Ableton Forum

Hello Ableton users,

I have been doing gigs with a live band playing my music (me on laptop with ableton + midi controllers, + guitar, rhodes, saxophone, bass guitar, vocals), for about 3 months (and 5 months preparing). We generally re-worked my CD-tracks for live performing. I learned a lot, but now I want to take it to another level. Problem is, I kind of outran all my friends using ableton, so it's hard for me to get inspiration on where to go now. So basily my question is: Who is using Ableton in a interesting and intuitive way, and where do i find video's or something to read about them?. I've had a good look on youtube, but the target audience there is really the people who just installed ableton.

To get a better view of what i already did: I make sample based music. I usually cut up my songs into drum- and sample loops, which i then start and stop using a midi keyboard. I control volumes and sends (mainly delay) on a BCF2000, and control FX and play non-looped sounds on a PadKontrol. I focus on drums and sample layers that cant be played by my band.

Main issues:
- I have a lot of freedom on when to start what loop. But after a few weeks of practicing, you know which order works best... If a crowd reacts good on a saxophone solo, i can let that carry on for a bit.... but that's about the variation i get from this set. Not very inspiring.
- I am planning on playing with a drummer soon, which makes my role even smaller. I have been thinking on ways to get around this, but i hope this forum inspires me even more.

Already thought of solutions:
- Focus on FX+looping of the live instruments.
- Fire half of the band and do more myself (wouldnt like that!)
- ....?

So, anybody? I would be helped by suggestions of fun things to do, but also by "hey, this guy .... does real cool things with live, you should check his youtube vids...." things like that.

Brrrring it on!

(PS, here's three vids of my performances, all pretty poor sound quality i'm afraid, but will have better ones soon)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZJ85alXle0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma1BpfKSDHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DK5gkwzq8g (starts at 00:40, sound is from my CD and not the actual performance)

once you are comfortable with how to use live for live performances i would recommend spending time on your actualy setup.

what i did was that after i got comfortable with doing everything in session view performance style, i spent (am still doing trial and error for the best setup for me) alot of time programming fx/instruments racks aswell as midi mappings.

now i can launch a loop, let it run for a loooooong time without it getting boring for me, or the audience, because i have so much stuff to fuck it up with.

also, if youre going live with other live musicians (non computer based), id suggest patching it up so that you wont have any monitoring on the other peoples things, so that if you do decide to loop that sax, it iwll be looped no matter what your sax player is playing.

i hooked up some of my toys this way, and its way more fun then having them set so that you can monitor them andhave the fx output behind the monitor.

ofcourse thats just a matter of principle. but yeah, id suggest taking some time to think about what you could do with your set, and how, how are you using your controller? how are you using your computer keyboard?

for example, with a thirdparty translator you could set up your qwerty keyboard as a normal midi keyboard (yeah yeah i know, but bare with me here), and if you make a rack with several chains you can then hook up your qwerty keyboard as a preset switcher, something which you cant do with normal keymapping. if you fiddle with the send channels and the crossfader you can make some pretty interesting things aswell, such as the supatrigga send trick thing posted here. theres alot of things to do with live, but the key is to know what you want to do. atleast if youre trying to make a template setup.