Launching of complex sequences automatically - or easily..!

[Groovacious]

Hey "Live"- Brothers and Sisters

does anyone have a good suggestion as to how I can sequence my show ?


I know about the arrangement view where you can fire clips simultaneously.
However, I constantly operate in the Arrangement view and I can't switch screens.

I actually need to see where in the song I am so basically I use Live like I would, say, Protools.

How do I launch my songs (which are frequently 16 tracks or more with lots of automation on them) in Sequence without having to do what I have to do now:

1) Stop Playback

2) Open File Command

3) Scroll through the songs (= Sets) and select the next one

4) Open the file

In that time span- until the new song is launched- I should be thanking the audience and communicating, not disappearing behind a screen.

Any ideas (and yes I am fully aware that I could ask another band member to launch the songs for me….)

Thank you all for brainstorming with me!
Stephan Oberhoff

www.heartbeatbrazil.com

[infernal.machine]

I wouldn't ever consider Arrangement View for live performance. What makes Live unique is that you can trigger clips seamlessly in Session View, so why wouldn't you use it? If you need to see where you are in the song, just double click a clip and you'll see it. If you really need more detail, divide your clips up into sections (verse, chorus, etc.) and either trigger them manually or set them up using follow actions.

As for loading new songs, you don't have to use the file menu. Just navigate to the .ALS file in Live's browser or in explorer/finder and drag it in. You can even drag in individual tracks from your sets this way. What was currently playing will continue playing, and you can load new tracks at the same time. This will even work with Arrangement View, but I would make sure all your tracks are muted by default (or pushed way back in the timeline) so you don't get a mess all playing at once when you drag something in.

Hope this is somewhat helpful?

[Groovacious]

@infernal machine

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.

I can't work Live in any other way but Arrangement view as I need to see where in the song I am (I use Markers and automate a set of buttons to target certain areas of the song.

My sequences are extremely complex and go FAR beyond a few clips.

Thanks in any case!
Stephan

[infernal.machine]

Is there something stopping you from bouncing your 16+ tracks to a few audio clips? For me, I can usually bounce out 90% of what I do to audio, trigger it, and then play the rest live (sort of like creating a glorified backing track to jam over). If you aren't actively manipulating all the tracks during playback, I feel like this would be a lot easier to keep track of... I guess it depends on your setup and what you're trying to do.

[Groovacious]

Hey!

Yes - the fact that I have live musicians with me who need discrete headphone mixes which vary from player to player.

Bouncing to stereo is totally not what my show requires.
As I get bigger budgets, I want to mute more tracks and have the live members play the part which I would then be able to simply take out of the picture you see?

Also, my music is brazilian and very acoustic sounding, nothing repetitive at all!

Really appreciate your willingness to help though !!
Best
Stephan

[3dot...]

how many tracks in your show?

why not make one big set containing everything?

this is the way I used to work:

each of the tracks/songs was up to 8 channels each (+ 4 Aux FX) and 8 scenes per track/song.
So I can move in banks of 8 around my "mega" set using the LaunchPad.

on those 8 channels x 8 scenes I would have the 1st scene of each track/song do this:
1. change tempo to the appropriate tempo of this track (write the desired BPM in the scene name)
2. each clip would change a rack fx chain on it's channel to the appropriate rack chain for this track/song (using clip envelope chain selector)
3. all the clips on the 1st scene of a track/song would have launch mode quantization set to '1 bar' with 'Legato' OFF.
the rest of the clips in a track/song were set to 'no quantization' or '1/16' with 'Legato' turned ON.
the idea is that the 1st scene syncs eveything together while the rest of the clips are free of quantization but locked to the 1st scene time and so stay synced.

on some tracks I would use clip 'follow actions' for drum fills and snare rolls and such. it would play a short part of the clip and jump back to clip with the main groove (clip 2 with legato turned on)

After a while i expanded this setup to much more extensive 16 tracks (8 audio routed through 8 FX tracks)
I won't go into the details for this one...

that was then..
today...it's even more easy to tailor a complicated live set-up to your exact needs ..
with clyphx being so robust, and m4l included in Live... you can really do what you want performance wise.
But it is going to take some effort on your part to learn ..build and test/rehearse.

[zwolf]

Finally a question where I may for once be a bit of help. I've been sorting through these same questions for some time now and have finally come to a workflow that is solid and easy. This involved a switch from session view to arrangement.

So like 3dot was saying, you want to do this all in one large live set. Depending on what sort of laptop you're using, this should be no problem. I'm running probably well over 16 audio tracks (with the same intention as you - to have the ability to mute them out when replaced by an actual band member in the future) plus a number of midi ones to control various synths and effects. Part of the reason I switched from Session to arrangement is that I was having performance issues in Session, with all my audio broken down into manageable clips. The great thing about arrangement is that you don't have to break them up at all, other than between individual songs. It's easy on the eyes, very recognizable coming from the protools/timeline world, and you always know where you are in the song. So there's zero lag between songs - stop one and start the next. I can't imagine opening a new set for each song, the loading time would be unacceptable!

If you want to avoid messing with the laptop at all during performance you'll need a basic midi controller that you can map to the functions you need. I use a DMC-6 from Disaster Area Designs, and I've mapped the midi notes it sends to the things I need to control on the fly: stop and start playback; turn metronome on/off (only for myself in rehearsal, not for live use); and then I have two buttons on the DMC that will scroll up/down successive midi notes, each of which I've mapped to a marker on the timeline that corresponds to the beginning of a song.

And then you can get even trickier with a midi track that itself can control playback, so you could for instance program a certain note to come at the end of one your songs which would stop playback, or skip to another song and play right into it… the possibilities are endless.

[Groovacious]

Great feedback y'all - I actually tried to download 2 songs into 1 Set and it works.
But then I realized what is being robbed of me right there and then: The ability to loop certain sections in each song.

I have a lot of need for looping certain sections since that is the key feature I purchased Ableton for....but there are no multiple loops (which I wish they would provide.

But what I am gathering from Zwolfs great reply is that maybe a MIDI track could provide that option somehow, routed back to Ableton's IAC Midi in??

Its a bit daunting but I would consider doing it!

Thanks so much for all your help guys!
Groovacious

[stringtapper]

I have to say that it sounds like you could avoid a lot of workarounds by at least trying to translate your current method from Arrange view into Session view.

The part about wanting multiple loop braces in Arrange view will probably never happen since that's essentially what scenes are in Session view.

I think if you thought through some ways of adapting your methods you could find solutions to the problem of seeing where you are in the song without the aid of markers in Arrange view but rather using scenes and pre-calculating cue points based on the number of cycles that a particular scene has gone through.

Just food for thought. We can sometimes go all Rube Goldberg on a problem when changing ourselves or our approach (rather than the machine) can often end up being the path of least resistance after all.

[S4racen]

zwolf, do you have max4live??

The part about wanting multiple loop braces in Arrange view will probably never happen since that's essentially what scenes are in Session view.

This i can do....

Send me a pm with your email address if so....

Cheers
D

[Groovacious]

WOW

That one suggestion of creating a MIDI track to auto-stop a song has now enabled me to also create something radical: a multiple loop option!

Super simple.

I marked the part of the song, say the solo, which is to be looped (or not) with a Marker.
I assigned to that Marker a MIDI CC, in my case 34
I wrote into a fresh MIDI track a CC 34 within 1 bar before the possible repeat (loop) should take place.
Assigned the output of that MIDI track to IAC bus 1
Made sure Ableton had IAC Bus Input open and receptive for REMOTE (in Preferences)

Lo and behold (and logically so) everytime LIVE would reach the bar in which that CC 34 was written, it would jump to the Marker mentioned above.

But it goes even deeper (just like you guys had suggested) :
I assigned another Midi CC to the output of that MIDI track (now named the "Loop Trigger Track") and I can now remote control it from my control surface (KORG NANOKontrol- which sends these CC's) and, in that way, decide if I want to give (e.g.) more solos to my band or not.

This is amazing - this cool little exchange has gotten me another level deeper into LIVE!

Thank you guys
Very happy!

[zwolf]

Right?!! The IAC midi bus trick leaves endless possibilities. And you can stay in arrangement where you're comfortable. I came about this backwards, thought I wanted/needed to be in Session for live performance but switched to arrangement because I was having hard disk overloads. And then I discovered that it's 100x better for my usage.

[clydesdale]

I've done a very similar thing by mapping clips to midi notes and then building a midi track to launch the clips in different orders. In my case I used MIDI-OX with REMOTE set on the return path. I call it META-MIDI.
You could then MIDI map the META-MIDI instructions to create even more automation. The real pain in the butt is midi mapping all the actions. It would be cool if there was a M4L deveice that would automatically remap all clips to sequential midi notes kinda like how the Convert-To-Midi works.

[massenmedium]

I have to say that it sounds like you could avoid a lot of workarounds by at least trying to translate your current method from Arrange view into Session view.

Yeah. Clips can be as long as you like, not just loops. And you can use follow actions to reconstruct the running order you'd have in arrange while having the track divided into scenes. Song plays through each section, then the next - you can see where it is by which scene is playing. Get to the solo section, hit it again if you want more, let it run on if not, or assign CCs to any of the scenes to jump around, etc.

Anyway, sounds like you're making progress.