2021 Fall Endsemester Concert Guide Portal
This wiki page will describe the steps that were taken to perform a telematic concert from the MCT portal using the LOLA4 rack.
The LOLA4 rack was designed to be and all-in-one, portable solution for low latency telematic performance. The LOLA computer on the LOLA4 rack works the exact same way as the LOLA computer in the portal, and also features a mixer on top of the rack.
You can control the LOLA4 computer using the wireless mouse and keyboard inside of the rack. If the mouse or keyboard isn’t working, first try switching it with the mouse or keyboard from the LOLA3 rack. If it still doesn’t work, make sure to replace the batteries on the mouse.
As shown in the above flowchart, we have two sources of audio and video for this concert: audio and video from upstairs (the MCT portal) and audio and video from downstairs (Salen). Audio from upstairs is routed both to LOLA and to the LOLA4 rack, while video from upstairs is only routed to LOLA. From LOLA, we get the audio and the video from downstairs. The audio is routed to the LOLA4 mixer, while the video is routed to a monitor where the upstairs performers can see the downstairs performers and a monitor behind the upstairs performers for video capturing purposes.
Once a connection is received from downstairs, you may mix the audio from downstairs using the LOLA4 rack mixer. After that, you may route the audio from the LOLA4 rack to the stagebox, which then sends it to the Midas M32 mixer, and finally sends it to the speakers so the performers can monitor their performance.
The biggest issue to look out for in this project is jitter created by LOLA. We have found the longer the LOLA computer remains on, the more jitter is created, but this can be temporarily fixed by simply turning the computer off for a little while.
For those especially interested, we'll briefly walk through the instrument rig used by the musicians in the Portal below:
The musicians engaged in both digital and analogue instruments, treated through various effects.
Arvid had a Korg MS-20 Mini going through an Empress Superdelay pedal, a macbook with a Pure Data patch based on beesounds, an iphone with a Noise generator and Kaospad Pure Data patch running through Mobmuplat, and the awesome Gecho Loopsynth for some ambience. The empress superdelay also has a looper, which enabled him to loop whatever he played on the Korg MS-20 mini.
Kristian used a small keyboard to control an analogue semi-modular synthesizer with MIDI and CV, going through a phaser effect. The keyboard could also send MIDI to a digital modular synthesizer/FX pedal, which was routed directly to our final sub-mixer. He had various other small gadgets, both glitchy and granular in nature. Combined, the instrument rig could be percussive, melodic and harmonic. These gadgets went through a small mixer, which had its output routed through a reverb effect. The last stop was our sub-mixer, mixing both Arvids and Kristians instruments, sending 2 channels to the LOLA4 rack.
Arvids equipment:
- MacBook Air: Pure data
- iPhone: MobMuPlat
- Korg MS-20 mini
- The Awesome Gecho Loopsynth
- Empress Superdelay
Kristians equipment: