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Groove Armada's Andy Cato on Ableton and Logic

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:03 pm
by Serra
I have just read the interview where he says Ableton is not sophisticated enough to record 'those' beats compared to Logic. I love their work and their music. I also love Ableton and Logic. I fell my music tends to sound more spontaneous and less mecanic when started in Ableton. Don't really care about the zillion midi editing possibilities in Logic if I capture the idea right when I play it the first time. What about you guys, do you guys agree with his statement?

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:07 pm
by morerecords
can you post a link?

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:10 pm
by Tone Deft
Live is weak on MIDI

it pisses me off that we can't warp MIDI in Live.

I want to:
walk up to the keyboard
hit record
bang out a beat
go back and set the start and end points and have the other beat markers line up.

I hate playing to a metronome when making beats.

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:11 pm
by three
there's a thread over at http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=91308 going on about logic and live.

as i said there, i see them as different programs and good for different things. there is nothing more painful than composing in logic in my opinion. but i find it painful to do the final mix in live. it's almost "too" spontaneous for that. so i use both and am happy to have that option!

.cm

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:19 pm
by Angstrom
Tone Deft wrote: I want to:
walk up to the keyboard
hit record
bang out a beat
go back and set the start and end points and have the other beat markers line up.

I hate playing to a metronome when making beats.
what I do is this:
  • play without a metronome
  • finish and press stop
  • tap the tap tempo at the same speed I was just playing
  • go into the pattern I just played and select the bit where I actually got it right
  • use "stretch midi" to get my 8 bars to fill 8 bars
  • done!
that works really well, no metronome and lots of fluidity :)

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:20 pm
by Serra
Sorry I don't have a link to the article, I just have the magazine which is Future Music Issue 201 2008 UK Edition, it says:

"Then it's a case of trying to find little moods and after that it's a battle as you're not dealing with sequenced music most of the time, you're dealing with live musicians so what we tend to do is edit loops up in Logic.

We didn't really use Ableton for it because it's great, but it's not quite sophisticated enough to pick up those kinds of beats. Sometime you just can't do it if there's maybe some little harmonics thing or one little string that rides up at the top so there's not really any set way of doing it so sometimes you do it in a mix - some times you just cut it up a bit". (Future Music Issue 201 UK Edition)

This last bit is a bit confusing I know but this is how it is written, maybe it has also been edited in Logic :-) joking... as I said, I very much both tools, but for editing loops I find Ableton very effective.

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:22 pm
by Angstrom
I think they are talking about needing crossfades on the same track to tame some audio loops.
The idea being that the "little string part on the end" will get cut off unpleasantly on a raw loop, and Live has no audio tool to handle crossfades in the same channel.

So thatt makes sense, it's not the midi editing, but the audio crossfading / comping

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:34 pm
by beats me
three wrote:there's a thread over at http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=91308 going on about logic and live.

as i said there, i see them as different programs and good for different things. there is nothing more painful than composing in logic in my opinion. but i find it painful to do the final mix in live. it's almost "too" spontaneous for that. so i use both and am happy to have that option!

.cm
I fully agree. When I should be in mix mode in Live I instead find myself adding more parts because it's just that easy and all this is really doing is adding to the mud. It's not even tempting to arrange and write in Logic and all I find myself doing is mixing. The biggest distraction is when I first drop the stems from Live into Logic and I'm making it all purty by coloring the tracks, adding icons to the tracks (which is a great time saving feature), and chopping out silence. Then it's on to mixing. I also think the built in effects are far superior to Live's.

I don't want to start or bump a "which sounds better?" thread but I have noticed when I dump my Live stems into Logic the tracks are a lot brighter and have more highs. That may not be a better thing but it is different.

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:36 pm
by beats me
And I wanted to add I love Groove Armada. I can't think of any other electronica/live musician combo band that is great at so many styles.

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:43 pm
by Serra
by the way, how do you guys throw Live's tracks to Logic?

Do you rewire and record or export the audio files (all tracks 24bit triangular dithering etc)?

find one way to have a better quality than the other? what's your prefered way?

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:49 pm
by three
beats me wrote:
three wrote:there's a thread over at http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=91308 going on about logic and live.

as i said there, i see them as different programs and good for different things. there is nothing more painful than composing in logic in my opinion. but i find it painful to do the final mix in live. it's almost "too" spontaneous for that. so i use both and am happy to have that option!

.cm
I fully agree. When I should be in mix mode in Live I instead find myself adding more parts because it's just that easy and all this is really doing is adding to the mud.
that's just it, live get the creative juices moving so quickly, sometime i'll have trashed a track by the time i'm done just 'quickly' checking how a gregorian monk choir would fit on an elektropunk track.
beats me wrote:It's not even tempting to arrange and write in Logic and all I find myself doing is mixing. The biggest distraction is when I first drop the stems from Live into Logic and I'm making it all purty by coloring the tracks, adding icons to the tracks (which is a great time saving feature), and chopping out silence. Then it's on to mixing. I also think the built in effects are far superior to Live's.
absolutely - that's something i mentioned in the other thred as well. logic's plugins are top quality, but nobody plays live (live as in gig) with 3 subtle convolution reverbs chained to one another. on the other hand, i bounce tracks in logic like that all the time. so there's a lot to be said for live having a selection of decent, light plugins so you don't have to worry about dropping samples, while logic, as a production environment, is in a position to put the finishing touch on.
beats me wrote:I don't want to start or bump a "which sounds better?" thread but I have noticed when I dump my Live stems into Logic the tracks are a lot brighter and have more highs. That may not be a better thing but it is different.
interesting. i assume you mean audio? i tend to run a lot hotter in terms of midi velocity in live than logic for whatever reasons. probably just get caught up in the music, and the gain starts to creep.

cheers,

chris

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:51 pm
by morerecords
well, export works perfect for me, but you don't want to dither until the final stage, so leave it off until you finish your mixdown in the next program

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:54 pm
by Serra
thanks morerecords, for that I need to record in 24bit in Live so I can avoid dithering when exporting to Logic for final mix

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:58 pm
by three
depending what plugins you're using, i almost always try to just take midi clips and presets from live to logic.

the drum machines are (IMHO) the weakest part of logic, but it only takes about 10 minutes to gather the drum rack into battery *and it's an opportunity to retune the drums now that the mix is nearly final* .... i've really integrated that transition into my workflow, try to reevaluate every part of the track on the way from logic to live and decide whether there's anything i could leave out.

cheers,

chris

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:01 pm
by Serra
Three, do you mean Drum Rack into battery as in Live's Drum Rack? What exactly are you doing here? tks