Post
by jhartford » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:24 pm
I disagree with ciw... having multiple live sets just complicates matters, cause either you have to have multiple live sets open, or your have to reload a set after every song... not cool in a band environment
I perform in a more band type environment (though we don't have a drummer and I use live to host VSTi's and stuff too... so more is going on than a simple extra track thing, but we use that kinda thing for our drum tracks)
The simplest way we've found to do it is to set up one big set with all the stuff that you want live to play bounced into one track. Put all of that either sequentially in the arrangement view, with tempos automated. Send the metronome to your drummer (and anyone else if you have in ear monitoring).
Now put locators 4 counts (or however many counts you want) before the start of each mixed down 'song' (ie the stuff live is going to play - make sure it is the length of the actual song, even if it is just a minute of silence or something until Live starts making noise... it'll make sequencing easier).
In terms of controlling it - you can just put the laptop next to the drummer, with keyboard mapping to each of the locators (this is why they're there)... then on your set list write what key maps to what song.
Now all the drummer has to do is, at the start of each song, hit that key and the the spacebar, wait the four counts and then start playing, and then hit spacebar to stop at the end of each song.
Like i said... this is the simplest method (and more importantly the cheapest - as it doesn't require any extra midi gear).
It does have limitations though - most importantly, that either the drummer has to start playing at the beginning of each song or he has to at least click his sticks to given the tempo to everyone else.
If I were to try do this in a "rock style" band now, I'd probably get the drummer to get an alesis controlpad, and set up one of the pads to control tap tempo, then the rest of them to launch sections of the mixed down 'songs' from the session view, with all the sections as short as possible without making them too much of a mission to launch. This lowers the risk of the band going out of time with the samples. It is however, a more complex and expensive method of doing things, so try the first method to see if it works for you (cause it doesn't cost anything...) and if it isn't working go to the second method (which is ultimately cooler if you can get it right cause you can hide the computer away)
One last thing... if you're using the first method, to save on ram, disable all the sections of the songs that are silent and consolidate the rest. If there are looped sections, use the same clip however many times it is needed rather than using one long clip... it's not a necessity if you've got a lot of ram (we're on a 2gb system and we often forget to do this and it handle it fine), but its good practice and will lower your system overhead.
