Ableton Forum

Hey guys so thinking of a way to make a big live set, with stems from tunes Ive made. Ive made quite a lot of tunes but think id like to experiment more with live tweaking rather than making linear songs.

So I have a bunch of songs, and im taking bits and pieces out of them, stems, loops, fx etc. still just at the beggining of this process really.

I have a novation remote 25 keyboard, with 8 pots, rotarys and sliders and 16 buttons. I also have a faderfox dj3, an arturia beatstep an ipad running touchable, probably and a roland d2 groovebox. Ive not even added the groovebox into the equation, or even my guitar, which I can do midi guitar stuff with, first things first though.

So Im thinking one template on my keyboard for drums group, one for pads, one for fx and one for bass etc. I just change the keyboard template and then im controlling one of these groups. each group has 6 audio tracks, maybe one midi for drum racks or vst's but mainly audio thoguh Id also like to maybe get a coupl vsts mapped to the keyboard, would be cool with the arturia creating sequences while manipulating the sound and adding a whole another element.

I dont want to just make a dj set of my own tunes chopped up etc. Ive got bored of making mixes in traktor of my songs and want to do more yay know. I wwant to make something thats almost like it will never be the same twice, where I can throw new audio into the mix and get something new happening, start messing with a few vsts and come up with something thats decent while live mixing different parts.

Im thinking touchable for clip launching, but just realised theres support for the beatstep to do that but not even worked that one out yet properly. My launchpad is fecked as that would be ideal but touchables got lots going on so that could launch clips, and the mouse which I have no issues using.

I want to go from ambient, hiphop and breaks/electronica to jungle dnb speeds ideally, know like aphex twin or kid606 just playing lots of different styles in one set.... Im nowhere near the level of these professionals just want to do something where I can mix all these different styles which isnt tedious like ive found when mixing on traktor, lot of fun but....

Any ideas or advice?? am I on the right path?? I know I need to make a template on the keyboard for fx too but is there something Im maybe missing any thoughts on my plan? Cheers

I'm working on a live this at the moment and I think the difficult thing is that there's so many ways of doing it. I haven't got any advice really but I'd like to discuss it more and hear what other people think.
I'm doing one which mainly uses an APC40 and stems from tracks but I'd also like to do something much less pre-planned with my Push. I personally find that jamming stems is generally not that creatively inspiring, I get bored of them(Although better when jamming with a friend).
I'd also like to do a totally free form set from the Push - need a bit of practice thoough.

Hey man thanks for the reply, after messing around a few times I totally get what your saying, its almost turning into a dj set and planning whats next,, even though you can mix it up a bit with effects and controlling it is a bit boring after a while, still think it has some potential to be better than what I was previously doing of just mixing my finished tunes in traktor. It just seems to be a more controllable version, im going to get a few drum machines going and try to control them with some mapped synths and see what happens, just trying to steer away from the remixing my own parts and creating things freeform as you would like to do with pus. I dont have a push but similiar deal with touchable, ill keep you posted on anyting I come up with, cheers.

on win7

why not using 2 instances ?
i wish a possibility to have 2 .als loaded in 2 instances.
thats working in win7 and if you map 2 diffent controller (in my case push1 and apc40) in preferences
the assigend controllers stick with the instances and you can load and pingpong aslong you
not mess up by closing one instance.

better it would be if i could LINK (sync) the 2 Instances and hotswap the controllers like i wish
dynamically. another good thing would be to run 2 push (1+2) or even 2 same push would be good
but i think atm thats not possible

Hey sorry I thought I replied to this, didnt mean to be rude, and sorry for digging up and old thread. I had some fun with my stems etc. but it just went too dj'ish but going to reassess things to make it more liveish.

Thanks for the advice Tagor, sorry for late reply I thought id replied. How would you utilise running the two instances of ableton Tagor? If yur out there I managed to link two instances of ableton but the slave on you cant add fx or samples etc. Im really not sure how best to approach things, any ideas would be great thanks...

the pingpong-thing with 2 instances is only considerable with ready set/tracks which do not need editing orADD FX and samples.

i think freeze&frozen, consolidate and audiostemmed tracks are unversatile for later editing.

in each scenario there will be compromises to deal with.

if you try to pack all your consolidated tracks into ONE BIG session, you can Jam around easy over/between tracks, even adding new things should be easy, but edit existing things will put you into a mountain of many steps to re-integrate your changes from the full track into the consolidated ONE BIG SET.


preloading an .als or a split DJ-Mode for Performance would be nice

but at the moment and since years Ableton Live is hardly able to load tracks that are made in previous version.

so i put the ball on them to come up with a better solution