Touring Setup

[yacht]

Hi forum.

Jona from the band YACHT here.

I've been using Live for a long while. First in 2004 to experiment using a new piece of recording software for this EP, and since then I've used it for everything from recording albums to performing live to sound design and film and commercial scoring. I wanted to post here about my band YACHT's current live/Live setup to see if anyone has any tips to help with the stuff I don't love, and maybe help some people that are trying to do similar things.

YACHT Live Setup for Touring 2019/2020

Hardware: 15" MacBook Pro, Generic 6-Port USB-C Hub w/ HDMI out for video, Novation Bass Station II, Novation LaunchKey 25, NSynth Super, MIDIPlus USB MIDI Interface, Keith McMillen K-MIX, TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch 2, Ampeg SCI-DI Bass DI, Fender MicroDI Guitar DI, various effects pedals, Fender JMJ Mustang Bass, Vintage Fender Musicmaster Guitar.

We use Arrangement View since we've made synced up video for every song. I've heard of plugins for video in Session View, but I haven't had time to check them out and as you'll read our setup is complicated and would take some time to re-author.

We're touring a new album (PLUG: Chain Tripping is out now on DFA) right now and playing all 10 tracks of it, plus some old songs, so about 16 songs total. I've mixed a tour version of each song into 2 separate tracks: stereo tracks and stereo drums. Each song is placed in Arrangement View with ample time in between each song and with locators at the start of each track. I don't use Control Surface mapping, so I've mapped the Previous and Next buttons on the LK25's Transport to the Next Locator and Previous Locator buttons in Live. Has anyone had trouble with this method causing skipping? I've had to move the locators back a bit to make up for the button press acting like a double-press.

Ableton Live Tracks:

1 - Video
Note: Track Activator is deactivated since the videos don't have audio. I compressed 1080p video using Compressor and the HEVC codec in hopes that hardware decoding would help with any playback issues.

2 - Intro
This is our walk-on music on its own track for easy replacement and separate effects.

3 - Tracks
Stereo backing tracks that aren't drums, i.e. SFX, vocal doubles for choruses, etc.

4 - Drums
Stereo drum tracks and drum machines warped and set to Master to control the session's BPM (to sync arpeggiators and vocal FX delay time, etc.)
These are running through a rack with a Drum Buss that I've automated tuning to each song's key so there's some extra sub, and a Utility to add/reduce gain so the set is at more or less the same volume.

5 - BSII
We send Program and Control Changes to the Bass Station, and have a rack set up to mix the input through an External Instrument, and to also use the BSII as a MIDI Controller to control soft synths (Analog and Simpler samples) and our NSynth External Instrument (more about that later) when we need polyphony. Each instrument in the rack has a different Chain Zone which is mapped to the Chain Selector Macro, and then automated by drawing where each instrument should be available. We also send notes to the BSII when we want to tweak on a pattern.

6 - LK25
The LK25 controls a rack of soft synths (Analog, Simpler, Mallet, and the NSynth External Instrument). Same thing with Chain Selector automation as the BSII track. I also have a Velocity effect before the rack and set to 127 since we don't need velocity in this particular set of instruments.

7 - LK25 Pads
We use the pads to trigger SFXs, samples, and DM crash hits. By default this happens on MIDI Channel 10. You can also automate the LEDs on the pads, more on that below.

8 - NSynth
We hated the NSynth (Neural Synthesizer) at first. Google made a fancy synth that makes 16kHz fart sounds? But then we played with it, amped it, ran it through an effects chain and now we have a deep fondness for it. We control it with both the BSII and the LK25 (not at the same time), and route its output through External Instruments with effects.

9 - Sidechain
This is an Impulse track with a 909 kick to send Sidechain audio to soft synths. It's Audio To is set to Sends Only.

10- VoiceLive Touch 2
We send Program and Control Changes to the VoiceLive, as well as notes for harmonies. We used to use the rack version but replaced it to save space, first with the Perform-VK since it's tiny, but it proved to not be so great. I couldn't get the delay tempo to sync!? Programming these things is not awesome, I wish that there was some sort of open source universal software that hardware manufacturers all just agreed to use. It's hard to make software!

11 - LK25 Lights
You can send MIDI notes to the buttons on the LK25 to make them light up in different colors. We use this a sort of a visual click, but mostly it's just a novelty. By default this happens on MIDI Channel 2.

I'm happy to answer any questions and take your advice if you have a better way to do any of this. I have no idea if any of this is the "best" way to put our show together. Also, if you're in any of the following cities, come see us play! Tickets and info here.

[chapelier fou]

You’re doing it so wrong, and you only have 10 days to change everything ! Good luck

[Tarekith]

It's the holidays folks, let's try and keep things civil please.

[yacht]

How on earth did you imagine that this blatant self-promotion would be a good post for the tips & tricks section?

Sorry but this is just bad, you're possibly attracting new people who hope to find some tips and tricks on getting their tour on the road and they get this garbage. Most won't speak up but I will, blech.

Suggestion: try to pick your platform more wisely next time. Ableton even allows for this stuff to be posted, so why not show a little courtesy by using the right place for it? No offense but right now this has the exact opposite effect on me.

Woah, I didn't think it would read this way! I edited the post to remove the list of tour dates. I've been on this forum since 2005 and I haven't seen many posts with full-on setups, so I imagined this could be both helpful and hoped that someone might point out a tip or trick to help me with our setup.

Sorry I didn't make a second post with just our dates in the Local forum. You're totally right. This band is our only job and as the internet becomes completely controlled by a handful of platforms, free forums like this are some of the only places left where you can share independent culture directly with other people making it.

[chapelier fou]

To be honest I felt a bit the same way, it just feels weird that you're asking for help so close to the first gig. I would assume that everything in your setup runs just fine.
Also, I don't find many real questions in your post, except for this one :

I've mapped the Previous and Next buttons on the LK25's Transport to the Next Locator and Previous Locator buttons in Live. Has anyone had trouble with this method causing skipping? I've had to move the locators back a bit to make up for the button press acting like a double-press.

What do you mean by "skipping" ? Is it due to the "double press" behavior of the button, meaning it sends a message when you release it ? Couldn't be just a matter of setting up the button's behavior on the hardware ?
Could it be related to the fact that you're using clips as Master BPM control ?

Apart from this, I agree with you, I'd love more discussions about people's live setups/workflow. I'm really passionate about this, I try to help musicians to imagine their setups when I can. I always learn a lot from doing this.

[[jur]]

How on earth did you imagine that this blatant self-promotion would be a good post for the tips & tricks section?

Sorry but this is just bad, you're possibly attracting new people who hope to find some tips and tricks on getting their tour on the road and they get this garbage. Most won't speak up but I will, blech.

Suggestion: try to pick your platform more wisely next time. Ableton even allows for this stuff to be posted, so why not show a little courtesy by using the right place for it? No offense but right now this has the exact opposite effect on me.

That wasn't needed Shell, I don't get why you're getting this negative and suspicious... You know the forum rules so please try to keep the tone relaxed.
While I don't really see any question in here either I reckon this post could start a nice setup discussion, with constructive and friendly thoughts

[yacht]

For clarity — these aren't our first gigs coming up. We just finished the first leg of a North American tour with this setup, which is a variation on a setup we've been using for almost five years now. We're always looking for ways to streamline both the Live Session and our actual physical setup.

My questions are about streamlining, using the VoiceLive Touch 2 with Ableton, and yeah, the weird toggle/skipping thing. I found this support doc, but as far as I know Novation doesn't have any software available to change the function of the Transport buttons for the LaunchKey series of controllers. I'm messing with MidiPipe now to see if I can change the behavior, but why would the Transport Play button act weird? I'll make a video and post it in a little bit.

Thanks. Happy Holidays!

[chapelier fou]

At first I would try to map the next locator function to another hardware element like one of the key on the keyboard and see if the same thing happens.