Help with stems for a live show/set!

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Post Reply
sir_dss
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:18 am

Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by sir_dss » Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:36 pm

Hello...

Just got some stems to put together backing tracks for a bands live shows. They want to use unwarped audio(thats important) and there isn't a BPM for the tracks.

The music has some electronic elements but it's actually a lot of guitar/bass and backing vocals that the live band will have to play along to. I know I'll also need to make a click track...probably using Impulse/Drum Racks closed hats...

Anyone with any experience with this?

Thanks

Panda.Ray
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:10 am

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by Panda.Ray » Tue Jul 17, 2012 6:26 pm

Isn't undwarped and Click Track some kind of contradiction?

What do you mean by backing tracks? Certain parts/instruments of a song, or a whole Track?

I mean there has to be some kind of BPM the Band is going to play their songs to.
You can leave the audio unwarped and set the quantization mode to "none", so you can launch your clips without having to stick to the projects BPM.

I guess it would be easier to answer your question how the stems are going to be used during the performance.

sir_dss
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:18 am

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by sir_dss » Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:35 pm

Thanks for the reply Panda.Ray

Definitely need to figure out how to set up a click track for the drummer to play along to...the unwarping is to not have the sonic artifacts that warping produces

The backing track will be separated and sent through an Apogee Ensemble to the front of house.

The idea is for the stems to play along with the band to double up parts and to play things there aren't enough hands to play also tons of backing vocal tracks that define the band...the original tracks weren't recorded with a clock...the drummer IS pretty good but it's still live with human drift.

It's not the most optimal situation but this is what we have to deal with.

Panda.Ray
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:10 am

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by Panda.Ray » Sun Jul 22, 2012 10:39 pm

Well this is a tough one.

What you can do is matching ableton to you tracks. You could estimate the tracks bmp with ableton and then match the global BPM so you can let the drumtrack rum along with the backing tracks.
It would be even more precise if you would take the time to cut out the transients in the backing tracks and use those a reference for creating a click tracks which fits exactly to the backing tracks.

The whole idea is pretty cool and i think it will work out the way you want to do it. I guess the most important point with this action is to practice the whole performance with the band a few times till you guys are pretty sure of the mistakes that may occur.

Let me hear how the gig went. I really want to know how it all works out in the end.

Cheers,
Ray

daniel160
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:22 am

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by daniel160 » Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:49 am

same question I wanted to ask, but from 2 answers seems don't get the a workable way, looking forward experts.

Ryder17
Posts: 185
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:53 pm

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by Ryder17 » Thu Jul 26, 2012 11:44 pm

It's actually quite simple depending on how you look at it :)

I've been integrating live with bands for a few years now, I do it like this......


Firstly, you need to operate in arrangement mode. Set up an 8 bar loop brace at the beginning of the arrangement and keep it in loop mode at all times. Presuming all the backing tracks are at a fixed tempo and are sequenced how they are to be played, have each backing track spread out across the arrangement leaving plenty of space between songs (to accomodate tempo changes.
At each point that you need to bring a track in, place a marker. Turn global quantize off...

Now the way this works is that you have a loop at the beginning of the track that can just keep going to give the drummer his timing, you can then trigger a marker at any point in time to take you to the part of the arrangement you need to be.
To get the desired tempo, insert a scene named '120bpm' for example, delete all the stop buttons from the clips it creates and assign a midi controller that can send multiple commands (i use an fcb1010) so that a cc1 for example plays the arrangement from the start, and note E1 for example activates the scene. You can set up as many scenes as you need tempo changes, each tempo corrisponding to a particular backing track so all these scenes are doing is acting as tempo switches.

Soo...... 1 button jumps to the loop brace and sets the tempo, all you got to do then is jump to wherever you need to be, when you want to be there :)

Hope this helps, let me know if any of that dont make sense

Paul

Cymatic Kicks
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed May 04, 2011 2:15 pm
Contact:

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by Cymatic Kicks » Tue Jul 31, 2012 4:30 am

If you warp them, then you don't necessarily get unwanted artifacts. Try different warp modes. I use beats if it's for short clips and complex pro for full tracks. I would simply use session/clip view and plug the bpm in the scene like mentioned above. If there is no bpm, why would you want a click track? Maybe re-record the stems with a specific bpm and then put the click to that?

Vios
Posts: 266
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:13 am
Location: Denver, CO
Contact:

Re: Help with stems for a live show/set!

Post by Vios » Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:01 am

Watch this tutorial (if you haven't already). These are the basics on how to get from your track into session view for live performance. This was my starting point for moving from the studio to the club:

Moving From The Studio to Live Performance For The First Time

The quickest way to get a nice click track is to grab a high hat in drum rack, set the sustain to 0db, and then bring the decay time way down, probably 50-200ms.

It's preferable to work in session view for live performance because you can trigger clips on the go. In arrangement view you basically have your whole set laid out and can't change this on the go (easily).

Post Reply