Need advice for best approach to creating my own acoustic drum loops for solo gig backing

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entrainmentmachine
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2019 1:50 am

Need advice for best approach to creating my own acoustic drum loops for solo gig backing

Post by entrainmentmachine » Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:17 am

This is my first post on the forums.

One of my main uses for Ableton Live 10 is to use on a laptop to provide flexible backing tracks for solo gigs where I am playing guitar and singing.
I mostly want to play along to drum loops; each song will have several beat variations (A section, B section etc).

I play drums and have a good recording rig, mics, pres, and good plugins using Cubase. Some of the songs I want to prep are covers so my plan is to play along to the entire song while recording my drums to 6 tracks. Since I am playing along to the songs, it will not be to a click or synced to the grid. Then I will mix down the drums to a stereo two channel WAV file. From this I will select the "sections" out of the entire song, consisting of 2 bars, 4 bars, whatever that will become "Verse clip", "Chorus clip".

I have two questions:

1. What do you guys think is the best way to make these into clips for Ableton to ensure seamless loops?

A: Edit out the 2 bar or 4 bar sections in Cubase and import them into Ableton as you would a loop from a loop library?

B: Bring the entire song track into Ableton and cut out the clip loops in Ableton?

2. I am going to try and take the "one big Live Set" approach for gigs to avoid having to open up a Set for each song.
My 2nd question regards clip metadata. I read somewhere that each clip can specify its own tempo and time signature. It there a way in Session view, where lets say the first song's clips are 120bpm 4/4, then after a couple of slots I have a cluster of clips that are 200 bpm 3/4 in their metadata. Will Ableton read the metadata of the 2nd cluster of clips and change its global tempo and global time signature? Or will I have to manually change the global tempo and time signature for each song that I want to play i.e. skip to in the Set?

I know these are basic questions - thank you so much for your experience and advice!

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: Need advice for best approach to creating my own acoustic drum loops for solo gig backing

Post by fishmonkey » Fri Jun 14, 2019 2:20 am

hey there, this answers your tempo changes in Session View question:

https://sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live- ... sion-view/

jlgrimes
Posts: 1773
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:55 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga

Re: Need advice for best approach to creating my own acoustic drum loops for solo gig backing

Post by jlgrimes » Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:59 pm

entrainmentmachine wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:17 am
This is my first post on the forums.

One of my main uses for Ableton Live 10 is to use on a laptop to provide flexible backing tracks for solo gigs where I am playing guitar and singing.
I mostly want to play along to drum loops; each song will have several beat variations (A section, B section etc).

I play drums and have a good recording rig, mics, pres, and good plugins using Cubase. Some of the songs I want to prep are covers so my plan is to play along to the entire song while recording my drums to 6 tracks. Since I am playing along to the songs, it will not be to a click or synced to the grid. Then I will mix down the drums to a stereo two channel WAV file. From this I will select the "sections" out of the entire song, consisting of 2 bars, 4 bars, whatever that will become "Verse clip", "Chorus clip".

I have two questions:

1. What do you guys think is the best way to make these into clips for Ableton to ensure seamless loops?

A: Edit out the 2 bar or 4 bar sections in Cubase and import them into Ableton as you would a loop from a loop library?

B: Bring the entire song track into Ableton and cut out the clip loops in Ableton?

2. I am going to try and take the "one big Live Set" approach for gigs to avoid having to open up a Set for each song.
My 2nd question regards clip metadata. I read somewhere that each clip can specify its own tempo and time signature. It there a way in Session view, where lets say the first song's clips are 120bpm 4/4, then after a couple of slots I have a cluster of clips that are 200 bpm 3/4 in their metadata. Will Ableton read the metadata of the 2nd cluster of clips and change its global tempo and global time signature? Or will I have to manually change the global tempo and time signature for each song that I want to play i.e. skip to in the Set?

I know these are basic questions - thank you so much for your experience and advice!
I'm interested as well as I'm starting to do more performances without a drummer.

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