Writing songs with LIVE!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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Creeper
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Writing songs with LIVE!

Post by Creeper » Fri Feb 01, 2002 2:14 pm

Is it fair to say LIVE is a supercharged hybrid of Acid and Cubase? I\'m not much of a musician but I have written a few songs (trance, breaks, and UK hard house) in other studios and recently bought an Evolution 249MKII midi controller, Reason, Rebirth, Recycle, and some REX and Refill CDs. Reason is great but I\'m seeing even more potential if I Rewire it into LIVE. I was thinking of getting some sample CDs from East West (BT Nu School Breaks and BT Pads, Skip to my Loops, stuff like that) and now I can synergistically use Reason for truly writing music by sequencing as I play and also step sequencing....and use LIVE as an additional tool to integrate samples from those CDs I mentioned. Is this making sense? I\'m not saying that using pre-recorded loops is absolutely the most creative and talented way to write music, but as I said, I\'m not the most trained musician in the world so this is how it works for me. I don\'t know how many times I\'ve read Future Music interviews with \'techno\' artists only to find out the use samplers for so much of the music creation. Not all bands are like this..but hey, whatever works!

Thanks!

timothyallan
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Post by timothyallan » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:08 am

Yeah, that's pretty fair. It's more like Excel than anything though.

beats me
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Post by beats me » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:18 am

timothyallan wrote:Yeah, that's pretty fair. It's more like Excel than anything though.
I got fired and 2 people went to prison when they discovered we were using Live to do our accounting at work. I also heard the major mortgage lenders were using a combination of follow actions and dummy clips. It's still under investigation though.

posssu
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Post by posssu » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:49 am

I may be way off topic, but Apple is competing Live pretty arrogantly with the release of "Numbers" in its iWork...
Juhana Lehtiniemi - Film composer with Ableton Live

timothyallan
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Post by timothyallan » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:51 am

Yeah, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Open Office's Calc is another Live Competitor too... and it's FREE!

sublimelobc
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Post by sublimelobc » Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:27 am

Well, it's kind of like excel.....NOT!

Excel doesn't have a 64 bit summing engine!

Homebelly
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Post by Homebelly » Thu Oct 30, 2008 5:36 am

sublimelobc wrote:Well, it's kind of like excel.....NOT!

Excel doesn't have a 64 bit summing engine!
There is a lot of talk on the forums about that though, in fact Gates him self fronted up with a very long post about how 32 bit floating point was more that enough inside any 24 bit environment and that all the fuss made about 64 bit was just one up man ship...
15" 2.4 MBP/Live/Sampler/Operator/ Home made Dumble clone/Two Strats/One Jazz Bass.
Come and visit any time= Soundcloud

timothyallan
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Post by timothyallan » Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:33 am

Rave wrote:
timothyallan wrote:Yeah, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Open Office's Calc is another Live Competitor too... and it's FREE!
True however it is lacking in the filter department.
Zing! You are the winner.

heavensdaw
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Post by heavensdaw » Thu Oct 30, 2008 9:21 am

It can also be used with a Commodore 64.. cutting edge stuff right here!

Hd

logic_user99
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Post by logic_user99 » Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:04 am

I never use any 'pre-made' loops for writing tracks; not even MIDI'd drum grooves. However, I do use Live's session view in all it's loopy glory to hash out sections for my tracks, and then record them into the arrange page for tweaking later.

There's a whole bunch to be said for step sequencing, too! Loving the piano-roll editor!
Macbook | Live 7.0.18 |

crumhorn
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Post by crumhorn » Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:46 am

Homebelly wrote:... one up man ship ...
One-upmanship suddenly takes on a whole new connotation I hadn't noticed before :)

Homebelly
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Post by Homebelly » Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:58 pm

crumhorn wrote:
Homebelly wrote:... one up man ship ...
One-upmanship :)
My spell check kept yelling at me...
15" 2.4 MBP/Live/Sampler/Operator/ Home made Dumble clone/Two Strats/One Jazz Bass.
Come and visit any time= Soundcloud

leedsquietman
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Post by leedsquietman » Fri Oct 31, 2008 2:27 am

reason works fine in Live, particularly in Live 7 with the external instrument plugin.

What you want to do is achievable but Live is really quite a bit deeper than ACID in it's morphing and jiggery pokery that you can do in session and arrangement views. It also has more and better FX than ACID. Watch the videos. See how you can use the new drum racks (better and more flexible than redrum in reason), the new beat slicing and also clip envelopes to manipulate loops, panning, pitch, etc.

Live also has reasonably good timestretching and a good implementation of warp markers.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

crumhorn
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Post by crumhorn » Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:09 am

Homebelly wrote:
crumhorn wrote:
Homebelly wrote:... one up man ship ...
One-upmanship :)
My spell check kept yelling at me...
Not knocking your spelling - it took me a while to find the right spelling (actually not sure there is a right spelling for it)

It just appealed to me in a Beavis and Butthead kind of way

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