Ableton Forum

Me and my brother are trying to get some shows together, he is a drummer with a good sense of timing but I am a little weary when it comes to working out the logistics, but I'm sure that some of you in the live community have had some luck. here is our set up:

Drums (obviously)
Me on guitar (looping with line 6 dl4) and controlling ableton with an APC40 and a footswitch (triggering some isolated samples, but mostly long clips that will contain a songs full arrangement of accompanying synths and bass... i.e... timing is very crucial).

For situations where the full song is in ableton and we are just playing along with it, it is fairly straightforward (stay on time!). but for some tracks we may be looping and performing the first sections, and then LATER in the song I will need to use Ableton. so there are two ways of approaching this that I can see:
1) We each have an in ear metronome to say in sync, and then when I need the clip. just launch it.
2) i hook up my footwitch to the apc 40, and MIDI map it to the tap tempo. this way if we end up at a different tempo, when it comes in, I can adjust ableton. I like this idea because our tempo can "breathe" with ableton, and I dont have a metronome in my ear, but I am not certain that it will work out in reality.

are there any drummers out there who have played with ableton live (successfully)? Any electronic musicians who collaborate with drummers live? If so I would love to hear how you approached this.

I without a doubt endorse in ear metronome for the drummer. If possible, also having something to cancel noise. Preserve your drummer's ears

Also helps them work on their timing for recording sessions

there are many ways to do this but as stated above the easiest and most reliable way would be to have the drummer on with a click. preferably you would have a click too but it's not as much of a necessity.

I tried several ways of using tap tempo to sync to my drummer, and all failed I mapped one of my pads to TT, but whenever I tried to resync, the resulting audio comedy threw off my drummer's timing even worse. I had the dame result using a key mapped on the laptop. Then I built a momentary footswitch, connected it to my audio interface, and mapped it - same result. Ultimately, I added a click fountain through a discrete output to our in-ears (defeated by the machine).

Edit: Wow, some serious autocorrect there. 'Dame' = 'same'; 'click fountain'='click track'

Samaritan Sound wrote:I tried several ways of using tap tempo to sync to my drummer, and all failed I mapped one of my pads to TT, but whenever I tried to resync, the resulting audio comedy threw off my drummer's timing even worse. I had the dame result using a key mapped on the laptop. Then I built a momentary footswitch, connected it to my audio interface, and mapped it - same result. Ultimately, I added a click fountain through a discrete output to our in-ears (defeated by the machine).

i too had alot of problems mapping the tap tempo. the only way i really got it to work was by using "Selected Track Control" It has an option for tap tempo (among many others) and its very consistent. when i was just strait midi mapping it was always a little tempramental. I also use a softstep footcontroller. check out the post on this forum (start at the botom of page 6 as there was a major update.) http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 8&start=75

Without a doubt the best way to handle this is to send your drummer a click. I've been doing it for 3 years now and it's the easiest way to bring a live drummer into your production.

yeah, you got to send a click.

When I use hardware I have a pretty advanced signal routing to make it work.

soundcard out (Ableton Mix 1/2) > Mixer with hardware keyboards in the inputs alongside the ableton mix.

Main Out of Mixer > House

Control Room out of Mixer > Soundcard Input 3/4

Heaphone out of soundcard is the input from the mixer, and the click. I can use the control room volume on the mixer to bring the "mix" down in the headphones in relation to the click.

We change tempos at Scene Launch for different songs.

we coordinate other on-the-fly transitions with visual cues and hand signals.

As others have said your drummer needs a click. You don't because you will follow your drummer.

To have an organic tempo situation, there are tricks where you can tap to change the tempo of the song on the fly. I have a FCB1010, and one button is set to increase the tempo and one button is used to decrease the tempo. One click increases or decreases tempo by about 3 bpm. This is a very smooth and great way to do it live. It was not easy at all to set up, but I think I posted the way I did it around here somewhere if you search my posts. We have done hundreds of shows live over the last 2 years with this method and it feels great to not be a slave to the computer...