Ableton Forum

I play in a indie/progressive/experimental rock band. For a while now I have been interested in electronic/computer generated music. My only experience currently involves some knowledge of Cubase SX and using some vst instruments, for example, Native Instruments B4 and a few others. The main vsti we would be using is the Native Instruments B4. It works as a stand alone program as well as a plug in. We have began researching Ableton Live non-stop, but we have not yet developed a good plan to make everything work correctly. Mainly what we will be doing is triggering samples and playing vst instruments via a midi controller. But, I would also like to be able to create my own synth sounds and play them live, possibly in a program like Reason. Is it possible to do all of these three things?

This is the only thing I could think of...keep in mind I am not very knowledgeable on this stuff. Is it possible to:

1.) Run the B4 as a stand alone program and use a midi keyboard controller to play it, but not mess up anything in ableton or reason.

2.) Run Ableton Live and assign a midi foot controller to trigger samples.

3.) Rewire Reason into Ableton and use another midi keyboard controller to play the synths in reason.

Would that be too much for a laptop to handle? I believe the one we will be using has about 500 MB ram and a 2.3 ghz processor.

Or is there another way to go about doing this? I don't even have to use Reason, I am just trying out the demo and it seems pretty cool. I just need a program to create other sounds we could play on the keyboard besides the organ. We're mainly looking for atmospheric samples to add ambiance to our music, they would mainly be background stuff. I realize that if we didn't use reason we could rewire Ableton to Cubase SX and use cubase to hold the vst instruments.

I know this might require a lot of explaining, but I really appreciate any help I can get. I have been reading and searching on this forum a lot but I think this might require a custom response.

Thanks.

-ryan

You shouldnt have any problem doing all of the thing youve mentioned.
Rewire will allow you to run either Reason or and softsynths you want to use and simply insert them into whatever channel of Live's mixer that you want to use.
For softsynths you need a rewire capable host and theres several to choose from and everyone has their own favorite. I use Plogue, its versatile and it free...
Sounds like you have plenty of computer as well, although you may want to invest in some kind of sound card and a large, fast harddrive to record on ...
nobody ever complained about having more memory either, you can never have enough...
a midi interface will come in handy and theres plenty to choose from, take your pick, but you can still get by with the keyboard and a mouse...
hope this is helpful/encouraging.
Good luck with your music, youll find live to be a really amazing tool/instrument...

Thanks so much for the response Spiralgroove. I'll have to check out the Plogue. Is it possible to load multiple vst instuments into plogue and switch between them somewhat easily, or load multiple instruments and route a different controller to each? If that is the case then I could just use the plug in version of the B4 and not bother with runnng the stand alone application.

Thanks again.
ryan

yeah the routing in plogue is pretty flexible it should be able to do whatever you need in those regards...
ive been using two drum machines and two synths at once with no problem, loading patches in one while i play the other and just crossfading between them in live...
give it a shot, once you get past the interface it will be a joy to use.

copperandstars wrote:I'll have to check out the Plogue. Is it possible to load multiple vst instuments into plogue and switch between them somewhat easily, or load multiple instruments and route a different controller to each?

Yes indeed, Ryan. You can definitely do this in Plogue Bidule.
There's even a tutorial about this (well, almost) at the Unofficial Bidule User's FAQ: here. The example there shows a module for switching audio inputs between plugins on the fly, but you can easily do the exact same thing with MIDI input using the MIDI Switcher bidule.

One thing I should note: grab Bidule now while you can. The application is free while it's a beta in development, but Plogue have said that it will be a commercial app some day soon. So get it while the gettin's good!

Hope this helps,
-K

Kerrydan, how stable is Ploque Bidule?
Because basically me too I´m looking for a solution to use VSTi´s with my LIVE. I tend to use LIVE more and more as a sketchpad and composing tool instead of Cubase SX, because it´s much, much faster to work with and much more intuitiv as well. SX is simply overkill for workflow and creativity IMHO. Finetuning and mixing is still done in SX, but LIVE simply rocks. I can record and loop my keyboard or guitar just so quick, it´s really cool.
Would appreciate any answer/comment.

Regards
Raphael