Using Ableton with Live Band

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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HBOW
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2023 9:27 pm

Using Ableton with Live Band

Post by HBOW » Mon Jan 23, 2023 9:49 pm

Hi Ableton users,

I'm planning on performing some of the tracks I've made on Ableton with a live band (Drums, Guitar Bass, Keys, Synth).

I'm reaching out to this forum to find out the best way to go about this. Very early stages of my thought process but I'm thinking to breakdown the stems for each track. However I have a few questions once this is done:

How does the band play in sync with the stems?
How do you transition between each track with the band and Ableton Live?
What are some of the recommendations on how to design all of this?
I currently have the Push and a midi keyboard but what other pieces of equipment could support this or are essential?
Are there any videos regarding setting up that can be recommended?

I've done some initial research but any help on how to set this up would be appreciated.

Thanks

Calagan
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:44 am

Re: Using Ableton with Live Band

Post by Calagan » Tue Jan 24, 2023 12:12 pm

Hi HBOW

It's a complicated process, but the basic idea is to work in session view and to create a scene for each song (or a scene for each part of each song if you want to be free inside of your song structure).

Then you can use a midi controller to launch each scene (for exemple mapping the Live's "play" button to a specific button on your controller, and in the preferences select or keep the option "select the following scene at launch" in the Launch window).
You can also map the "up" and "down" buttons in Live so you can navigate in your scenes, or assign a midi message to each scene).
There's a lot of possible mapping in session view : just click the midi assign button and you can already see what is possible.

Regarding the sync between the band and Live, there are two options :
- using in-ear monitors with a click, and let 1 or 2 bars of click at the beginning of each song (the click track is only routed to the band in-ear monitors, so you may have to manage also the sound reinforcement aspect).
- always start a song with pre-recorded stuff with a rythmical aspect, on which the musicians can sync by ear...

I think that if you play with live, the best option is to have at least the drummer using in-ear monitors and have a click...

Regarding the transition between songs, it's a problem I had since I started to use Live on stage.
There's no easy solution, because Live is made so each scene is by nature exclusive.
The following thread was very useful to me recently. It's a bit technical but if you follow the advices step by step you can get good results and understand the idea.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=208560

Greenapples2019
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: Using Ableton with Live Band

Post by Greenapples2019 » Tue Jan 24, 2023 6:04 pm

+1 for all of Calagan’s insights. We’ve been using Ableton to run everything apart from guitar in our band and it works like a dream now. We use session view with one or more scenes for each song eg we may have an intro that loops until everyone’s ready and then we start the song, or we may have a solo that loops until we’re ready to move to the chorus and so on. As the drummer I have a click in my in-ears and the band follow me. I also trigger the scenes using pads and a MIDI controller. We also have off-piste sections where there’s no click and then switch to a scene with backing and a click. Lights are synced too with DMXIS and we also change patches on effects units.

The transitions started as a way to avoid the usual silence between songs but have now become a key part of our sets, enabling us to link 3/4/5 songs together seamlessly eg in the same key or in sympathetic keys like Dm to Am to Em.

There’s a YT channel called From Studio to Stage that has lots of insights. He uses Arrangement view which looks unnecessarily complicated to me but suits his use case and may suit yours too. There’s also a video on Reverb’s channel showing how Anomalie uses Ableton.

It’s been a three year journey incorporating Ableton into our set up, so that we get all the benefits of the tech but keep enough spontaneity and improv. Even those in the band who were initially resistant to the idea of backing tracks, playing to clicks, relying on tech wouldn’t be without it now.

DunedinDragon
Posts: 104
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:46 pm

Re: Using Ableton with Live Band

Post by DunedinDragon » Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:41 pm

From Studio To Stage is a tremendous resource for explaining how to do this. I've been doing it pretty much as outlined above for well over 2 years performing weekly. In our case it's a bit different than some since we don't use IEMs. All instruments and vocals go direct to the mixing board with no on stage amps or drums so it's really a silent stage. Since all songs have a drum track we just use floor monitors with a normal drum count in then it's just like playing with a live drummer. Sometimes we have to be creative in passages with no drums and just add a high hat or some other mechanism, but it works fine for us.

Our setup is pretty simple. We have a laptop that runs Ableton in Session view with each song as it's own scene. Each instrument in the scene is a WAV file which was flattened and frozen from the main desktop computer where I created the tracks in arrangement view, and I drop those WAV files into the laptop scene. Along with the instrument tracks I have a MIDI track that sends control messages via USB to a Morningstar MC8 MIDI controller that coordinates the synchronized stage automation commands with the music. It also has one footswitch that changes to the next song/MC8 bank, one that changes to the previous song/bank, and one that starts the playback. Each scene also has a STOP track which is just a simple a loopback command to Ableton to stop the playback at the end of the song. This is all explained in detail on From Studio To Stage. I have another USB output to my Audio interface which sends the stereo output of the backing tracks to the mixing board.

Each song in the performance has a matching bank in the MC8 which contains all the detailed MIDI automation stage commands that are triggered within a given song when triggered by the automation track. This greatly simplifies the automation track in Ableton to a single command for even complex changes.

Because each instrument is it's own Ableton track, each song has it's own directory on the laptop. Within that directory I have the WAV file for each track, the MIDI out track for automation and the STOP track for each song. Once these tracks are all gain staged and tested and saved, loading a song into the system just involves dropping each instrument into it's slot, dropping the MIDI out track in its slot, dropping the STOP track in it's slot and setting the BPM for that track and all the levels and setup are ready for performance.

Here's and example of what one of our backing tracks sounds like (without the live instruments and vocals).
https://www.soundclick.com/artist/defau ... ID=1323914

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