ER301 in live environment

ER-301
#1

Hi Folks,

How are you using your ER301 in live scenarios?
Is it for drums? Is it for FX unit? Is it for something else?

How do you change presets/states of the machine when you`re playing.
Is the menu intuitive in that situations?

I`m thinking about sampler for my live case. Partially for drums, percussive sounds and other pads/atmosphere sounds. My first ideal would be go with the ER301 but before i buy i would love to hear your thoughts about that

Thanks for reading and replying! Have a good day!

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#2

I recently played a set using primarily the 301. Each channel had a part: drums, percussion, melody, bass line. I swapped presets for entire channels as the set progressed. The interface is unresponsive while the presets load, but it was never more than a few seconds, and playback was only ever interrupted on the channel I was replacing. I ran each channel into an external mixer so I could fade the channels to be swapped in and out.

#3

Iā€™ve used it so far as pad / ambience / drone machine with MPC Live. The patches on ER-301 are beatless, thus I havenā€™t worried about sync yet. Iā€™m currently building a MIDI to CV converter for future gigs, so that I can get control signals from MPC to the ER-301.

Iā€™ve saved all presets as quick saves, so I can load them while the MPC bangs out some decoy fodder. After loading, raise the input channel from MPC and fire the sweet 301 tunage away! Flawless victory!

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#4

Yes, I use it for live and it is perfect.
I use it for soundscapes, granular stuff, loops and triggering of samples.

There are a couple of things I do with the way I set it up, for ease of use and to maximize the CPU.

I save everything as 1 quicksave - I name it ā€œGigā€ or whatever place I am playing. I save another duplicate quick save called ā€œGig Backupā€. I have ā€œGigā€ quicksave autoload when you power on the machine. The auto load quicksave option is in the system settings. I do not switch quick saves during a set. That could be potential trouble, so I donā€™t do it.

On a single channel of the er301 I will insert mixers. Each mixer I will call the song name. Each mixer is a track. From left to right, each mixer is the sequence I will play the tracks live. In each mixer I will insert my song stuff per song. Whether it be oscillators / loopers / granular / effects. So each folder mixer will have a complete chain of stuff for 1 song. I then turn off / bypass that mixer/song so the CPU drops back down so I can unbypass the next one. Sometimes I just put a mixer with nothing inside it - a blank - and just name it a track name. These are non er301 tracks and just a way of me remembering a track list instead of writing track names down on paper. I then save that each mixer song as a preset. I do this for all tracks so will end up with say 5 or 6 master mixers - all switched off and bypassed. I then save all that as an autoload quick save + plus another duplicate one as backup.

When it comes to playing i turn on / off each mixer song on the same channel working from left to right.

I used to put 2 mixer tracks on each channel of the er301 and work from left to right then down through the channels from 1 to 4 but it can cause mixups with outputs cables in a live situation, so I now stick to 1 channel. I did this also because I only had 1 available audio channel on my Mix 4 submixer.

Regarding inputs I make sure all the CV inputs match each mixer song so I donā€™t have to touch any cables once patched. They are already correctly routed in the er301 and I tend to keep everything in the same place, to avoid mistakes. CV things I have hooked up - 2 x attenverter. CV/ Gate from Earthsea. 4 x CV/ 4 x Gates from Teletype. So Iā€™m using 12 inputs. The 2 attenuvertors are important as they are both multiā€™d and routed internally on the er301 to control multiple parameters / songs. I can tweak them, they change, 16+ different things at onceā€¦ so Iā€™m not menu digging during the set other than turning mixers on/off.

My sets are not 100% er301, I would say about 40%. What I tend to do is alternate from 1 half of my case, which is regular analog oscillators / sequencer stuff, to the er301 side via a central sub mixer (Mix 4) So as I play one track, I line up the next track and fade between them. The er301 uses 1 channel of that Mix 4 sub mixer.

I am currently working on setting up a 16n fader for the er301 plus those teletype things will be done by i2c also.

17 Likes
#5

Iā€™ve used it live a few times. I have one quicksave that I use and once it is loaded I use that for the whole set. I use the 301 as a live looper, a sample player, a synth voice and most importantly my main mixer.

Channels 1 & 2 are linked and outputs 1&2 are my main stereo outs. Everything goes into the 301 and out those channels. In the channel 1&2 chain I have a mixer for each element of my setup. So I have a mixer for: bass, pedal 1, pedal 2, OPZ, clouds (various things are fed into clouds through submixer outside the 301), a 301 sample player, and an input from er301 channels 3&4 which I use as a simple synth voice (2op Fm or Sine osc). Various elements feed a live looper that is constantly recording with gate driven variations on the reset and punch in recording (gates source is pamelas new workout) This live looper also has a mixer slot in the main mixer chain. The 301 sample player I use for non-tempo based samples like waves, birds, people talking etc.

The only things I interact with on the 301 during a set is the the mute or bypass buttons on a couple of the mixer channels. Outside the 301 I have 3 faders mapped to control the volume of the bass, the live looper and the sample player. All other elements have attenuators before going into the 301. Thatā€™s basically itā€¦5 external sound sources and 3 internal sound sources mixed in the 301. CPU is around 60%. Nedseq for sequencing.

Things Iā€™ve learned the hard way: 1) it is tough to see the display if you are playing outside during the day. 2) as mentioned aboveā€¦auto load quicksaves.

Update: No problems with manually loaded quicksaves since updating to v0.4.21

6 Likes
#6

i use it a lot in live sets , depending on which live i play i use it for sliced breakbeats, for melodic stuff (usually 3 to 4 voices with my own system of analog shift register + flip flops and s&hā€™s) , for live resampling, for live processing of external instruments (voice included).
sometimes i use it with lots of random stuff for noisy glitchy generative blobsā€¦
i can make an entire liveset with it. i can fairly state its my best friend :smiley:

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#7

What sorta live processing of external instruments do you do with it? Iā€™ve been thinking about routing some tracks from MPC Live in 301 and trying to do some granular glitched mangling, but Iā€™m havenā€™t researched if 301 is suitable for that.

1 Like
#8

in two occasions (with a live band i play with, CP04 and with the theatrical act ā€œAlter Hellerā€) i used it to process voice realtime. i use grain delay for pitch shifting (zero delay time), then use a bunch of stuff to do very subtle to very extreme and weird effects: from loopers randomly gated that share buffers with different players (granular and not), pitched randomly or non randomly, carefully panned (i use out 1 and 2 stereo linked) to small doubling effects achieved with really small delays (with subtle random modulation of time) panned left and right, to choir like effects using different grain delays with different pitches and some modulationsā€¦up to distortions, filtering etcā€¦

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#9

Thanks a lot guys!! Really appreciate those detailed answers :slight_smile:

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#10

I use ER301 for live performances for backing tracks and tracks for surgery by other modules., as a looper, as FX processor (delays/reverbs/filters). And as a recorder for some live jams

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#11

Hey seems a really nice way to plan a live set! the part that interested me the most is the way to drop down the CPU, but doing a quick test seems that my CPU% doesnā€™t drops down as i bypass a unit or moreā€¦
Maybe this happens only if we considering a heavyweight unit/mixer or a group of these?
Iā€™m planning to use a lot of custom drum synths/drum machines and samplers/granulators within the ER301 so the CPU ā€˜drop downā€™ aspect itā€™s crucial to me.
Maybe iā€™ve omitted something about what youā€™ve explained?
Thanks!

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#12

By default, a bypassed unit will continue to be processed for continuity. Check the admin>Settings to change this behavior.

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#13

Iā€™m flying to admin/settings right now!

#14

I believe we spoke about this, but would it be possible to make the bypass CV-able (so I can control the mudlogger bypass trick automatically from teletype)?

I do realize that I could stale the 301 by sending things the wrong way (un-bypassing too many units and as a result pushing the CPU into 100%), but as I see it, I might more easily make this mistake if manually switching bypass states between songs in a set.

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#15

:notes:Last night an Mlogger saved my liv(f)e from a broken heart!:notes:

This has become the perfect way to use this module for my gigs.
In this way i can come across a huge amount of stuff internally without being
too worried about CPU.
Thanks a lot for sharing!

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#16

Just tried it today. Two mixers as containers. Bypassed both, still 13% cpu usage. Could I be doing something wrong?

#17

Thereā€™s a system setting that specifies whether bypass disables a unit or just sort of mutes it (canā€™t remember what that option is called). Only the former reduces CPU usage. The latter makes bypassing/unbypassing a little more seamless.

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#18

Yeah, that setting is active here. Still the usage only drops to 11% when this (single) mixer is disabled (31% when enabled). Hmmmā€¦

Could it be teletype units inside keeping it alive?

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#19

Nothing forgotten and hiding out on another channel or global chain, right?

#20

No, checked both. Deleting the unit drops the CPU to the idle 3%. Itā€™s pulled from the quicksave now, but saved it as a preset, to investigate furtherā€¦