Ableton Forum

I've been avoiding bouncing tracks ever since i started using a daw, thinking those things just shatter the flexibility of a daw.

Until i discovered live and its easy resampling, and great audio manipulation/rearranging possibilities blablabla...
But really, the session view with a bunch of audio clips, and some half-clever follow actions, different loop settings etc, just opened a brand new world to me (the fun one FYI).

Working like this for the last week, i've found the obvious pros are :
More processing power available for other things (duh, but still, it's about those other things...)
You actually stop tweaking the goddamn sound for a while, and get into the guts of the track more easiely; that is, if you don't start getting anal on eq settings and such, defeating the purpose of the whole process IMO - still kinda hard to avoid tho-.
In the end it sounded more personnal.

But there are cons :
Not as portable as it may seem, if you use stretching algos on all your sounds, even at very close/identical bpms, its likely to sound pretty bad.
You can feel a little stuck with the raw material that's left too .


My only tips so far :
-Record variations - same synth with slightly different params, drums with slightly different compression/eq settings to make a multisampled kit, fucked up drum loops you wouldn't play for a whole bar, but can come in handy for rolls/breaks etc...
-Open up the filters on your synth sounds a bit, it's easier to filter them afterwards, rather than trying to boost what's not there when you need a little extra sweep or whatever.
-try to get a little organised (colors, scenes), with the original midi clips, pre/post processed audio files, cause it can get quite messy after a while, and it will make it easier to trace the source of a sound even after it's been mangled.


I'm still trying to figure out my favorite worfklow, i like working on variations of the same thing in the session view, and load hits or whatever isn't looped into a sampler patch. But i reckon there must be lots of other ways...

What's yours ?

cheers

My favorite CPU/tracknumber workaround is to render the complicated tracks (the ones with multiple compressors, reverb, envelopes, etc.) and place those renders into a new Live project.

I keep the old, in case some part needs fixing, or I want to play with the tempo/swing and get clean, unwarped sound. Of course, I'm not using the freeze thing, I'm in Live 4, prefreeze.

Being able to have a 4 track, all audio Live session to tweak EQ/levels and add some creative crossfading is far less exhausting than managing a 20+ plugin monster.

Thanks for the insight ted, i always seem to forget that live sets are such an open format, this can come in handy for organisational purposes...

My question was a little more about the 'creative' benefits from working with resampled sounds, rather than pure performance gains.


cheers

Creative Gains:

Well, I think about it this way. In the pre-DAW days, an engineer would sit in a booth and record a band on tape. That was one job. Just get decently balanced, raw audio. Mixing that performance and adding overdubs, effects, etc was a separate task requiring different skills.

By rendering tracks (thus locking down your settings) and then concentrating on mixing, your workflow is more traditional. I think if you chop the process of song creation into 2 parts - content and mix, you can be more creative with each.

If someone handed you a Live project and asked you to remix it, but you couldn't change any of the synths, drum sounds, et cetera - and could only play with the audio mixer, you could probably do some pretty cool stuff.

I think of Live like a beat kitchen. Imagine if the cook had to also invent the menu and wait the tables. Sure, it's all food service - but they demand different talents. Live blends it all into one task, and it can be daunting. Live requires musicianship, mixing skills, and DJ skills. Not everyone is equally good at all of them. But untangling them can help.