Multiple loops within one set?

[nateghering]

Hey there,
I'm the band leader for my church and we use background loops for a lot of our songs but i've never found a way to have multiple loops pre-loaded so I can just go from one song to the next without having to load them individually. any help would be massively appreciated.

[ChrisMack99]

I'm not quite certain what you mean...

Do you have one sound file that plays for the duration of a song, and then another sound file plays for the duration of the next song?

If so, use follow actions!

Let me know if that is what you meant and you need help setting up follow actions...don't want to type up a whole thing if its no use to you at all.

[nateghering]

let me explain better. what I do is design individual loops for each song. so, say I have multiple clips programmed that provide a beat or sound that coincides with a particular song (song X). during X, I trigger those various clips/scenes as the song dictates. as soon as X finishes, Y begins with it's own tempo, clips, scenes etc. is there a way to have the loops for X and Y in some sort of playlist? that way, instead of having to go to File-Open-LoopX, I could just select the next item in the playlist. I have no idea if I can import various loops into one master or if I'm just screwed.

[ChrisMack99]

You should be able to import lots of loops into one ableton live project.

The tempo change is a little tricky though...maybe do it in arrangement so you can automate the tempo.

[nateghering]

Is it possible to do that and still have all the flexibility that I use Ableton for in the first place? Would I still be able to use an external midi controller for triggers throughout each song? I didn't know that what I was trying to do was so outside the norm! Guess I just need to write my own software (oh wait, I don't do that).

[jsumners]

I'm not sure I follow. You say "clips/scenes," but those are two different things. So I'm not sure, but I think you might benefit from this tutorial -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHlOiy-ZlDk

[colonp]

How you'd go about it depends upon how your current sets are set up, which MIDI controller and such. It shouldn't be hard to do, might take some time/work before it works as well as loading individual sets does now. Especially setting the MIDI correctly could be a bit of a pain.

Tempo can be changed by launching a Scene if the scene is named as an example "130 BPM".

One way of going about it:
- Load one of the songs.
- Make empty scenes (ie. no clips) that just change the tempo.
- Group all tracks (select all, right click->group). You can now mute the song by muting the group.
- Drag another song into the Live set from Windows/File Explorer/Whatever it's called. Group again. Setup all the needed MIDI mappings. Repeat until you have all songs in one set.

In between songs you'd mute the song/group last played, change tempo, unmute the next song, and you're ready to go.

A variation would be to use one MIDI channel per song (or 1 channel per 2 songs or whatever), so in between songs you'd change MIDI channel on your controller. Then you won't have multiple songs playing at the same time, which will save some CPU. You won't have to mute channels either.

This is a bit of a messy way to go about it, but it's what you get when I don't know whether you use MIDI instruments or just audio loops, whether you use effects on the tracks and whether you use return channels, which controller(s) you use and how the songs are structured and supposed to be played. Uploading two sets where we can see how they're supposed to be played (ie. record yourself playing it) might help. Don't need the audio files, just setup and arrangement.

[niksG]

This is not negative. I've seen a few people post that they are new to ableton and find this very informative. Djtechtools is not the source for ableton stuff. It is a place to learn about traktor. I highly recommend going to the ableton forum and going through all the tutorial vids that are posts in the tips section.

[majorshake]

I would bounce all of the loops you have in midi that you don't mess around with (as in, add any notes to) during the set to audio.
Then put all of your songs into one live set.

To change the tempo, change the name of the first scene of each songs to the desired tempo.
It works perfectly well.