Can Ableton Live follow a live band?

[madhatter]

You could modify a midi foot switch into the the drummer's kick drum pedal and then assign it to tap tempo. It depends on how well Live would be able to deal with a not-four-on-the-floor kick pattern tapping the tempo. And how much the drummer trusts you.

You could use Bome's or vvvv so the person operating the laptop could control when the midi data from the footswitch is sent to Ableton.

If you do a double hit the tempo doubles. If you miss a beat it halves - unusable in a live situation

[H20nly]

^ or its a new genre.

[AceLuby]

When playing live its great to all bounce off each other rhythmicly, not leave it up to the drummer to lead it all. Sometimes having the tempo shift down or up really adds to the song. Having it always to a set tempo kills the spirit.

Totally 100% disagree w/ this. Get a good drummer who can play to a click and you'll see what I mean. The groove is the groove whether the tempo is static or fluctuates a few BPM's.

[madhatter]

Well I got everything working fine, tempo controlled by a kick drum - so far so good. Then I set up Looper so I can throw some guitar riffs into the mix. Latency a bit of a problem, but just about acceptable. When I then try changing tempo guitar loop tuning goes haywire!!1 sh**@£$£@£™€32tt!!!

Is there any way of using looper so the resulting loops act like other samples and pitch isn't affected by tempo? Should I start a new thread with this?

[madhatter]

When playing live its great to all bounce off each other rhythmicly, not leave it up to the drummer to lead it all. Sometimes having the tempo shift down or up really adds to the song. Having it always to a set tempo kills the spirit.

Totally 100% disagree w/ this. Get a good drummer who can play to a click and you'll see what I mean. The groove is the groove whether the tempo is static or fluctuates a few BPM's.

We all have our own opinions, but I 100% disagree with you (at least in a live situation). When you play to an audience you need to be able to move with the situation and tempo is another variable just as groove is.
If I'm watching a band after 2 or 3 songs at fixed tempo I'm off to something more exciting

[AceLuby]

When playing live its great to all bounce off each other rhythmicly, not leave it up to the drummer to lead it all. Sometimes having the tempo shift down or up really adds to the song. Having it always to a set tempo kills the spirit.

Totally 100% disagree w/ this. Get a good drummer who can play to a click and you'll see what I mean. The groove is the groove whether the tempo is static or fluctuates a few BPM's.

We all have our own opinions, but I 100% disagree with you (at least in a live situation). When you play to an audience you need to be able to move with the situation and tempo is another variable just as groove is.
If I'm watching a band after 2 or 3 songs at fixed tempo I'm off to something more exciting

Who said anything about fixed tempo between songs? Switching tempos between songs is trivially easy in Live and you can still play to a click and launch your clips the way you want.

What you claimed is that a drummer playing to a click 'kills the spirit', and I find that statement to be incredibly ignorant.

[hacktheplanet]

Our drummer plays to Live's metronome when we are recording. Easy peasy. Sometimes he drifts a little, but there's flavor in the imperfections. It certainly doesn't "kill the spirit" or whatever.

From there, just sync everything else via an inexpensive MIDI thru box or something like that.

[madhatter]

Who said anything about fixed tempo between songs? Switching tempos between songs is trivially easy in Live and you can still play to a click and launch your clips the way you want.

What you claimed is that a drummer playing to a click 'kills the spirit', and I find that statement to be incredibly ignorant.

I didn't mean between songs, I meant after 2 or 3 songs that are each played to a set tempo (either to a click or backing track) I've had enough. You call me ignorant and you imply that I don't know a good drummer (I think many people might laugh at that, and our drummers and percussionists wouldn't be too happy). Well I admit I am ignorant when it comes to playing with a click. I did a gig once that used backing sequences and there were times when I could feel that the tempo needed to subtly increase (in the days before timestretch without pitch change), but we were stuck in the machines tempo. It was a good gig but you could feel that it would have got hotter if we could have inched up the tempo, and I vowed never again to play live to backing tracks.

I've been gigging for 30 years now to audiences up to 20,000 people and make my life through music. I might be ignorant of playing to a click, but I'm not ignorant of what gets a good live vibe going. You've got to interact with the audience and that includes playing with the tempo, as a band. Let drummers play to a click in the studio if they choose to, but live go with the vibe or kill it.

This whole thing about click tracks reminds me of an interview with Charlie Watts (drummer of Rolling Stones in case you're too young to know that) When asked to do a session to a click he said "I'll play it at exactly the tempo you want without a click, but I think it needs to drop a couple of bpm in the chorus and then pick them up again in the next verse..." He knows what he's talking about.

[outershpongolia]

Map tap tempo, tempo knob and use the nudge buttons.. Other than that you just have to live with the limitations of using a computer/software to make live music, unless you can pull off one of these tempo follower deals, which I don't think I could rely on that type of thing if I was the drummer..

[fishmonkey]

this trainwreck of a site has lots of tempo analysis of songs:

http://meanspeed.com/

[luddy]

Let drummers play to a click in the studio if they choose to, but live go with the vibe or kill it.

That's fine, and the question that the OP is asking is how to make that happen if you use backing tracks. If your band can play all the parts live, there's no issue. The Stones can afford enough band members to do this . Otherwise, you have to confront the problem, and the question is, how? Controlling the tempo from the drummer sounds great, but I'd very leery of using this solution at a live show for fear that the software would get confused and the backing tracks would go out of time. But who knows, maybe there's a reliable way to do it.

-Luddy

[fraxyl]

In my experience with Live, even after the initial taps of the tap tempo button, you can still keep tapping it with whatever midi controller you have it set to and the tempo adjusts.

If he's on a midi capable kit, set the tap tempo to the high hat perhaps?

[luddy]

In my experience with Live, even after the initial taps of the tap tempo button, you can still keep tapping it with whatever midi controller you have it set to and the tempo adjusts.

If he's on a midi capable kit, set the tap tempo to the high hat perhaps?

he'd have to have a separate control that turns on and off the tap function so it doesn't try to track him while he's playing fills etc. could maybe be done, but it would take a lot of practice by the drummer.

-Luddy

[madhatter]

In my experience with Live, even after the initial taps of the tap tempo button, you can still keep tapping it with whatever midi controller you have it set to and the tempo adjusts.

If he's on a midi capable kit, set the tap tempo to the high hat perhaps?

he'd have to have a separate control that turns on and off the tap function so it doesn't try to track him while he's playing fills etc. could maybe be done, but it would take a lot of practice by the drummer.

-Luddy

I've tried it in the past using tap tempo and it only works if the beat is regular. Double hits or missing a beat causes huge tempo changes. InTime seems pretty good when playing it on your own. The test will be how it works with more players and in a live situation. I'll be trying it later with other band members and will let you know.

[kvitamin]

Well i use live in a live band, well really a duo, me and a guitarist so we don't have to deal with a live drummer but we have some shows this week and next in NYC if anyone is curious to see how it can work. Our stuff is super fun, dancey/electro/party/rock music with lots of vocoding.

checkout some of our music and show details here: http://www.myspace.com/wearegreattiger

UPCOMING SHOWS:
Saturday July 10 @ Public Assembly in Brooklyn
Thursday July 15 @ Santos Party House in Manhattan
Saturday July 17 @ Trash Bar in Brooklyn