Let's try this.
So I have a lead tone now.
Haha, Ola Englund, that was an epic fail right there.
Maybe that will be the intro.
Hello, I'm Ola Englund the Swede, and today I'm talking about using nothing but a computer
and plugins for playing live.
So I talked a little about using plugins with tube amplifiers in a recent video and the
reactions where VERY mixed, some people really embraced the idea of combining computers and
plugins for a guitar setup, while some just don't seem to understand why you would bring
a fragile computer to do all the work for you.
And I agree, can we trust computers to stay reliable at a live show?
That's why Ola the swede is here, to answer all the 1st world problem issues and questions.
When I play live there are two different applications, the first one is when I play with the Haunted,
and second when I do live workshops or clinics.
Two VERY different type of situations where when I play with the Haunted it's a full band
experience with a sound engineer, full stack amplifiers, big crowds and so on.
When I'm doing a clinic, it's a one guy performance, it's usually me playing together with a backing track
And not that many people, maybe...
And together with that I'm talking about life in general and trying to teach how you can
burp on video and make a living out of it.
But both these types of live performances have had the same thing in common and it's
that I've been using real amplifiers and cabinets on a stage.
Which is awesome, but when I'm out with the Haunted, we have crew and people to help us
out with all the gear.
But when I'm doing clinics, I'm flying alone with all the stuff myself.
So ever since I started doing the clinics, I've kind of searched for the absolute most
portable rig to bring with me without sacrificing anything.
And that brings us to todays video.
Because right now my rig went from this.
To this...
Please Ola the swede, explain what the fuck I am looking at right now.
Well this, is IF it works, my new live rig for clinics and workshops.
This is my Macbook Pro, My UAD Arrow audio interface and my Sennheiser inear system,
EW300.
And that's it.
Apart from the guitars of course.
But with this rig I have an already produced and mixed guitar and backing track system,
with my own monitoring as well.
With this, I just hook these two cables to a mixing desk and I'm ready to go.
On my Macbook, I'm using Logic Pro X. ONE project where I have all my clinic songs
and all the routing of this rig being made.
It looks like a mess, but what we're all looking at the top is my guitar signal chain, rest
of the tracks down here are the backing track songs, reason I have them on different tracks
is basically just to try and balance them a bit better because all songs are from different
productions and so on, that's why it's a fucking mess with all the songs.
Sounds like this:
But what I'm going to focus on here is my Guitar Track that you can see here.
This is the signal path of my guitar.
My guitar goes in to the input here. I'm using this stupid wireless XV...eeh wireless thing
My guitar goes into Input 1 of my UAD Arrow interface and into this track.
And looking at the plugins, as you can see there's a bunch of them on here, but not all
of them are engaged.
The Fortin Nameless plugin is what I'm using for Rhythm tone.
And it sounds like this.
The other plugins beneath it, are basically other Amp modeler plugins with different sounds.
So the ez mix window I have a clean sound that I like and down here we have a secret plugin
for lead tone.
So I have all my different tones on one input track in Logic, so how do I switch between
them you ask?
Well using automation, I can choose which plugin is active or not.
So, here we have a change from rhythm to lead tone, and as the track is playing, the automation
changes the sound for me.
So I don't even need a frigging pedal board anymore, I can just have Logic make the
changes for me. one less thing to bring to a clinic.
And depending on what song I'm doing and what type of sound I need, I just automate to change
what plugins needs to be changed.
So for instance..let's check out here.
So in the Solar song I'm going from lead to clean sound.
And so on...Pretty cool huh?
So Ola, what about latency when doing this setup?
Well you have to set a pretty low buffer size in Logic to get around the roundtrip latency
with all the digital to analog conversion, BUT logic has this low latency mode where
I can set a limit to the latency on this track, so basically I'm playing with almost no latency
at all.
And this part is why I even consider to use this setup because this has been the problem
with using computers, playing through plugins always puts on a plugin latency making it
almost impossible to play fast stuff.
Well this setup works and I'm not getting annoyed by the latency when using this because
it's just so small.
You just remember to shut off all the pornhub windows before you play.
Also regarding the monitoring situation I have the headphone output of the UAD Arrow
hooked up to my Sennheiser in ear system, this is the same system I use with the Haunted
and it's just a lot easier beacause wherever I go, I will always have the same monitor sound
It's really convenient and saves a lot of time when sound checking and so on, also makes
me feel a little bit more comfortable, because you never know when you get to a venue if
the powered monitors there are shot or not.
With my own inear system I have a security in what I listen to, and with that also I'm
saving my ears because I don't have to blast any monitors, I can just use these.
So there you go, that's one of those changes from lead to rhythm for instance.
So that's really cool.
And the cool thing is that, on this part as well..let me see if I can show it to you.
I have a bus send here, buzz going to a reverb and a delay.
So whenever I'm at this part, were one of the tones that I have, were I'm holding that tone
I decide to send even more of the signal into a reverb and delay, and it becomes this really
huge effect, check it out.
So you can here that still going, even if I continue play, that's what's so awesome
with this system.
Because I can automate effects and all that, really easily.
So there you go.
So with this setup, the real challenge will of course be to see how this works for real,
in a REAL situation when I'm out playing.
SO I'm going to use this in Moscow now, I have a clinic there in a couple of days.
Lets make a montage and move there.
Lets see how reliable this setup is.
So now we are in Moscow.
Did it sound OK?
Killer, awesome, thank you.
So it worked, thank you so much.
So conclusion is, yes, it works, I still need to tweak around a bit with my Logic Project
to make it perfect but it's still a solution I'm going to continue with in the future for clinics
We might not all be ready to embrace the use of plugins for rehearsal or live just yet,
but I think for me it's a huge help in terms of what I need to bring to a clinic and to
be honest in a situation where you're an alone musician up on a stage with all eyes on you,
I need all the help I could get and this has definitely helped me out a lot and removed
a lot of the stress elements of a live situation that I haven't been able to control in the past
So there you go, hope that made any sense.
Thank you so much for watching this video, let me know what you think about this method,
in the comment section.
And I'll see you next time.
OK, thank you.