in at the deep end

Hi guys, I need your help, today after 9 years of playing bass guitar for my band I told them that I want to move to a different role, playing midi keyboards etc, and having an auxilary role, where I can take a feed from the guitars, drums and vocals, experiment with that, trigger visuals and mainly play keyboard style patterns from samples via ableton live 7.

Obviiously this is going to entail training a new bass player etc, and I haven't even got any of this equipment, or play the piano.

So, I need some advice on what mid would be best for

taking samples from live 7 and playing them .

I take it I would also require a mixing desk, etc. Can i conrol multipe feeds live wth ableton?

Any avice on triggering visuals?

I would also like the band to start playing to a click track so that everything is in synch, any suggestions for hardware to make this possible?

When synths say midi in/out, does this mean you can put your own samples on them?

Money to spend roughly a grand on everyting.

Is there any midi where you can assign a different sample to every key?

Any advice much appriciated.

yamaha mg16/6fx

couple fx units of your choice

novation remote sl (dunno how it owuld be for ableton tho)

second hand sampling groovebox and a couple of guitar pedals.

the pedals can be cheap (ie behringer) because you wont be stepping on them.

getting your midi patterns in time with a live drummer is going to be a bitch tho. i know there used to be a box that did this back in the day but i dont know if there are modern equivalents

edit: sorry i missed the click track thing. that will utterly snot the feel of your band and you shouldnt be surprised if people quit over it. if you insist on doing it though, you should be able to take an output from the groove box and send it to a "distributor amp" ala "headhmone amp", which is basically a box with an input and several headphone outputs with separate level controls.

  hahathhat said:

yamaha mg16/6fx

couple fx units of your choice

novation remote sl (dunno how it owuld be for ableton tho)

thanks for the info, mixing desk thing looks the part

sorry, I should have mentioned I'm into getting an 88 key midi controller.

  analogue wings said:

second hand sampling groovebox and a couple of guitar pedals.

 

the pedals can be cheap (ie behringer) because you wont be stepping on them.

 

getting your midi patterns in time with a live drummer is going to be a bitch tho. i know there used to be a box that did this back in the day but i dont know if there are modern equivalents

 

edit: sorry i missed the click track thing. that will utterly snot the feel of your band and you shouldnt be surprised if people quit over it. if you insist on doing it though, you should be able to take an output from the groove box and send it to a "distributor amp" ala "headhmone amp", which is basically a box with an input and several headphone outputs with separate level controls.

cheers for the info, I am thinking of manipulating the sounds in abeton tho, actually taking a feedfrom a guiar say and running it through with effects in ableton

btw - MIDI is notation data and nothing else - if a synth says it has MIDI in/out it means that you can send note and timing information to control it, send note and timing information from that to something else or both at the same time. there is no audio involved in MIDI - it's basically like a sheet of music that your keyboard reads and plays along to. MIDI will also enable a synth, drum machine, sampler etc to be synced together and play along at the same tempo. to route audio into something you need a synth with audio in. a sampling synth/groovebox/workstation would be the obvious choice.

Thanks for all the info guys, well I went for Roland Juno D synth as my main board, and Roland SH101, a Roland MC-303 groovebox a M-Audio MIDI/USB lead and an Alesis iO|2 portable 2-channel USB audio interface.

I started off geting a shot of my sisters old yamaha keyboard to learn the basics, started felling my way into in and now got the toys to take it to another level. I am delighted with the Juno, the 303 and the SH101.

It's taking a bit of time to get used to weighted keys but I'm glad it's weighted, to hear the differences in the subtlties of playing. I'm having a little difficulties in trying to save my own patches in performace mode, and trying to build walls of sound with differnt patches playing simultaniously but I guess that will come in time. The preset sounds are gorgeous, the grand piano sound and the first brass are cool as you like. The 303 is mental, I knew Massive Attack used it on protection so I knew it was going to sound good, but I'm amazed at the scope this thing has. Well worth the money. The SH101 was my first synth, it needs a bit of TLC, and I'm looking to get it modified, I saw you can get more buttons on it.

Having issues with midi/abelton, maybe need to set the midi out on 303 and juno? with the usb/midi lead there is a recognition of midi tranfer, seeing level meters in abelton, wee light flashing on lead but no audio, cannot hear anything, with the alesis there is no recognition of midi tranfer, light not going on in or out, not a problem with box say guys in reverb store Glasgow, sound guys, even offered to sort it for with abelton etc if I bring my wee avant pc in to the store.

Not with the band anymore btw, just doing my own thing now ...

Apologies for double post, having problems editing on this forum.

With the Midi / usb lead the data shows capture in abelton, the keys being pressed length of press the lag /buffer seems pretty fast, obviously the lack of audibility is a problem.

with Ableton - make sure the "External Sync" option is ticked. It's on one of the drop down menu's - probably Options or MIDI menu (sorry, haven't used Ableton in a while so can't remember!).

but yeah, tick external sync and make sure the correct MIDI device is chosen in the MIDI preferences and you should be set.

  BCM said:

with Ableton - make sure the "External Sync" option is ticked. It's on one of the drop down menu's - probably Options or MIDI menu (sorry, haven't used Ableton in a while so can't remember!).

 

but yeah, tick external sync and make sure the correct MIDI device is chosen in the MIDI preferences and you should be set.

Cheers, ok getting stuff on abelton from the drum machine and synth is do-able.

There is however the lag.

Currently the best I can do is 11.6 ms overall latency, which is no good for playing live/ triggering etc.

How do people do it live with no delay.

I want to be able to press a key have an efect in abelton which sends the effected note back through the amp instantly.

On a happy note, I figured out a wee cheat to the lag, just take a feed from the mixer into the headphones, and turn down the speakers I am using for abelton.

This works for recording, I'm still beat for triggering or using vsts live.