stimming - advent calender production tips

[soronery]

During the next 24 days I gonna do another advent calendar like last year but this time its about playing live!
I also asked other live-artists which I like to submit us an overview of their set, how its build, what's the philosophy behind it and so on. You gonna see tips from: Henrik Schwarz Johannes Brecht Der Dritte Raum Stephan Bodzin isolée and others

dec, 1st from stimming's advent calendar:
my #livesetup:
right now I’m using Ableton live as a powerful loop-sampler with almost 30 complete tracks of mine, all of them bounced out of Cubase into 3 busses and sliced into 5-9 parts. this gives me flexibility to change the arrangement of each track. I use 6 channels from live for playing those loops which means channel 1-3 are one track, 4-6 are another one (in session view). everyone of those 6 channels has a LP/HP-Filter. with this setup I can easily mix two tracks together while being flexible of how I mix those (by filtering, by exchanging only one of the busses, by volume, etc).
channel 7 is the external input from my op-1, channel 8 is the external input from the moog voyager. channel 9 is a midi channel for recording and play midi from/to the voyager and channel 10 is a help channel on which I have the basic tone from every track to be able to tune the voyager properly.

last years tips - http://de.slideshare.net/shahakshapira/ ... ction-tips

[soronery]

dec 2nd from stimming's advent calendar:
#guesttip from Henrik Schwarz:
My liveset is kind of chaotic. Every track I have ever made is in there in separate parts. Nothing is arranged or preworked and the clips are not sorted in bass or vocals or chords. Everything can be anywhere anytime. I believe that helps to keep things open and alive. If you prearrange too much you loose energy. Its not important to play perfect - its important to actually play!

For some extra fun I have written a small 4 track drummachine in Max4Live that I am controlling via a NI F1. The whole set is 1500 scenes long. To have quick access to all the clips I have grouped them by track. And the tracks are grouped in alphabetical order. There is a shortcut on every key of the laptop - so if I wanna play "WALK MUSIC" for example, I press "W" on the keyboard and the set jumps to all tracks beginning with "W".

Some channels can do special effects with only one knob doing multiple things: For example with one of the knobs on my evolution UC-16 hardware controller I can lower the volume of all tracks at the same time and only keep one track going and playing it a touch louder - that can be a dramatic effect. Just Bass or just Vox and then back into the full arrangement with only one knob. Drama is important. Merry Christmas everyone.

[soronery]

dec 3rd from stimming's advent calendar

#externalinstruments and #latency:
The instruments I use right now are the TeenageEngineering OP-1 and a Moog Voyager. They physically go into my RME Babyface as two mono signals and they are routed inside ableton via audio channels on which the I/O settings are from ext In (1 or 2) to ext Out 1-2 (NOT the master out). because of this they don’t go through the whole audio engine and I don’t have a latency problem while playing the keyboard. But I can still use the sends and of course the volume and pre listen/cue capabilities of ableton.
I don’t understand exactly how ableton treats these signals, I suppose they just go through the output engine, which means I only have the output latency (which is 6.3ms on my system).
On both channels I have the ableton reverb (a short, more psychoacoustically working, low wetness one) and on the op-1 channel I use the ableton compressor, side chain triggered by a bassdrum which I have on channel 11 only for this purpose.

[soronery]

dec 4th from stimming's advent calendar

#guesttip from Johannes Brecht:
My liveset is built around a MacBook Pro, Livid Alias8, NI Maschine and a custom built SSL Style BusComp with integrated DAC.
I built a gigantic max4life patch to control everything in Live by hacking the Ableton Api, to make it much more intuitiv and playable like a real instrument.
There is an „Arrange Patch“ (Livid Alias8 as a midi controller) and there are 5 „Live- Instruments“ (NI Maschine as a midi controller).
With the „Arrange Patch“ the Ableton Clips don't exist for me anymore. its a new way to play and arrange all the audio material in live. for example all audio tracks are organized in 5 groups, each group can create virtual clips at anytime, position and length of the clips can be changed spontaneously.
Also there are Gobal Functions for example harmonic information about the Key and Scale used in each song.
Live-Instruments are 2 Stepsequenzers for Drum- and Percussionsounds. and 3 synths with some specials: all synths are integrated in the main max4life patch so all synths are in the right key and scale and have correct loop length and rhythmic feel.
Maschine is perfect as a controller to play instruments live, because the pads are touch sensitive and because of the different colors its easy to play different things without losing overview.

From his Facebook page;

[+] Spoiler

[soronery]

dec 5th from stimming's advent calendar

#EQ and #Filters:
on dec, 1st I told you about my HP/LP Filter on each channel (apart from channel 7&8) - I use DMGAudio Equilibrium for this.
Its also my main EQ for producing: a very precise sounding eq including the possibility to increase quality (which costs processing power). On the „lowest“ quality level I use it as a simple HP/LP filter basically for mixing and tweaking. DO NOT use the internal Filters or Equalizers from ableton - all of them (even the EQ8) cut off low frequencies. I really don’t get why it is like that and some might say: „yeah, but its only at 30Hz“ but clubs have big sound systems and on those it DOES make a difference. At least, in my opinion, the decision to cut off frequencies should be made by the artist, not by the programmers.
On my master out I have two of them: one for cutting purposes on basic quality and one for „mastering“ with high precision to increase high frequencies as +5db „high-shelf“ at around 8-10 kHz (I tend to mix them mildly in my studio which will sound dull after a dj) and yes, I also cut off the low end with a 24db Highpass filter at 28kHz.

[soronery]

dec 6th from stimming's advent calendar

#Compressors and #Limiters:
A big problem in playing live is to reach the loudness from a mastered track. To not fall off in loudness after a dj who’s playing masters its very important to also use a maximizer or limiter on your master out. I am using the Voxengo elephant but in the low-latency version which is called: EBusLim. The original Elephant sounds better but has a latency of 10ms which will cause problems for my live-instruments. the category „maximizer“ is not only a limiter but also a thickener who produces artificial harmonics to thicken up the signal. the gain reduction is, depending on the track I play, between 4-7db which is a lot, but I didn’t choose to start this loudness war
you can also put one of those on every channel with less gain reduction to reach the desired loudness, but for my signals I found it too loud and squashed that way. so I’m only having the EBusLim on my master out. I used to use the UAD Maximizer but I got rid of the satellite because of weight. another limiter with a very good reputation (if you look at gearslutz.com) is the one from fabfilter.
And there's also the possibility to use external hardware like Johannes Brecht with his custom made ssl style bus compressor.

[soronery]

dec 7th from stimming’s advent calendar:

Today’s #specialsweet is a video where you can see me traveling from Hamburg to Werder an der Havel where I recorded some sounds from an organ manufacturer and after that I was at a Vinyl Pressing Plant in Leipzig! all of that including a weird hair cut

http://noisey.vice.com/de/read/youneedt ... -and-found

[soronery]

dec 8th from stimming’s advent calendar:

#livesetcontroller #1:
My main controller is a AKAI APC 40, because it combines (dual-way communicating) clip starting possibilities with knobs for tweaking parameters like fx, sends and of course - the volume faders.
I used to use novation’s launch pad in combination with different controllers, but the apc40 works best for me right now. The volume faders (instead of potis) are a big plus because it makes you save time in this very basic operation. Another big advantage for me is the auto map possibility at apc40 - everything you need is already mapped, but you still can (and need to) remap things (via cmd - M „midi learn“) - this will override the auto map settings.
first thing you should do is remap the master volume - this is a big trap for making something terribly wrong on big systems! I have the locut from my master channel filter on this fader but it only goes up to around 110Hz - this makes it very fast to cut off the bass and its always in reach which means you can do this in the last quarter of a second right before the drop. another thing I strongly recommend is to disable the „stop all clips“ button - you can do things horribly wrong with this as well.
In my set this is a „all sends off“ button - once you are in midi mapping mode, the popup window on the left lets you change the range for the mapped parameters and when I press „stop all clips“ it switches all sends to zero.
I start and stop the whole set with the space-bar and don’t touch the laptop anymore, only for tempo-changes.

take care to remove everything which might do something radical by accident (!) like stopping clips or changing main volume.

[soronery]

dec 9th from stimming’s advent calendar:
#guesttip from Der Dritte Raum

the fundamental difference between dj´ing and playing live:
dj´s play finished tracks made by other people - playing live means doing something with your own, selfmade music.

I´ve changed the machines in my setup many times in all the years, but basically it´s still the same: I use 2 identical independent and unsynced sequencers and focus the "live access" on multi channel mixing (trevor horn once called this dub-style mixingdesk jam "sex with tracks" )

as I don´t do so much with the sequencer, the setup in general is very simple.
Coming from 2 atari computers and a full "vw passat variant" load of analog synthesizers, nowadays it´s 2 macbooks, each with ableton live, 2 mixingdesk style controllers and some additional stuff. the songs are separated in groups, like drums, percussion, bass, chords, effects, synth-lines etc.
each group has it´s own mixing channel. with this we have 16 stereo channels on stage plus effects and additional synth´s.
the basic idea behind our live show is playing with these parts on a mixing desk, or a desk-style controller.

besides these technical issues most important for me is to have enough time to play with all the knobs.
sounds stupid, but - the only way to realize this free play is to do it with a partner.
that´s the reason why d3r always comes with two guys: while one is totally trashing the mixer settings in one song, the other can reset all the knobs to start the next track with a clean setting.
The most fun is to interact with the separate parts of to tracks - you simply can´t do this with a dj setup.

[soronery]

dec 10th from stimming’s advent calendar:

#livesetcontroller #2:
there are many controllers on the market which all have their pro’s and con’s - to name a few controller builders: Livid Instruments, Ableton Push, Novation, Akai Professional, BEHRINGER, Faderfox, Keith McMillen Instruments and so on… all of them do what they are supposed to do, its basically about you to find out what you need exactly and how much space you have.
there are also a couple of very powerful ipad apps (Lemur and touchable for example) that can do all of what the others can together and a little more - unfortunately they depend on a touchscreen: you don’t have a physical feedback that means you need your eyes to double-check what you’re doing (which costs a lot of time during a performance and our eyes distract us from our ears, unfortunately). But they are brilliant for finding out what controls you really need and then go and buy the right hardware.
some hardware needs you to always do a step in-between (like the channel select buttons on the apc for me to reach the filter per track) - this is something which goes into your spinal marrow after some hours of practice.

[soronery]

dec 11th from stimming's advent calendar

#guesttip from Stephan Bodzin

the livesetup :

daw: ableton live
audiointerface: rme ufx
midicontroller:
custom made „3mur“ (3x jazzmutant lemur) touchscreen controller (2008-13)
custom made hardware controller, wireless, see-through case (2015-…)
doepfer ribbon controller
2x faderfox dx2 (custom wireless)
monome 256 gridcontroller

hardware: moog sub37

my livesetup is based on ableton live.
each track is splittet into 5 groups
1 bassdrum / subs
2 clap / snare
3 percussion / hihats
4 tones / pads / additional sounds /sfx
5 (and HERE is the live factor) the main bassline or leadsound as vst-plugin playing a midifile

when i´m playing live it´s most important for me to play / modify that main-sound (the „hook“) of the track in realtime. this is not a pre-produced audiofile, it´s the midi-file triggering a soft-synth. all main functions of that synth (like cutoff, resonace, lfo-speed, adsr, ect) are routed to my main-controller (lemur in the past, see-trough hardware controller in the future) so i can make it sound as i feel like it should at any time. i can react to any situation, create peaks or drops whenever i want to, however i feel like.

live is when the audience starts realizing that i´m the one who´s creating that music right here and now. not creating a set but creating that track, that moment.
i used to film my hands and beam them onto screens behind me to let people witness i´m doing that all in realtime. and as they see and hear the changes simultaneously, they can feel it´s live, it´s alive.

btw: playing an ableton set packed with all your productions as masterfiles is not live, it´s a dj-set.

[soronery]

dec 12th from stimming’s advent calendar:

#audiointerface:
I use a RME babyface because of its (small) size and (good) sound. I used to use a RME Fireface400 and before that a Multiface2 - the main reason for RME Interfaces is that the drivers are very stable. My very first Liveset I played was with a "better entry level" interface (it took place at uebel&gefaehrlich in hamburg, a club inside a huge bunker right in the middle of the city) and the audio interface crashed during the set with a loud fieeeep - 100% reliable interfaces where #1 of my list from then on
To test the liability for a new interface I had my set running for 12hours overnight at home and when nothing happened I knew it was alright.
I sometimes miss my Fireface400 because of the many in- and outputs - would be very nice to be able to send audio out of ableton into an external effect (for example an eventide Space or a strymon timeline) - those „stomp-boxes“ can be a huge advantage for the dramaturgical side of a set, especially for breaks!
There are many audio interfaces on the market and I’m pretty sure that a crash including a Fieeep is something which doesn’t happen anymore, but to get liability and sound quality you still have to spend from around 500$ upwards.

[soronery]

dec 13th from stimming’s advent calendar:

#samplerate, #latency and #timestretchalgorithm:
My set has a sample rate of 96kHz but only 16bit sample depth because of the file-size. My sample buffer is 512 samples. The higher the sample rate the lower the latency but this costs processing power. I’m running the fastest macbook pro retina on the market but I still have one hiccup every 1,5 sets (which is the usb connections fault I guess). I choosed to do so because of sound quality (ableton sounds better at higher sample rates) - you have to dial in the sample rate at the very beginning of a new set and then include your wave files, otherwise the pitch will sound weird.
keeping the audio latency as low as possible is very important because this is the amount of time ableton needs for your controller input - if your having 25ms of delay on every action its difficult to be precise in controlling your volumes or any other action.

The time stretch algorithm I use is the one called „Re-Pitch“: Ableton acts like an old school sampler, as well as like a Turntable or a pitchable CD Player - depending on the original tempo its in- or decreasing the pitch but keeping the sound itself intact. The other algorithms allow you to independently change pitch or tempo but they do this with artificial added grains depending on your material. Because I’m using only three busses per track every bus is very complex - on very complex material those algorithms „do not sound good anymore“: you can easily hear this on the attack from your bass drum - they actually destroy the tightness. so - best is to combine those algorithms: for very important signals like the bass drum I strongly recommend not to use any other than the Re-Pitch algorithm. but as it changes the tonal pitch its not possible to mix tonal signals with different tempo. that’s why I need to tune the moog voyager for every track (for which I have a help channel with the ground tone in original tempo on channel 10 for each track to tune the voyager via my in-ear monitors). the best way for me to bounce those busses would have been to strictly separate tonal from percussive elements but when I did those bounces I followed my mixing logic and not my liveset-logic: a big mistake which will cost me many hours of fixing this.
tradeoffs everywhere - that’s real life, yeah!

[soronery]

dec 14th from stimming’s advent calendar:

today’s #specialsweet is a live set which I played last year. instead of the op-1 and moog voyager I was using an arturia micro brute back then which went through an Eventide Space:

[soronery]

dec 15th from stimming’s advent calendar

#inearmonitoring #soundcheck
since the beginning of this year I always use In-Ear monitors. Back then I played in a club where the monitors were so much distorted that it hurt my right ear permanently (I had a tinnitus on my right ear for a couple of months, thank god it went away silently). Also, for the first 6 years of my career I remember having ringing ears in the hotel room after every set. this is not acceptable for me as I’m planning to use my ears for the rest of my life for making music.
With In-Ears you can listen to what you’re doing on a moderate loudness level and without being dependent on the monitors from the venue which mostly are pretty much crap for creating music on the spot. I also found out that bad monitors need a lot of brain power for our ears to identify what we’re doing which is tiring. And, even if they are called monitors, they always sound different from the main PA that’s why its not that you can’t hear what you’re doing on the big sound system because you can’t hear that anyway (not 100% true but pretty much like that, depending on the venue size, stage-placement, etc…). To find out what you could do wrong in the mixing it is important to do this via a soundcheck beforehand. Empty clubs need to sound harsh in the treble section, so its good if high frequencies hurt a little bit during soundcheck (human bodies swallow a lot of sound).

One problem which occurs by using In-Ears is their level of insulating the outside noise. In the worst case you can’t hear anything from the audience which will affect your performance because you don’t recognize people screaming (which either can be because of joy - a sign for you to go further that way or because of pain - a sign for you to change something RAPIDLY ). Right now I’m using UltimateEars UE-7 Ambient which are customized to my ears. „Ambient“ means they have a canal open to the outer noise as well as a canal for their incredible good sounding 3-way drivers (per ear). I admit that’s the very expensive luxury solution, but starting at around 200$ there are good In-Ears (from Shure for example - SE215 and up) that come with different Plugs which all have different insulation values - again, a tradeoff but I’m sure our ears and our wifes will thank us when we’re old (…screaming: what?).

[soronery]

dec 16th from stimming's advent calendar

#guesttip from isolée

One thing that is Important for me in a Lifeset is to keep it alive and interessting for myself over time, which will result in a better liveset. This seems self-evident, but unless like a dj your "repertoir" will most likely be quit limited, since it is your own produced music that you are going to play instead of the endless records a dj can buy. And if you are not the kind of live-performer who is using a lot of synchronized drummaschines & beatboxes, and a lot of loops, but the one who is building, remixing, reprocessing and relayering the parts and sounds in so many studio-sessions you don't remember where it all came from in the end, your possibilities can even be more restricted, because there is no way to reproduce this in a live situation.

To avoid having having only one stereo file for each track, I do record subgroubs, usually beeing a Bassdrum- , bass-, hihat-, snar/clap-, synth- and string/nap or whatever submix, that I can put on different channels on an analog Mixer for live mixing & adding effects.

In the beginning I did build up a whole Liveset as one big arrangement in Logic, (beeing only used to work in the sequencers arrangment view), which obviously wasn't very inspiring when performing, because the track-order and length, even when working very well, was fixed. Any change had to be done in the studio...
So I ended up using Ableton-Lives's Clip View, even with the long submix-files.

I use the first 8 clips of 16 in a row for the submixes of one track and leave clips 9 to 16 empty, erasing also the start/stop buttons. In the next row, I leave the first 8 clips empty and put the same 8 files (or less) in the clips 9 to 16. This way, I have the same track on a "left" and a "right" side, like two turntables..
I go on and do this with all tracks I want to play, which means that I can trigger simultaniously or individualy (with a launchpad or akai apc f.i) the eight submixes of any track, at any time, in any length and order I want, without stopping the files playing on the other side.

Most of the controllers usualy have 16 fader/potentiometer in two rows, so I use the eight faders in one row to control volume for the submixes of one track, let's say on the left side, and the other row for the right side.

I route then the Hihats,- snare- etc. submixes of both sides together on 4 Stereo returns going to the soundcard with 8 outputs/ 4 stereo outputs put on the analog mixer.

I keep a certain order, like Bassdrum is always on chanel 1 & 9, bass always 2&10 etc.. in ableton and on the midicontroller, and one (or two for stereo) dedicated channel on the mixer.

Now there is plenty of possibillitys blending submixes together, and controlling the sub-submixes on the analog mixer, which also avoids you looking at the laptop all the time. Of course this setup can be done in any variation, with added filters, added rows for loops etc.., and could also be done in a more simple way, but I like two have these possibilities, especially with the analog mixer and it's eq and auxes for external efx.

[soronery]

dec 17th from stimming's advent calendar:

#syncing #ableton
so, unfortunately able ton's internal midiclock is very unstable while syncing it to external gear or another ableton computer.
in both cases it helps if you use an external midi clock (well, it doesn’t help - its the only way ).
I use an E-RM Erfindungsbüro Midiclock for this, it has two MidiOuts which send a pretty stable clock.
To sync two laptops with ableton running, make sure they have nearly the same latency.

[soronery]

dec 18th from stimming’s advent calendar
‪#‎guesttip‬ from Frank Wiedemann

my live set-up is still based around the apc40. all songs (yes, there are a lot!) are structured into 8 tracks by 5 clips which made me reduce our songs to this kind of framework. This by the way also helped me a lot to find out which is the essence of each song and that i could really "play" them a lot more than just reproduce the studio versions which keeps playing every show exciting for me. Also the fact that I have one knob or fader for each action helps me concentrate on making music instead of running through menus. i also have to look at my laptop only when i have to decide which song i could play next or if i want to change the key of a melody running for instance. Sometimes when you play around with the songs you also get new ideas of how to perform them. And after a while i play remixes of my own tracks.

[soronery]

dec 19th from stimming’s advent calendar

‪#‎dramaturgy‬ ‪#‎arrangement‬ ‪#‎flexibility‬
my live set consists of around 25 tracks of mine ready to play - ranging from very melodic (like eiszauber) to high energy ones (like the cowboy). this gives me freedom to react on different crowds, locations, play-times and djs playing before me.
10 minutes before the set I decide with which track I gonna start and leave all the rest open for the moment. of course there are some tracks which very often work as an opener (like the blagger remix) and some don’t (like from one cell).
A great set means for me that I played the right tracks in the right order and moment - the order is always slightly different and to be really satisfied I need to do some complex tricks on top with my two spontaneous live-elements.
its also important to mix different flavors - for example, if I drop the sexy biest after a long period of dark emotions it works like bright sunshine after a rainy day.

[soronery]

dec 20th from stimming’s advent calendar

‪#‎op1‬ ‪#‎moog‬
You may wonder what I do on the Teenage Engineering OP-1 - (Teenage Engineering) exactly: I figured that the „ape-sequencer“ for the percussion sampler is very useful when using your own samples. so I collected 8 different drum sets, ranging from handmade percussions to recordings from my drum machines. then I programmed useful ape-sequences for every key which then I play as driving percussion loops on top of my tracks. The nitro filter helps me to make them fit in my mix (its a hp/lp one with an envelope follower that goes in both directions) and the master effect gives me freedom to do really crazy things (with the cow, the grid and the phone).

The sequences themselves are kind of simple, not longer than a bar but very technoish - I gonna use them for my upcoming tracks because it works so good!
Unfortunately there’s one issue - the tempo isn’t stable, after around every 5 minutes I need to speed up or slow down the sequence, just like a dj.
I very rarely also use the synth because for melodic stuff I like more the Moog Music Inc. Moog Minimoog Voyager (who wonders).

On the moog I do everything from supporting my main ideas per track as well as using it as a tonal percussion element with short envelopes.
The Moog is at its best when used with the lfo modulating cutoff frequency or pitch via the wheel - just a tiny bit for making simple melody sounds more interesting or drastic pitch modulation with increasing speed followed by the space reverb to immediately get listeners attention