Can it be done in Live? (long post)

[[email protected]]

Hi,

This is my second attempt to switch to Live from Cubase on stage. The first one failed because some important features were missing from v4, maybe I'll have more luck this time. Most of my first and most important questions are related to the same goal: using live like an old pattern based sequencer. I hope it's all my fault that so far I wasn't able to make it work the way I wanted.

1. Can I force Live to launch the next scene only when the playback reaches the end of the current scene, regardless of the quantize value? (The same way as pattern based sequencers work when you choose the next pattern, but the playback will switch to it only when the current pattern gets finished).

Here's the point why this would make sense: let's say I have a set arrangement for the first 56 bars of the song and I never will want to change the playback of these 56 bars. I know that this will be followed by a solo, (but only after the entire 56 bars gets played back), so I have to launch the Solo scene, but if I do this before reaching the 49th bar, the playback of those important 56 bars will definitely get chopped off, even with the longest quantize value. So, instead of telling Live "play the Solo scene after the current one" at any point of the playback, I have to keep an eye on the position of the playback and launch the Solo scene at the right time. Then the solo comes, which should have a length of any multiple of 16 bars. Again, if after playing two cycles the soloist gives me a sign that the last lap is coming, I can't switch to the Chorus scene right away in bar 33, because that would interrupt the last 16 bars of the Solo scene after 8 bars. This doesn't sound very musician-friendly to me.

2. Is there any way to get a visual indication of when the playback will switch from the current scene to the next one? I mean a visual countdown that would show the number of bars to go before the transition will occur.

The only way I found was to start playback from 1.1.1 and check the arrangement position and wait until it reaches a multiple of the quantize value, but this surely wouldn't work on stage, because who would know when the next scene will start if you launch it in bar 434 with a quantize value of 8 bars? (In this case in 6 bars, if I'm not wrong, because 54x8+2=434, so takes 6 more bars to reach the next multiple of 8)

3. Can I limit the length of the recorded clips in advance? This should work the same way as any drum machine works in loop recording mode: you build up the rhythm by adding some notes in each cycle without having to mess around with the length of every single take.

Scenario: there's a 16 bar scene for which I want to build up the rhythm tracks on stage, so while playing it back, I want to record a Kick, Snare, Hi-hat loop. But when we reach the end of the 16 bars, the recording won't loop back to bar 1, so when I take the track out of recording somewhere in the middle of bar 17, it will automatically start playback at a musically totally useless position with a loop length that's useless, too (e.g. 16.1.4)

I hope someone can give me positive answers to these ones, because they seem to be crucial for me to be able to use Live on stage.

Thanks in advance,

endre

[Tone Deft]

1 - for the clips in the 56 bar loop (pre-solo) set their FOLLOW mode to 56 bars, next scene. it sounds like this section can be bounced down to 1 clip for simplicity's sake.

for the scene AFTER the solo, set those clips to a quantize of 16, do this in clip view. open clip view, select the clips in the scene by selecting (not launching) the scene. set it then it's set for all of them. then during the solo you can launch the scene that goes after the solo anytime you want.

I'm not sure if the clip view quantize setting takes precedence over the global or the other way around. that's easy to experiment and figure out (I'm still at work.)


2. for each track, above the fader there's a little circle that spins around indicating clip progress and a number showing how many times that clip would need to play to be in perfect sync with everything else. kinda hard to explain, play with it yourself.


3. there's a behavior in Live you can take advantage of. set global quantize to 16 bars (I think it goes up to 16), once recording starts, click the clip again as if to play it. this second command gets queued up to go into effect at the global quantize time of 16, so after 16 bars the recording turns into playback and loops what you just recorded.


I made a max/msp patch to help with this
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

also check out what people are doing with their FCB1010 footpedals, very similar things.

[beats me]

Er, what Tone said. I'm going to give up on answering people's questions and go back to what I do best on here, waste space.

[pepezabala]

regarding 3: You can start with an empty midi clip of any length, e.g. 16 bars. At the top of live is a button called OVR (overdubbing). If you click that one then all notes you play on a midi track will get added into the currently playing clip. Try it ..

[[email protected]]

Thanks for the quick replies, the answers for Q1 and Q3 seem to do something like what I need with some limitations.

In case of Q1 it works for fine for playing fixed arrangements without any interaction, which partially solves my problem. Unfortunately this wouldn't work if I have an Intro-Verse-Chorus structure and want to play them in a random order but want to be sure that whenever a scene gets launched it will start playback only after the currently playing scene reaches its end. A good solution could be if the Follow Action menu had an item which would delay the execution of the manual scene launch actions for the number of bars set, but unfortunately this setting currently doesn't exist.

The solution for Q3 works perfectly for creating loops with a length that matches a selectable quantize value, but for example you couldn't make a 6 bar loop this way.

In case of Q2 my description may not have been clear enough. The question was not about the length of individual clips, but the number of bars in which an entire scene will start playing back after launching it. As far as I understood, this depends on the quantize setting and not the clip length, so after launching a new scene the playback of the current scene will continue until it reaches a multiple of the quantize setting. If the quantize value is set to 8 bars and a 12 bar loop gets repeated 6 times before I switch to the next scene, let's say in the 3rd bar of the 7th cycle, it's not that easy to predict in how many bars the new scene will start playing back. Plus, by saying countdown display I didn't mean a tiny circle with a 5mm diameter, but a large display that musicians would clearly see on stage, even from a distance.

Any further ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[Gtrance]

For Q3 pepezabala should have solved your solution. If you first create an empty clip by just double clicking a empty click slot in arrangement view, you can then set that clips length to whatever you wish (even 6 bars!). Then with the track armed, play the clip and it will record anything you play. It will keep looping as well.

[pepezabala]

[

In case of Q1 it works for fine for playing fixed arrangements without any interaction, which partially solves my problem. Unfortunately this wouldn't work if I have an Intro-Verse-Chorus structure and want to play them in a random order but want to be sure that whenever a scene gets launched it will start playback only after the currently playing scene reaches its end. A good solution could be if the Follow Action menu had an item which would delay the execution of the manual scene launch actions for the number of bars set, but unfortunately this setting currently doesn't exist.

Best practice here is to set the global quantize to one or two bars and launch the desired scene manually right before you need it. If you hae no hands free because youre playing an instrument, then I would suggest the use of a foot pedal.

The solution for Q3 works perfectly for creating loops with a length that matches a selectable quantize value, but for example you couldn't make a 6 bar loop this way.

see my answer above, perfectly possible to loop any cliplength (midi) and introduce notes in an overdub-style

In case of Q2 my description may not have been clear enough. The question was not about the length of individual clips, but the number of bars in which an entire scene will start playing back after launching it. As far as I understood, this depends on the quantize setting and not the clip length, so after launching a new scene the playback of the current scene will continue until it reaches a multiple of the quantize setting. If the quantize value is set to 8 bars and a 12 bar loop gets repeated 6 times before I switch to the next scene, let's say in the 3rd bar of the 7th cycle, it's not that easy to predict in how many bars the new scene will start playing back.

I don't see the problem here. It will launch at the end of the next 8-bar-cycle. Again, to make it easy I would suggest to use a global quantize of one or two bars and launch clips/scenes straight before you need them to drop in.

There is another way of triggering sequences of scenes with follow actions: You can set up a midi-loop and use midiclips to fire scenes. You can relate those midiclips via follow actions. This would alllow you to control entire scenes with follow actions, without having to edit follow actions into lots of individual clips. Maybe you will find some use of that for your purposes. You could have clip A launching scene 1, with follow action after 16 bars, launching clip B, which then launches scene 2. Like this you could play over scene 1 until you decide, ok now I only want to have 16 bars continuing, you launch clip A and after 16 bars scene 2 gets launched. Global qunatize can remain at 1 bar.

Plus, by saying countdown display I didn't mean a tiny circle with a 5mm diameter, but a large display that musicians would clearly see on stage, even from a distance.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a large countdown display in live. However, in order to know where you are in a piece of music, you could

a) listen to the music
b) have somebody conduct your piece
c) have eye-contact with your co-musicians.

[octatone]

I'm guessing Legato Mode will solve your problem. Read page 141 of the manual.

In fact read the entire manual while you're at it

[[email protected]]

I thank everyone for your efforts to help. You sorted out some of my problems.

Pepezabala,

1.
I think you must be right about using smaller (1 or 2 bar) quantize values here. But I have to note that the way we use Cubase has a big advantage compared to this: when we decide to end a solo, we can take the playback of the solo part out of looping at ANY time during the last cycle, not only in the last 1 or two bars.

2.
I'll have to experiment with the dummy clips used in conjunction with the Follow Action, but your description sounds quite promising.

3.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a large countdown display in live. However, in order to know where you are in a piece of music, you could

a) listen to the music
b) have somebody conduct your piece
c) have eye-contact with your co-musicians.

a: That sounds like an interesting new approach, I'll give it a thought.

b: I'll think about hiring a conductor then, it's a pity that Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein are both dead, but I might find a smaller name who'd do the job.

c: It's difficult to have an eye-contact with a laptop and my problem was not with my musicians anyway.

But seriously, I think it would be really useful to have a large display like that. If you are interested, go to http://www.myspace.com/930collective and check out the lower two videos. In some shots you'll see how we set up Cubase's display for on-stage use with an 11 piece band for giving the musicians the least distracting and clearest information about the playback: there's a large time display that shows the no. of bars and a very wide dummy track where each part of the song is represented by a large color-coded rectangle and the time-line that shows the progress of the playback. Some TFT monitors were set up across the stage, so that everyone could see at least one of them wherever he/she was on stage. Even a vocalist couldn't get that wrong.

Before someone asked me, why I didn't stick with Cubase then (especially because the music originally was composed on Cubase), here are two simple reasons: interactive non-linear playback and the ability to record reliably during the performance.

Endre

[hambone1]

In arrange view, load up a simple QuickTime video in Live as a countdown timer.

In session view, ReWire or IAC Live to a simple VJ app and do the same. Trigger all sorts of visual cues the same way.

[[email protected]]

In arrange view, load up a simple QuickTime video in Live as a countdown timer.

In session view, ReWire or IAC Live to a simple VJ app and do the same. Trigger all sorts of visual cues the same way.

Thanks, I'll try it.

[pepezabala]

Regarding 1 - and the advantage of cubas style looping:

There is another thing that you can do, using the legato mode. Let's say you have that odd 12-bar clip (clip A) looping and you are playing solos over it.
Now put a copy of that clip (A') in the slot below, set to follow action "play next clip", after 12 bars, to trigger clip B. Put clip A' into "legato-mode".
Set global quantize to 1 bar.
When you're soloing over clip A you can decide at any moment to end that solo, and trigger clip A'. The 12 bar sequence will finish in clip A' and follow action will trigger the next clip - B.

Should give you the same result as the cubase looping-thing.