Using Live...live (for musical theatre)

[jmclear]

Hi all,
I just purchased Ableton as it was highly recommended for what I'm trying to do:
I am trying to program Ableton to run the synthesizer for the musical I'm directing (high school level). I need it to move through the Ableton scenes and each scene is programmed with the virtual instrument or combination of VIs (though the use of instrument racks - I got this part).

I have approached this two different ways, both of which were unsuccessful:

1st approach) I inserted each VI into a MIDI track (ex. strings into track 1 / piano into track 2) and mapped the top note on my keyboard to advance through the scenes. I was hoping that creating a blank MIDI clip into strings scene 1 and into piano scene 2 would activate that particular VI for that particular scene. I'm sure that sounds ridiculous to those of you that have a clue. This clearly did not work like I thought it would.

2nd approach) I inserted each VI into a MIDI track (same as above). This time, however, I mapped the "1" to both activate the solo switch and arm recording for the strings track. I then mapped "2" to do the same for the piano track. Thus, hitting "1" allows me to play using the strings VI and hitting two switches the sound to piano. This is much closer to what I want to do, however I'm going to have hundreds of settings and I need my piano player to hit a pedal switch to advance to the next sound (in this case, track not scene). I feel as though this might not be the right approach, especially because I'd like to be able to fire off sound effects for the show through Ableton as well.

I feel as though I'm either asking Ableton to do something so simple it's not part of the software or I'm missing something completely. The problem, it seems, is that I'm not having Ableton play anything prerecorded (except for the sound effects)...I want to play everything live.

I hope this makes sense and somebody is able to help me out.

Thank you!
Jon McLear

[bosonHavoc]

whats your final goal? as in what is that you want ableton to do?

from reading your post i gather that you have 1 musician playing a keyboard for the performance. (correct me if i'm wrong)

is the keyboardist actually playing the keys?

from what i gather so far i suggest you learn all their is to know about instrument racks (also effects racks and drum racks too)
and check out the "select next scene on launch" settings in preferences

a nice rule of thumb when working with ableton for live performance... if you don't play it or tweak it, render it to one audio clip.
meaning if you find your self firing off a bunch of midi clips and loads of tracks all at one time and letting them play through render it all to one audio clip and call it a day. it will save on the cpu of your computer and your brain

[jmclear]

Thanks for the reply. I'm waiting for all my gear to arrive - until then, I'm working with a demo version of Ableton and a few free Virtual Instruments I found online - just so I can try to get Ableton to do what I want it to do. And that is...

Yes, I have one keyboardist playing one piano MIDI'd up to Ableton. This player is going to be doubling the string section all the time and therefore needs to switch frequently between different string techniques and sounds (I'll be using Quantum Leap Symphonic Gold, I believe). I want her to concentrate on playing the music - as we are a high school production, there's no time to "tech" the show out to the precision required at the pro level - so I want to set it up that all she needs to do is hit a key/button/pedal and the settings will change to the next preset. Nothing she plays will be pre-recorded. I decided to go this route because none of the pianos/synths we have at school have realistic string sounds and from what I've read, VIs are they way to go...but perhaps I was mistaken.

Now, as I was typing this I had an idea...and it looks as though it might work - I'm sure this is what the rest of the world does when using this stuff. Because time usually doesn't matter in my case (except when I have sound effects - it'll take some tweaking), I set locators every other beat and turned on or off the various VI as needed for each locator point. In essence, these become my "scenes." I mapped my pedal to to the "next locator" arrow, armed all of the VIs and I'm doing exactly what I had hoped to do. Maybe this isn't the best/easiest/most solid solution, but at least something's working.

If someone else has a better way to do this, I'm all ears. Here's what I did:


Thanks,
Jon

[bosonHavoc]

i think i'm getting it..

basically you want the player to just hit a button the selects the next sound or sound combo for the performance..

you could do that allot easier using dummy clips and scene launch
plus it would be really easy to move clips and scenes around to edit the set for a performance. then just map a button to scene launch and be sure to have select next scene on launch set up in preferences. it also be a good idea to have a buttons for scene up and down to correct any mistakes.

the dummy clips would be used to turn on and off your instruments.

quick over view of dummy clips
http://www.thecovertoperators.org/Artic ... the-basics

one thing to watch out for is the sharp cut of of the decay trails of some instruments like strings and pads. when you turn off the instrument it cuts the sound off abruptly. the work around i have come up with is using the midi effect called scale. then deselect all notes and macro map the off/on switch of the scale effect. so when the scale effect is on no midi notes will make it to the instrument but the instrument is still on so it can finish out its decay.

also for this situation i would recommend setting global quantization to none.

instrument racks will be your best friend in this situation i highly advice learning all the amazing things you can do with racks.. they are super powerful and one of the greatest features of ableton.

[bosonHavoc]

to simplify it even more you could just use a foot controller that the player could use to turn on and off instruments as needed.

[LithiuMind]

You can use the Chain Select function that's built into the Racks.

Put each of your instruments that you want to play with in one big rack in a new midi track. Above the list of devices you have loaded into the rack, press the chain button to display the chain select window. Now what you can do is give each of the instrument chains a separate space on the chain select menu...the easiest is to just give them a single space each, 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. (I'm including a picture because it's kind of hard to explain what I mean.)



Then you can create clips on this midi track, go to the clips' automation envelope settings, choose Instrument Rack as the device and Chain Select as the parameter, and make an envelope that selects a value of 0, 1, 2, 3 etc. Make a clip for each device you want to be able to select, and give it an according envelope that chooses which of the chains to have active.



Now when you launch each of these clips it will activate the given instrument. Organize the clips in the order you would like them to be, and you should be able to scroll through them scene by scene just by pressing enter to launch the scenes, or whatever midi control you wish you map to "scene launch." Or if you don't have too many choices, you can just map buttons on your midi controller to trigger the clips individually and let you choose which instrument you want at your whim.

With this method you also avoid cutting off the decay on any sustained sounds.


A few tips with this method:
-Make sure you turn off the yellow OVR button on the top of the screen, because with Overdub enabled you will record any notes you play into the midi clip you just launched, and if you play the clip again you will wind up replaying those notes.
-You can change the launch quantization for each clip, or by changing the sets global quantization. By default the quantization settings are usually "1 Bar" which means that when you trigger a clip, it will wait until the beginning of the next bar to actually launch the clip. But setting your quantization to "None" you will have free control over when those clips are launched, and therefore when you switch instruments.

[jmclear]

Thanks for the tips! I'm at school now - I can't wait to go home and try these methods out. I'll post results!

Thanks so much,
Jon

[jmclear]

Thanks so much for all your help, bosonHavoc and LithiuMind. It looks like I'll be using LithiuMind's method this time around. It seems to work well. It looks as though I can only chain up to a value of 127. I assume that by adding a second instrument rack, I'd be able to increase that number.

Also, any suggestions on how I can fire off an audio clip (sound effect) at any given moment or would that require more precise timing and programing? I was hoping I could simply load an audio track full of sound effects, assign each to a separate key on the computer keyboard and fire them at will.

Again, thanks so much for your help. It is greatly appreciated!

--Jon