Anyone here use Ableton for Rock/Indie??

[Mark Lane]

I feel I am in the minority as most Ableton users seem to be dance guys, but I find Ableton great for composing rock/indie music loops then pasting it all together on the timeline for the skeleton of a track and re-recording bits as necessary. I use BFD2 for drums and I find it a great workflow.

Anyone else?

[DoobieBrother69]

I'm in the same boat.
I just don't get into EDM, trance, etc, at all.
I do some ambience stuff to go with soundtracks to video projects, and to create sound effects for those projects.
But I mostly use Ableton to create Rock music (Hard, Soft, Progressive, Metal, Alernative, Alt/Funk, Punk, etc), Hip Hop (no music samples, as I don't want to hassle with copyright crap, so I make my own stuff from scratch, but will snag speaking bits from public domain. I do have one song where I took 10 seconds of speaking parts from an iconic movie, but that's the extent of my sampling other people's work), R&B, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, Roots, Junglist, and Classical symphonic stuff.
And I dabble in Dubstep, but don't snag samples from existing music, as it's no biggie just to make something original to incorporate into a song.
I don't hate EDM, et al, and I do appreciate the skill & effort that sometimes goes into it, but I'm not a clubber, or a raver, and just don't get into the monotony of that kind of music to bother listening to it beyond clicking through a song on soundcloud or youtube to make sure I'm not missing out on something that might be groovy to listen to.
That's the beauty of Ableton: it doesn't limit us to the kinds of music we can create, it just opens doors.
It doesn't care what genres you're into, it's here to help us all get our ideas recorded so we can get it out there.

[Jekblad]

i do mostly rock pop and some singer song writer shiz. I like ableton but at the same time it's my first love concerning DAW, so I don't consider my opinion real well rounded. Either way, ableton can certainly record whatever you put into it! I love session drums as well as superior drummer. The midi libraries for superior drummer make sketching together songs sooo much faster and less lame as far as "realistic" vst drumming. I do love Guitar rig above any of the amp sims, but a mic and tube amp ends up making me WAY happier in the long run.

however, with ableton i've fallen in love with tinkering in edm, dubstep, crazy follow actions, synthesis, complex rack etc. so i like to mess around and create stuff but i rarely finish electronic tracks.

[alexgordon]

Yes! I love it. It seemed to me that Logic and protools have a few plugins that are easier to use because the presets match what you would want to do with live recorded music like with "steriozing", eq, and compression, delay, etc... but if you know a little of the mechanics behind -let's say what makes a good natural sounding delay or what a "steriozer" does with the eqs of left, right, and mid then... you can tweak the plugins in ableton to do those things. I started with analog 2 o 8 track recorders, moved up to fruityloops and digital 16 track and have used protools, logic, reason, reaper, audacity, acid, etc... guys in the industry said protools or logic but my uncle (who has a studio and still plays guitar in a cover band at 50ish) said to try out ableton because it's fun. I think that's the thing that ableton has that other daws don't - it's fun (meaning you can make a song in about 5 mins with it) but at the same time, it's options are vast.. I'm still learning new tricks to use with it.

Just finished mixing and mastering a punky project, "The Ravines" or "Deep Ravines" (haven't decided on name really), in ableton with tracks recorded at studio owned by the band Sublime's engineer here in Austin on analog api board into protools. I paid to get it mixed on the board but it came out pretty bad... I wanted to do edits too so I ended up doing it all in ableton and I am glad I did. Automation is great to create crescendo type feelings. I know you can do this any daw and thata's why I highly recommend learning how to mix and master better... because if you can do that, most of the other daws will work.

"Currently, I am working on an electronica EP under "Flash Macgyver", a singer-songwriter classic guitar style EP under "Alex Gordon" and another EP for that awesome punky project... recording everything straight to ableton except for maybe drums and vocals in studio since it's cheaper to pay for studio time that includes an engineer to help than to rent all their fancy equipment (if you can find it for rent) like mics, mic pres. etc for one day.

Anyway, in short, it really comes down to whatever will help you finish the project in the most efficient way possible. My dad, Ron Gordon, has been a full-time professional artist for decades and he tells me that it really comes down getting it done... and then on to the next one... Momentum you know... use it or lose it. just keep making music with whatever you have until that project is done, then you have extra money and or time to try a different daw or plugin for the next project then do it! I think that most daws are like learning romance languages. Once you learn how to record, mix, and master in one of them, the next one will be much easier because they share many things in common.

OK, there goes my break... back to work for me guys. Hopefully, you feel encouraged to keep producing music. I can't wait to get done here so I can do the same.

If you are in Austin Texas, please hit me up!

[JoshG567]

I do as well. I use mainly real bass and guitar, vocals, Superior Drummer 2, and the Live instruments. I've fallen in love with sculpting Operator tones to complement my rhythm guitars.

The way Live is geared toward working, to me, affords my highly nonlinear production process tons of freedom. I get my ideas for a song, all the conceptual ground I want to cover, spread out on session scenes and over time connect things into an arrangement. Getting to that point can be full of surprises, I revel in it.

If I were recording my songs with a band I'd want to rehearse the shit out of them and go live to perhaps another DAW, or even tape, but that's a totally different phase of work.

[doghouse]

I mess around with various styles but the core is best described as "space rock" I guess...guitars, bass (my main instrument) , drum loops and synths. It is not any form of electronic dance music.

Session view lets me easily comp parts, even piece together long solos from short phrases.

As noted by alexgordon, I just find Ableton fun to work with.

[Fizmarble]

I use Live exclusively as my DAW, I record mostly live-instrument based music, guitar, bass, ukulele, vocals. Mostly rock stuff, but electronic music makes its way in often. Different projects call for different instruments and sounds, but Live handles it all equally in my experience.

[eyeknow]

I like to do all of it in live. The only thing I don't like about live with recording instruments is that there isn't even basic audio editing in session/clips. Some REALLY remedial stuff in the arranger, but I'd rather use session view for this (I like capturing a short take and repeating but sometimes I need to edit an accidental bump/scrape/etc)