Advise for theater sound

[Dronomophone]

Hey guys. Allright so I'm doing sound design for this musical this summer. I've never done theater before. It's still really early in the stage, but im trying to think of the best way to run the actual show. I'll have to trigger a bunch of sounds like phone rings, door bells, a few ambient sounds like a cafe, music, etc. Would something like Ableton Live be good for this? I want a nice organized way to trigger the samples, probably either with the keyboard or mouse. Thanks for the help.

Edit:damn typo in thread title

 

[scottlinux]

Ableton Live is definitely the program for this. And you can map ANY midi control to anything in live. So say, 'A4' on the keyboard plays this. Or this pedal does that, etc.

 

[Dronomophone]

Thanks. I'll be getting Ableton with my mbox 2 that is being shipped right now, i think its a lite version. Say i have 30 sounds or so, will it be organized on the screen and is the software easy to learn? Can i use my laptop keyboard to play sounds, not a midi controller, or are the keys already programmed to do stuff?

 

[zimv20]

i've used Reason for this. i loaded my sounds into the sampler player and triggered them with an oxygen-8. it worked well.

S.O.P., at least for the non-pro theaters with which i'm involved, is to use CD players and/or mini-disc players (ugh). if you have need for a CD player, get one of the DJ models that allows for single-track trigger (i.e. after the track is done, it queues up but does not play the next track). these tend to have bigger, easier-to-find buttons, too.

 

[e-clipse]

I think Ableton is the ultimate sample and loop cue software. Most news stations have all their audio on hardware samplers. Each sample is labeled and linked to single button operation. But ableton is just as easy as one click away. Reason is also helpful in this area, as Zimv20 has pointed out.

 

[sdjam]

Check out this software. I've used it in other theatres I've mixed in. Not my favorite but out of software based cue execution this is probably the best.

http://www.soundcuesystem.com/index.html

Unfortunately it's Windows based however, it has a great deal of features that are tailored for this very application.

In my theatre I'm using a Roland/Boss Drum Machine with 16 pads and many banks. It uses a SD card to load the files. I edit all my cues in Protools and move them over to this unit. Works Great!

I've thought about using software before but have determined that real time execution w/out the concern of software or computer issues during a performance was the way to go.

I hope this helps.

SDJam