Live

[silkpantsman]

So whos making live tunes and organising playable DAW templates??

[deadly_habit]

me

[silkpantsman]

Wow hav nt been on the forums in a long time...which is a good thing i suppose was lurkin way too much!! Ill hammer out a few questions and hope you dont take 2 months to get back to me . Whats your hardware software set up for playing live? Midi or Audio? Loop lengths? What does your template look like when you open it (how many channels have you got...wats in them etc)? How do you like to start, i realise that it doesnt matter and its always gud too come at it from dif angles but wats your pref at the moment or wat you find to work better?? How do you store and recall earlier loops and how do you vary arrangement? Tell me eveything !! Im using abelton...i use an mpd and a 32 key and a deck...use abletons looper but wud love to figure out how to loop midi in a live fashion for obvious editing on the fly and to make use of abletons session view for arrangement. Im still only at the stage where i can record 2 bar loops 4 bars tend to be little too sloppy...i can get away with it for pads and lead style stuff. I use 1 drum rack with multisample goin on...1 instance of operator and analog (synths) both using only 2 osc's as this is all i can get full control over...no presets just start at default and work from der. I dont use any midi effects but wud like to start if any1 has any tips?? Anything at all that you might think to say/add it will help i know it will...the smallest ideas have made huge progresses in my live set up and im sure you guys all have ideas?? Also if any1 has any resources on using ableton in live scenario, playing drums or bass that focus more on the sound and theory as opposed to the instrumentation id really appreciate any help here??

[mickledan]

I don't do it currently, but my when considering it i came to these conclusions

16/8 audio loops

16/8's give you long enough to get the next section que'd up and get it changed without it getting boring,

audio because then your not mucking about with file locations and you can still use effects/vst's on them + hardware friendly

thats my 50p

[silkpantsman]

yeah i feel ya but im a bit of a less with more kinda guy...alot can be done with a solid 2 bar loop at 70...using effects. The other thing i have is a looper before my main loop to add lil bit of variation to the main loop of watever instrument. As well as this i go from drums to bass (eg. 1 instrument to another) and then maybe back to drums again so => new 2 bar loop to complement the new bassline. Its just a solid 8 bar loop played in is rather difficult and to do it live (perfectly) sounds a lil above my level at the mo...especially when im not tryin to learn off some riff just play it...watever it is thaat comes to me der and then and move on. note im playing all this stuff live not setting up loops to then launch so some jamming is der between the recording of the loops.

[Mad_EP]

My Live template is pretty basic ---

I start with 8 channels of audio and 4 channels of midi (1 Predator, 1 Minimoog, and 2 empty at the ready).

I have 4 sends preset at the ready - 1) Audio Damage's Eos, 2) Audio Damage's Adverb, 3) Audio Damage's Dubstation, & 4) Audio Damage's Ricochet.
(I usually add a few more instances of AD Dubstation throughout the process using different delay times)

Not always, but often I will have a very slight Cytomic Glue on the master on the "Transparent" setting just for a little extra adhesion (rather than dynamic control).


There is no need for me to get much more templated than that - as every track has its own needs....



I do have a different template for sketching out quick ideas (perc mapped to keys, etc), but that is a whole diff ball of wax than properly writing tracks.

[EDN]

It depends on what kind of live. I wanna get into live composition but I'm not really good enough at piano yet.

I do do two person stuff with a friend of mine, each of us having a kinda basic template of 2/3 tracks of drums/percs a few synths and some glitch or vocals in audio.
I go out into a Korg zero8 and he goes out into his 16ch mackie onyx, plus other controllers (we each have a launchpad and an axiom 25 and he has a kaoss pad and a couple of other bits). This then goes into a 2ch Dj mixer with us each having a channel.
Mainly work with 4/8 bar loops, starting with drums and atmos and building bass and melodies over the top. We haven't got to the performing stage just yet as we're jamming for ages til we got enough material, but I imagine we will generally render most of the basic bits out to audio and keep a few things midi to save on cpu.

Its so much fun though doing stuff this way, much better than just beatmatching vinyls.