I need ideas & advices for a building a live set

edit : sorry for the mistake in the title :/

Hey,

If you're lazy to read, just jump to the next bold section :sup:

At the moment I'm beginning to seriously think about playing my tracks live but I still have to figure out a lot of things about the configuration I could possibly use.

So far, about all my tracks are in the form of a composition / mixing session which is Reaper rewiring Renoise + two midi controlled hardware units (an Electribe SX and a DX9). I also have a BCF2000 control surface which controls Reaper's tracks (volume pan mute solo...).

I've never used Live and don't think I'll do for several reasons : I can't afford it and I like to work only with free tools or cheap tools I've bought ; my actual configuration is so far of the Live workflow that transposing all my songs in that software would be IMO a waste of time. The third reason is that I'm a cunt and every time a lot of people use a soft for one purpose, I use a less famous one (Examples : Reason or Cubase -> Renoise ; Pro Tools -> Reaper...)

Anyway, I really like my composition / mixing configuration because it's smooth and allows me to do everything I want from the scratch of a track to the final mix tweaks I make on its master channel.

For that reason, I'm sure I could make out of each of these sessions an alternative "live" session.

So far my idea would be to determine for each song the elements with which I'd like to interact, to keep them tweakable, and to render the elements that I know will only be played to wav files. Then I'd "cut" each track in several parts depending on its construction, and play loop each track, performing the progression to the next part with the elements I kept as tweakable.

Well, this is quite imprecise at the moment, mostly because the music I make since four years now never has been about anything "live", but more likely about programming.

So here is my questions for those who use a DAW as a main live tool : how do you proceed and what way do you "perform" your songs ?

thanks

My general philosophy is don't make things harder than they need to be. Ableton live will do exactly what you want... It was made for that.

If you want to use something else... Go for it... But really why spend extra time and effort to make something new, when an entire company has dedicated themselves to precisely what you want to do?

Just saying...

Also, I used to be exclusively based in Logic for many many years. I kept ignoring live. I got it in version 8, and I've been kicking myself for putting it off for so long. Not only for live use, but for composing now a well... It has changed my process for the better...faster workflow, the ability to perform ideas easier (I never used to perform anything... I always entered with a mouse) and doing so has made my ear stronger, and the result is more musical outcomes.

This took time, btw, but it was worth it.

ya live is really the perfect tool for performing. It's also great at controlling external gear. You could save out midi loops, and pop them in as clips in live, the set up your clips into scenes, so you could have some control over the structure when playing out. Skip things that seem too long, extend things that work well. It's even handy for building transitions between tracks, sending program changes to gear (electribe pattern changes) and still gives you flexibility to improvise.

I'm a big hypocrite because I use logic only ATM. I would love to get into using live more though. I just never have the impetus to get over the learning hump. It's real fun though for external gear. For instance you can have one track playing notes and another sending CC data and then trigger them completely separately from each other...

Install solitaire.

LAWLoTAIRE, I would discuss my unorthodox live setup with Reaper but it's a bit of a secret weapon I reckon innit? Heh, JK, will come back when I have time to explain, gotta go.

I wrote a ridiculously long post about this and all my thinking that went into it here:

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/57608-whats-your-live-setup/page__view__findpost__p__1366931

The gear doesn't matter as much as wearing helmets or masks with blinking lights and/or performing in giant geometric structures.

I think a lot of other people cant afford Ableton Live either but that doesn't stop them using it

  On 10/5/2011 at 12:30 AM, scones to die for said:

The gear doesn't matter as much as wearing helmets or masks with blinking lights and/or performing in giant geometric structures.

Pretty much. I'm in the process of talking to a costume designer, his first prototype looks like battle armour, with automotive chameleon paint and EL wire that lights up in time to the music. Looks AWESOME. Coupled with my guitar w/synth pickup and piano key necktie controller for my monotron, I don't think people will give a fuck that I'm basically playing over pre-rendered backing tracks!

I'm sure there's demo versions of live available which you could try to see if it fits. No use in not trying things out first before rejecting them.

Ive seen a few people using renoise live, and very well too. friend of mine, Hitori Tori uses it, search for him on YouTube. Not entirely sure how he syncs projects for beat matching and stuff, but basically has several instances running and tabs between them.

I guess the only real thing to consider is not to over complicate things. It's all well and good to have an incredibly complex and versatile live setup. But in an actual performance, streamlined and efficient is key imo. That goes for everything, how much control you have over things, how many features your setup has, how easy those features are to use, how much you want to improvise, and how much kit you want to carry about.

if possible, ditch the outboard stuff. a few reasons why.

First off, unless you're playing locally, the added weight of carting a tonne of kit about sucks.

Second, good luck finding a venue with adequate space to set up all your kit. There are some moments when there's loads of table space and pre show prep time to get everything all nicely installed. There are infinatly more times when you'll have to squeeze into a small space about 10 mins before you're supposed to play.

Also, do you really want to be taking some of your prized possessions on trains/planes/long car trips, subjecting them to care free luggage handlers, promoters, venue owners, the outside world? leave the nice stuff at home, it will only get broken otherwise.

What you've written about breaking the tracks into stems, and allowing a degree of control over arrangement makes perfect sense, and I imagine the route a lot of people take. It provides you the opportunity to adjust mixes to taste on the night, skip bits you decide won't go down well, and stretch the sections you get a good reaction from.

one other thing that might be helpful, a lot of it comes down to your personality. some people are definitely hype people when they play. simple set up with a lot of energy to get the crowd excited. Others are more focussed heavy concentration and busy busy.

If you're the type of person who's gonna want to be pretty animated on stage, make sure to keep your stuff relatively simple. Simple enough to give you the time to jump about and have a dance. if you are, for want of a better word, a bit shy. Don't feel pressurised to act any different. It gives you more opportunity to really fuck with stuff, and also pay attention to what the crowd is digging, not just what you're enjoying.

Hope this is helpful, good luck with it, hope you have fun doing it!

To Kcinsu & slightlydrybeans

Well, I don't think getting onto Ableton Live would be especially simpler than continuing using Reaper mainly for two reasons : first, the transfer of all my songs (which includes tracks with vsts, midi items, media files...) from a soft to another could be quite complicated for matters of compatibility ; second, I know Reaper and know it's hugely tweakable so I'm sure I can set a pc keyboard + midi controller configuration that would be both simple and versatile (I just have to thought and practise). Also my music is full of little variations which IMO are very important for the tracks and I wonder if Live is designed to handle that kind of stuff (but that's more a thing to figure out than a certitude ; actually I wonder if handling live tons of programmed variations would be easy in any software).

My point is I'm sure Live has a lot of features which would be simple and efficient to use, but I'd be much happier if I would determine which elements I want to interact with and if I could create myself an easy-to-use and efficient workflow out of that myself. I think it's always better to use tools that do what you want because you've chosen them according to that, more than managing a way to do what you want from pre-aimed tools. But I know this may actually results in more headaches that it should ; still, I don't know, I'd like to try anyway because I'm not sure it would be so difficult to reach.

To Blanket Fort Collapse

Coooowl, I'm looking forward to your post

To acid1

Thanks for your instructive post. It remembers me that CPU usage is an important point to keep in mind

To scones to die for & modey

Yeah, the visual aspect of the show - and all the things attached to it that aren't properly musical ; like I don't know, weird sentences to shout at the audience or something lol - are for sure a thing that's important for me but I didn't really think about it yet as I still have no idea what I'll be able to perform musically !

To Jonas

I didn't talk about it in my first post but I actually think I'll remove Renoise from my configuration. Basically, I make all the rhythmic stuff of my tracks with Renoise, and I don't have any parameter to play on on the fly in it (that's a shame because the programming ability of that soft just kicks asses). So for matters of CPU consumption, I'll render all the rhythmic tracks to wave in my Reaper session.

To TechDiff

Thanks for all your advices about envisaging all that live set.

I agree with you when you talk about the fact I shouldn't bring too much stuff in a concert. I wonder if going for a laptop + soundcard (presonus firebox) + BCF2000 for tracks control + Electribe SX for playing with the synth parts and FX is still too much. At least I can carry all that alone.

I don't know which kind of live performer I would actually be, but I think what I want is a good dose of "performance" ; I'd like to have the feeling I can control the tracks and re-arrange them "on the fly" more or less the way I want to. I know this is gonna be hard but I want to practise alone in my room once I'll feel my configuration is right.

Also, when I'll feel comfortable on the stage, I know I'll want to be all about dancing and moving like a mad man but I don't want that to happen at the detriment of what I'll musically perform. Aphex wouldn't agree with that

  On 10/5/2011 at 3:58 AM, modey said:

  On 10/5/2011 at 12:30 AM, scones to die for said:

The gear doesn't matter as much as wearing helmets or masks with blinking lights and/or performing in giant geometric structures.

Pretty much. I'm in the process of talking to a costume designer, his first prototype looks like battle armour, with automotive chameleon paint and EL wire that lights up in time to the music. Looks AWESOME. Coupled with my guitar w/synth pickup and piano key necktie controller for my monotron, I don't think people will give a fuck that I'm basically playing over pre-rendered backing tracks!

Nice maan! Don't forget to get a lot of cheap gear (some ideas are in the 'why do hipsters think it's cool to use shit equipment'-thread), even if it is not connected or doesn't work, it's important to have as much out-dated stuff as possible!

I just wanted to say I eventually considered the eventuality of using Ableton Live and I'm setting it up right now.

But I'm still curious about the way you managed to configure your Reaper, Blanket Fort Collapse !

  On 10/5/2011 at 12:05 AM, acid1 said:

I wrote a ridiculously long post about this and all my thinking that went into it here:

 

http://forum.watmm.c...ost__p__1366931

I loved this post and it really helped me out when I was setting up a live set a while back. I've done something similar a few times since.

My only thing is that when it really comes down to it I don't know what to fidget with other than transitions. I love all of my tracks the way they are and that's why I made them that way. :/ Maybe I should design tracks specifically for live performance. Or maybe make live mixes of tracks that are geared for playing live.

First of all, thanks to all the comments you posted here or on Acid1 thread, they're much helpful and give me a basis for the set I'm going to build.

I think I eventually won't go for a Reaper setup, unless Blanket Fort Collapse has the key for something stable and smooth as fuck ( ) but I doubt it'll be as smooth as it could be with Live for what I'd like to do (the fact is I quickly tried to do something in Reaper out of midi loops sent to Electribe SX1 synth parts, which audio turns back in the soundcard but this is not properly "smooth as fuck". There are some drops that make the electribe don't receive some notes-off - things like that).

Anyway, I started my tries with rendering that song (advertisement inside) into tracks (3 synths tracks, one of whom is a midi track sent to the electribe ; 3 drum tracks (kick, snare, and hhat+else)). I suppose everyone who already played with pure electronic live set will suppose that choice of stems is pointless but, I don't know, it seemed to make sense for me back then.

Then I made a session out of loops from that tracks and tried to play it, messing up with transitions, track mutes, filter of the acid line in my electribe (which is actually a very inflexible acid line lol). After some tries, I found it kinda unpleasant / hard to play with.

And above all unnatural

Because I think what I was trying to do finally was to recreate the song exactly the way I composed it ; "in live" this time. But this is for sure not a good definition of what a live set should be, as there's nothing "live" about having your tools prepared for making a thing which is already wrote, and which I think I don't want to change actually.

So I figured out that what I should work for is a flexible workflow, more loop-based. So here's what I'm planning to do, I'd be glad to hear what you guys think about it :

My equipment would be a laptop running Live, BCF 2000 midi controller, and Electribe SX1.

In Live, all the melodies of my songs would be available as audio or midi clips going to VSTs or electribe. These clips would be present in an arrangement window which would contain all the set more or less programmed in a way I could just press play and let the thing go until the end.

All the rhythmic stuff would be present in some patterns of the electribe (several patterns per song), and would be called by live arrangement window via some program changes events.

Then, everytime I want to change what is written in the arrangement window, I switch to session mode (which is a "mirror" of the arrangement window, like the way you use it Acid1) and can mess up with drum parts of the electribe, parameters of the synths, tracks I want to mute, etc...

But all of that would imply a Live file with A LOT of audio clips, VSTs... I don't know if you guys make all a live set with only one Ableton Live file or if there are alternative and less CPU consuming ways to achieve that.

Anyway, I think all this setup is going to give me a lot of work and practise, but if I succeed in re-writing my songs in a simple, more loop based way it could be awesome because I could for example perform some quite "time killing" and good sounding transitions from one song to another, with for example making the melodies of the second song beginning with the rhythmic of the first one... at any moment I could write live a rhythmic that comes to my mind.

And if it works, I think I could replace the electribe with a MPC in the future, in order to have a more flexible rhythm tool.

Ok I just need to stop that post or no-one is going to read it.

thanks ayway

Interesting thread. This one and the other one.

Well, I'm in quite the same situation here. Only that I use Reason, not Reaper. But I have no idea how to set up things for a live setup: 1) open multiple reason files, sync them and use my midi devices to change stuff and mix one to another 2) save elements of the tracks and mix them in traktor or in a big Reason patch with a lot of effects and stuff 3) switch to ableton live

The first choice would be my favourite one. Has anyone figured out performing a live set with Reason? Any ideas? Antape how does your setup go?

  On 10/8/2011 at 2:33 AM, wahrk said:

  On 10/5/2011 at 12:05 AM, acid1 said:

I wrote a ridiculously long post about this and all my thinking that went into it here:

 

http://forum.watmm.c...ost__p__1366931

 

I loved this post and it really helped me out when I was setting up a live set a while back. I've done something similar a few times since.

 

My only thing is that when it really comes down to it I don't know what to fidget with other than transitions. I love all of my tracks the way they are and that's why I made them that way. :/ Maybe I should design tracks specifically for live performance. Or maybe make live mixes of tracks that are geared for playing live.

Cheers man, glad I should help, I overthought about my setup so much that I'm glad I posted it for my own sanity and for others.

One thing I should mention is that I have far less follow commands these days then normal, but as a result I end up playing much longer then I should, I have people actually come up and tell me I'm playing too long, which is a good thing because before I'd always end far too early and have no idea what to do.

As far as fidgeting, all my songs are basically 2 channels on my APC, i have 6 more to work with visually. One thing I do, is load up breaks/drum loops/odd fx in different channels. I set them all to be launched in legato mode via ableton, and set the launch quanitzation to something small like 1/4th. This allows me to basically press buttons at random to add subtle elements while i'm looping other sections of my music, sometimes I will even mute my own tracks and just mess with loops in legato mode on stage for a bit before I switch back to my own music. I have a "live" fx rack set up on each channel that basically assigns fx to each knob. Its rather difficult to explain, but google ableton's effects chains. Makes tweaking stuff easy.

The ultimate trick that I'm willing to share is that actually made a max4live patch that (when enabled) will make it so if i press a button on my APC it will light up a random color and/or blink, if i press the button again it turns off................. yes this is specifically so it makes it look like I'm doing stuff even though I'm not. I've had many musicians approach me and ask what I was doing, i usually talk about FFTs and granual binaural synthesis triggers and stuff. Really I'm just drunk and turning lights on and off.

Here is hitoritori showing off a Renoise performance, check his channel for several more examples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxNMWGm_ZhU

The story behind this video is that from this clip in the show "lie to me" the set designer or whoever used a copy of Renoise as a fake "lie detector" type software and obviously got caught by the Renoise community.

Here are some interesting links about Reason as a live tool:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov06/articles/reasontech_1106.htm

http://acid42.valdellon.com/?p=178

http://acid42.valdellon.com/?p=188

Anyway if someone figured out his own Reason setup for live performances, please share!

  On 11/30/2011 at 6:39 PM, tokn said:

Antape how does your setup go?

To be honest I didn't go much further. I'm also occupied in (slowly) making an EP and I seem to be unable to make the two things in the same time.

Anyway, since my latest attempts and experiments with ableton + my electribe, I think I'm going to minimize quite much the part of Ableton in the set, and make the Electribe being the master in synchronisation. Basically I think I'm going to transpose my tracks the more I can on the electribe, and every synth or track I can't make with it will be an audio or midi clip in ableton ; but I don't want to use it too much because I think it's less "efficient" than the electribe. But maybe I still didn't get the way I should use that soft.

I already made almost full tracks just with the electribe and loved it for the live control it provided me, so why should I completely switch to a software ?..

Good luck with your own live setup anyway. I almost don't know Reason so I can't really help you but IMO the most important thing is the access to the control. Like, if you have to use several buttons to access a specific parameter of whatever synth, or worse, TO USE THE MOUSE, that's just bad. And I use the mouse dramatically too much when making my "studio" tracks, but I think it just doesn't fit in a live performance. Too indirect.

I saw Msak perform a while back and he had a MPC1000, a small doepfer and a monotron. Was amazing. I guess there was a little mixer in there some place.