Ableton Guitarists

[kanuck]

The secret to total control is "Mackie Control Board emulation." Set up a Live MIDI input as if it were a Mackie Control, then send MIDI notes on channel 1. I just posted a link to a list of the notes, and what they do, to this same thread about 20 minutes ago. These controls would let you move from clip to clip, up, down, or sideways, and fire clips, all via MIDI. I do it with my feet, using an FCB1010.

There's a customizable remote script for the FCB1010 at my blog, which picks up most (if not all) of the Mackie funtions, and includes control over the APC/Launchpad "red box" as well:
http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/ and
http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/p/sup ... ml#FCB1020

Best,

Hanz

PS: I'm primarily a guitarist; I made the switch from Sonar to Ableton about a year ago. Enjoying this thread - thanks.

that's you!? I just wanted to say thank you so much on your apc40 script it's brilliant.

[Pasha]

I'm on a crossroad of where I want my guitar to go. Anyone please chime in and hopefully help me on one way.

There is a Third Way: virtual guitar

I use the VG-99; it's awesome. Or you can pick up an old VG8, and if you're patient and love figuring out how to program effects and synths, you can dial up some crazy synth-like sounds with it.

Just coming out recently is StringPort, which looks similar in some ways.

Cost-wise, the VG-99 wins, because you don't need a computer to dial up awesome weirdness, or to take it onstage. Of course, if you're using Live onstage anyway, computer-based is a plus.

VG8 comes in 2nd, only because it's so old now that you might have probs with internal batteries or repairs. It's solidly built, though, very solid.

Features-wise, StringPort has potential, but isn't there yet. Not enough sound modules and tweaks. Has potential to exceed Roland VG units, though, just because it's computer-based. Pricey but seems like it'll be a good value once they've fleshed out the available options a bit more.

There may be others that I haven't checked out, too (does Axe-FX approach synth-like power for guitarists?).

I took a look at stringport today. I'm feeling not very convinced. VG99 is a better approach IMHO.
You need a monster machine to run all that stuff, while VG99 has dedicated CPUs and OS to do it and if they
(Roland) followed their own steps I guess that it should have 1 little CPU per string... In GR300 they had 6 analog circuits. Virtual Guitar gives more juice to our stringed friends without going to MIDI. The expressiveness of MIDI cannot be compared to VG approach.
Good suggestion about the VG8. I did not think about that.

- Best
- Pasha

[auron]

When I play practice sessions with clips being fired with repeated looping, as well as using looper for the guitar, live crashes in 20-30 min. consistently.

I've seen a few videos of people live looping with ableton, anyone else running into this problem?

The only surefire way I see doing a live performance would be to have a redundant laptop midi clock synched or create arrangements that can go acoustic just in case of failure.

I'm running Ableton 8 suite, Amplitube 3 with the new Macbook Pro 15" i7, M-audio profire 610 interface, Roland FC-300 midi foot pedal.

[Pasha]

When I play practice sessions with clips being fired with repeated looping, as well as using looper for the guitar, live crashes in 20-30 min. consistently.

I've seen a few videos of people live looping with ableton, anyone else running into this problem?

The only surefire way I see doing a live performance would be to have a redundant laptop midi clock synched or create arrangements that can go acoustic just in case of failure.

I'm running Ableton 8 suite 64-bit, Amplitube 3 with the new Macbook Pro 15" i7, M-audio profire 610 interface, Roland FC-300 midi foot pedal.

Ableton 8 is not 64 bit so there's no real benefit into running it that way. If your system boots into 64bit you gain more memory access but unless you have more than 4GB in your machine you'll be fine with 32bit mode as well. Moreover audio/midi drivers at 64bit might be still 'unstable' for the time being.
I have two Macs, I loop live with no crashes at all. Snow Leopard on both my Late 2006 Macbook and Mid 2008 iMac.
I have spotted Amplitube. IKM has not a good reputation with Live so I'd try without that plugin in both 64 and 32 bit mode.Hope this helps.

- Best
- Pasha

[auron]

pasha,

ableton seems stable so far without the VSTs (whether os x is in 32 or 64 bit mode). Along with amplitube I was also using kontakt 4. I think there lies the problem because WITHOUT the VSTs loaded I'm not crashing (at least not yet).

many of the kontakt instruments can be imported by Live so that might not be a problem, but amplitube 3's is hard to give up.
Perhaps use ableton for live performance and use the vst's for recording until the issues are worked out.

[Pasha]

pasha,

ableton seems stable so far without the VSTs (whether os x is in 32 or 64 bit mode). Along with amplitube I was also using kontakt 4. I think there lies the problem because WITHOUT the VSTs loaded I'm not crashing (at least not yet).

many of the kontakt instruments can be imported by Live so that might not be a problem, but amplitube 3's is hard to give up.
Perhaps use ableton for live performance and use the vst's for recording until the issues are worked out.

I have tried to stay away from IKM after a very bad experience.
Sonce then my standard guitarist sounds were made using Ableton Live only.
Do you have the Suite or Live? I can exchange some presets I made, if you like.

- Best
- Pasha

[auron]

I have ableton suite.

i was making a project for the Killers - All These Things That I've Done. I took a midi I found online (don't know who) and started to hack at it. I wanted to model everything in ableton using midi to get the instruments sounding authentic then have each band member play live for the actual performance.

my killers amp/cab needs lots of work. I left the midi guitar tracks in there as a sound reference if any out there is interested in working on this.

The following project is Ableton 8 Suite components only, this way we can share the project file only. maybe some of you can make it better?

http://www.messenger.org/killers-attid.zip

using Amplitube 3 and Kontakt 4 playing live with musicians using those VSTs it sounds better. I should clarify that we are playing 2 guitars with Amplitube (not synth). But I do have midi pickups on my strat so I can play the pad and strings using synth. The organ/piano is played on a midi keyboard. I want to replace the drum track with our drummer playing a MPD32 because the venue has no space for real drums. But with amplitube 3 VST running the setup crashes.

if you can get this project to sound great using only ableton suite, I'll update the link with your improvements.

AP

[yop44]

Auron -> the link does not work

[auron]

Auron -> the link does not work

the link works now, i updated the post with the actual project zip.

[Pasha]

Auron -> the link does not work

the link works now, i updated the post with the actual project zip.

Good. I'll take a look,

- Best
- Pasha

[auron]

for all the guitarists out there...

support at IK multimedia suggested using the AU (audio unit) version of the amplitube 3 plugin instead of the VST.
so far no crashes.

give it a try if you are an amplitube user. If you haven't bought it yet, I would wait for them to really fix the problem first.

[omega13lives]

I really dig what I can do with Live as a front end into a clean power amp and cabinet. I'm actually using Live as both my bass and keyboard rigs these days, often simultaneously too.

I hear you guys on the guitar-synth lust though. Are any of you guys using pitch->MIDI conversion at gigs? It definitely works a LOT better on guitar than it does on bass (longer wave cycles = unusable latency).

So rather than use pitch->MIDI conversion with bass, I just shape my actual bass tone into a synth sound using a long effects serial effects chain. One benefit from doing things that way is that you eliminate any conversion latency and another is that you can preserve a lot more of the nuances in your pitch bending, vibrato, etc. I feel 100% comfortable gigging with it on bass.

Hi, I play bass too and am not really trying to get a synth sound right now, just use the Live effects in an Instrument Rack and Behringer's FCB1010 to switch. However, I can't seem to eliminate or minimize the latency or I seem to lose notes if I play too fast, or I get a crackling, which is clipping, right? (I get the crackling sometimes just playing a clip so I'm not sure how to deal with that either.) I/O is an 8 channel Behringer rack device thru ADAT to EMU1616 breakout box connected to EMU PCMCIA soundcard bus (which has it's own software interface to connect HW to ASIO and back) in 3.3 GHz laptop with 4 Gb RAM on WinXP. From your experience is this workable or is the problem "longer wave cycles = unusable latency" as you mentioned? Or do you think it's something in my setup? When I go to Live's Preferences and click Hardware Setup I get the EMU ASIO box where I can choose the Latency ms, which then shows in Live as a certain number of Samples in Buffer Size but shows Input and Output Latency both equal to the number I select so it doubles the latency. There is a Driver Error Compensation that supposedly will reduce the Overall Latency but I haven't seen that make much difference. Again, I want to use it in a performance, not recording. Also, your file expired at Zippy so I could not listen to what you posted. tx

[littlepig]

Pasha, did you buy a VG-99 in the end? It looks like a good all in one device but expensive.

[crumhorn]

I've been messing around with an old casio MG-510 midi guitar recently and having a lot of fun with it.

It's actually a lovely guitar to play but the built in latency on the MIDI side makes it hard to use in real time.

But you can set up some really nice effects with arpegiators and scale and chord plugins.

Sometimes I record the MIDI output without listening. later you can shift/quantize and edit the results.

In the POLY mode each string sends on a different MIDI channel which can be routed to 6 separate tracks in Live. By putting a separate monosynth on each track you can get a very organic feel with slides and pitch bends. It takes a bit of setting up but it's well worth it. It seems to be able to detect if the note has been picked or not so that slides and hammer-ons are sent as pitch bend messages. So it's vital to set the PB range correctly on the synths.

Also you can use a different sound for each string and retune each string with a midi pitch effect. eg. tune the strings in octaves and fifths and put a different orchestral sound on each string for awesome power chords.

Plus it makes an excellent control surface if you map the session view slots to particular fret/string combinations - think of the strings as scenes and the frets as tracks (or vice versa). I've been experimenting with using the 17th fret and upward to control clip recording and launching. no need for a fancy foot controller.

Try mapping notes on the top fret to control looper.

Excuse the rather breathless and unstructured post, but as you can tell I'm pretty excited by it. not had so much fun for years.

[crumhorn]

...
So rather than use pitch->MIDI conversion with bass, I just shape my actual bass tone into a synth sound using a long effects serial effects chain. One benefit from doing things that way is that you eliminate any conversion latency and another is that you can preserve a lot more of the nuances in your pitch bending, vibrato, etc. I feel 100% comfortable gigging with it on bass...

One trick for getting good bass lines from a MIDI guitar is use the MIDI pitch change effect to lower the pitch by as much as 4 octaves. That way you can play high up the neck on the top strings where the latency is more acceptable.