Using ableton live in a gigging band with Native instruments

[GiantGoldenMole]

Hi there,

Im currently getting ready for a gig with my band and decided that finally i should use ableton in a live scenario. Up till now iv been using a sampler to trigger most sounds, whilst replicating as close as i could my vst synth sounds on a couple of real synths. This has become far to much of a hassle as it requires me to program my synths twice, once for the studio version and once for live.

The band set up is a drummer guitarist bassist and myself who plays synths and triggers samples. I was just wondering what would be the best way to do this in live.

Most of my sounds are used from Native instruments Komplete and i tend to use several different synths massive, absynth etc per song. along with triggering the occasional sample and singing using Abletons vocoder and The Mouth.

How should i use this in a live environment? Should i have different live sets for each song? The issue with this is having to wait for each set to load. or is there a way to have this all on one set?

If I did set it up in one set would there be a way to select individual synth sounds using midi controllers. I have a Bheringer FCB1010, and a trigger finger.

Im looking for as many suggestions as possible as ill happily try most things and see what works. If you need anymore information about the set up let me know and I will try and describe parts in detail.

[Ableton_David]

Moved to Music & Audio Production.

[haj loves t*tties]

what i have tried to do is to create "live" versions of beats and limit each to one bank on the apc40

then i can bounce from one song to another simply and dont have the issues of waiting to load new sets

of course depending on your song... it might be tricky to get your song down to one bank but... so far this has worked for me once ive done some organizing rearranging and bouncing clips together

[Khazul]

Depends what you are trying to do - play MIDI clips and audio with automations that drive Komplete Instruments, or Just play them direct for keyboard with splits etc?
If just going to play them, then TBH I would look at using Kore 2 to build up your instrument racks with splits etc.

[Machinesworking]

Depends what you are trying to do - play MIDI clips and audio with automations that drive Komplete Instruments, or Just play them direct for keyboard with splits etc?
If just going to play them, then TBH I would look at using Kore 2 to build up your instrument racks with splits etc.

This is what I'd suggest. You can do it in Live to a degree, but Kore 2 with the hardware gets you even further from looking at the screen.

Most Native Instrument plug ins respond to program change messages, so you can set up tracks in Live with empty MIDI clips that fire program change messages to the VST to change sounds. You can set up Racks in Live with you're separate Instruments so that you can turn off the CPU power to that track (Racks is the way to do this without using the Arrangement View which IMO isn't as good for live use), thus saving CPU on instruments you're not currently using in Live. You can set up keyboard splits in Live with the MIDI plug ins in Live. One reason to consider using Kore though is that I would guess that it's going to be lighter on the CPU than using Live to do all this. With Live, you're adding Racks and MIDI plug ins to facilitate the features Kore does on it's own. also, to get Live to change from more than 2 instruments in a single set you're pretty much choosing between two lessor choices: You either have to set up these changes in the Arrangement View, which with it's timeline based operation opens up 'that' can of worms on managing a live set, or you're having to use Chains in Racks. The problem with Chains becomes obvious if like me you have an older laptop and are switching from Massive, a huge piano sample in Kontact, and Absynth in the same song. I don't think I could do this in Live with Chains in a Live Set with 4+GB of clips for all my bands songs in it?

So yeah, if you're playing single instruments in Live with no real reason to use three or more in a song, then Live would work well, beyond that I would recommend getting Kore.

[JuanSOLO]

Kore 2 is truly awesome, I recently got it and kick myself for not getting it sooner. As stated above, the Performance presets allow for quick recall of complex configurations using program change numbers in Live's midi clips. Where I once had an instance of Massive, FM8, and Absynth in my Live sets, I now just have Kore. The performance presets truly optimize CPU if you have it set up that way. If I wasn't such a sucker for side chaining stuff with Live's compressor, and a few other FX racks I am dear too, I may not even use Live for performing anymore.

HOWEVER, for me there is a major drawback to the Kore controller. You cannot midi map it's focus. So if you want to get the knobs on a specific device, you either have to navigate it with the arrows or use your mouse pad. That may sound trivial, but I have some complex shit in Kore, so navigating with arrows and the old F1 or F2 button seems ridiculous. The mouse pad is faster, but the point of Kore was to get away from the mouse.

Anyways there is speculation of Kore 3 on the horizon. May be just a dream, and it is not founded on anything other than it's about that time. If the do release an new version of Kore I will be ON IT, but I will be happy that I got Kore 2 plus the controller for 150 bucks.

[Machinesworking]

HOWEVER, for me there is a major drawback to the Kore controller. You cannot midi map it's focus. So if you want to get the knobs on a specific device, you either have to navigate it with the arrows or use your mouse pad. That may sound trivial, but I have some complex shit in Kore, so navigating with arrows and the old F1 or F2 button seems ridiculous. The mouse pad is faster, but the point of Kore was to get away from the mouse.

Yeah that the Performance Presets don't save the focus is my main complaint for sure. Though the way I've dealt with that is to map all the functions I'm using live to the top tier User instance, so in the Live Set Scenes are triggered that change the Performance Preset and on kore all top tier Presets are labeled with the song name, it's a simple push to the left or right on the Kore controller arrows to change focus. I agree that it would be much better to have all that took care of by the Preset though. When I get excited and forget I've had a few Durr! moments where I'm wondering why a knob isn't affecting the sound, or it's doing something weird.

[JuanSOLO]

I just got it, and I think I get what your saying about the top tier inside KORE. I have it set up in a similar fashion, but I still am not comfortable with the controller and navigating it. Sometimes I go to menu's and I feel lost.

All and all, I think it's one of my smarter purchases, and I hope NI continue improving it.

It has seriously consolidated and simplified my efforts with Live sets without sacrificing versatility.

[JuanSOLO]

.

How should i use this in a live environment? Should i have different live sets for each song? The issue with this is having to wait for each set to load. or is there a way to have this all on one set?

I got caught up in my excitement over Kore and forgot to answer a few questions.

Personally I use 1 Live Set for performing.

Track 1 is a dummyDrum Rack that triggers samplers containing drumSamples on Tracks 2-9 foloowed by FX racks.
Track 10 is Kore
Track 11 is for Midi clips to trigger the Finger
Track 12 is Vocal input
I have 4 return tracks, Delays, Reverb, a ResonatorRack, and the Finger.

Granted I still have to be CPU conscious, and I do back up vocals more than main vocals. Not only can I play my drum sounds via "pads" or midi clips, but my drummer can too.

I have slaved over my Live performance set for a long long time now. I use this same set up to focus on making or writing tunes and then exporting the clips I want and bringing them into my performance set. However when I am writing tunes with this set, it eventually get's focused, tracks are added and some taken away, and more production/mastering FX are eventually used.

[Machinesworking]

I just got it, and I think I get what your saying about the top tier inside KORE. I have it set up in a similar fashion, but I still am not comfortable with the controller and navigating it. Sometimes I go to menu's and I feel lost.

The Escape key is your friend! I didn't really incorporate it well until recently.
But yeah, for 99% of the issues you run into were you navigate waaay too far away from the top tier etc. a few hits on the Esc. key and your back to square one!

Even worse, when I first bought it, it was used off ebay, and I thought it was broke for the whole first year I owned it, it had random freezes all the time and lost connection with Live. I finally replaced the USB cable and it's a rock!

[Khazul]

I have to admit I do wish the Kore 2 controllers mapping and control of Kore could be changed - in particular its navigation etc - switch between my most common view seems to be a complete pain - though its fine once in one of them, though Im not a huge fan of the feel of the controls compared to the excellent and really positive feeling controls on their new suff.

I have a feeling some new people got hired in att NI, or they got some new ideas etc as between the Kontrol 1 / Kore 2 generation of stuff and the current X1/S4/Maschine generation of controllers as the new stuff just seems so well designed from a usability perpective by comparison.

[continuous]

I just need to chime in and say that I get so lost in the KORE nav... it makes me hatzez it!

Thanks for listening!

~ C

[GiantGoldenMole]

thanks for all the advice. Im looking into kore but for now i will set ti up fro racks and see if my cpu can handel it. Im using a pretty recent macbook pro so it should be ok. Ill let you know how it goes.

[GiantGoldenMole]

Right I finally set up the whole show in Live without the use of kore. I have a group for each song consisting of a Midi and Audio track.
The midi will have an instrument rack with each of the instruments I will use for the set and the audio has all my samples that I can trigger with a foot pedal.

I then have used my trigger finger with midi learn so that each pad turns on or off each of the tracks and instruments in each of the groups. Along with the BPM which I have typed into the master channel. I have also assigned each of the trigger fingers faders to the volumes of the samples instrument rack and master channel so i can adjust them quickly on the fly if I need to make some quick tweaks.

I have done several rehearsals since and the cpu never goes over 50% so alls good so far.