it too fast in the end due to the natural tendency of coming out of each fill a little faster each time until cumulatively the tempo additions result in the tempo delay effect now not working much to the frustration of the guitar player.

This must be true for a lot of bands. Pink Floyd back in the day, Duran Duran made heavy use of an arpeggiated keyboard sound, etc.....

We never have a drummer having to listen to some click track, however in one song I need the arpeggiator. So I made the arpeggio of one measurement and every measure I hit a key to retrigger the arpeggio... this works good enough. But in most situations I stay away from sequencers and arpeggios (playing in a rock band, not a dance/pop band).

Our drummer controls pro-tools from a laptop and all the midi gear uses the master clock from that, the drummer uses the metronome as a click track and can give the count in as normal, the orchestral backing and vocals all comes from pro-tools so it makes sense for the drummer to initiate everything - everyone else follows the drummer anyway.

In My band it's simillar to @michelkeijzers.
I create waves equences, and arrpegio ( usually one bar, sometimes two) and hit each bar to sync again.

in 85% it's works quite good, but even that i don't feel comfortably..
I even take audio click track from the drummer, and route to my headphones monitor.

Our drummer is good with metronom, but even that sometimes we/i push to late or to fast --- this is 15%. This is only on bar, but every body specially me and the drummer know that is shame!

So i set click in kronos manualy... or clock are not in sync.
I mean i set in preset/combi 100 BPM, and he have 100BPM. So sync is via hand.

He has not midi in his metronom...
So only better solution, what i could propouse but is hard becouse it's alot of song... and i should make preset for every one is that i should create metronom in kronos, and route click to separate output from kronos and send to drummer.
In that way i can quantize arp to tempo...
Or he should have midi in in his metronom... (only boss have one i think... ).

In all the situations I've been in where there's a sequence, we used a click track. However I've played songs with arpeggiator for short sections (the kid is hot tonight, for instance). Where leading up to that section, I just hit the tap tempo a few times so that it's in time when I get there. In another band I had sampled loops that I triggered manually every measure. Usually it was close enough that with me retriggering on the downbeat, it was good.

Your drummer and other humans should follow the machine. This is how most everyone operates musically. It is much easier to adapt to the machine rather than having the machine try to read the minds of a group of human musicians.

That said, there are ways to do it the other way around. The most obvious way is using TAP TEMPO. If you wish your drummer to control the timing, he will need to tell the machine using TAP TEMPO information. This means he will need a method to input quarter note tempo information live at any given moment. If he is already using electronic drums, this isn't so much of a problem, especially if he is already playing quarter notes on the kick drum or the high hats.

If not playing e-drums, then the drummer will need some kind of MIDI device where he can tap out the tempo, and that device will then need to be the MASTER CLOCK of the Kronos.

Ask again here, if you need more details on how to do this.