The PC/Mac Virtual Studio Live app - I don't touch it mostly - the iPad does it all. Oooh.. sometimes I really like starting at a new church :-)

The Problem - when leading worship yourself and at the same time controlling Live's stems (or loops or tracks or whatever), its not easy to be confident of Live's lingering on a say a chorus or talky bit. Until now I've done the usual tap-dance within the last few bars to set a section repeat, then furtively looked down to make sure it's taken. Sometimes I've unknowingly hit it twice or not at all with the ensuing confusion. Live's loop facilities help a lot but what I really want is to be able to tell Live, at any time before I get there, that I want to linger in the upcoming chorus or instrumental part or whatever.

My solution - insert a MIDI "control track" that contains "skip to last locator" commands. Have this track's on/off (mute) status controlled by a footswitch (I have this footswitch bracketed by some aluminium angle so I can reach for it without stopping the song). I use Bome's MIDI translator to achieve this. I insert simple, bright green, MIDI clips into the set where I might want to linger.

Result - if I want to linger a bit, it's easy to hit the pedal to tell Live to keep repeating a section until I say move on.

To remind the band there's a section we might want to repeat, I've already highlighted that bit in the band's leadsheets and added an audio cue fro those on IEMs. As they can also see if the mute button is on or off they know whether I'm going to repeat or not.

Here's a quick video to illustrate. More detail to follow - feel free to comment or email me with any questions meanwhile.