Ableton Forum

Hey guys.

New here and to Ableton Live. I'm not a DAW noob(REAPER) but have never used a DAW for live performance. When I say live I mean it. Not breaking stuff into loops and then playing them. Here goes:

Hopefully this make sense.........

I would like to use different plugins/tracks at different times using the same instrument(guitar,mic, midi soft synth) etc. Is there a way to set up ableton so that X track is automatically record enabled @ X bar then XY plugin is enabled @ XY bar...

An easy example would be ONE vocal part is @ 2:1 then another one @ 4:1 they have completely different effects and levels so i want them turned on/off(rec enabled/disabled) at specific times. I realize i can do this if im sampling said things but i want it to be all live. There are 3 of us that want to do multiple things during one song....

Nice to meet you all.

shopchop wrote:When I say live I mean it. Not breaking stuff into loops and then playing them.

I understand what you're saying, but at this point you're at square zero as far as performance?, so even breaking stuff into loops and playing them is farther along then where you're at now and it might help you to establish what you're effects and routing are going to be.. THEN you can take the loops out of the equation and try doing it all live ( it's not easy! especially when something goes wrong and you're looking for the delete key or trying to start your loop over from the beginning )

You can shoot for having a very hands-on super live performance setup but don't skip the steps it takes to get to that point.. you might miss out on some key things.

"Keep It Simple, Stupid"

as far as your specific questions.. if you want things to be automatically armed and this and that, look into ClyphX, cheers

shopchop wrote:Is there a way to set up ableton so that X track is automatically record enabled @ X bar then XY plugin is enabled @ XY bar...

If you have any experience with live performance of any kind, you'll probably know that making such plans as these is inadvisable. Besides, it's more like a recital then. Surely you want the freedom to be able to add the next part when you want, even if it is at the same point each time you play the song.

I agree with Mr. Shpongolia. I think you should try building up the songs as loops in clips first and then break it down again and see how you can do it live.

Sorry if I didnt make things clear. The songs are already recorded. All the sounds and effects are already there. The drummer is playing to a click so there will be rec tracks playing back here an there I just want to keep it as live as possible. I'm a musician first and a producer second. That being said I want things to sound as they sound. I spend alot of time shaping these sounds in the box. I want to bring these sounds to life...... live.

I dont see how this could be problematic? I think once its all set up it will be quite the opposite. Everything would be done and all we have to do is perform. The songs are the songs so it is a recital in many ways. I want to perform the songs live as I recorded them introducing and replacing different parts with acoustic instruments(drums, guitar blah blah blah)

I'm not really interested in hearing why I shouldn't do this. I know what I want and in the end it will be pretty damn good. Only want to hear IF I can do said things and how. I know this is going to be one hell of an adventure but im ready..... and scared

PS: Is there a recommended MIDI floor controller that would help me do this? FCB 1010?

shopchop wrote:Sorry if I didnt make things clear. The songs are already recorded. All the sounds and effects are already there. The drummer is playing to a click so there will be rec tracks playing back here an there I just want to keep it as live as possible. I'm a musician first and a producer second. That being said I want things to sound as they sound. I spend alot of time shaping these sounds in the box. I want to bring these sounds to life...... live.

I dont see how this could be problematic? I think once its all set up it will be quite the opposite. Everything would be done and all we have to do is perform. The songs are the songs so it is a recital in many ways. I want to perform the songs live as I recorded them introducing and replacing different parts with acoustic instruments(drums, guitar blah blah blah)

I'm not really interested in hearing why I shouldn't do this. I know what I want and in the end it will be pretty damn good. Only want to hear IF I can do said things and how. I know this is going to be one hell of an adventure but im ready..... and scared

PS: Is there a recommended MIDI floor controller that would help me do this? FCB 1010?

A lot of people swear by the FCB1010, I'd look into the SoftStep also, it's new, rather pricey, but it can do some pretty neat stuff..

Not trying to discourage you from shooting for the stars, just letting you know that it's gonna be a LOT of trail and error, and then refining, refining, refining.. BUT I do think that this is all possible, it's just gonna be one hell of a task to set it all up and I just think you might want to control those things that you previously wanted automated.. cheers

I use an M-Audio sustain pedal for punching-in while the song is playing. The "armed" track usually has an empty clip in it with a pre-determined length so that I just record for the four or eight bars and then it's ready to go. I can then open up the clip and adjust the midi data in real-time then copy it to the next scene and use the variation for a break, chorus, etc.. Just be aware of things like your timing and any soundcard latency because we're doing it live here so you've only got one shot to get it legitimate. And as far as your band-mates, depending on what equipment you have you can set them up a pedal and map it to the track arm button on the track they are playing or arm it before-hand then set their pedal to global record. I don't know if this works as I haven't tried this particular scenario but it seems plausible so try it out.

I have tried multi person loop recording type setups and select on launch, overdub mode and a few other things always kept us from "playing nicely with others" so watch out for those situations - cause you will probably run into them eventually..

I like the idea of the pre-determined clip lengths - but then again this is where overdub mode gets in the way, and what if you're trying to do audio recording? - nativeKONTROL has some sort of pre-determined audio loop length that relys on the global launch quantize, also something worth checking out if you need that function.. cheers

Thanks for the help guys. Please see the link I provided to give you a better idea of what im talking about.
There is going to be NO live looping on the fly. Everything will just be playing back or performed live.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/reaper/l ... w=37100248

This is a bridge part were there are two different vox parts on two different tracks with different effect settings, volume, pan etc. I want track one(first vox) to rec enable then vocal track two to enable/vox track one disable @ X bar. Back and forth. I would rather have this done automatically but could do it with a 1010 if need be.

PS. If anyone is in Toronto and wants to help me with this in person I will pay you

hi shopchop.

i used live to do similar stuff in my last band, with synth effects rather than vocals.

it's easy enough to do in live - you could probably do it with only one track, too. the easiest way to do it is in arrangement view, assuming that the songs have the same structure every time.

make yr audio track, set the monitor to 'in' and the in/out to the right things for yr mic/where it's outputting to.

stick in the relevant fx.

click the little down pointing arrow beside the track name to expand it out and show the automation lanes. (i apologise in advance if this is all stuff you already know btw...).

now you can draw in automation for either the dry/wet or on/off of your effects. easy way to get the right thing up in the automation lane is to simply click on the control at the bottom (ie dry/wet, on/off etc) and the automation lane will update to show the data for that control.

ps - if you're using a lot of time-based fx (reverb/delay) then maybe put them on a send instead of the track itself - you can output the send to the same output. this way you can automate the send instead of dry/wet, and reverb tails etc won't get cut off.

if you feel you need two separate tracks then you could try just leaving both set to monitor 'in' and automating the track on/off or volume. volume might be a better idea since you can put a slight fade on it and avoid any clickies when switching on/off effected tracks.

hope this is what you're after!

cheers,
g

+1 to what GRNR said...

If you're not actually recording anything new into Live "on the fly" and just using it to process effects, and if the songs stay structurally the same and there is no improv, then just set up a different track for each instrument/vocal you're sending in and automate them to turn on/off when needed, in time to the click that your drummer is using. Then automate the effects in each track to change in the same way.

I might try things that way myself for a while, instead of wrestling with the looping...

grnr.

Sounds like the ticket. I'm going to give this a go on the weekend and ill report back. Hopefully I can come up with some tricks on my own to help others.

Cheers!

If I were you I would lay out the entire set in scenes and trigger each one manually when you want to change. Then you can have each scene have its own automation and settings depending on where you are in the set. You could even add dummy clips and route live sound into them for automating effects on live sound. Once there you could also add follow actions so parts move fluidly w/out you touching them.

AceLuby wrote:If I were you I would lay out the entire set in scenes and trigger each one manually when you want to change. Then you can have each scene have its own automation and settings depending on where you are in the set. You could even add dummy clips and route live sound into them for automating effects on live sound. Once there you could also add follow actions so parts move fluidly w/out you touching them.

we use ableton with a lie band setp (with live vox, guitar, saxophone). this is essentially what we do. The track is laid out by scene, so we never refer to the arrangement view when playing. We just work our way down through the scenes. It does mean that the ableton user (me) has to be on their game, get a scene change wrong and the whole song can be messed up.

pre-programming most of the effects into the scenes also works this way too. I do little live effect modification, my whole time is spent queuing up scenes and playing the various synth riffs that each track requires.

zenelectric wrote:

AceLuby wrote:If I were you I would lay out the entire set in scenes and trigger each one manually when you want to change. Then you can have each scene have its own automation and settings depending on where you are in the set. You could even add dummy clips and route live sound into them for automating effects on live sound. Once there you could also add follow actions so parts move fluidly w/out you touching them.

we use ableton with a lie band setp (with live vox, guitar, saxophone). this is essentially what we do. The track is laid out by scene, so we never refer to the arrangement view when playing. We just work our way down through the scenes. It does mean that the ableton user (me) has to be on their game, get a scene change wrong and the whole song can be messed up.

pre-programming most of the effects into the scenes also works this way too. I do little live effect modification, my whole time is spent queuing up scenes and playing the various synth riffs that each track requires.

Since this is your method anyway I would suggest just pre-programming the automation lines. Basically, turn all of the effects on for each track and then within each section you can automate it so that effect is either off or on.

I would also suggest programming follow actions into each clip so that it makes your life a little easier. That way you can concentrate on doing some live effecting or remixing instead of constantly worried about making sure Live is where it should be. You can still have manual sections for jams that have no set end time, but for everything else it should make life much easier.