doing a live show......with ableton live?

[cynic one]

anyone here done any performing with live?

i've been thinking about how i'd do a live show these days. the whole rapping over a 2 track into a mixer shit is dated to me. ok, cool, that's the origins of hip hop - but let's progress a little right?

when i start getting into performing live again i want to do it proper.

i've been thinking of putting together a live rig based around a laptop, some midi foot pedals, and ableton live.

my reason being - i do a lot of fx per song on our vocals. tempo sync'd delays, etc. just wondering if anyone know if it'd be possible to load up live with all of my tracks, then switch tempo and song with a press of a midi foot pedal. maybe even have all the vst eq/fx/compressors/tempo sync'd delay set up when that happens.

i've seen too many wack shows where you can't even tell what the **** the mc is saying because the mix is f'd up, or there's no compressor on the vocals or whatever.

anyone see an issue with this? the big thing i see could be latency from processing vocals through the cpu, then back out again. that could kill the whole idea. maybe i could get around that with a nice firewire mixer or something with a comp/delay built in?

interested to hear everyone's thoughts on performing live in a way that makes it sound proper.........

[ill Factor]

Yea its so mad dope i Dj with live now.... i luv using it as my studio sequencer... and live performance you can have fun tweaking the tracks during your set.

[cynic one]

Originally Posted by ill Factor

Yea its so mad dope i Dj with live now.... i luv using it as my studio sequencer... and live performance you can have fun tweaking the tracks during your set.

i always see tempo/beat matching the songs you play - as it's geared towards the dj market.

can you set it up to change tempo per song (and not beat match)? how easy is that?

..........anyone have comments on running vox through the cpu and the whole latency thing? think it's better to get a mixer with built in eq/comp/verb to monitor @ 0 latency? maybe something like that m-audio nrv mixer?

Sonic State - News (Video Item) Review: M-Audio NRV10 FireWire Mixer, Sonic Labs - All in one and one for all?

[cynic one]

so either.....nobody performs live in here, or nobody uses ableton?

maybe this woulda been better for the electronic music forum

[henryrobinett]

I tried using it to augment my group and it was a pain in my ass. But I'm not the person to ask . . . .

[henryrobinett]

I know some people use it to play with their group of live musicians, and it'd probably work great. But I think MOST people do DJ stuff with it. The amount of effort it took to set it up and some stuff (Live 4.1) just . . . I don't know. I didn't get it. That's why I say, i'm really not the person to ask. Everyone seems so enamoured with it and I'm always the person left scratching my head. But seriously, it'd probably work great for what you do and want to do. I don't know.

Why not do the show with CD instrumentals and get a DJ to backspin them like the vinyl days?

I personally always used Dat/Vinyl

I have done a show from an instant replay before but I didn't control it. What's the software equivalent of an instant replay?

It should exist right, the thing is really a big sampler right?

[cynic one]

Originally Posted by no ssl yet

Why not do the show with CD instrumentals and get a DJ to backspin them like the vinyl days?

I personally always used Dat/Vinyl

I have done a show from an instant replay before but I didn't control it. What's the software equivalent of an instant replay?

It should exist right, the thing is really a big sampler right?

i think live would be the equivalent of an instant replay. but who knows. i mean you could use serato, or any of the other digital dj platforms. that doesn't give you the (possible) advantages of going through a DAW.

maybe i'm just too inexperienced doing live sound to know, but i see the advantage of using live being sound quality......most live hip hop shows i've seen or have been a part of are just the 2 track, and some mics plugged into a mixer. no limiters, no compressors on the vox, no verb.....nada (and all of em have sounded like shit)

you could run the signal path like it's a real song. like you'd run it when bouncing to cd. instead of the vocals just floating over the 2 track, everything could be compressed/limited/verbed/whatever together.

the song would be running the same fx on vocals as the produced version, so it'd sound more like a polished production than a hacked together live performance. more like a song.

also - you could get into some ill shit where you sample yourself, and all that live madness...maybe even assign different parts of the song to pedals. wanna loop the chorus for 16 bars instead of 8 at the end because the crowd is feeling it? you could do that with live i think. (sure you could do that with a dj too, but i ain't gotta dedicated dj at the moment)

how do the pros do it? are they using s/w or is it all hardware compressors/verb/delay?

[MarkusColeman]

Originally Posted by cynic

you could run the signal path like it's a real song. like you'd run it when bouncing to cd. instead of the vocals just floating over the 2 track, everything could be compressed/limited/verbed/whatever together.

........set up in the session view and recorded live into the arrangement view into seperate tracks.

track presets with effects and "dummy" clips for automation purposes (very nice!).

Originally Posted by cynic

also - you could get into some ill shit where you sample yourself, and all that live madness...maybe even assign different parts of the song to pedals. wanna loop the chorus for 16 bars instead of 8 at the end because the crowd is feeling it? you could do that with live i think. (sure you could do that with a dj too, but i ain't gotta dedicated dj at the moment)

its easy to trigger different scenes (just press MIDI and assign the play/start button of a scene to a MIDI controller). you should read through the tutorials included in Live: they should answer most of your questions.

there is much more wizardy and live resampling stuff you can do with Live in combination with something like Bidule or Usine.
but that´s an option and not necessary for the simple setup you described.

So is Live and a controller the software equivalent of an instant replay? (I've never used live enough to know)

[MarkusColeman]

Originally Posted by no ssl yet

So is Live and a controller the software equivalent of an instant replay? (I've never used live enough to know)

yes, you can (re)sample either a selected track or the whole song, record audio into preset clips (with different lengths) and you can use follow actions logic.

for example: set up a track to record the drums. let it jump to the next clip after 8 bars, then record 14 bars, then a 2 bars break, then 8 bars chorus, etc... (all pre set with "dummy" clips and follow actions - in the session view).

the moment you are finished recording the single elements/parts, you can already trigger them via keyboard/midi controller and arrange the drum tracks live while recording them into the arrangement window.

now you can sample parts of the arrangement you like, copy them and bring them back into the session view to.........retrigger and rearrange them.

Live is a live sampler, audio editor and fx processor - while maintaining the balance between the conventional linear approach and pattern based arranging - why its not THE #1 DAW in hip hop production is really beyond me.

[gradylives]

I've dj'ed with live and played along/programmed drums along with acapellas/mcs. Just make sure your laptop has plenty of ram, and test everything out at home first. Live isn't quite as stable as Reason, which almost never crashes on me

[Chaotic]

When I play live these days I run instrumentals (minus the bass and hand percussion, because we have a bass player and 2 percussionists) thru a CD player (a good one with antiskip) and use my 1200s to scratch.

I was in a hybrid rock/DnB band for 5 years and used a computer rig live. It was a NIGHTMARE. Nothing worse then a computer crash in the middle of a song. It happened a lot, and I had a damn good computer. What Ive learned is that many venues (i.e. bars, lounges, VFW Halls), unless we're talking real deal concert venues, arent wired to handle poweramps, computers, etc. Usually there will be one or two regular outlets near the "stage" area. So bands will daisychain a dozen powerstrips together to accomodate their needs. From what I was told, thats not a stable setup for computers. If there's a dip in the power, while it might not affect guitar amps and whatnot, it could cause your computer to restart. Its no fun telling the crowd, "Hold on for a minute while we re-boot our computer"!

Im not an electrician, Im sure theres a better way to explain this, but I can speak from experience that unless your doing tours in good sized venues, computers are generally unstable for live performance.

Eventually, I think an Ipod and a standard DJ setup will be the way I go.

Originally Posted by Chaotic

When I play live these days I run instrumentals (minus the bass and hand percussion, because we have a bass player and 2 percussionists) thru a CD player (a good one with antiskip) and use my 1200s to scratch.

I was in a hybrid rock/DnB band for 5 years and used a computer rig live. It was a NIGHTMARE. Nothing worse then a computer crash in the middle of a song. It happened a lot, and I had a damn good computer. What Ive learned is that many venues (i.e. bars, lounges, VFW Halls), unless we're talking real deal concert venues, arent wired to handle poweramps, computers, etc. Usually there will be one or two regular outlets near the "stage" area. So bands will daisychain a dozen powerstrips together to accomodate their needs. From what I was told, thats not a stable setup for computers. If there's a dip in the power, while it might not affect guitar amps and whatnot, it could cause your computer to restart. Its no fun telling the crowd, "Hold on for a minute while we re-boot our computer"!

Im not an electrician, Im sure theres a better way to explain this, but I can speak from experience that unless your doing tours in good sized venues, computers are generally unstable for live performance.

Eventually, I think an Ipod and a standard DJ setup will be the way I go.

I've been thinking about doing something like this from my MPC4k.

Just sampling songs and making all pads cut off other pads, (and leaving one blank sample to cut off to silence).

OF course you have to have a CD for backup incase everything fails though.

I've done shows from a roland VS880 and it worked pretty good with songs at different locate points

[cynic one]

Originally Posted by Chaotic

When I play live these days I run instrumentals (minus the bass and hand percussion, because we have a bass player and 2 percussionists) thru a CD player (a good one with antiskip) and use my 1200s to scratch.

I was in a hybrid rock/DnB band for 5 years and used a computer rig live. It was a NIGHTMARE. Nothing worse then a computer crash in the middle of a song. It happened a lot, and I had a damn good computer. What Ive learned is that many venues (i.e. bars, lounges, VFW Halls), unless we're talking real deal concert venues, arent wired to handle poweramps, computers, etc. Usually there will be one or two regular outlets near the "stage" area. So bands will daisychain a dozen powerstrips together to accomodate their needs. From what I was told, thats not a stable setup for computers. If there's a dip in the power, while it might not affect guitar amps and whatnot, it could cause your computer to restart. Its no fun telling the crowd, "Hold on for a minute while we re-boot our computer"!

Im not an electrician, Im sure theres a better way to explain this, but I can speak from experience that unless your doing tours in good sized venues, computers are generally unstable for live performance.

Eventually, I think an Ipod and a standard DJ setup will be the way I go.

power spikes wouldn't be an issue with a laptop......they have batteries to cover power outages you know thumbsup stike

ok - so the live thing has been beaten to death - what about my other issue? the sound...

what's a good chain? am i totally off base for thinking running my vocals through a compressor/eq and all that along with the song will make things sound better instead of just flying into a mixer?

what about running all that shit into a firewire mixer then pumping it through vst fx? probably some latency involved - but i guess the only real way to find out is buy the shit and try it :p

appreciate everyone's responses so far. thanks.

[handojin]

"just wondering if anyone know if it'd be possible to load up live with all of my tracks, then switch tempo and song with a press of a midi foot pedal"

if you name a scene with a number and then bpm ie "120 bpm" launching that scene will automatically switch the tempo to just that..
pretty nifty feature if you havent discovered it, check it out

i use mackie control emulation on my axiom 49 keyboard and have buttons to go up and down scenes, buttons to launch scene
sometimes ill have it set up just that way.. tracks loaded up... launching a scene automatically moves down to next after so i can hit the "launch scene button" assigned to my midi keyboard and then hit the same button again after to start the next song and switch tempo automatically

hope that helps

[Switchcraft]

Originally Posted by handojin

"just wondering if anyone know if it'd be possible to load up live with all of my tracks, then switch tempo and song with a press of a midi foot pedal"

if you name a scene with a number and then bpm ie "120 bpm" launching that scene will automatically switch the tempo to just that..
pretty nifty feature if you havent discovered it, check it out

i use mackie control emulation on my axiom 49 keyboard and have buttons to go up and down scenes, buttons to launch scene
sometimes ill have it set up just that way.. tracks loaded up... launching a scene automatically moves down to next after so i can hit the "launch scene button" assigned to my midi keyboard and then hit the same button again after to start the next song and switch tempo automatically

hope that helps

Yao!
Thanks for that. That helps! I have been trying to get my head around live for a few days now. Trying to work on using the percussion form my album as a backing.

My question is, is there a better way to write a sequence in the arrange page? I do not like doing it 'live' in the clips view for now cause I am still working out the detail issues.

What is the best way to have 10 songs in Live all with different tempos?
If I need to move from one track that is 125 to another that is 100 and I do not want them tempo synced, what do I do?
Obviously, I plan in putting on some space / noise sound in between, but would just labeling the files 125 bpm and 100bpm solve my problems?

[Nahuel]

I use ableton live but not for live ...

I think something like torq or any virtual DJ setup combined with a real mixer/effects would be much better for hip hop live.

with a real mixer you got no latency and you can insert a good comp for you vocalist, you can sync a delay to your virtual dj setup (playing the beats) via midi and when needed jus turn the aux knob on the vocal track in a cool way a la King Tubby.

with you virtual DJ setup you'll be able to sync tracks, add fx to the beats, cut, scratch, play intros n stuff.

I dunno but live is probably mo interesting for ppl doing techno live, that kind of stuff where you want to be able to throw loops in real time and construct you "instrumentation" during the show.

jus my opinion

[handojin]

no worries switchcraft..
never tried doing that from the arrangement page but ill try and post back

i think you would need to automate tempo changes in the arrangement, and use the markers to start.. just gotta check if you can midi map or key map to the markers which shouldnt be hard
if no tempo based effects you could always just unwarp the instrumentals so they dont follow tempo track and ignore the tempo track all together..
will try it out and see how it works
werd
kevin

[handojin]

one of the other things cool about ableton that comes in handy with my sets is being able to have ableton swithch effect amounts on certain sounds automatically.. this is done with midi loopback device and dummy clips, you can have the scenes automatically switch the tempo on track start but also change the effects ie more verb on second song, activate cool vocal effect at bar 17 and disable 8 bars affter ect,, all that stuff can be automated so you dont have to worry about it live and worry about the performance. very nifty, maybe more for singers though than emcees

[Ari-M.]

Originally Posted by Switchcraft

Yao!
Thanks for that. That helps! I have been trying to get my head around live for a few days now. Trying to work on using the percussion form my album as a backing.

My question is, is there a better way to write a sequence in the arrange page? I do not like doing it 'live' in the clips view for now cause I am still working out the detail issues.

What is the best way to have 10 songs in Live all with different tempos?
If I need to move from one track that is 125 to another that is 100 and I do not want them tempo synced, what do I do?
Obviously, I plan in putting on some space / noise sound in between, but would just labeling the files 125 bpm and 100bpm solve my problems?

print a click track for each individual song (at the right tempo of course) and then set each one of those click tracks up in a vertical sequence...then set each track to be the "master" (in the clip editor view) and voila...each time you change a scene the click will become the tempo master...wheeeeeeeee

[coolout]

Check out M-Audio's Torq and give it a long hard look.

I use it 3 nights a week at DJ gigs but have also used it for stage shows.

It's really the best of both worlds.

It's known as a DJ app but the features of version 1.5 also make it a good live production/performance tool:

Elastique Pro timestretching on all the tracks...

it has a built-in sampler that can trigger on-shots or loops...

it can host vst effects...

it can send/receive both rewire and midi timecode so you can sync a drum machine or sequencer...

you can trigger cue points to chop songs on the fly and with the internal effects capture the new pattern as a loop...

everything can be assigned to a midi controller with just a right-click...

plus...it's half the price of serato

the only downside is you can't use midi controllers like the vestax vci to scratch with...yet

and of course you really need a new laptop to use all the fancy sh*t.

[icyroc]

i think the idea is great for years people have been using the instant replay systems
which are cool... but live could do so much more... i could see getting the new controller they released for it...and it would kill anyones show period... well people that do track shows... even if you had a band you could do some incredible stuff... live is the illest program out to me... the possibilites are endless really... i have used it to do dj stuff
remixes... a lil sequencing... when people see me use it they say why dont i use protools and i say i have protools but protools cannot do this and do it this quickly... they frown at the interface... say it looks wack... but you cannot front on it at all once you know what it will do... it is cold at what it does and how you can chain effects together easy... save that chain... warping is sick... its great for doing commercials and such... i even use it for video projects i work on... to do a lil scoring i cannot wait to try 8 i am a registered user of 7 ... as for dj stuff all these cats use serato and stuff... i could lite them up using live and some turntables... it would sound like a live radio show... you can put drops in the drum machine and trigger them mix a gang of songs together easy ... man i could talk about this for along time man.. i think if they made the way it looks more like some other daws it would take over....

[MarkusColeman]

Originally Posted by icyroc

i think if they made the way it looks more like some other daws it would take over....

part of Live's unique workflow is the session view, the horizontal plug in bar and the fact that the user interface is not bloated.

I don't need my tracks to look pretty on the screen. I want them to sound good and I want to be able to do them live.