Ableton Forum

it's quite surprising that noone has mentioned having an adequate sound card for this task..

if you don't have a low latency card (or asio4all drivers), then the latency you experiance will be far too high to actually play in "real-time". so, get asio4all drivers if you don't have a low latency asio driver card already. if the latency for that is still too high, then get an asio card.

but yeah, of course it can be used as an effects processor, both with the built in plugins and using third party vsts.

can someone explain the gating sends to effects trick? I'm intrigued but I need DETAILS. I mean really detailed.

generally:
- put an effect in a return
- put a gate in the same return in front of the effect
- set the gate to taste

example:
- put a delay in Return A (I set it to a triplet)
- set the gate to only open when the source hits a certain threshold

(you can also do the same thing in a separate channel with audio routed to it)

It's important that a whatever you send has dynamic changes in volume. I've done it where a snare or even a guitar will have random hits that are louder than average.

Only the louder hits will go through the delay.

- r

I'm just sitting here on the back porch on a cool summer day in Georgia, listening to your song and totally digging it. Perfect time & place for it, too. Frickin' awesome, dude.

Loving the discussion of gated effects, too. Thanks for the idea.

mooncaine wrote:I'm just sitting here on the back porch on a cool summer day in Georgia

is there really such a thing as a "cool summer day" in GA? : )

- r

ps. thanks for the compliment

That's what's makin' it sooooo nice.

check the video section.. im pretty sure they have a video talking about using guitars with live

There is, but it's a joke. Basically the guitarist treats Live like a drum machine w/ a footswitch. I was really hoping to see some creative looping applications fleshed out... or something. My rig is more interesting and I can barely drive Live yet.

..and to think that i have never even thought about using a gate to open/close an effect.

i feel quite silly now.
ill go hide.

mbenigni wrote:

check the video section.. im pretty sure they have a video talking about using guitars with live

There is, but it's a joke. Basically the guitarist treats Live like a drum machine w/ a footswitch. I was really hoping to see some creative looping applications fleshed out... or something. My rig is more interesting and I can barely drive Live yet.

share!

- r

ps. seriously - show us what you got

share!

See p. 1 of this thread. Not saying it's any big deal, mind you, just a guitar synth and guitar w/ suitable plugins and crossfades set up, but it's more exciting to me than turning drum loops on and off. I'm really more interested in the real-time looping potential here but I'm not sufficiently adept with Live yet.

I did add a couple of neat tricks this weekend - for instance, I was trying to get a synth designed to pull off an intro for a song, and couldn't quite nail it... so I flew in an MP3 of the song, routed it to an audio track and recorded a brief clip of it, assigned that clip play to a QWERTY keyboard key, and assigned the corresponding stop to a note on my guitar. Now the intro plays right up until I queue the band to start the song. Cool!

I just love the way Live puts everything I need for performance in one place. But I'm still trying to get a handle on recording with it. After many of years of Cakewalk and Sonar it's not quite intuitive for me yet. But I sense a lot of power under the hood, so I'm hanging on.

I pulled it off this weekend, playing through my EMU and Live in real-time. I didn't have enough time to fully explore all the effects, but I did notice that the Beat Repeat effect didn't work at all. The left volume meter was jumping but the right was off for some reason. I fiddled with it a while and had to give up due to time constraints.

Does anyone have a link to a good site with freeware guitar effects and VSTs? This is new territory for me.

I really like the sound of the Simulanalog stuff, but it is very simple. Still, you can get some serious mileage out of this if you combine it with Live's own devices. Just do a google search on Simulanalog.

If you want something more flexible, check out this link: http://frettedsynth.asseca.com/ampsims.html I've never used these plugs (they're sitting on my HD waiting for test drive) but the company offers a lot of stuff for free, and it looks like they put some serious work in. The guys on the Sonar forum were raving about it.

If you're ever looking for a retail product, the major contenders are Guitar Rig 2, Amplitube, and Waves GTR - pretty much in that order. There's also Izotope Trash, but that kind of takes things in a different direction.