Ableton Forum

Hi folks

This is my first post here. A bit of background - I'm mainly a guitarist (playing in pretty traditional rock & folk type lineups) but have always been partial to a bit of electro & hiphop as well. In terms of my own live performances it has been real instruments all the way, with all the timing imprecision that entails. I've never so much as played with a drummer using a click...

I bought Live 6 some time ago, mainly with a view to exploring the non-linear songwriting possibilities it can offer, but never fully got to grips with it. I ended up using Logic more, mainly due to its handy comping feature. Live has always been in the back of my mind though, and I think I'm ready to revisit it and maybe invest some time in finding ways of making it work for me.

What I want to do is find out if it's possible to use Live for performance in a live band situation, but keeping the organic feel as much as possible. I'd like to be able to trigger parts I've recorded myself, and have them lock in to the live performance, but without being bound into fixed tempos and structures, and without having a pair of headphones anywhere onstage! I guess I'm after the same freedom that pure MIDI based performers can get by tapping out tempos and triggering clips on the fly.

So, the key question is this - is there any way to sync Live to an audio signal, which would then define the tempo and launch points for the clips? For example, if I feed a kick drum microphone into Live, can it use that to beat-match all the clips in a set, so that everything can be in sync without needing a click track? Obviously I'd then be launching clips via some kind of foot controller.

There are two main reasons for wanting to do this:

1) Adding extra parts to a live song
2) For rehearsal - if somebody can't make the session, we could just play their prerecorded part from Live (and maybe fire them later)

Has anybody tried anything like this? Strikes me that if Live could "listen" and figure out what's going on in a live mix, it could open up a lot of possibilities.

Cheers
Trude

one thing i don't understand is why some musicians feel as if using a click track is unmusical. unless you're doing a stairway to heaven cover (where the tempo keeps ramping up, and i'm sure you could set the click to do that as well). If you're worried about playing too mechanically you could always duck in and out of the click. like play just a bit behind and then come in a bit after craeeating a lot of swing and feel. I don't know, I'm trying to convince my drummer to play with a click track but he refuses to. But he'll use it in the studio so I can't tell the difference. Anyways, to answer your question if your samples are short shouldn't be a real problem as long as you guys are still relatievly near the same tempo. I've heard there are devices to link to your tap tempo to set the bpms but they always come to the conclusion that a click track is best.

I don't have anything against click tracks per se, and I certainly don't think there's anything unmusical about that approach - plenty of bands make it work very well. It's just that I know with some of the drummers I work with, it'd be an unmitigated disaster! I just don't want to go there - I'd rather have the software following the band, rather than the other way round.

Maybe there's a simpler way to do this.... I've only just realised that the tap tempo function also seems to sync the actual beat positions in the clip playback (ie not just the bpm). That means all I need is a MIDI pedal that I can tap along with every now and then during a song, and all the clips I play should be in time!! You can also start the song by tapping out a count-in on the tap tempo control, and it automatically starts after one bar! Brilliant!

if you feel like getting deep into it, you could make use of the max/msp external bonk~, which does transient detection, and a drum mic, feed in the audio of your drummer, use it to tap tempo into live. It's not going to be perfect, but for rock rhythms, maybe good enough...