"liveset" ableton workflow???

franksterling · Post by **franksterling** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:12 pm

hi!
i just started making music again with very little experience in techno/techhouse/minimal
i used cubase and later logic to do drum & bass.
now i tried live and really like it as some things are really easy and straight forward
i think i have to restructure my way of thinking a bit in terms of mixing.
drumracks are amazing. i always wanted such an easy way to use samples.
i just built some patterns nothing special so i haven't experienced arranging with live which i think might be the downside.

anyway at the moment i am much more interested in building up a pool of loops to jam around (sold my technics 5 years ago and the thought of jaming with my own loops is much more interesting than completing tracks at the moment).

so... how would you guys recommend to bounce my loops and arrange them into a structure which gives most flexibility without cluttering?
i am not so sure what is the best way to do it.
i probably can't have single tracks for every element of my beat which would give me 100% flexibility but would not be able to be used properly (starting 10 tracks at the same time seems quite difficult). so what would you bounce on a single track and what can go together (baddrum, hihats, snare(?), rest)? how do you do variations in live (lets say a roll or a breakdown etc)

i had a look at the swayzak liveset you can download from the ableton website but i can't really figure out if there is a system how these guys bounced their loops and arranged/categorized them (can anyone else???). lots of things do not go together very well and with most combinations i tried (not much) i can hear flanging because 2 basssdrums are playing at the same time or issues with the timing of some cut loops (missing groove quantize in live?).

how do you do the processing? i don't know about techno but in d&b what i used to do before the drums and cut loops go into a subgroup and get processed there but how do you do this if you do a live set? obviously the settings for dynamics have to change with every new loop or are the loops processed and categorized/bounced in terms of frequency ranges?

as you can see i am quite confused because there are quite a lot of questions that came up with even more of possible answers and my lack of experience in producing/live situations for this kind of music and the overall small knowledge of the music itself (have been to 1000 parties but cant remember most of them and just recently started having this kind of music on my ipod) make it quite difficult for me to find the right way and i don't want to spend ages bouncing loops just to realise that i should have done it another way.

thanks for the help!

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:59 pm

i just press the awesome button.

franksterling · Post by **franksterling** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:01 pm

hydrogen wrote:i just press the awesome button.

obviously!

sherman · Post by **sherman** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:00 am

As a Live user, I read through your post and kept thinking "Live is great for that!". As you said, there are quite a few questions up there. I'll do my best to answer when I get the chance

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:40 pm

i think you have to find what works for you mate, it may take a while to get the set-up right for what you're trying to do.
i'm not sure anyone will have the definitive answer.
personally none of the things you mention mean much to me, i work in a completely different way. i avoid loops as much as possible, but when i need to use loops in a live set, i break down already semi-constructed tunes into manageble loops, and each tune is different, so some tunes i will have bass and kick loop, a high percussion loop, low percussion loop and maybe play the synths live from midi loops, another tune i will breakdown in a completely different way.
jamming just with loops usually turns into a directionless mush of percussion for me, i need the power of the 'tune' to give my sets focus and direction, so i'm normally jamming and mixing tunes which already have some identity more or less to start with. i suppose its a mixture of DJing and playing live.

i think anyone can adapt the ableton platform to how they want to work, just experiment with it.

daveashe · Post by **daveashe** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:26 pm

A seperate channel bounced down to Kick, Bass, Perc, Synth, Other is the usual way its done - tom cosm has a video on this somewhere, its flexible enough though for me, i'm thinking about having two laptops to play live, and load alternate songs on each.

Starting to think about what i can freeze right at the beginning now, then when i move to laptops it won't be much of an issue going live.

::BLM:: · Post by **::BLM::** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 11:41 pm

What are peoples thoughts on Lives sound quality? I was listening to some of my older tracks made in Cubase and sound quality wise they sound much better then my ones done in Ableton.

tone-def · Post by **tone-def** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:19 am

Ben, is it live 8 you use?

i think the sound of Live has improved. they managed to close the gap but it's still not there yet.