Remote control for theater performance

#1

Hi there !
I’ll be doing the sound design for a theater performance and we’re looking for technical solutions for the live playback. I’ll be making tracks for the various scenes and we need to trigger the tracks while the piece is evolving. So far so good. The thing is there’ll not be a dedicated technician and the person triggering the tracks will be sitting with the crowd and needs to do it without being seen. So we need a tool to control remotely either the DAW (Ableton) or just a media player.
I’ve been looking for smartphones apps but they don’t seem very reliable. We know that there are devices to control the lights remotely with just one button. Is there anything ressembling for sound ? Any other idea ?

#2

Not sure what the pro solution for this would be, but you can do it with just about any MIDI controller with keys or pads and Ableton. Just assign specific MIDI signals to the clips you want to launch in Ableton, change the clip launch settings (you probably want to switch of quantization) and you are good to go.

#3

By remote control I mean wireless and by without being seen I mean something that fits in a pocket. Even a Bluetooth version of my nanopad2 would be too large :sweat_smile:

#4

I think there are some very small MIDI controllers such as the hot hand, but I guess you have to some research then ^^

#5

Some pedal thingy might be another idea but that’s all I got :wink:

#6

Nice one ! The pedal thingy may just be it ! It turns out there are unexpensive bluetooth pedal controllers.