individual tracks vs. whole song loops

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
cderum
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Post by cderum » Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:17 pm

As near as I can tell, the only way to answer the question of whether or not it matters that you're using big chunks of rendered songs in live performance is by asking another question . . . "who is your audience"? If your primary goal is to satisfy other musicians and purists, then stocking your set with pre-recorded material will not work. If your primary goal is to satisfy the rest of the audience (i.e., people who don't care what kind of latency you're getting out of your soundcard), then i don't think it matters at all. if your goal is to satisfy yourself that what you are doing on stage is both creative and entertaining, then I think some mix of techniques is right--after all, you are giving a "performance"--not just a listening session.

ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:55 pm

i've been wrestling with this for awhile too.

i try to come from a purely pragmatic approach. personally, i don't make music for purists or other musicians, so i'm not concerned with procedure for its own sake.

thus, the question i ask is this: "what level of hands-on control will give me the ability to improve the result the most?"

one pitfall would be having too much control. a scenario of this would be to attempt to manually sequence every beat or 4-bar phrase individually. the audience wouldn't enjoy it as much because it would fall apart every time you tried to switch motifs, and you'd get a sore arm from constantly hammering at the keys.

another pitfall would be having not-enough control. a scenario of this would be only being able to trigger the beginning of a 3-minute track. the audience would have less fun because it would be hard to change the mood to fit them, and you would be doing less; they can sense that. :)

in my case, the ideal is a combination of three levels of control:

1) a section of "song level" components, i.e.: MySong_Verse1, MySong_Verse2, MySong_Outro.

2) a section of "phrase level" components, i.e.: Amen_4BarLoop, JB_Bassline8Bars.

3) a section of "trigger level" components, i.e.: Scorpio_DrumRoll_2Beats.

I find that by combining these three levels, there are long enough parts to make it sound like songs, but there are still fine enough grains that i can alter the feel by manually "playing" stuff.

Rx
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Post by Rx » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:12 pm

My great hope is that Ableton will allow for multiple cue points in a clip, and perhaps even multiple loops. I made a set by sequencing songs and it was a pain in the butt to load in several instances of a song, with different sections looping so I could mix & match on the fly, skip sections, change order, etc. I could have chopped up the song into separate wave files for the sections but felt it was not necessary. Another issue with that is that not all sections can be sequenced seamlessly, depending on reverb tails, delays, grace notes, etc.
Arp Laszlo
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ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:35 pm

hi rx, i'm a software developer myself so when i see a limitation in software, i try to imagine a literal mechanism for making it work better (not that this trait is limited to soft developers.) :) :)

so, anyway, i too get kind of tired of having to manually chop up each song into like 10 different subfiles just to replicate cue points.

however, i wouldn't want an individual instance of a clip to have multiple points in the sample view editor. in my opinion, this would clutter up a wonderful, simple interface.

the way, i think, that would be best, is to extend the functionality of the "Save" button in the sample view editor. currently it saves the warp and loop settings along with the sound file, and makes them the default settings.

what if you could "Save" as a brand new sound file with this button, in addition to merely saving the settings to the existing sound file? i think that might knock the problem out in the most elegant way.

rs

Rx
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Post by Rx » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:58 pm

That's an interesting idea. I think that multiple cue points could be implemented without cluttering the interface too much, tho. Say you select a clip and use the function keys f1-f12. You could select a warp marker and assign a function key and have it appear as a tiny 'f1' next to the marker. After setting them, maybe you could set up a loop by clicking one function key then double-clicking another one and have a band of color appear between the warp markers above the waveform. I think it can be done in a clean, usable fashion. This is like the one good feature Traktor has that Ableton doesn't.

Another reason I'm interested in this is that say I'm using parts of a song in a mix - if I pitch one part up a step, I'll have to pitch everything up a step, so missing one could sound really bad (or really good, depending). Maybe we need to come up with a word for this, when something is pitched incorrectly and sounds like ass. Since Live users are generally not going to trainwreck, there has to be the equivalent Error Displaying a Lack of Skill. Hmmm - sounds like a fun post to make...
Arp Laszlo
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Dell 6000d: 2.0ghz Pentium 760 | 1gb DDR2 ram
Echo Indigo DJ | Korg microKONTROL | faded black t-shirt emblazoned with 'Detroit' in gothic type

ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Mon Jun 09, 2003 6:15 pm

rx,

thats a very good point about having to pitch-up every clip in a "song", or alter the interpolation method, input gain, etc...

if i understand you correctly, then, the sort of object you're after is in between orders of magnitude of these two things:

<---Audio File------- GOAL -------Individual Sound Clip--->

perhaps the existing "alias" feature could be further exploited in future editions, or perhaps the key does lie in adding switchable "warp presets" to make this happen, as you said.

interesting thread...
rs

Rx
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Post by Rx » Mon Jun 09, 2003 7:01 pm

Interesting indeed - I kinda ditched the forum for a few months after the hoi polloi started posting loads of crap. Seems like they've taken off and we can get back to discussing the uses for this incredible evolutionary software.
Arp Laszlo
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borg
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Post by borg » Mon Jun 09, 2003 7:27 pm

maybe this has been covered before, but it is somehow on topic...

i'd be really happy if we would be able to not only drop clips, but also complete tracks... (track x would contain clips 1-7, level, pan,..., fx a & b. track y would have clips 8-..., other settings and fx) this way you could have a continuous show with just one song file. and why not blocks of tracks, used together with the crossfader... someone must have asked for this before...
but for really adventurous and interesting for all live sets, i still reckon midi clips is the number one jamming tool.
that would take my laptop/live/magma/creamware pulsars to the next level. too many good synths, filters, modulars to not use to it's max, and an awful waste of dsp and cpu. midi clips would be soooooooo more economical and tweakable. sure ableton's filters are nice, but some stuff you have in the creamware environment is a completely different game...

mmm, not really progressive thinking, sorry... :roll:

Rx
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Post by Rx » Mon Jun 09, 2003 7:33 pm

I'd like to ability to open a new track loaded with clips, or to import scenes with loaded clips, rather than having to drag in all the clips you want. My suggestion for having cue points within a clip is a workaround for that.
Arp Laszlo
arphaus.com

Dell 6000d: 2.0ghz Pentium 760 | 1gb DDR2 ram
Echo Indigo DJ | Korg microKONTROL | faded black t-shirt emblazoned with 'Detroit' in gothic type

ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Mon Jun 09, 2003 7:41 pm

regarding most recent part of this thread...

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3642

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