Is this possible???

[Guest]

Is there anywhere in Live where you can link tracks together so that when (for example) a clip plays in track one, track two will stop and vice versa

Why do I want to do this

I'm currently working on translating already finished tracks (Cubase) in to a format that can be performed live in Live.

I'm finding that to perform certain tracks to my satisfaction I'm needing to make a lot of different loops of the groove - i.e Background loop, Background loop+Kick, BL+Kick+Bass+Hats etc. Otherwise I would have to run about a million tracks to get everything in: my music isn't minimalist.

I want to keep the groove elements of song 1 on track 1 (the groove for song 2 being on track 2 so I can fade DJ style between grooves). And leave tracks 3-8 free for overlaying parts. I'm using 8 tracks max for practicality and because my controller has 8 faders: I got the UC-33 in the end and it is VERY good.

The problem with having so many groove loops is that a song gets many many scenes deep which makes it difficult switching between different songs in different scenes to fire off different overlay clips - too much scrolling (no I haven't memorised what key they're all assigned to yet in fact I haven't got as far as assigning keys yet, doing it with the mouse as I build the thing).

So what I want to do is effectively link tracks 1+2 and 3+4 together so that I can place the groove clips for song 1 on tracks 1&2 and for song 2 on 3+4. This way I've made the track 'wider' on screen but can still see everything width ways without scrolling and cut down on the depth: much better. For this to work though I need track 1 and 2 to trigger mutually exclusively.

Or is there a better way?

[nunrgguy]

Don't know why it came up as guest - was logged in.
Oh well...

[bigbadotis]

If you're running Live on a Mac, you could use a Max or jMax patch to do this. Use MidiPipe or Midi Patchbay to connect the virtual output of jMax to the midi input of Live.

Of course, creating the jMax patch is easier said than done, but it doesn't sound like it would be impossible from what you've said. In jMax you could store which clip got pressed in an int message (by storing the midi note which triggered it), and then use split to detect whether or not any new incoming messages should retrigger the clip to turn it off. Or something close to that.

So yeah, it's possible... hopefully there are simpler solutions though. I can't think of any. At least it's all free. Unless you have to buy a Mac

[nunrgguy]

I'm PC but what you've suggested sounds interesting. There's a piece of shareware/freeware available called Bome's Midi Translator which looks like it might do the trick. I'll give it a go. Thanks

[Guest]

i build tunes from scratch live on a pc, and find that 8-11 tacks is plenty for one song--bass, keyboard chords, keyboard atmospheric part, kick, snare, hats, rides, percussion, and guitar, then a melody/lead part or two--still only 11 tracks. I know everyone's music is different, but it seems if you had much more than 11 things going at once, it could be a bit much--if you minimize the browser window, and get rid of unused sends, you can get more viewable tracks on screen. Once i start to fill up the 11 slots in the one scene/one song scenario i use, then you can always stop a clip in one track to record another on the scene below it. If your on a pc, bomes midi translator is good for having a midi button become the delete key (very useful for scrapping clips your recording live when you don't execute the part as desired--just hit your delete, then start recording the clip again). Midi ox and midi yoke are very useful for sharing midi between multiple apps. As far as your initial "linkage" of tracks scenario, i don't know how the uc-33 works, but on my behringer fcb 1010 midi foot controller (a great piece of gear for Live live performance), you can program a number of midi commands into one patch, so that hitting that patch could do the type of things you desribe in live, given that you program the 1010 and live's midi map accordingly. And though i have an event ezbus, i don't even bring it out live to performances, and i do alright using the mouse for fades, but mainly i use the crossfader to fade a number of tracks in and out at once.

Ryan

[nunrgguy]

Yes it does depend on your style of music.

Generally speaking in a typical arrangement in Cubase or Logic I run probably around 40 tracks and upwards - very techy, loads of layered percussion with lots of tricks and effects. It sounds a lot but density of sound is important to my style - it's not something I can simplify too much for going live either as my stuff is very well known - I'm up to my 50th release, possibly more.

That's why in order to make my sound translate to Live I need to make lots of loops containing more than one element and build it that way. I would say that running more than 8 tracks in a Live situation with the number of changes I need to make would be nigh on impossible to do by myself.

I can DJ on three decks pretty easily, four I find almost impossible - there's just too much going on to be able to keep track of it. In an 8 track Live setup I'm effectively going to be DJing with 8 'decks' +FX but without having to worry about beat matching, making mashups of my own stuff on the fly.

I'm using a keyboard for triggering clips and the UC33 for mixing and controlling FX so the midi translator idea sounds good - when I press C1 to trigger a clip on track one it can also be mapped to a stop clip on track 2 and vice versa - it would then operate exactly the same as if I'd gone '1 down' instead of across (1 and 2 will have exactly the same UC33 controllers mapped to them).

I'm not too intent on triggering scenes one by one and having things play together in a pre-programmed manner as I can't see the point, I may as well just play the records in that case, so they don't need to be laid out in that way, although if after experimentation it looks like it will be too much of a handfull to do it there will be some pre done scenes.

Nice one