Keeping Ableton intime with live band.

[nitevision]

If I have a kick drum with a trigger on it, is there a way to have ableton quantize the drum trigger data as its recorded, and keep it in time with the expected tempo of the song.

The idea is that ableton follows drummer, rather than the normal other way round.

[nitevision]

Hi by the way, this is my first post.

[andydes]

Never tried it, but you could look into this:

http://www.circular-logic.com/products.html

Apparently it needs a pretty tight drummer to get good results and takes a bit of tweaking to set up.

[siliconarc]

i wouldnt bother with circular logic, i found it way too difficult to use. as soon as you change up the tempo slightly, bringing it back down is a nightmare. not really the software's fault, more to do with humans wanting to keep in time with the music, not the other way round. ymmv, though.

about getting ableton to follow the drummer, the only way really is to assign the kick to the tap tempo button via a 'ddrum' midi trigger or such, and then ONLY play 4/4, evenly spaced kick patterns. no double kicks, no fun, very rigid, and always waiting for the timing to fuck up.

basically, dont try it! i don't know anyone thats managed to pull it off successfully, and there are much easier, more flexible ways of combining live musicians and premade music in a live scenario.

[WFWS]

If you have Live8 maybe you can use the Looper. I use it to set the tempo for whatever comes next by recording a drum beat thru my DrumKat midi drums. That first loop sets the tempo, and all the rest of the Live clips play at that tempo.

I suppose that's a lot like tap tempo, but you can get the beat from several measures of music instead of just a four count intro.

To use it you'd need some sort of midi drum trigger, and a simple footswitch to control the Looper. 1 tap starts the Looper recording, and a second tap stops it and starts playing the loop. Two quick taps stops the Looper, but your tempo is now set to whatever loop you just recorded.

The counter has to be at 1.1.1 to do this- otherwise Looper will adopt the tempo of whatever is playing.

Hope this makes some sense.

WFWS

[ptlindstrom]

I remember Bars and Pipes of the Amiga had a great little MIDI effect that took a note in and drove a tracks content to its output, it seems especially with the addition of Max 4 Live that it should do able to take an input covert it to a MIDI clock and put Live in EXT mode. Alo would be riding on the drummers foot though

[yur2die4]

I was about to pretty much not post, as my only answer would be "Unless you can make the drummer follow live instead, you are screwed.", which is too negative to bother posting with.

But I am now very fascinated with the idea of someone creating a program that learns how to recognize and jam along to streaming live audio...

I mean, Live itself can sort of create warp markers, programs exist that calculate and design songs based on horrible singing into crappy microphones, and programs like melodyne 'hint' at correcting pitch and time errors. Of course all of those involve calculating After analyzing waveforms.

But if a waveform is starting to buffer, I'd imagine that a program could 'look back' and put the timing/pitch/rhythm into context as it begins to attempt to 'play along'.

A program that plays along (and outputs midi ) ... the million dollar idea

[Jacob Thein]

Hi.

Trigger on the Bassdrum to tap tempo is not a good idea, just give the drummer an extra PAD so he can tap the tempo over that.

Thats how I do it.

Also you on the Live can tape it and use the nugde buttons.

Greetz

Jacob

[H20nly]

Two quick taps stops the Looper, but your tempo is now set to whatever loop you just recorded.

Is that how its done??.

i've used Looper a dozen or more times but never did figure out how the tempo gets set... I've been meaning to go back to the manual, but at the moment that I think about it never is important enough to stop making music and start reading... so we just move or set by bars and I never learn or remember to go back

I guess part of my issue is that I'm stopping and starting with a mouse or recently I mapped Looper's big ol button to the Zero on my number pad... kinda awkward so I always end up editing what I recorded instead of using Looper's full potential...

Anyway.. I said all that to say this.. Thanks (I think)!! I'm giving this a try when I get home..

[nitevision]

But I am now very fascinated with the idea of someone creating a program that learns how to recognize and jam along to streaming live audio...

This is what I'm looking for. It doesn't seem to be available.

[WFWS]

I'm still working with my Looper chops, but I have figured out this part. If you look at the Looper and it has segments, the TEMPO IS ALREADY SET. If it has just a all red RECORDING showing, it will record the tempo and change to that tempo.

TO have that happen, you have to start from 1.1.1. That means you need to press the square stop button on the transport bar (not the multibutton on the Looper) TWICE. That will reset your counter and start at the very beginning of time.

From that point, you need to make sure Looper's buffer is empty by pushing clear. You'll know you've got it right if Looper does NOT display segments when you push the multi button to record. Push multi once to start recording, a two times (doubleclick) to end the recording and stop the Looper from continuing in play or overdub mode.

Hope that helps. Really need to think about a footpedal. Looper is really set up best for that.

Hope that helps.

WFWS

[H20nly]

^ thanks for all that. Really helps. definitely feel like I can use the tool a lot better now. Shop talk is a good thing...

I agree about the pedal. I made mention of it in another thread recently and got this response:

I dunno if this (Logidy UMI3) is out yet, but it looked nice and simple. http://www.macmusic.org/news/view.php/lang/en/id/8654/

It is indeed nice and simple, perfect for what I need. If I hadn't of just bought a new car I would have ordered it that night. Its on my Christmas list and a little lady just asked me what I want the other day... I emailed her the link

Stay

[transology]

Hi guy,
I consider myself an expert of Midi I/O stuff, using an DDM4000 and a Xone 1D together, having led feedbacks (CC messages in the DDM4000), dummy clip to launch scenes, dummy clip to ajust tempo on the fly, dummy clip for filter and fx automations.

But I still did not figure out how I could do this simple operation.

I have an Alesis ControlPad for the drummer. I would like him to use 2 drum pads. One to accelerate to tempo by 1.0 bpm and the second to slow down by 1.0 bpm. Without any surprise my drummer would hit tempo UP or Down an have a good feel playing with the back beats at any moment. I think Ableton should program this (2 bouton like the scene UP and Down) for us to assign a MIDI note on it.

Any ideas on how to do that ?

Thank you so much

[outershpongolia]

^ All I can think of is using Bomes or some sort of MIDI translator to send +1 and -1 messages.. The nudge buttons might work but they snap back to the original BPM after you nudge, it's only for speeding/slowing for a quick second to get back on track, not to nudge the tempo up/down and keep it that way.

[transology]

Thanks outershpongolia

I know this app but still does not tell me how to do it

I means EVERY live band should be desesparate to do that live in real time !!

Thanks