Seeking Advice on making Live JAMMY

[bezz_jeens]

Hi folks.

I’ve been a Live user for a few years but mostly just used it for designing sounds, finishing up mixing and polishing, and processing samples before exporting to a hardware sampler.

However, in a fit of anxiety/mental health/brash, sweeping decision making, I sold nearly all my hardware at a steep discount, thinking that I’d be better off making music in the box and downsizing.

I’ve been trying to do my daily, free-wheeling jam session with Live, my octatrack and model cycles. Previously, this jamming was done with that octatrack, model:cycles, Syntakt, Digitone, SP404mk2, Electribe EA-1, and Minifreak. I’d just start the transport running after work and let the mood take me. I have a high desk that I stand at so I can dance the whole time.

I am absolutely STRUGGLING to make this work with Live. I have decent knowledge of the program, some sounds I like, samples, drum racks, lots of plugins and M4L devices, and several MIDI controllers that I like, but I just still seem to fall out of the flow so easily, or find myself hitting stop or messing around in some menu somewhere. Even though I have some hands on control, there’s always some pesky thing I need to change that I haven’t mapped and I lean over to mess with it and just lose track of where the idea was going.

Recently, I’ve found myself basically avoiding making music, breaking a years-long streak of doing a little something each day. I asked some discord friends who are Live wizards, and they gave me some advice about mapping macros and making racks and all this, but frankly I don’t know if I have the patience to do all that for every sound I’d want to pull in. I spent about 45 minutes making a template that would make things a little faster to set up and that was about my monthly limit of faff-on-a-screen.

Perhaps I’m asking too much, maybe I just need to try a Push, I feel like Live can be great for this kind of thing I just feel like I’m missing something. Maybe it’s just speed and practice. I picked up the octatrack a lot faster than I’m picking up Live but there’s so much less to know in comparison.

Not really looking for answers as much as resources, ideas, encouragement, videos, anecdotes, whatever you think might help. I’m just so frustrated and sad and I’m trying to make the best of some sour consequences.

[panten]

I can completely sympathise with how you're feeling. For years I only had Ableton Push to get away from the mouse and keyboard rabbit hole. It completely takes you out of the zone and for me is zero fun.

Over the last year I've been building a 2 deck template that allows me to jam ideas and build up live loops 'on-the-fly' in a very free form and creative way.
It is so much fun and what can start as an intended 10 min distraction can lead to hours lost in playing around with ideas.

UNFORTUNATELY this has only been made possible with the addition of 3 MIDI controllers and an Octatrack Mk2, but it essential to avoid the mouse and keyboard. I maybe use the mouse 1% time when jamming.


https://flic.kr/p/2pHrKrz


https://flic.kr/p/2pHro5M

Here is my current setup:

2 Decks with 4 channels in each making 8 in total. It was intentional as I wanted it to fit nicely with the track controls on both the Push and the APC

1. Drum Rack Selector
2. Synth Selector
3. Audio Samples
4. Looper

Both Deck A and Deck B are mirrors of each other.

Ableton Push is the main tool for generating the sounds.

The APC40 MK2 main purpose is for the cross fader allowing to switch Decks as a DJ would to mix.

The MIDI Fighter Twister is mapped to have immediate access to DeckA/B Effects
The buttons on the Twister also allow me to choose quickly what gets sent to the Octatrack AND the two Loopers on Deck A & B.
At any time I can choose to the sends:
Deck A (post effects)
Deck B (post effects)
Octatrack (post effects)
External Instruments

The Octatrack can sample anything sent to it, including the Loopers, which can get sent back to the Loopers without feedback as they're set to NEVER monitor incoming sound.

The Octatrack allows me to do all the amazing things the Octatrack can do using EZBot's Performance Template. I have modded his template to allow me to record loops on the fly and affect them in realtime.


https://flic.kr/p/2pHqJja

I wanted the routing of the two decks to be as simple as possible so you can't route individual tracks.
Finally I have a bunch of monitor tracks for listening to incoming live instruments. They don't get sent anywhere and are just for monitoring purposes.
On the MASTER track I have setup a Performer device (from Iftah's Performance Pack) that deals with all the MIDI mapping for the Fighter Twister send controls.

This all sounds complicated but in practice it just means that I can be hands on with the controllers and 'get into the zone'

[bezz_jeens]

I'm at work, but just wanted to post a reply after skimming your post. It sounds like you know exactly what I'm talking about and just having the example of the structure that you use is going to be massively helpful. As far as I can see, there's not a ton of other examples of this workflow out there.

Once I have a few minutes to dig in, I'll get back with a more in-depth response. Really appreciate you taking the time to help out.

[panten]

No worries. I just thought I'd share as it's been a bit of a mission to try and come to something that is simple enough to not hinder the creative flow, but complicated enough to allow a lot of flexibility.

This is actually my second iteration of this template, this time I avoided using sends almost completely.

FYI: Sends and Returns can introduce latency which was driving me crazy when recording loops to the Looper devices atter going through the external outs and back in again.

This current template seems to behave a lot better now (albeit the tracks look a lot messier)

If you've got any questions I'd be happy to brainstorm

[bezz_jeens]

I've got lots of questions actually! I may have to collect my thoughts and let you know tomorrow. I'd like to understand what's going on and sort of add my own things from there, plus getting into some more detail on the public record would be great for anyone trying to get into this later on.

[panten]

If you do get a Push and depending on the type of music you want to create, you could maybe also check out Andri Søren's Push PLAYGRND.
He's created something pretty unique there and looks a lot of fun.

[yur2die4]

It can be frustrating. You can in theory get lost for hours, months, years, doing more to make it all work a certain way, than making music and having fun. When we are first introduced to Live, we definitely see the surface level potential, and we learn that there is a lot we can dig into beyond that.

I don’t have a solution. I do know that I do jam sessions with a friend using Link. And we don’t even use Live.. though I’d love to integrate Live, it’s just that we do these sessions on the go in a very portable manner haha. We use just our phones, or even an iPad. There are pluses and minuses to the tactility of touch screen jam stuff.

Back to Live, it might help to determine what the limitations are going to have to be in order to allow you to flow. And maybe outside of jamming, if you have an a-ha moment that seems ‘generally applicable’, go for it.

Examples of fun things I’ve seen:
-I saw a part of a script that allowed you to assign loading a specific device into the highlighted channel via a midi or key command. That could be convenient, as long as you don’t try to make this load Every possible device… imagine memorizing all those assignments haha

-A friend of mine once took advantage of Hot Swap in the browser. If he has a sample set he wanted to keep more limited, quick and easy, he’d save the preset in a unique directory so that when he does a hot swap, his Only options are those things, instead of scrolling through hundreds or thousands.