An Ableton Q for ya

old gregg

I'm currently playing around with a few ideas in Ableton advance of playing the Life Fest next month and am wondering about how best to use the resources of my system and overall best practice for an hour long performance ... to explain ...

We'll say I'm working towards an hour of new music, created in Ableton made up of say 5 pieces of music that sort of drift into each other so as to keep a flow going. Each of those pieces may have 5-10 vst instruments though some will share synths for things like drones and maybe some percussion. I'll also have quite a few short field recordings in .wav format being triggered during the performance.

I suppose the question goes along the lines of am I better served to:

1) keep everything as is in Ableton and trigger individual or groups of clips working my way down through the performance from piece to piece?

2) take the groups of clips (for example a 30 second synth sweep with percussion and maybe a tinkle of piano) and export these out as .wav files and then just trigger the wav files during the performance + all the live instrument playing that I'd do anyway?

Does that make any sense? I suppose I want to make the best use of RAM & CPU (nothings under pressure but I like doing these things efficiently so I can forget about what the computer is up to) and also to free myself up to be able to map stuff to midi and improv large chunks of the music live while the drones, beats and other stuff takes care of itself.

Many thanks for considering this and if anyone is going to the Life Fest then I'll be doing the Sunday morning chill session at midday so do swing by for some ambient/downtempo with plenty of Australian field recordings. Nice.

darklow

are you gonna be using 1 live set for all 5 pieces? it takes ages to open a live set if it has loads of vsts which would make changing between songs a bit of a pain in the howl. i was wondering that myself if it was better to have all the songs for a gig on 1 live set but then you run out of keys to map to trigger them all! i know you can use caps as well as small letters but how many clips are you using?

i use ableton for triggering different drum beats and synth riffs and play along with them with my guitar through guitar rig 3 or a midi keyboard controlling other synths. Ableton rocks ass!

is that lifefest in westmeath?

old gregg

ahh yes this goes to the root of the issue darklow and thanks for the reply.

I think it's a case of 1 large live set to overcome the waiting to load issue. I've done this before and used 1 live set but was keeping things relatively simple cos I was learning the software and at the same time wanted to keep the mapping thing simple while doing improv with synths.

This time round I'm writing in Ableton for the first time and can see it all getting bigger and bigger and I'm wondering whether it would be best to export some parts out as wav files and import them again as audio clips to be triggered and thus cut down on some of the mapping I have to remember or will this just add to the CPU/RAM load.

Yep, it's the fest westmeath.

darklow

i would have thought that wav files wouldnt take up as much cpu as loads of vsts, if you have that many songs will u not run out of buttons to map with, even with caps? somebody on the ableton forum built their own footswitch controller which looks cool but who has the time to do that?

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=112242

old gregg

that sort of makes sense re wav v vst and the cpu. In my case mapping more comes down to the ability of my memory to keep track of more than 10 at a time


as for the footswitch box ....


so cute, they even left room for the dog to have a place to sleep

darklow

id say the best thing to do is have some kinda mapping sheet on a music stand beside your computer so u can see what does what. im using my guitar through guitar rig on ableton so ive got a pain in the ars amount of equipment! what soft synths do u use?

old gregg

yep, the mapping sheet will become part of the set up I'd imagine.

as for soft synths, at the moment I'm trying an idea I'd come across in an interview with Anthony Paul Kirby (Circular Ruins, Nunc Stans) who does not dissimilar work to my own ambient/space/downtempo and he mentioned somewhere about starting a project with a limited number of synths and having some of the synths from one track develop as part of the next track and so on. Sort of brings a nice overlap and allows things to flow from piece to piece. Anyway, I'm trying this approach with some Absynth pads at the moment and am enjoying how the process works.

hubiedubie

I would freeze the clips / render to audio as much as is feasibly possible. Audio clips are far less CPU intensive
than midi clips with plugins. Ableton is also less likely
to crash if you can just stick to audio and Ableton's
native instruments and effects. Obviously this mightn't be feasible so I would try to strike a balance between the
two.

In terms of continuity between the tracks you could also
use Ableton's device racks and relatively seamlessly morph between instruments and effects using chain select zones. The manual describes how to do this.

Additionally, device racks with chain selectors is a great way to have multiple VSTs / Instruments (used for different songs) on the same ableton track.

Other tips:
Label and colour code your clips so that you know exactly what each one is. There are many ways to approach doing this pick whatever suits your mindset the best.

Use device racks with macro knobs assigned to the essential controls you need when performing live.

old gregg

cool, thanks hubiedubie there's plenty there that makes sense. I remember freezing clips on my old lappy out of necessity but this time I'll do the same just cos it reduces load anyway.

I'll check into device racks with chain selectors as something new cos that sounds good.

hubiedubie

One thing I just realised that I should have mentioned is that you can't add any more plugins once a track is frozen, so you may actually be better off rendering the clips to audio. Also I think live still might load the plugins in case you want to unfreeze the tracks. The main benefit to freezing as opposed to rendering to audio is that you can unfreeze tracks if you want to do any midi editing or plugin automation further down the line. So based on that, freezing may be of more benefit in the composition process than live performance.

Sorry to back-track here but I thought it worth mentioning.

old gregg

many thanks for giving this more thought too.

It's my first time using Ableton for composition rather than importing bits and bobs that I'd composed elsewhere so your input is muchly appreciated.