At+Beginning+of+Rehearsal

__**At The Beginning of a** **Rehearsal**__

1. If possible and necessary, volunteer to help move speakers and other equipment from storage to the rehearsal location.

2. Help everyone else move tables and chairs to get the space ready. Help run power bars and extension cables so that everything can be plugged in.

3. Grab a loudspeaker and a power cable. Find the right cable to go from the headphone output of your laptop to the speaker (what the right cable is may depend on which loudspeaker you have chosen).

4. Grab an Ethernet cable and connect your computer to the network. If a wired connection is impossible, use WiFi and connect to the cybernetic_orchestra network (but note that a wired Ethernet connection is the preference).

5 for Mac: Launch EspGrid. If it is your first time launching EspGrid ever, then go to the applications Preferences and enter your name (i.e. "David") and a name for your machine (i.e. "MacBook"). Look at the "Peers" tab to see who else is already on the grid. Send some chat messages to make sure people can "hear" you.

5a for PC: Launch espClientForPC.maxpat (it should load via the Max 6 runtime). Click on the first button at the top and enter your name.

5b for PC: Find a "buddy" in the orchestra who has a Mac and is running EspGrid. Figure out your IP address and their IP address. Your buddy will enter your IP address in the EspGrid preferences panel in one of the "Custom IP" slots - then they will enter a port (5512 assuming you are going to use miniAudicle/ChucK) - then they will check the checkbox next to the custom IP slot. You will enter your Mac buddy's IP address in the dialog that pops up when you press the second button at the top of the patch. Now send a few chat messages back and forth to test.

5. Launch miniAudicle (miniAudicle+ESP on the Mac), start the virtual machine, and test that you can make sound. You could use the following ChucK code and click add shred:

SinOsc s => dac; 90 => Std.dbtorms => s.gain; 100::ms => now;

When you add the shred above you should hear a short beep. Note: The 90 in the second line of code sets the level in a (slightly eccentric) dB scale: 100 is "full scale" - by choosing 90 (i.e. -10 dBFS) we are using a sound that is somewhat less than "as loud as possible" for our test.

6. In miniAudicle, load esp.ck and add the shred. This shred makes it easy for us to "talk" to the grid of shared beats (etc) from chucK/miniAudicle code. Once you've added the shred you can minimize its code window. In the virtual machine monitor, you should see it in the list, it's elapsed time slowly increasing. (Pro tip: don't remove the esp.ck shred or click on the "remove all shred" button! To re-add the ability to receive beats etc you'll have to stop and restart the virtual machine, then add esp.ck again.)

If the beat is on in EspGrid, you should see beat-related messages in the miniAudicle console monitor. You could turn the beat on to test if someone hasn't already turned it on. Usually we leave it on when we are setting up, getting into an improvisation etc - as it makes it easy for everyone to test this way.

7. With the beat on in EspGrid, here is a some simple ChucK code that will play a Shaker on every downbeat (beat 1): Shakers s => dac; while(true) { Esp.b(1) => now; 1 => s.noteOn; }

If that works, you should be good to go!