gigging and live 5 poll

henry ford · Post by **henry ford** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 3:21 pm

just curious how many of the live 5 happy campers actually take it to the stage....its important you're honest and speak with EXPERIENCE , rather than what COULD be....

john gordon · Post by **john gordon** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 3:51 pm

well ive tried gigging with live 5 and it was a disaster so now ive had to go back to 4 which has me thinking of selling my copy of 5 for now.i still have my machine freeze up when i delete a midi track.this bug has been around forever and its still not fixed.i mean cmon what the f .

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 6:22 pm

No problems whatsoever, other than my own stupidity. Last gig, I didn't realize that I had cross-mapped some Live audio loops with the lighting. Every time I fired a clip, the lighting all went off! My bad, though...

The only issue I have is the time it takes to load a large set, but that's not really a problem. I load it an hour or so before I start and stay in the same set all night.

I am paranoid about crashes, though, so I keep my system streamlined and backed up, plenty of free disk space, no dodgy plug-ins, and never let the CPU meter rise above 40%. When the eventual crash happens, I've got a DVD running constantly, so a quick fade-up on the mixer brings up the DVD audio, and one button push on a remote sends the DVD video to the projectors.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:22 am

that dvd idea is definetly a good one.

I read that matmos has 2 computers running all songs and a dj fader between the 2 so that at the first sign of problems they can cross fade to the computer that isn't having problems. that is also a good idea but most people can't afford a second identical computer.

one could also have a cd or ipod going just in case of a crash that they could fade to. I'm highly considering using my ipod in case of crashes. most of my stuff is in the same tempo so I could drop a really long track in my ipod and start that and then slap the spacebar of the computer at the right time so that I'm in sync with it, then if any problems happen I can fade to ipod and the beat doesn't even get interupted.

henry ford · Post by **henry ford** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:53 pm

i have a prerendered set saved on an mp3 player.....better to have something playing than nothing , even if it is an mp3 , cd ,dvd , etc

hey hambone , what kind of gigs are you playing ?...a live dj set (sample playback)...or a performance (instruments) ...?

i like to mix reggae/dub....right now im working on putting together a breakcore set , of original stuff...

my laptop aint the best , so I'm not confident with anything too cpu intensive. really , i dont want to experience any disastrous crashes on stage....

giorgio · Post by **giorgio** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 5:50 pm

i use live 5 for djing, with effects and a midi controller
and i use live 4 with my band to play backing tracks, click tracks, cues and midi controll of effects. i had some problems with with band with live easlier so i didn't want to risk using a new version of live (5) but go with something that has been perfected (4.1.4) but i realized i have been using 5 for djing and i have never had any skips, dropouts, or crashes, only human error.

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:27 pm

Henry - I'm doing a bit of both. As they are private/corporate functions, it's really up to the client. I try to leave the main song in its original recognizable form. People want to hear what they know... not my beat-repeaty filter-sweepy beeps and squeaks! I do play live percussion and FX over the top, as well as trigger loops to the FOH PA and separately to the rear of the room. All of the lighting and video is pre-programmed in Live, but I can trigger lighting and video loops, too.

I know I'm going to have to bite the bullet and run a second parallel computer in case of a crash. When clients are spending 4 figure sums for a 3 hour set, you can't let them down. I'll feel a lot less stressed, too.

Seviel · Post by **Seviel** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 3:58 pm

I'm on stage with ableton for at least 2 times a week.. This is how I make my money! The rest of the week I work on the system I use...

Found a way to work around some huge bugs....
I'm happy with Live after starting my set with about 2500 wav samples (and growing) 3 times... This takes 10 min every time :S More on this below!

http://groups.google.com/group/Live-DJs ... aedcb1cfed

henry ford · Post by **henry ford** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:26 am

what do you use for visuals hambone ? a mac ? another pc ? some kind of visual box ? .... having synced up video loops must be sweet....

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 12:58 pm

Henry - I run Arkaos VJ on the same Mac that I run Live on. I was using separate computers, but it was too much hassle.

I do run the G-Force Visualiser on an iBook, though, and feed it into the G5 through a video capture card. Because of the video delay through the visualiser and video capture cards, I send the audio from an aux send to the iBook set up with a -250ms delay in Live. That way, the waveform beats on the projector screen are tightly in sync with the audio. I also run two remote pan/tilt/zoom cameras into two more video capture cards to feed live video from the dance floor. All three video cards feed into Arkaos VJ. I do the animations in Motion 2, Poser 6, Cinema 4D, and Flash that are beat-matched to warped Live audio tracks. Warping and Live make all of the video and lighting effects beat-matched and in sync, too.

Most of the stuff is sequenced in Live along with all of the lighting, but I have some Live clips that I trigger live, too.

Lots of fun but lots of work, too!

Hedroom · Post by **Hedroom** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:00 pm

Played out with Live 5 at a big club in the Midlands the weekend before last> not so much as a hiccup.

microgroover · Post by **microgroover** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:58 pm

only live-experience i've had so far with live 5 was good but with one stressing bug. i'm using a finger trigger to do percussive fills and used two different midi-channels with an impulse on each track.

everything worked fine when rehearsing the set but when running it "live" I got a dodgy error about liveset may be corrupted blabla when changing scenes and/or playing midinotes. thank god it worked anyway but quite annoying. it happened all the time when switching the midi-input between the channels..

otherwise set went ok..

except the stress!

Pheek · Post by **Pheek** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 2:49 pm

I love Live, i think it's the best software for me! There's no doubt about it ever since i did beta testing for version 0.5b. I still use L5 for gigging even though I have some sort of minor problems here and there. I tweaked my laptop to perform and do it, sort of a temporary situation, I'm sure.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:34 am

Live5 + Yamaha 01X is the absolute centrepiece of my Live PA which I'm gigging with this summer. Never before have I enjoyed such integration with hardware control surfaces, ability to make a Audio/MIDI DAW slave to incoming MIDI Clock and such a feature-rich environment for either remixing my studio produced works on the fly during performance or for on-the-fly composition/sequencing.

Adding my regular hardware synth machines to this rig allows live performances which aren't simply yet another goof bobbing around behind a laptop screen (yawn).

In fact in my rig the laptop sits off to the side ... the 01X allows for confident manipulation of Live without being welded behind a display ...

Cheers

loreamon · Post by **loreamon** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:15 pm

As a performing soft Live is abosolutely revolutionary tool... even wondering why there still isn't any concurence on this filed.

I beleive this kind of soft is the future of performing music - every musician can find his own way to use ableton for gig. For the first time since live 1.0 i tried to play electronic music like a jazz jamming session - imporvising on stage different combinations of loops and FX every time, deciding when the beat stops, when it starts again while looking at the public's mood... and thus every track on live is completely different from what is like arranged in cubase

Unfortunately there is one thing i cannot understand - Live 5 was really disapointing for me... sure there are great new feautures, but not so much after all. The new version is really much heavier to run, using alot more ram and cpu.. but why ??

My opinion is that programmers in some way have forgotten the main idea of abelton, since Live 1.0 - to have a really clean, not hungry on sys ressources soft meant to be played on stage with a 100% viability.

Compared to live 3, ableton 4 was also some how hungry but however running quite well on good machines. Live 5 is really a step backward for me, because now i can't use anymore huge files with loops even with my brand new laptop.. maybe the idea was to turn more on the arrangment side, which I never really used - there is alot more to do in sequencers like cubase and logic for this. And once again i repeat - for now there is no concurence in the field of live giging soft on the market

after all live is not fruity loops !

and what if abelton were 2 different applications - one for arrangment one for gigs ? My 4.1.4 live set (~4GB) is impossible to run on 5 ... the clips are continuosly loading after the file is open... so why doing this?

gigging and live 5 poll

do you gig with live 5?

gigging and live 5 poll