1. General setup

This piece is played with a clicktrack sent soundly and visually to the orchestra conductor. A tablet or a computer plugged on the same network as the main (and spare) computer is needed on stage to give visual feedback of the click to the conductor. Miraweb is used for this purpose.

The unrolling of the score is mostly automatic, however by default the score is unfolding section by section and you need to trigger by hand each section. This is useful mostly for rehearsal.

When playing the piece from the beginning to the end, and do not want to trigger each section by hand along the playing, you need to tick the run_through box in the patch. This way, the whole score is going to unfold automatically until the end.

2. Loudspeaker setup

The loudspeaker setup is made of 12 speakers organised in 2 rings of 5 speakers around the audience, placed (or directed to) two different heights. And 2 speakers about the center of the room, in a zenital postion, number 11 pointing downwards as “voice of god” and number 12 pointing upwards to the ceiling to have a diffuse canopy effect.
First speaker (#1) is above, in the center of the stage frame as usual “center cluster” while the classical left and right sides of the stage participate to the lower ring (left: #10, right: #2). In the back of the audience is #6 speaker which also should be rather low.
Here is an aproximate diagram of the setup (with precise angles).

3. Midi setup

MIDI is solely used to connect a nanoKontrol2 controller allowing to set and follow the volumes of the differents “instruments” of the electronic part. This can be replaced by any MIDI controller with faders (best with at least 9 faders) as a BCF2000.

A table is provided which indicates the level of each “instrument” of the electronic part for each section. This is based on the creation concert and has to be adapted to each venue and balance between the acoustic ensemble and the electronic setup.

4. Software installation

a) Max/MSP patches

This piece is wrapped as a MaxMSP project containing all the elements needed to run it. However, it uses 3 external objects/packages from Ircam: Spat5, Antescofo and Samplor. The externals included are for Intel Macs (Silicon Macs did not exists at the time of this playing of the piece).

You will have to get the modern versions of those externals to match your hardware if needed.

Cycling’74 Miraweb package is also need for visual click feedback to the conductor.

When opening the file Vertigo.maxproj, the main patcher (file _main_noadc.maxpat) should atomatically open as well. A small to do / check list is written in the right side of patch. The antescofo score to load is the file _main_noadc.asco.txt located in the data folder of the Max project.

b) Routing in Max/MSP

Routing is straightforward in this piece:

• there are no inputs
• outputs follow the previously included diagram (see 2. Loudspeaker setup)
• clicktrack is sent to the conductor through #13 output channel

c) DSP Status Options (Fs, IO vs, S vs, Overdrive, Audio Interrupt, Vector Optimization)

No specific setup is needed. By habit, I played the piece with Overdrive set ON and Audio Interrupt set OFF. And as information, the rest of the audio configuration is given in the Audio_config.txt file.

d) Click - Audio & Miraweb

The clicktrack of this piece is not a wavefile, it is generated in the subpatch [bnl.antesclick] of the main patch. This subpatch reacts to messages sent by an automatic process of the Antescofo score named click().

As this version of the piece is played with a clicktrack given the conductor both soundly (with ear-monitor) and visually, you should use a computer or a tablet with any web browser (preferably Firefox or Chrome) on stage. All the computers (audio main, audio spare and stage) should be on the same local network for visual feedback to work – preferably a closed, cabled network not connected to the internet.

On the stage computer, open the web browser of your choice and type in the address and port shown in the subpach [p Mira] of the main patch. Measures, tempo should be updated in real time and rounded-squares displayed should light in red following the time signature and beats of each measure giving the conductor the visual info in sync with the audio click.