Live's influence on your music.

Komplex · Post by **Komplex** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 4:41 am

So has live influenced the sort of music you write? Or maybe made it so easy that you receive no enjoyment out of doing a particular type of music/composition? Has it opened your creative potential and you are doing things you have never thought were possible before?

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 3:09 pm

I think live has made me feel that it's "ok" to use vst instruments. Before really getting into live, I used tweaked samples and trackers for everything. I'm much more comfortable molding sound within vst's and having live play that back for me now.

I also think that live has given my music a much more "human" feel. Instead of predictable and pre-programmed tracks made from trackers, live has allowed me to create music which is best described as computer-polished human performances.

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 3:23 pm

it has just made me work much faster .i m used to do all the stuff that live does using a few softs like timestrech with serato pitch & time ,recording/routing/rewire/sequencing in protool or cubase & lots of sampling .
live made me sell all my samplers apart my first peavy sp sampler + 2 stereo sound expantions from the 80s i am sure i can sell it for a good price to colectors in a few years coss its such a rare piece in europe .

but apart from that it hasnt really changed my music.

LaQ · Post by **LaQ** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:04 pm

there was a time when i used live for composing - all music from that time was actually crap.
now i'm back on logic and i'm starting to like my music again.
i only rewire live for certain FX now and ofc, i take my songs to live to perform them.

after all i found live so easy that there was no efford put in my music after all - everything was "ok" after a short time, and i somehow never had to work that critical amount of time an idea needs to evolve and become a "great" idea.

so - live pretty much changed my workflow and it wasn't for the better.
anyway i love it. it can do certain things no other program can. i just won't use it for composing anymore.

mpc2323 · Post by **mpc2323** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:08 pm

^^^ well isnt the reason why youre tryin to make beats as often as you can is to make shit easier? So why does it feel like its no fun when everything is easy? I had an mpc sold it just last week because I felt like I had to do unecessary things to even finish a track. I got live and everything is easy and shit.

LaQ · Post by **LaQ** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:10 pm

oh and yet another problem i had:
live makes it so easy to have something looped - so easy that i'm starting to simply loop everything.
then i let the song run for a while and suddenly all ideas are gone.

the way i work with logic is much more musical. i never loop anything, but only c/p from one measure to the next one. so i always notice when it's time for a change, and i'm not simply letting it run because it does...

dumi · Post by **dumi** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:19 pm

hmmmm, first of all, before using live i was always trying to make tunes that sounded like a certain song or artist. and i have to say i was failing admirably

and now i found that i'm just makin music, whithout thinkin it has to sound a ceratain way. i'm finally creatin and not imitatin

secondly, bein so user-friendly, live has allowed me to actually finish song in a reasonable amount of time. before usin live, i was wurkin with cubase sx and reason and i was gettin stuck on a 8 bar loop for months. i used to have dozens of loops like that and never actually finis a song

and, yeah, since usin live i've come down from 170-180 bpm (drum'n'bass) to 85-115 bpm (trip-hop, down tempo, chillout, abstract hip-hop kinda tunes). all in all, i'm esxtremely greatful to live for helpin me discover i can actually create

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 7:39 pm

I use Live as a remix tool, in fact some loops that never became actual songs, became parts of songs in Live. I still write mostly in Logic, it's easier to build complex MIDI songs in Logic IMO, but sometimes I want the limitations of Live to force the song along.
Also I use Live live!

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 3:41 pm

I do more often make sort of text and sound compositions but with Live it quite often by "accident" turns into something resembling music. And yes, it is because you will often try to loop things...
It funny in a way: I started out with tape recorders, then hade a hardware sampler, then the software came in and I lost the feel for the whole thing. Live gave it back, and I think that is because Live is the best tape recorder I could ever dream on. I some sense I am back to where it started.

// C

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 4:05 pm

i was about to start a thread like this one because i too feel that live has changed my music. and my comments would be really close to LaQ's.

i feel my music is much more looped based, which i don't like. so i've got to struggle against that. but the simple fact that the audio flow almost never stops means that my ears don't get rest, and after a while i'm completely disconnected to what i do. i don't know what happened before in the tune, what i was aiming at. i'm just lost.
sometimes i think of switching back to cubase for composing purposes. but there are some things (among which automation handling) that make me stay on Live.
and after all, maybe do i need more time to get used to this wonderful app, i've only been working seriously with it since L4 was released, as opposed to several years of cubase...

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 5:58 pm

since Live 3&4 I havent found the loop based thing to be a problem any more as you have so much control with the clip envelopes etc and once you're in the arrange page it's so much easier to change everything about

I find my musica has changed dramatically - for a while with Live 3 I found it was not necessarily for the better as I kept getting sidelined and never finished anything, but since live 4 I feel like I have arrived. I have gone complete circle and with some decent plug-ins Live 4 is everything I've always wanted

I'm hoping for a few changes to the arrange page to make it a little better for production, but on the whole it's completely sorted me out.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 6:21 pm

This thread's really got me wondering. I've not finished a single thing I'm happy with since exclusively using Live, I've been thinking that it's just me getting old and running out of ideas (which might still be true) but some people here seem to be experiencing the same sort of problem.

I have a hardrive full of unfinished stuff, none of which made it past the loop, loop, loop, bored with it stage.

I'd love to be able to create an hour long set with this software but I'm not a dj and I'm not sure I ever will be, I just don't seem to think that way.

I really don't want to go back to the old Cubase way of doing things though, maybe i'll get me guitar out and do some busking, bloody christmas is bearing down on us after all, I recon I might be able to manage a few bursts of smoke on the water and Streets of London (Anti nowhere league version) might make a few quid.

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 7:29 pm

wow, Martyn, are you THAT MUCH depressed?

LaQ · Post by **LaQ** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 10:57 pm

did someone say "get my guitar out"?
maybe that could be the solution...

these days i'm pretty often thinking about simply doing some tunes with my piano and my voice... thanks to live i'm somehow fed up a bit with electronic music. you can't do anything wrong with live and i'm often wondering who's making the music - me or the computer. as music should be an emotional thing (to me, that is) letting the computer make it seems wrong to me (given a computer is not really the most emotional being).
i'm not saying live can't be used to make human music, but it has that "computerizing" effect on my music.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 11:17 pm

Komplex wrote:So has live influenced the sort of music you write? [...] Has it opened your creative potential and you are doing things you have never thought were possible before?

hell yeah! I've started a band because of live4! It now does all the things I want my computer to do. Flippin' ay.

I just got back from the most amazing livesession with noisetonepause, a drummer and a singer. We got three tracks DONE, starting from scratch, in about six hours, and we also had a lot of setting up to do, so I'm really pleased with the ease of use and speed of operation!

Live's influence on your music.

Live's influence on your music.

Re: Live's influence on your music.