How do you move between Live sets when you are playing live?

[alexjholland]

Hey

I recently got an APC40 and have really started to get my game together. I'm going to start playing live this summer, so am practising to get good.

My hard-drive is full of ideas/unfinished songs that I'm now harvesting into clips to mix up with beats.

One thing I haven't sussed, is how to move between sets (or Ableton files).

The obvious answer is to have one Ableton set open for an entire set live - but this seems pretty unrealistic with the huge range of different instruments I have.

How do you guys solve this? I"m using OSX on a dual-core Macbook if this is relevant.

[lapieuvre]

The obvious answer is to have one Ableton set open for an entire set live - but this seems pretty unrealistic with the huge range of different instruments I have.

There is the answer. Normally you would freeze/flatten your instruments to get audio files.

Just 1 live set

[alexjholland]

Balls. I have stuff from 140-150bpm funk breaks to 90bpm ethnic breaks.

Bouncing the synths down to audio samples seems like it could be doable. I can still control live FX on them; and it's slicing between breaks I tend to do mainly.

Adjusting the BPM could be a pain though. Is there a way to assign BPM to samples? Even then it might sound lame.. I kinda need a way to slow/speed it and blend in..

[hacktheplanet]

I've done the multiple set thing, but I used two computers and a DJ mixer. It sucked.

For the different BPM thing, you can arrange the clips with certain BPMs in scenes. Then just rename the appropriate scene "150 BPM" for example, and it will automatically set your BPM to 150 when you launch that scene.

The way I do it is just like that. A collection of scenes in my set is at 155, when the rest of the set is about 125. When I'm playing the last scene at the normal 125, I assigned a knob to the BPM, with a range set of 125-155. Then the knob all the way left is 125, and all the way right is 155. At that particular section is a synth pad. While it plays, I just turn the knob up slowly until the speed is where it needs to be in order to launch the 155 BPM scene. Then I do the reverse when that song is over. With a BPM knob you can also speed your set up all around if you need to.

Also it is a good idea to bounce stuff you don't need to affect very much. I have a gigantic folder full of livesets very unorganized. When I make something that sounds good, I bounce it, and then drag the audio clip into the set, or use Live's sampler. I like to use Sampler for bass and other other static synth noises. Pads and evolving noises tend to be audio clips or just right out of the synth.

Sorry if that didn't make sense... Just get creative with it. There's no "right" way to do anything, just whatever works best for you.

[docprosper]

FYI, you can drag and drop a set into your current one and it will be inserted. I've never tried this with the transport playing and would guess that it would choke, or at the very least be too unreliable for a live show. It's a great way to insert complex setups from one set into another, however.

One advantage of sticking with one set for your entire show is that you can record the whole thing digitally in the background. Food for thought.

-Hamish

[Tone Deft]

I've been to shows where the artist told me beforehand that they play an mp3 player between sets while the old set closes and the new one loads. I didn't notice.

this is one way to do it. with practice you can make it work.

[chapelier fou]

I've been to shows where the artist told me beforehand that they play an mp3 player between sets while the old set closes and the new one loads. I didn't notice.

this is one way to do it. with practice you can make it work.

Yep.
I do transition between songs with a SP 303. I prepare drone/experimental/voices stuff that fit well between song X and song Y, but sometimes also with song Z. One good thing is to take the root note of a song and make a drone with it. It will fit with another song with the same root note or the fourth degree, 90% of the time.
Just the way i do.

[JAMM]

startup two different versions? 8.1/8.2

[3phase]

you dont.. what is a major flaw with this "software".. when it dont kills your live set it makes it harder

[Tagor]

Some Korg MX/SX patterns for the time between the 20min-sets.
Sometimes its usefull if you can play an instrument (in my case didgeridoo).

BUT: Often we perform together in PingPong mode. My Friends SetUp
is completly without computer. He uses different Grooveboxes/Akai MPC`s, Synths.
Its much Fun in PingPong, even if it last 30 mins from Ping to the Pong.
Its a challange to have transitions after each track - but possible and Interesting for
the people on the Dancefloor.

[3phase]

a load while play as wouldnt hurt..

actually astonishing that a so called live software is not even spending a thought in that direction..

The monsterszise of the typical stage set for non preprogrammed sets is a mayor stability risk..

one of the reasons L8 was ok for smaler studio projekts but started crashing badly when beeing actually short before a gig or professional projekt delivery ... as bigger the set as more crashes was the easy tp grasp relation not so long ago..

a special window in the browser where one can select new sets and maybe some inbuild looper trick to perform the transision..

maybe a special master track that stays in all sets the same.. so one host projekt with the steady master track..that might do the missing thru handling aswell... or better a master group... and all tracks outside that group get exchanged with the reload mechanism.. together with the crossfade you could play for days than and decide on the fly which projekt to play.. or add to the core set in your master group..

[outershpongolia]

I bounce all my projects down to 5 stems and then chop them up ala the Tom Cosm method.. I try to incorporate clips with interesting launch quantization so I can play around with the samples that I setup for each track. Sometimes theres follow actions, some dummy clip stuff or whatever I can come up with

So if the song is 8 scenes long it comes out to a 6 track (5 audio and 1 clyphx) by 8 scene 'chunk', so I drag the whole chunk of clips to the browser and label with name, BPM and KEY.

Then I can drag these chunks into my LIVE project as I go, or make the set lists however I want before I play..
It's been great having an empty live set to start off with everytime - or saving multiple chunks into one .als file as a sort of set list / playlist.

With Clyphx I can recall settings on my half-assed "live mastering rack" in my set.. so each set of stems can have their own settings for this rack to get them to sound mastered live without having to just use a bounced wav, and this chunk technique allows you to include these clyphx clips in each song so they will be ready to go where/when you need them.

If i need to I can drag bounced wav's of my tracks in and just 'press play' like everyone else does.

[sjerre]

It would already be nice if you could change the live set via a midi controller. Wandered al the internet but found nothing... strange. Anybody knows if this is possible? Thanks

[jestermgee]

No it’s not easily possible without making some external scripts

[chapelier fou]

It would already be nice if you could change the live set via a midi controller. Wandered al the internet but found nothing... strange. Anybody knows if this is possible? Thanks

I do this with max/MSP.
But there are probably other ways.