Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

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Bruce E
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Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by Bruce E » Sat Nov 26, 2022 11:11 pm

I'd like to use Live to record demos of jazz/blues style tracks, but I'm not sure if that's too different from the styles it's typically used for to work. I posted a more specific question about this here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=246246, but I thought it might help to ask the general question as well.

I'd like to start with guide tracks, which would be a simple click track and one or more rhythm tracks that establish a basic chord progression - one verse or chorus. Then, I'd like to loop those tracks while I improvise over them as many times as it takes until I think I've captured something worth saving.

Then, I'd imagine editing the tracks to save only the best parts, which would establish the actual length of the demo song. At that point I'd go back and rerecord the rhythm parts live so that they're not simply looped. I'm not a drummer, but I would want to try and humanize any drums tracks as well so that they don't sound too repetitive.

I don't think this is a common use case for Live, but is there any good reason why it couldn't be done?

thanks,
Bruce
Old-school semi-pro part time musician trying to learn to use Live. I don't like it to be obvious that any part of a recording is ever repeated exactly.

[jur]
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Re: Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by [jur] » Sun Nov 27, 2022 5:34 pm

Live doesn't care about the type of music you're making :wink:
What you're describing is actually one of the most common use case.
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Bruce E
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Re: Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by Bruce E » Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:11 pm

[jur] wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 5:34 pm
Live doesn't care about the type of music you're making :wink:
What you're describing is actually one of the most common use case.
Ha ha! - Yes, I'd be pretty surprised to see a pop-up warning saying, "Live has detected that you are playing bluegrass. That is not allowed. Please stop." :wink:

I was thinking about what I might call "traditional improvisation," where every note (or drum hit) is improvised separately from every other one. The impression I get about Live is that it's more often used for improvisation where the musical choices don't involve individual notes as much as which clips to insert at which times, but the clips themselves might have been recorded or created much earlier.

What I'm coming to recognize is that Live supports either or both approaches. My mistake had been to try and do this in the Arrangement View. It looks like Session View recording is what I need to do (and will be trying next).
Old-school semi-pro part time musician trying to learn to use Live. I don't like it to be obvious that any part of a recording is ever repeated exactly.

pottering
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Re: Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by pottering » Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:23 am

This person did a video based on using random Chance with individual notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icg8Hf9e9rc
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yur2die4
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Re: Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by yur2die4 » Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:58 am

I’d say my one complaint with Live for this is that on its own it doesn’t quite have many tools for natural sounding auto-harmonized accompaniment. Plenty of tools for trying, but nothing quite convincing.

I can find some silly but still fun grooves on old keyboards and arrangers. And they handle chord changes pretty nicely. I’ve seen a few nice ‘drummer’ apps on iOS (iPad and iPhone), and they even support Link

Logic / Garage Band also have ‘drummers’, and have a kind of session view.

Still, Live still seems the most straightforward with the session and arrangement view recording methods.

Bruce E
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Re: Can Live be used for jazz/blues style improv?

Post by Bruce E » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:27 am

pottering wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:23 am
This person did a video based on using random Chance with individual notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icg8Hf9e9rc
Wow - that was interesting! Not at all what I expect people to do with Live. I'll have to watch it more carefully to pick up some of the techniques that he blew by kind of quickly.

Of course, as you might guess, this is 100% the opposite of what I want to do. I don't want the notes to be programmed (randomly or otherwise); I want to play them on my instrument. The looped clips are just to serve as guides as I improvise over them, but they should all have been replaced by actual recorded instruments by the time I'm done. But ... I can't play everything, so I might use some of his techniques for the parts that I can't really play myself.
Old-school semi-pro part time musician trying to learn to use Live. I don't like it to be obvious that any part of a recording is ever repeated exactly.


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