What I’d like to share with you is the way that I use SCS in a music/band context as opposed to theatrical productions . . . however, these two different aspects are of course often intertwined (typically in musicals where music and sound effects are combined).
I'll use one of my productions, the 'Forever Everly' Everly Brothers tribute show (www.forevereverly.com), as an example. The show has been designed to run either:
- As a two-piece (Don & Phil Everly) with full recorded backtrack backing, or
- With live guitar, bass and drums and certain extra elements included in the backtrack (but it's great to have a pre-recorded track just sitting there on the night your lead guitarist decides to go sick).
- The tracks can be rebalanced, EQd, processed etc. by the FOH engineer.
- The performers can have diffent mixes for on-stage and in-ear monitoring.
Audio
Tracks 1 & 2 Stereo . . . I call 'OTHER' as that consists of anything that's not on any other track (strings, brass, keyboard etc...).
Tracks 3 & 4 Stereo . . . 'LEAD GUITAR'.
Tracks 5 & 6 Stereo . . . 'DRUMS'.
Track 7 Mono . . . 'BASS'.
Track 8 Mono . . . 'CLICK'.
When the band is playing with us we only use the 'OTHER' and 'CLICK' tracks.
MIDI
This is a MIDI file composed of data to control other outboard equipment. It's not being used in the traditional way, i.e. playing MIDI instruments, although of course it could be. In this instance it is being used to switch on & off and change patches on a reverb unit, and to automate lighting. In a couple of previous tribute shows, 'Elton John' and 'Billy Joel' the MIDI track was also used additionally to change patches on my guitar processor, electronic drums and Elton & Billy's pianos.
Video/Image
We're running various videos (AVI) consisting of footage of the 'Everly Brothers', scenes from the times, song lyrics etc., and still images (jpg) between songs.
Putting It All Together
For audio and MIDI production I use Cubase SX . . . . . I first lay up all the audio tracks that are required and get a mix together. For this particular production I then mix-down five different sub-mixes as described above, ensuring that the length of each is identical (IN and OUT points). . . this is essential to establish and maintain sync between the tracks. The sub-mix configuration will obviously vary from production to production. I take advantage of the fact that the ‘CLICK’ track is an audio track by adding verbal count-ins, and piano or guitar chords to assist with a cappella songs or songs where the vocals come in at the top with no instrumental intro.
Still within Cubase, alongside the audio tracks I then prepare MIDI tracks that each contain the data required to perform the above tasks . . . each MIDI track has a different MIDI channel allocated. I export these MIDI tracks as a MIDI file . . . also the same length as the audio files.
I actually use Adobe Premiere to prepare my videos but as it is possible within SCS to choose what part of the video you wish to play you may not have to do any prior video editing.
Now, in the context of SCS I think of the ‘Cue’ as each song and the ‘Sub-Cues’ (audio sub-mixes, MIDI and video) as the components of that song. It’s then very easy within the ‘editor’ to rearrange the running order and/or to enable or disable any particular song. I also use SFR Cues and Sub-Cues to automatically fade in/out certain previously playing Cues (mainly image Cues as certain songs start). I have recently added our pre-show/interval music to the production by use of the 'Playlist' facilty. This is triggered by either a hot key or automatically.
The show is done in many different lengths and combinations so to avoid each version from getting too cumbersome I have created a file that I call ‘ALL CUES’ where I construct all of the ‘Cues’ for each show or artist, and then import the required ones into each version as required.
Some SCS Screen Shots
I find that we only need the above four columns . . . the ‘When Required’ column consists of our verbal cues which indicates to the operator when to start the song (Cue). I’ve used dark colours as backgrounds to help eliminate glare from the laptop monitor screen.
This gives you an idea of the way we lay up our Cues(Songs) and Sub-Cues (Parts) . . . the first three tracks are stereo audio, the next two are mono and the last three items shown in this example are MIDI, Video and an SFR sub-cue.
This shows the audio configuration (the last stereo track is an 'emergency' vocal track just in case one of us loses our voice for some reason or other).