Using Live in a traditional band setting

Filthyape · Post by **Filthyape** » Thu May 23, 2002 5:43 pm

I used Live in a traditional band setting at a show recently and found it to be quite stable and perfect for real time improvising. The only issue I found relatively difficult to deal with was every song for this project requires a new Live song to be loaded (new BPM, new sound sets etc). I found it rather taxing to reload a new song in-between songs (sometimes with seconds to spare).

While I understand that this is a fundamental issue that every person who plays electronics in a band has to deal with, I'm just curious if anyone has found a more streamlined solution using Live? Am I missing an obvious solution here..?

thanks

Jory · Post by **Jory** » Thu May 23, 2002 5:54 pm

Well, one solution is to use two laptops. That's what my group does. We have two laptops going through a DJ MIXER. Both Laptops are synced to an external Beat Clock Source with a Tap Tempo. Not the most economical solution though.....

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Thu May 23, 2002 6:20 pm

2 laptops? Not a very sensible solution for me. I am also planning on using the programme live with a band.
What about implementing something like tempo changes or being able to chain several songs with different tempos/meters in the arrange window? Definitely something for the Wishlist board.....

FORMAT

songcarverr · Post by **songcarverr** » Fri May 24, 2002 7:33 am

not sure what os you are using but on mac os X you can just run two copies of the program if you want and switch between them flawlessly. I
just copy the program, and run it as well.

then you can load up both and run them with whatever you want

might even be possible to syncronise them with a little patching program called MIDI patchbay... not sure.

but you can run both, and of course use the same ASIO box.

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Fri May 24, 2002 10:08 am

Filthyape,

how did you use live with the band? On a laptop? Did you give the drummer a click on a separate sound card out? I'm VERY curious to know this... as I'm a band musician wanting to incorporate electronics.
If you wanna take this off-board, you can also email me direct (format@gmx.co.uk)

Thanks

filthyape · Post by **filthyape** » Fri May 24, 2002 5:35 pm

I use two powerbooks, but one is dedicated to Reason. The last show we did used Live as a arrhythmic sound generator, although I did manage to sync up some short rhythmic and vocal loops in real time with the band. While this worked it was a bit ugly as the chance for human error is quite high. We now have most of the songs sequenced and are running a click and headphone feed to the drummer who is also triggering his own set of synced loops (slaved to Live).

Thanks for the feedback but Im not sure any of the answers are right for me. I'd hate to have 12-15 versions of Live open in sys 10 to accommodate an entire set, and the two laptop scenario doesn't seem to be an option (How do you quickly change songs?).

One option I've been experimenting with is to have the whole set loaded into one song (I.E. song one is track 1-12, BPM 120, song 2 is tracks 13-20 BPM 170) and then simply change the tempo real time before each song. Still not ideal but much better than playing around with the finder while the band kills time between songs. I'd be much happier if the sequencer could be set up to change tempos programmatically. All I would have to worry out is when to stop and start the sequence and playing synced loops in real time....

Any more ideas would be grand. Anyone from Ableton use Live in a traditional band setting? Seems they might have overlooked a massive demographic here - the rock band.

filthyape · Post by **filthyape** » Fri May 24, 2002 5:35 pm

I use two powerbooks, but one is dedicated to Reason. The last show we did used Live as a arrhythmic sound generator, although I did manage to sync up some short rhythmic and vocal loops in real time with the band. While this worked it was a bit ugly as the chance for human error is quite high. We now have most of the songs sequenced and are running a click and headphone feed to the drummer who is also triggering his own set of synced loops (slaved to Live).

Thanks for the feedback but Im not sure any of the answers are right for me. I'd hate to have 12-15 versions of Live open in sys 10 to accommodate an entire set, and the two laptop scenario doesn't seem to be an option (How do you quickly change songs?).

One option I've been experimenting with is to have the whole set loaded into one song (I.E. song one is track 1-12, BPM 120, song 2 is tracks 13-20 BPM 170) and then simply change the tempo real time before each song. Still not ideal but much better than playing around with the finder while the band kills time between songs. I'd be much happier if the sequencer could be set up to change tempos programmatically. All I would have to worry out is when to stop and start the sequence and playing synced loops in real time....

Any more ideas would be grand. Anyone from Ableton use Live in a traditional band setting? Seems they might have overlooked a massive demographic here - the rock band.

tronso · Post by **tronso** » Mon May 27, 2002 8:03 am

I've been using LIVE with my band too.
Here's what we do:
Yamaha RM1x as sync master, triggering Korg EA-1 and Korg-ER1 and some midi to Novation Nova's vocoder, and sync to Live running on a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop.
The drummer gets his click from the Rm1x internal sounds.

Using Live in this way, i can use the tempo button on my RM1x to gradually change the tempo between songs. This is in fact a very cool effect!!
Having some loops running that gradually changes to the next songs tempo...

I also use this to create effects, for example in the middle of our live set we have an ambient jam, I just change the tempo gradually down to 20 bpm, add lotsa delay/reverb and instantly get weird and cool ambiences!

Or the other way around,when I sometimes feel to finish of the set in a crazy crescendo , I turn the tempo up to 300 bpm!

You should've heard the drumclick at 300 bpm!

Well , hope this could shed some light on the discussion!

Cheers
Trond
http://www.oscillate.no

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Mon May 27, 2002 10:21 am

Very interesting reading, tronso! I am still in the planning stages for live gigs...

Regards,
FORMAT

SongCarver · Post by **SongCarver** » Mon May 27, 2002 11:51 pm

I'm trying to synconize things in alive band setting but am having some probs with Midi Clock and LIVE on OS X

my friend has a hardware sequencer which generates Midi clock signals but i cant get live to slave properly to the box.. the box will happily slave to live but not the other way.

LIVE is obviously recieving clock, it's syncronization light is flashing, but it seems to play about 5 bpm slower than the box. It's on external sync, but doesn't seem to calculate the tempo right from the incoming 'ticks'.

any ideas... I have tried many combinations of things...

neuronaut · Post by **neuronaut** » Mon Jun 10, 2002 9:04 pm

Changing tempos automatically:
I have been slaving Live to cubase. Cubase has tempo control. If you know what order you are playing in you could lay it all out in cubase.

Stringing songs together:
Then I assume you can copy and paste the arrange data from one to another. The references to the sounds should be retained. (I'm guessing about this)

Sync with MIDI:
I haven't had ANY luck with midi sync. From what I cn tell it's too sloppy to be reliable. I'm waiting from cubase SX so I can slave mutliple copies of cubase (on separate machines) together using lightpipe...!

Any help? Any questions?

Using Live in a traditional band setting

Using Live in a traditional band setting

more Live info for live band performance

more Live info for live band performance

syncronization

Some ideas