How do you make your live set seamless?

[cacti]

like, the transitions between songs.

So i generally make songs in arrangement view, then dump them in session to play live, the only problem is the all the songs are in different tempos, keys etc. and the transitions between songs are ROUGH. How do you do it?

[Tarekith]

That's the thing most live electronic musicians lay awake in bed at night thinking about for years, at least I did. I mean, to some extent you need to do either of two things:

- Ignore the fact that you have studio songs and work on stuff just for live use.

- Make compromises to the studio songs so you can use them live.


Different tempos is not a huge deal, you can lay out the songs that are close in tempo together and thus mak your transitions easier. Different keys isn't too bad either, you can always noodle off into some weird effects laden transition to make the transition between keys less noticeable too. Or just transition using drum sounds. Here's a screen shot of one of my live sets:




You can see I have the tempos marker in the scene names, just to let me know when I need to tweak the tempo in my project as I get ready to go into a new song. Also, the tracks are broken into stems, so I can freely mix the bassline from one song, with the pads of another, the HH's with one, the perc with another (for instance).

Always a balancing act between enough flexibility, and too much flexibility.

[ollyb303]

I actually tend to work in exactly the opposite direction. That is, I generally write stuff specifically for my live set, test it out on an audience, then if it works well, I'll commit to an arrangement.

I usually use percussive sections to transition between tracks in different keys, and I play the whole set at one tempo, usually adjusting this if/when I come to arrange.

[Rabalder]

I use an external delay!

[agent314]

re: different keys, would it be possible to create a Max For Live device that would basically act like a Master Pitch setting, such that changing it would let you modulate the pitch of all the elements of a scene/group of clips? So you could play any clip in a certain key to fit with another song, for improvization, etc.

[pepezabala]

abrupt changes of tempo or key are not a sin, they make a liveset richer.

[Silverfish]

Tarekith, you make that live set look so easy!

I'm constantly pulling my hair out, trying to find the best way to go about putting my "studio" tracks into a live set. I'm to the point I think I should just give up and start with new material specifically for live performance. Makes it hard to promote an album. lol.

[Guff Tong]

I mostly use that dub-tastic old 'supatrigga crossfade' trick though I've added several other 'sound manglers' in the chain and have also added a few different delays for variation...

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... +crossfade

[Nick Shepherd]

not much difference compared to Tarekith´s set.

Usually i do the transitions via the basslines - hpf them, trigger the next one, then gradually bring in the next percussive elements... i do my drum sequencing in Maschine with 5 different drumkits thoughout my set (roughly 1 hour)... keeps me pretty busy, without beeing overkill and works intuitive enough that i dont have to sober while playing it

Tempo wise there isnt much change throughout the set... starts @ 125 for my more deep housey stuff and goes up to 128 at the end when its getting more techno, nothing to exciting

[ollyb303]

Well, if we're doing pics, here's mine:



quite a lot of tracks, but I have them all covered easily with my 3 faderfox units, normally 6 or 7 tracks of drums, a couple of prerecorded drum loop tracks, a couple synths, bass, 303 (this is usually the only midi track - I tend to freeze/record everything else to audio), fx and a couple of spare tracks for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else!

The stuff you can see on the master is all performance-related stuff (beat-repeat, filter, eq for sweeping) that is generally turned off and just mapped to buttons/knobs on one of the foxes.

[tigali]

I am currently preparing a live set and just wanted to say that this may be the most useful thread EVER on this forum. Thanks for the screen shots everybody. I've been toying with the idea of bringing my Space Echo out with me for transitions and general mayhem but I dread anything happening to it so I may just use a send with the simple delay with an autofilter mapped to the XY on my nanoPad instead. Doesn't sound half as good but the Space Echo is too precious to bring to a room full of drinking folk.

Anyway, thanks for this thread. It's very encouraging.

[Tarekith]

One thing I like to do is use ONLY Live's built in effects for my live sets. That way, worst case scenario my laptop dies and I need to use someone else's, I can just download the Live demo and load up my Live set (always carry a DVDr back up) and still do my thing.

[Angstrom]

One thing that techno obsessives can forget about is adding a gap on purpose

All this obsessing about seamlessness tends to avoid the fact that the audience feel more involved if you give them a space (or two) to cheer in.

I learned this by mistake really, because my old band used to plough through in one monolithic music block but one day when i fucked up the next song so we took it to a crescendo and stopped, the audience assumed it was all intentional and cheered wildly for 10 - 15 seconds, giving us chance to get it together. The gig was actually better after that because social reinforcement meant that the audience had now informed itself "we are enjoying this" through the collective cheer, and so it took the gig to new heights.

We figured it out: A gig is a conversation between you and the crowd. Obviously you take the primary role, but no gaps is like conversing with one of those people who never takes a breath, you feel un-necessary and un-appreciated.

So from then on we intentionally put a couple of stops in, giving the audience a chance to contribute, cheer, re-enforce the good times, before we ramped it back up again.

It had a double benefit, #1 the vibe was always improved , #2 we could use the stop to change vibe and tempo quite easily allowing us to re-build to a new set crescendo. It made our lives a lot easier, and the gigs better

[slatepipe]

here's two halves of my current work in progress live set thing, i've played it live about 4 times now

i control it all with a uc33e controller.

it goes down further than that but you get the idea, further down are more scenes that i have grabbed from time to time and moved down to work on later

i generally improvise around some basic ideas and build it all into a big noisy jam thing as i use it in conjunction with some outboard noise making devices

[hps909]

my set is very similar to tarekith ..all my songs i write are in a live context first then translate them to full productions afterwards if they work out well live..... but as far as tempo changes are concerned just rename the scene as the new tempo as in 130BPM then the next scene 132BPM then the next scene name 128BPM.... gives you quantised tempo changes and never noticeable unless your jumping 10 - 15 bpm..

i limit mine to 10 tracks also easier to keep track of channel settings on the fly