Who uses Live with a live band? What tips can you give me?

[Henry Robinett]

Ok. I keep trying to start using Live, try for awhile and give up. I’ve had it since 4, I think. Maybe earlier. I’m on 10 now. I only ever wanted it to be an addendum to use with my band. I’d be interested to hear from some of you out there who use it in this way. I’ve done exactly one gig with my band with Live. Many years ago. Not enough rehearsals though it did work.

My challenge is this is an original instrumental, jazz oriented band that has a fair amount of improvisation. Some of the music I wrote is bigger than what a four piece can reasonably pull off.

I need to get a simple foot controller and a trigger for the drummer. What works best? Pitfalls? I have about 6 projects I put together years ago I’m going to have to update. Sounds are old and lame. I have a nice audio interface. Metric Halo ULN-2. I’m planning on the drummer using phones and send him a click. I’ll have the foot controller. And maybe the keyboardist. I play guitar.

[Henry Robinett]

Nobody huh? Nobody uses this to augment a live band?

[jestermgee]

Plenty do, just probably out making a living and not on the forums at the moment. Probably need longer than half a day to respond.

Any MIDI foot controller will do anything you need it to in Live (play, stop, launch a clip or scene etc). Here are some ideas:

https://heavy.com/tech/2017/02/top-best ... interface/

How you would go about setting things up for your situation will differ to how I might want to do it so probably best to start with a list of problems you need to solve and start addressing each one, best way to design anything.

[Henry Robinett]

Thank you. I'm not as concerned about foot controllers. I have several already including the FAMC LF+12+ which is overkill for this. But it'd be interesting to see here what is most popular.

[JackTheRipper]

I use Live in a live band setting. I am a bass player and I sometimes play in a Rush cover/tribute type band. I have a Roland PK-5A controller that I trigger with my feet that I interface to Ableton and a Roland Juno-G synth. Sometimes I use the PK-5A to play notes, sometimes I trigger samples, etc. Depends on the song.

Here's a diagram that shows my setup:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1helFP ... uVBx11TWpH

I also sometimes play in an Iron Maiden cover/tribute and I use an Actition MIDI controller to trigger keyboard samples loaded into Ableton. The drummer also has a Roland SPD-SX drum pad that he uses to trigger samples. Here's a diagram that shows that configuration:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18D6tv ... dTGhMe96yT

One thing that I have recently done in the "Rush" configuration is to automate the selection of the Live set. Each song has its own Live set. What I do is program the set list into Juno-G in sequential "performances." Before starting a song, I press a single button on the Juno to select the "performace." This sends a Program Change message to my laptop. I run Bome's MIDI Translator Pro which receives the PC message and translates that into the keystrokes necessary to open the Live set for that song. MIDI Translator Pro also sends a SysEx message to the PK-5A to configure it. It works very well and has eliminated human error while on stage that can be a mess.

In the Maiden band, I have only 1 Live set that contains the samples for every song. The samples for each song are arranged vertically (Session View) in separate audio tracks. The drummer will select a "drum kit" on the drum pad which sends a Program Change message to my laptop. In this case, I use MIDI-OX to translate the PC messages to selectively SOLO a specific track. Then either he hits the pads on the SPD-SX to trigger sounds, or I use the Actition foot controller to trigger keyboard samples.

--jack

[Henry Robinett]

Thank you! Sorry I missed this post! Do you use a trigger to time stretch tempo? You know, if the tempo varies or you WANT to change the tempo? How does that work exactly? Sorry, it's been a while. Can you just have a trigger off to the side and hit it until it locks into tempo, or do you have to have a constant trigger? What are some of the preferred triggers for that?

[JackTheRipper]

Thank you! Sorry I missed this post! Do you use a trigger to time stretch tempo? You know, if the tempo varies or you WANT to change the tempo? How does that work exactly? Sorry, it's been a while. Can you just have a trigger off to the side and hit it until it locks into tempo, or do you have to have a constant trigger? What are some of the preferred triggers for that?

I have a couple of samples that need to be synchronized with tempo that the band is playing. In that case, I have the clip's WARP button enabled and I MIDI-map one of the pedals on the PK-5A to Ableton's TAP tempo function. I press the pedal at the song's tempo and the sample is adjusted. It works well.

--jack

[Greenapples2019]

We are just starting to use Ableton Live in our four-piece band (guitar/bass/drums, all four sing). We use it in Session view on a MacBook Pro and through a Focusrite 18i20 to our PA system. Each song has at least one scene and the drummer controls it using it a Yamaha DTX-M12. AL is multifunction for us:
Playing backing tracks
Cue/click tracks to the band's IEMs
Monitor mixer for the IEMs
FOH mixer for the vocals (using a variety of AL and Waves plug-ins), the backing tracks and drum triggers on a Roland TM6-PRO
Controller for DMXIS to run our lightshow

We use dummy clips to automate pretty much everything to minimise the effort on-stage and use a Novation LaunchControl XL to control the mixes alongside the DTX-M12.

I hope that helps, I'd be keen to hear from anyone else on how they use AL in a live band.

[MusicIsMath]

We are just starting to use Ableton Live in our four-piece band (guitar/bass/drums, all four sing). We use it in Session view on a MacBook Pro and through a Focusrite 18i20 to our PA system. Each song has at least one scene and the drummer controls it using it a Yamaha DTX-M12. AL is multifunction for us:
Playing backing tracks
Cue/click tracks to the band's IEMs
Monitor mixer for the IEMs
FOH mixer for the vocals (using a variety of AL and Waves plug-ins), the backing tracks and drum triggers on a Roland TM6-PRO
Controller for DMXIS to run our lightshow

We use dummy clips to automate pretty much everything to minimise the effort on-stage and use a Novation LaunchControl XL to control the mixes alongside the DTX-M12.

I hope that helps, I'd be keen to hear from anyone else on how they use AL in a live band.

I'd be interested in hearing more, seeing some screenies or a video rundown of your setup and how you control everything in a live performance scenario

[Greenapples2019]

Yes happy to do that, I'll put a video together in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I can post some screen grabs. There's quite a lot going on with our set up so I'll do it in stages. Here's what the MBP looks like when we're playing (hopefully this works, it's my first attempt at posting an image!):



The four green columns are the four vocalists, set up so that backing vocals are 10db quieter than lead. Sends A-D are the band's IEMs/foldback, E,F and H are reverb, delay and doubler and G is DMXIS for the lights. We turn all vox FX off between songs so that we can talk to the "crowd". We use a click on some tracks and go freestyle on others, and the different shades on the Backing channels reflect this. We also have three different settings for the FX: fast songs, standard and ballads, and again these are automated.

This is all controlled using a Yamaha DTX-M12 to launch scenes and the Launchcontrol xl as a mixer for the first 8 tracks.

Does that help/make sense? Is there a particular bit you're interested in? As I said, I'll put some videos together to show it all set up.

BTW, even with all this going on, we never go far above 30%, and that's with a 2013 MBP.

[Emilepattes]

Is the video out now? Anyone with other band projects?

[Greenapples2019]

No video out there, I did record one but it turns out I'm a better drummer than video maker so I didn't post it!

We've refined our use of Ableton over the last couple of years, and are now really happy with how it works. I'm happy to share any knowledge or answer any queries that people have. We're no experts but we've got it working for a live band where we don't always use a click, and where we want to go off-piste at times.

Cheers

D

[roxxymoxxie]

I've been using Logic Prox X to run backing tracks and video for years. I am a different video for each of my songs and I have no idea how to import and play videos in the session view. I really don't know what I'm doing here but the videos I've watched online make it seem so much more user friendly to use Ableton than Logic for backing traxx because Logic only allows ONE video per session so whenever I make an edit to the show I have to edit the entire vdeo and have it run the length of the timeline. Can someone help me?

[[jur]]

I have no idea how to import and play videos in the session view.

You can't run video from Session view. You need to run your video clips from Arrangement.

[Pitch Black]

I have no idea how to import and play videos in the session view.

You can't run video from Session view. You need to run your video clips from Arrangement.

There are several third party solutions that give video playback in Session View. Videosync and Zwobot are two that come to mind.