Gaps between tracks in sets

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
MONKHOUSE
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Gaps between tracks in sets

Post by MONKHOUSE » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:07 am

i have some live shows coming up and am a little anxious about finishing jamming with one live set and then closing it and opening a new live set - that few seconds of silence could potentially be agonising - is there a stratgey around this or can anyone suggest any ways they negotiate this bar pc's or use of hardware synths!?

Many thanks,

Alex

longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:37 pm

Most people would probably recommend putting everything in one set. It is possible to run 2 instances of Live, if you've got enough sound card outs.

nebulae
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Post by nebulae » Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:30 pm

I used to do shows where each song was a different Live set, and the in-between switching was terribly agonizing and totally killed the momentum. Plus I couldn't enjoy the applause because I was too busy looking like I was "reading my email" (setting up the next Live set). My strong recommendation is to put it all in one set, and then stop if you need to, or just keep going. If you're clever about how you set up your mappings and tracks, you should be able to get your songs into one set.

eamoon
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Post by eamoon » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:59 am

I generally split my shows up into 15-20 minute Live sets, and play little intermission pieces in between (I use max/msp for that, but only because I use it for monome stuff as well; iTunes or something similar works fine too.) If I tried to cram it all into one Live set, I'd have 8-10 returns (ick) and it would be generally unwieldy... but it really depends on your priorities. For a balls-to-the-wall techno show it'd probably be better to have everything in one set and accept the consequences, just to keep the momentum up.

MONKHOUSE
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Post by MONKHOUSE » Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:48 am

Like that 'balls to the wall' crack a lot - yeah i guess it's right - my stuff is pretty atmosphere based so i don't tend to use lots of clips but am definitely sends/returns heavy which is more challneging - my sets are only normally 30 mins so i guess i will go with the unaninous - i can't imagine the anxiety of seemigly reading wikipedia while there is appluase/silence (!)

compositeone
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Post by compositeone » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:02 pm

This is the same dilemma I have been having for a while. Wanting to do drum and bass with Live I would be moving into an arena that is totally dominated by the DJ and so therefore a crowd is going to be fully expecting a continual stream of music.

It was the one thing I found disappointing about Tom COSM's video was that he only really shows one track live rather than how he structures a full live set which would have been extremely helpful.

I have started adding all the tracks to one live set. I'm having to freeze and flatten most of the tracks though and yeah I seem to be ending up with a lot of return tracks which is not ideal. I think it might just be case of starting with this seemingly clumsy set up and gradually refining it with experience. :S
http://www.myspace.com/compositeswerve

"So what kind of music do you make?"
"Both kinds...... drum and bass."

hacktheplanet
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Post by hacktheplanet » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:44 pm

The best way is to use one big set.
However, you could get a sampler, and loop the end pieces of your tracks while you are loading a new set. Or even play some synth noodles or big pads and lots of spacey vocal samples on CD between songs.
Image

hambone1
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Post by hambone1 » Wed Jan 24, 2007 3:20 pm

Definitely one big set. Live's designed for it.

Load it up once at soundcheck, and don't worry about loading anything else all night!

compositeone
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Post by compositeone » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:11 pm

So do you guys:

1. Build your multiple tunes left to right across the session view so that you can still have midi instruments in in each track but then you can't really use the scene launch ?

or

2. Build down the view so you can use scene launch but have to render/flatten your midi parts so that its all audio?
http://www.myspace.com/compositeswerve

"So what kind of music do you make?"
"Both kinds...... drum and bass."

compositeone
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Post by compositeone » Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:35 pm

Bump-diddy-bump-bump 8O
http://www.myspace.com/compositeswerve

"So what kind of music do you make?"
"Both kinds...... drum and bass."

sans soleil
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Post by sans soleil » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:02 am

2.

build your tracks vertically. i don't see why you would have to flatten your midi tracks....
in session view, just add all the instruments you figure you'll need for all of your songs, and drop the clips in so that they more or less follow your arrangement.
if an instrument isn't being used it won't have any clips in the scene. i don't think that idle scenes should make a huge difference re. cpu usage.
launch yer scenes at the right time, tweak the faders/sends/fx, make faces and voila...instant rock god.

spherop
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Post by spherop » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:14 am

crazy - i was just coming here to ask this thread's very same question.

my main remaining question is if i have up to 10-20 scenes per song - i am concerned about the session view becoming incredibly long. although maybe that's just the way it has to be. it would be so nice though if there was a way to hide things so that you could see only 1 songs scenes at a time.

so in sum - is that what you peeps do? just load up hundreds of scenes to run through your entire set?

YILA
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Post by YILA » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:13 am

less is more,

the more i play live the more i shave my set down...
Scan i5 in the studio. Dual core Pc laptop, 13inch macbookpro,RME fireface 800,live 8.1,operator. drum machines Myspace Soundcloud Youtube Twitter

compositeone
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Post by compositeone » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:22 am

sans soleil wrote:2.

build your tracks vertically. i don't see why you would have to flatten your midi tracks....
If I had an operator for example in track 1 driving my bass line, but this was the only track that used this instrument then track 1 will mostly be empty down the set. If that was the case for many of the tracks in the first tune, and then the second and third and so on, then it means that the live set will be horizontal and vertical so I would have to kinda scroll diagonally across the set to go through the tracks.

I thought to avoid this and make better use of the limited screen space I could flatten all my basses for example and have them all on track 1 and 2 as audio, so that hopefully over all I would only have to scroll down not to the right as well (in an ideal world).

I'm really just feeling around in the dark here though and any pointers would be very welcome. :)
http://www.myspace.com/compositeswerve

"So what kind of music do you make?"
"Both kinds...... drum and bass."

fatrabbit
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Post by fatrabbit » Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:38 am

spherop wrote:crazy - i was just coming here to ask this thread's very same question.

my main remaining question is if i have up to 10-20 scenes per song - i am concerned about the session view becoming incredibly long. although maybe that's just the way it has to be. it would be so nice though if there was a way to hide things so that you could see only 1 songs scenes at a time.

so in sum - is that what you peeps do? just load up hundreds of scenes to run through your entire set?
To increase space, make sure you're in full screen mode.

You can also hide/show various parameters in the Session view with the buttons towards the bottom-right (hide I/O section for example). There are key commands to do this so it's best to learn them.

To avoid touching the computer as much as possible, you could use MackieControl emulation with your MIDI controller (do a search) - set up a scene on your controller that enables you to move left, right, up, down etc. in Live.

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