Hey there List, I do theatre sound design, and up till now my usual rig for pre-recorded stuff has consisted of my hardware sampler and a couple of DJ CD players. I've been playing around with the idea of creating a sound design patch that would be easy to customize for different shows. My general plan has been to have some sort of script file that is read by PD that can trigger audio streams and alter their volume/panning, with the user interaction ideally consisting of a "GO" button that would trigger the next event in the script file. Anyone who's used a computerized lighting console should know what I'm talking about.
The idea is to have something that's simple enough that I can have pretty complex designs that are easy to run during the show, so that I can actually enjoy the play.
The tradeoff, of course, is that if too much is automated, and something goes wrong, we could have a huge trainwreck, so I'd like to have a "cancel" button, also, that would stop the current cue without moving on to the next one, and maybe some way to easily navigate the cues.
Has anyone played around with something like this? Can my script be a simple text file? Can PD navigate around a text file to skip cues or go back to previous ones? Does anyone have any different/better ideas of ways to make sound design automation easier?
Thanks, spencer