14 replies to this topic

[wisefox]

thought i'd post this a) to see if i'm doing anything horribly wrong and to spark some discussion on how other people approach setting up a live set

:cans: i'm putting together a live set in ableton, but write all my music in logic.

the set consists of 6 channels covering kicks, bass, perc, hats, sfx, synth, then some 'live' channels setup for live synth, vox and guitar, plus some other bits and pieces.

8) when bouncing out each part from logic, i bypass anything on the master bus, but leave on existing compression/eq/fx on the channel strip and/or send.

import these samples into ableton into their specific areas, set them to loop*, play with the levels...  _{(*all samples loop because i want to jam out certain parts and have greater control over the set)}

??? mix doesn't sound to crash hot, things that sounded crisper and fatter in logic are now a bit muddy, play with levels/panning some more...

still unhappy, but test it out anyway - play through first 3 tracks, which includes some live synth and vocals... live synth muddys up everything, has little cut through... add compressor, still muddy. even without the live elements, not happy...

:'( i've tried this with and without a limiter on the master bus (moderate setting, not slamming), but i'd imagine most people would always play live with some kind of limiter on the master bus...

so question time:

should i be bouncing out uneffected samples and recreating channel strips / mix-busses in Live, essentially recreating any eq and compression used in the track, within Live's environment? I doubt this is the case due to the amount of CPU it would drain.

should i rethink my approach to bouncing out the various parts from logic?

will the 'live' elements like synth, guitar and vox ultimately muddy the mix - perhaps i should think about stripping back some of the un-needed elements for live play? might also be worth mentioning i don't have any hardware compressors/pre amps - only the ones on my firebox. perhaps a compressor for the synth and vox would help when playing live?

finally, how do you do it?

p.s. this probably belongs in the noob section  :-[

[Cheyne]

Great thread , live setups are always a hot topic ,  iv often been trapped by choosing the wrong method.

[wisefox]

thanks cheyne, plenty of wisdom on the topic here as well i'm sure.

a prerequisite - please don't turn this into a 'what constitutes playing live' thread - they always seem to end up that way...

[hps909]

i always bounce sans processing into live it just works a whole lot better
keep your master out of the red boost with a limiter on the main outs if you need more volume.. live clips rather nastily when it's in the red i wish the metering was a bit clearer....

i always run a good eq and a comp on the master leave comps off the channels unless you absolutely need it

[dylab]

Tom Cosm has shared a great deal on this
http://www.cosm.co.nz/

[wisefox]

Quote

Tom Cosm has shared a great deal on this
http://www.cosm.co.nz/

ah! found it - for anyone interested:

http://www.cosm.co.n...video&Itemid=94

[hps909]

Quote

i always bounce sans processing into live it just works a whole lot better
keep your master out of the red boost with a limiter on the main outs if you need more volume.. live clips rather nastily when it's in the red i wish the metering was a bit clearer....

i always run a good eq and a comp on the master leave comps off the channels unless you absolutely need it

i'll just expand on why i export sans processing usually dynamics processing ....when you process tracks your processing against the sum of the

track so if you have a compressor the master . each track is affecting how the compressor will react you take an element out of the mix the compressor will react accordingly. if you solo it will react accordingly so when you bounce a solo'd track your bouncing the settings of the comp set to react to the whole mix .. so it will behave differently when applied to a solo'd instrument...  you can have a comp / eq etc set to balance a whole mix when you solo to bounce you've taken elements that influence your final sound away which fundamentally changes the sound ...
a good blatant example you have a kick and a bass line you use eq to balance  you might cut 100hz out of your kick to give the bassline oomph ( or vice verca ) together they sound great solo'd the kick will sound thin coz you've cut a chunk out of it...  a delay might have a hpf on it to make it sit right with the context of the mix a reverb on a send might be turned up to high in the mix it sounds great solo'd it sounds washed out ...  Dynamics processors by name are dynamic they rely on the movement of sound in order to work  once they are printed to disk they become static

[dylab]

some more cosm goodness from my inbox, its aimed at beginners but could be of help

Quote

This is a free, chopped up ready to jam Ableton Live pack of my latest tune, Heaps Good Strong Board
(Download the mp3 of the tune here)
http://www.cosm.co.n...ng%20Board.mp3–
A bouncy fun sampled flooded cheeseball electro tune.

It’s aimed towards people just starting to get into performing live, or for people who are curious and want to jump head first into having lots of fun.

The zip file contains the Ableton project file, all the samples and a PDF document of how I have mapped they keys on the keyboard to various effects within the program.



New things in this pack
-          Formant style filter rack on the synth track
-          Rack on the delay channel with sweeping band pass, reverb and redux to create evolving delay tails
-          Bassline split up into individual hits and mapped to keys, so quick glitch edits of the bassline can be played real time just using standard computer keys

All effects are native to Ableton and can be run on any computer.

There is also a 20 or so minute instructional video available for streaming on the download page.

Please feel free to download this, pass it on to whoever, link it in forums/blogs, add it to your setup, remix the tune, use it to demo a product… whatever you want its all out there and open (maybe don’t use it to promote genocide plz).

Most of all, have fun!

Download the pack and view the video at http://www.cosm.co.nz/ableton

Cheers

-Tom

[lightfoot]

Tom Cosm likes to use SEX......

[wisefox]

come again? (pun intended)

[Dirt_Rock]

Yeah Ive been working on live a set recently and I had the same problem. That my tracks didn't quite have the same balls in Live as they did in Logic. Although when I have played live, with tracks from Logic in Live using Toms method of clips, I just eq'd back in some upper register freq s and added a limiter to the main output. The system that I was playing on was not so good so I don't know if it worked or not.

I also had trouble with tracks composed outside of Ableton and imported in and the Warp function freaking out any suggestions what I should do there?

These live sets ain't as easy to construct as I first thought

[wisefox]

its an art all on its own. arranging the set to allow yourself to be spontaneous, creative but in control takes a lot of time, trial and effort.

hps909 makes a really good point about bouncing sans processing, i've started doing this a lot, however i still apply processing within ableton, for example i have a send set up with an eq and compressor that i send things like synths and fx to, so the eq can roll off the lower bass and the light compression seems to gel it all together a bit. i don't know if this is right or wrong but it seems to work.

i also noticed once i started rolling the bass off on everything except bass/kick channels, the levels stopped hitting the red all the time. found this suprising because the instruments were eq'ed before bouncing so why would i need to do them again? i also put a stereo to mono plugin on the bass channel which seemed to tighten it up a bit.

in terms of the warp function, it does act a bit weird on some things, but you can generally get around it by tweaking the original bpm field or bouncing out a longer sample than what you need and changing the start/end points until the tempo aligns correctly. i think its definitely important to get the warps working on the entire set to ensure you have complete freedom when actually playing your set.

tom cosm also highlights a really cool trick in the video link that was posted earlier which instructs live to play the next clip after a certain number of bars. this is incredibly useful for me as i have a lot of vocal parts, so it means i can concentrate on singing and performing rather than physically triggering the transition from verse to chorus. i don't use it all the time, but definitely something to consider in certain parts of songs.

my biggest worry at the moment is minimising the latency, a little bit is okay when i'm just working with the loops i've bounced out, but when i start adding live guitar and vocals it can be a bit tempremental. last night my vocals were way out from the rest of the track.. a reboot fixed it but if that happened live... embaressing. i've started disabling any fx when they're not being used but not sure if its enough. (p.s. running a 1st gen macbook pro)

overall, my set is sounding a hell of a lot better than when i posted 2 weeks ago (have been working on it a lot) so keep experimenting!  :cans:

[hps909]

i construct tracks in live to play out then convert those to studio tracks not the otherway around... the beauty of that is that i can construct and mix how i like in ableton and worry about polishing them later with proper cpu intensive dynamics inside cubase.. works well i never worry about how a studio track will sound live as it's made from scratch to sound good live...

[wisefox]

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i always run a good eq and a comp on the master leave comps off the channels unless you absolutely need it

hps, out of interest what comp/limiter are you using on your master when playing live?  I'm currently using a PSP vintage warmer because it sounds a lot better than live's inbuilt, but i'm going to have to ditch it because its using up way too much CPU (like 10%)...

[hps909]

sonalksis sv315 and waves ren eq.... the sonalksis eq is a little to clean and clinical very precise though the ren eq sounds a little warmer