still not getting my brain around Live

[LesPasta]

ive been playing with Live4 on and off since i bought it...im mainly a Reason user when it comes to software... so im looking for something that will expand on Reason....i believe Live is the right tool but i just dont know where to start...

i import my own samples into Reason..i dont use refills or factory sound bank..my style is more like choped quarter and sixteenth notes and drum hits.. and i play them however i want..no 'loops'

maybe i should start out using Live alone instead of trying to rewire ?... would he Impulse drum machince be ideal to play other kinds of samples which would be more lengthy than an average drum hit ?

im just trying to get started with Live...any help would be appreciated... ive been fumbling around with it here and there for the past few years...and making no progress...

[geo]

What exactly do you want to do. Have you read the manual? I think Live is the perfect tool to complement Reason. You can either use Impulse or rewire ReDrum, it's up to you.

[hafnarbakki]

hang in there Geo
I also think Live is tricky... and reading the manual doesn't help me much either... it is too technical.. but they say there will come some tutorialbooks soon in 2007.

So don't give up.. it is just an application and eventually you will find your own way how to work with it and probably eventually come up with your own style.
But reading all these posts here at the forum I feel like I don't know even half of what one can do with Live. : /

Pity there aren't any courses here in Sweden... I have been looking. there's orca.se though, but they don't reply to any emails, so I have given up on them.

[3rdordertrauma]

What kind of support do you need? I'm happy to help.... j
Cheers,

[Lord Kahn]

You could try focusing on the stuff that live does that Reason doesn't maybe? Try importing some commercial tracks and warping them, then perhaps remix them using stuff you've produced in Reason? Or you could try making a DJ set with it maybe, try different things that Reason isn't so good at and focus on the stuff that live is stronger on.

[longjohns]

If you're not using Reason sounds, you could almost ditch it entirely. There are features on the NNXT which are nice, and it's also nice to have the Malstrom LFO's to route to other things. I guess if you use ReCycle that .rex files are better in some ways to chopping things up in Live.

For me, the value of Reason is mostly having access to TONS of sounds for cheap. Rewiring gets to be a real pain though and I really prefer to just be in one program.

For longer samples, try Simpler instead of Impulse. You can even just have a sample/clip in the Session view and assign it to a MIDI keyboard range and play it that way.

[barstu]

Yeah hang in there definatley worth the effort. I would focus on Live first and get to grips with that. I found the whole session / arrangement concept was the hardest thing to learn. But once you have that moment of clarity and it all clicks its wicked.

There are plenty of Live books around on Amazon and theres always a how to in sound on sound or future music.

[fzero]

i import my own samples into Reason..i dont use refills or factory sound bank..my style is more like choped quarter and sixteenth notes and drum hits.. and i play them however i want..no 'loops'

Since you use samples, it seems to me that you could simply dicth Reason and do everything with Live. You could either use a combination of impulse and simpler to trigger samples or use directly the session grid. That would have the added possibility of locking samples to the beat.

Try loading your samples in Live turning off the loop on the clip properties, then assign keyspans and single notes to them. You can make the clips respond to velocity and pitch, so even without simpler you already have a sampler with timestretching.

[LesPasta]

thanks...that sounds like good advice.... would i be triggering these clips and recording (or re-sampling) them into a new clip ?... i play with small samples, the longest would be maybe 3-4 seconds..

[fzero]

thanks...that sounds like good advice.... would i be triggering these clips and recording (or re-sampling) them into a new clip ?... i play with small samples, the longest would be maybe 3-4 seconds..

You could do that, but you can also record the session while you're playing... the result will show in the sequencer and you'll be able to edit what you've done.

[LesPasta]

ok cool, thanks..

another thing i like to do is get a drum loop and a bassline in clips...then i like to play keys over the clips.....so where does all of this information go when it is recorded ?...do my tracks remain separated ?..or when im playing keys along with the drums and bass, are the drums and bass recrded to the same track with the keys ?....

what is the best way to go about this ?

[fzero]

That depends a lot on how you set thing up, really. You can record everything separated and make them loop while you play something else on top. I sometimes record five different sounds live and keep them looping, each one in a different channel. The main concept in Live is that you can make everything without stopping the sound, so you're basically jamming along with the computer.

Did you take a loot at the lessons? They help a lot in the beginning.