Setting up a live set in Ableton

electrogrimey

I want to start experimenting with learning to play live sets of mostly my own music in Ableton. I have a Novation Launchpad, and an Oxygen 8, so I have enough MIDI to control one.

I'm just wondering how people go about setting up a live set though. I don't like the idea of pre-arranging all the tracks in arrangement view, hitting play, and tweaking effects. That seems even less live than DJing. So I'd like to do it in Session view, but can't really figure out how. With all the parts of 10/15 tracks loaded into session view, is it not going to be impossible to navigate, and put huge strain on my laptop?

If anyone could explain how they do it, or have seen it done, it'd be much appreciated!

rcaz

electrogrimey wrote: »

is it not going to be impossible to navigate, and put huge strain on my laptop?

I'm sure you could find a way of laying it all out in Session view to make it easy to navigate - well maybe not 'easy' but at least intuitive for yourself.

As for a strain on your laptop, use Audio tracks instead of MIDI ones as much as you can, and if you've got lots of similar effects on each track, try put them all into a Send/Return track if you can. Have as little actual sound generation and processing as possible...

Having said that I've been playing a few songs lately with setups like two sampled drum kits, two Audio tracks processing live inputs and two MIDI tracks synthesising and processing sound in real time, all at once, and my laptop hasn't had any trouble. I'd be surprised if you could really push your laptop all the way to its limits?

old gregg

not sure if this will be of any help ...... but for the current project I'm working on, which has 11 tracks, I recorded directly into Arrangement view for the first time. This gave me the initial demos. I then tweaked these midi tracks (around 10-20 per piece) and worked them with audio field recordings. After that I bounced everything out into audio files, reimported these back into arrangement view so that they married up in a timeline with the original midi tracks. Then chopped everything up into 32 bar sections.

Next step was to create a new Ableton project and import the 32 bar audio files for each of the 11 pieces into Session view. I then spent maybe a month tweaking these so as to smooth out sudden unforeseen volume changes from clip to clip.

Next step was to create a bunch of new midi tracks that used some of the more prominent vsti's from each of the 11 pieces. I created a few new midi clips just for fun.

I've got around 5 send/receives also running to give me effects that are triggered via mapping. 2 reverbs, a limiter and away we go.

The end result is that I now have the makings of a 2 hour performance with a large number of audio clips that can be triggered in any order I want + a few midi tracks that can be armed while performing and 'played' live via keyboard or pad controller.

That's the bones of 7 months work.

It's worked so far and has the benefit of the more I perform the material the more I can randomise things due to becoming more familiar with each of the maybe 200 clips, lots of permutations there.

mayhap of little help but who knows.

jme2010

Any links to the tracks you've made old gregg?

Good work man!

old gregg

jme2010 wrote: »

Any links to the tracks you've made old gregg?

Good work man!

yea no worries and I'm honestly not comfortable derailing the thread so pm feedback or anything if you feel like it. Note: this is mostly beatless ambient.

The current project is all about walks and travels in and around Berlin. I've spent pretty much since last October working on the music and travelling back and forward to Berlin to make recordings. It's a bit of a release for me cos I'd spent the previous 4 years doing the same in Australia which resulted in 3 albums.

Anyway, the initial Berlin demos (10 anyway) are up on:
http://soundcloud.com/mixile/sets/berlin-alexanderplatz/

I've performed the music live 3 times in the last month and will do so again in Transylvania in 2 weeks. After that I'll take the live recordings + the demos + all the thoughts and inspirations of recent times (including listening to Berlin music while travelling - Rammstein, Tangerine Dream, Ben Klock) and work everything into an album of ambient electronic music with a working title Berlin Alexanderplatz (after the book of the same name)

some recordings of previous live performances from the Australian series are also up on http://soundcloud.com/mixile

But, back on topic, it' s a method that's worked for me this time. It may not work for others and it may not work for me in the future. I've used Ableton for a few years but would not be pushing out the envelope by any means cos ambient does not generally call for that.

electrogrimey

I'm thinking of doing it this way:

8 tracks in session view, I'm pretty sure I can squeeze each tracks parts into 8 pretty easily. i.e. 1) Kick, 2) hats, 3) bass etc.

3/4 different scenes for each track, intro/middle/breakdown/end kind of thing, so if things go tits up I can launch a full scene to get back on track.

Sends and returns with the standard filters/delays/reverb/beatrepeat etc.

Novation Launchpad and Korg Nanokontrol to control it.

This way I won't need to scroll left and right on session view, and I can just scroll down as I go, so it'll allow me to mix different elements of different tracks and give a lot of control, which still keeping it fairly simple for a first-time live set.

The only problem is I'll have no way to easily control EQs...Would there be any way of routing all 8 channels easily through a DJ mixer? I have a soundcard with 4 stereo outputs.

Hesho

The Apparat pack on the Ableton site is good to have a look at.

http://www.ableton.com/able10-artist-packs

It's nice to see how he has the different sections of his tracks laid out and what effects he uses on the send/return tracks etc

romarr

some nice ideas here for the launchpad http://www.aurexmusic.com/

I use a modded version of one of his templates for live - i find it works great

are you out of control surfaces for the eq ?

Quiggers

learn top use the clip launch tool, dont be frightened to go over 8 tracks,
the launch pad make navigation easy, be aware of musical keys so you can avoid clashes.
reduce the quantize setting and practice your timing for launching clips, this will allow you to do stutter edits on the fly. and be prepared to spend an hour preparing a minutes worth of performance. put a limiter on your master but watch your levels so that it never takes more than 3dB off.

lastly, enjoy, playing your own creations and edits is very different from DJing,
not better, just different and you'll know when you get the goose bumps