Using sounds from Pro Tools in live performance

[EVaschon]

Hey guys,

Please forgive me if this is elementary to many of you, but I am doing this for the first time and I'm not quite certain of how to make certain it all goes smoothly, so I need to ask for help.

I'm a songwriter and I've created a virtual band (all songs are the result of musicians, singers, producers, engineers, etc. working together [remotely] from their home studios, to record several songs). However, we're now moving to a point where we are turning the virtual band into a real-life one. Problem is, I have no idea how to get the synth sounds use to play the keyboard parts out of ProTools and make them accessible for a real musician to play on stage in the real world. Can someone please help?

Thanks
Eden

[Darryl Ramm]

More info would help.

This all depends on what those "synth sounds" are. Was a VI(s) used to generate those? What VI(s)? Or did folks record a hardware synth(s)? If a VI was used does the synth player want to find something on a hardware synth that is close or do they want to play a VI live? What synth hardware do they/you folks own already? And Pro Tools would *not* be my first choice for live hosting a VI, many other options, starting with Ableton Live.

Or is your question more about just transcribing the MIDI notes used to drive a VI so a keyboard player can learn them?

[albee1952]

If you simply want to play those sounds live, you could run PT on a laptop with a small interface(you only need a stereo output and some way to get midi into PT). Assuming a midi controller is used, you could have a session open with all the instrument tracks on the screen. Solo the sound(or sounds) you need for any given song and the laptop becomes your midi sound module.

If you want to get deeper, like using multiple sounds in a song, then you would need to dig into splitting the keyboard to multiple midi channels. It won't be ideal, but it can work if you don't over-complicate any given song(of course, you need to keep a low buffer setting to control latency and be careful about plugins in play)