ableton live & seamless looping/layering workflow

I'm basically looking tips for how other people use Live for looping and sampling hardware so that the end result is a simple but capable workflow. My basic idea is to create a project structure where I can map stuff to a controller or two and do most things without touching the laptop at all.

Right now what I've got is basically this:

• 16 MIDI tracks mapped to my Korg Micro-X multi mode - each track controls a separate instrument.
• 16 audio tracks for recording audio from the Korg, also each track meant for instruments 1-16. When playing I basically arm the audio and midi tracks and first record the midi loop., then record the loop to audio and stop the midi clip.

This works well until I feel that I want to overdub a second melody layer to the audio clip that's already playing using the same instrument. A simple example would be like when I start a drum track with hi-hats and want to add snares.

So far I've come up with two ways to do that:

1. Have every audio track as a group buss instead - each new audio clip would then be recorded to a new sub-track in the group. I think this sucks because I'd have to create a huge amount of extra tracks beforehand and starting/stopping stuff using my novation launchpad would require scrolling/paging like a madman each time.
2. Add more audio tracks and just record the "overdub" audio to the extra tracks, and whenever there's a need to record extra audio, I'd put it in a track that's "vacant" and not playing anything yet. I think this sucks because if I ever had any filters or eqs on the audio tracks, I would have to keep those settings in sync when recording new audio. Also, making sense of a project afterwards and untangling all the parameter automations is a huge pain in the ass if one track contains the audio for several different instruments.

There's also the thing that I before I fade up the newly recorded audio, I want to be able to listen to it on the headphones using cue first, so if I was doing a live impro, the audience wouldn't have to hear me noodling for the right drum sound. And an important requirement is also that mapping that workflow to an external controller should definitely not end up being some Mortal Kombat fatality style clusterfuck.

I'm getting the feeling that what I need is to use Live's Looper device. I think there was a tutorial where the guy used 4 Looper instances in a rack, so that he could have several loops on running on the same track. I can kind of see it solving most of the problem - there would still be a limit on the "layers" per track - but it could work. What I'm kind of worried about though is that having like 16x4 instances of the device running all the time is going to be bad for CPU performance.

Is there some easier way to achieve what I'm looking for? Thanks for any advice. 

I'd love to see a snapshot of this set up.

Hm. I may be missing something here so don't take this as me being flippant...why are you playing MIDI tracks then recording them to a separate audio track? Why not just play the clip in its MIDI track and let it continue to play there? If you were to do that I think you'd solve half your problems immediately. Especially with Push, you can do exactly what you're wanting to do (write, play, add-in/edit melodies on the fly, etc.) very very easily. Of course a lot (probably all) of the functionality of a Push can be mapped to any MIDI device, if you know what you're looking for with that.

I've barely messed with the Cue settings but I think it's possible to do what you're describing with that. Can't much help you there, sorry.

Live's Looper is pretty solid especially considering what it's doing and how stable it is (I think there's a touch of latency introduced of course but it's not been a problem for me yet, though I use it for ~10 second clips at most), but I'm not sure it's the best solution. I've never tried more than maybe 3-4 Loopers at once (one on master and others on tracks/groupings/return tracks), but I'd bet you're right that it would really start to eat up CPU usage if you had too many at once.

Also, are you really using 16 tracks at a time? Do you have drum bits routed through separate tracks? That seems crazy to try and coordinate for playing live/jamming, but my brain no big 

  On 8/21/2017 at 11:22 PM, auxien said:

Hm. I may be missing something here so don't take this as me being flippant...why are you playing MIDI tracks then recording them to a separate audio track? Why not just play the clip in its MIDI track and let it continue to play there? If you were to do that I think you'd solve half your problems immediately. Especially with Push, you can do exactly what you're wanting to do (write, play, add-in/edit melodies on the fly, etc.) very very easily. Of course a lot (probably all) of the functionality of a Push can be mapped to any MIDI device, if you know what you're looking for with that.

I decided to record both MIDI and audio loops for a couple of reasons:

1. The Micro-X multi mode has no track EQ and I will want to mess with lows or highs for individual tracks while jamming and mixing later in the process. So sooner or later I'll have to record the MIDI to audio - I chose sooner. Also by looping audio instead of MIDI in Live I can send individual tracks to Ableton effects busses.
2. The Micro-X also has like 64 note limited polyphony, and I tend to use long release times for some droning sounds. If I am playing other tracks through the synth at the same time, that limit fills up quick. At least I'm pretty sure that effect was noticeable when I was working on a project this weekend.
3. I have this dream where I can just pick up my laptop, disconnect all external stuff and still keep working on the same project without having to go through the process of rendering every piece of MIDI into audio again.
4. I keep the MIDI loops because that's like the notation score for my project. As you said, I can always take the MIDI and arrange existing clips for new instruments or build new loops with some mousing around. Also good for removing glitch notes from solos etc. This proved itself this weekend when I needed to go from 90 to 95 bpm and Ableton's warp was making audio weirdly glitchy so I just re-recorded all the loops.

So far I've checked out a couple of Looper videos on YouTube, but it really seems that it's not the kind of thing I am looking for, mainly because you have to drag the audio into a clip.

I think it's definitely possible to somehow fix up three tracks so that the first two are recording into the third, record the "overdub" clip and then crossfade smoothly. It should also be possible to automate/map this workflow so it's not a clusterfuck of clicking around each time.

I don't play 16 tracks at a time, but some projects get up to 9-10. I just picked 16 because it matches the amount of tracks in the Micro-X. I thought I'd figure out the workflow and then just hook up all the tracks so in the future I won't need to do it again if I get constrained at 8 or something.

As for drum bits I actually sampled a bunch of kits from the synth, so I'm using them from Drum Racks instead. If I get this looping thing figured out I think I'll go back to using drum sounds straight from the Micro-X because I can mess around with the sound using sends and filters.

  On 8/21/2017 at 10:59 PM, Salvatorin said:

I'd love to see a snapshot of this set up.

I can post some screenshots and an empty Live project file later when I get home from work. 

Regarding this:

  Quote

This proved itself this weekend when I needed to go from 90 to 95 bpm and Ableton's warp was making audio weirdly glitchy so I just re-recorded all the loops.

It might be worth trying a different Warp mode (Beats / Tones / Texture / Re-Pitch / Complex / Complex Pro) depending on the type of material

Please imagine this post being read in the shittiest nasal voice low-quality muffled laptop microphone recorded sound of a youtube tutorial.

Basically here's what you are seeing on the screenshots:

1. All MIDI is split into notes and CC (tracks "all cc" and "all notes" in the midi routing group). Only receives channel 1 because that's what my Microkey is sending. I use the pizMidi plugins to filter midi, although it seems that this setup also stops pitch bend from getting through so I'm probably going to put the midi splitting into the Pure Data patch that's receiving and mangling MIDI from my bespoke Doepfer PE knob thing with a numpad taped on it (the numpad sends MIDI thanks to Controllermate).
2. MIDI notes go in to tracks N1-N16, MIDI CC goes to tracks C1-C16 (each track outputs to the Micro-X on channel 1-16 correspondingly). I've mapped some keyboard keys to toggle record arm for both N1/C1 pairs. This is the solution for my earlier problem that I wanted to mess with knobs while the MIDI clip with notes was playing - thanks to the splitting of notes and CC it now works the way I want. It's also good that note MIDI clips don't get any CC recorded in them, so I don't have to scratch my head and look for weird modulation anomalies when I start a clip.
3. Ideally, all audio would go to the tracks Audio 1-8 (or 1-16) and each track would only contain clips of one instrument. How to seamlessly add new layers to one track without too much fuss is what I'm currently trying to figure out.

I got an idea while writing this post though: I could just keep all the MIDI clips playing while their corresponding audio loops are playing. I would only have to block or mute the MIDI tracks. That would kind of solve the issue of having to merge two audio clips together - I would still have to figure out some way to "merge" MIDI clips together, but that's kind of easier because I could just copy paste when all else fails.

Maybe I'm just overthinking all this shit...

BTW mcbpete - thanks for the suggestion, I'll try to keep that in mind the next time I run into this.

midi jam template.alp.zipFetching info...

  On 8/22/2017 at 3:52 AM, thawkins said:

 

  On 8/21/2017 at 11:22 PM, auxien said:

Hm. I may be missing something here so don't take this as me being flippant...why are you playing MIDI tracks then recording them to a separate audio track? Why not just play the clip in its MIDI track and let it continue to play there? If you were to do that I think you'd solve half your problems immediately. Especially with Push, you can do exactly what you're wanting to do (write, play, add-in/edit melodies on the fly, etc.) very very easily. Of course a lot (probably all) of the functionality of a Push can be mapped to any MIDI device, if you know what you're looking for with that.

 

I decided to record both MIDI and audio loops for a couple of reasons:

1. The Micro-X multi mode has no track EQ and I will want to mess with lows or highs for individual tracks while jamming and mixing later in the process. So sooner or later I'll have to record the MIDI to audio - I chose sooner. Also by looping audio instead of MIDI in Live I can send individual tracks to Ableton effects busses.
2. The Micro-X also has like 64 note limited polyphony, and I tend to use long release times for some droning sounds. If I am playing other tracks through the synth at the same time, that limit fills up quick. At least I'm pretty sure that effect was noticeable when I was working on a project this weekend.
3. I have this dream where I can just pick up my laptop, disconnect all external stuff and still keep working on the same project without having to go through the process of rendering every piece of MIDI into audio again.
4. I keep the MIDI loops because that's like the notation score for my project. As you said, I can always take the MIDI and arrange existing clips for new instruments or build new loops with some mousing around. Also good for removing glitch notes from solos etc. This proved itself this weekend when I needed to go from 90 to 95 bpm and Ableton's warp was making audio weirdly glitchy so I just re-recorded all the loops.

So far I've checked out a couple of Looper videos on YouTube, but it really seems that it's not the kind of thing I am looking for, mainly because you have to drag the audio into a clip.

I think it's definitely possible to somehow fix up three tracks so that the first two are recording into the third, record the "overdub" clip and then crossfade smoothly. It should also be possible to automate/map this workflow so it's not a clusterfuck of clicking around each time.

 

I don't play 16 tracks at a time, but some projects get up to 9-10. I just picked 16 because it matches the amount of tracks in the Micro-X. I thought I'd figure out the workflow and then just hook up all the tracks so in the future I won't need to do it again if I get constrained at 8 or something.

 

As for drum bits I actually sampled a bunch of kits from the synth, so I'm using them from Drum Racks instead. If I get this looping thing figured out I think I'll go back to using drum sounds straight from the Micro-X because I can mess around with the sound using sends and filters.

Keeping the MIDI loops is great. Rendering every clip to audio all the time is not. It can be done, but it's going to get fucking messy. If you want to do that  though, go for it, but there's no simple way that I've ever seen to do what you're wanting.

Are you using an External Instrument device to play/process the audio from each separate MIDI track? With that you can process audio and control MIDI all from the same track...while you're connected to the Micro-X that should be your best way. That'll solve the problems of EQing and sending individual tracks to effects busses...but you still need separate tracks to record audio, of course. But imo that's something you shouldn't be doing very often...each their own of course :)

The only thing I can think of is to map some sort of macro "record all" button to your Micro-X. Either to record all tracks into their audio tracks, or to record only the active clip to its corresponding audio track. I'm pretty sure I've seen the second one as a Max4Live device, or perhaps a for-sale device, at some point but I can't seem to find it right now. Something like that might save you some time. Otherwise I think you're probably stuck chasing the dream described in 3) because that's what it is...a dream ;)

I don't feel it's much of a hassle to record each midi clip to audio really, because once the midi is playing, it just takes two taps on the launchpad to get it to an audio loop.

I'm not using the External Instrument because it is basically useless for what I want to do. The reason is that the Micro-X only has one stereo out that I use to record the sound, but it outputs the mix of all 16 instruments. So if I have 16 External Instruments hooked up, each time I do something on one midi track, all of the Instruments receive audio and would have to be muted. I feel it's meant for the cases where you hook up one midi channel to one audio input to record the sound of one instrument - I have 16 midi channels going through one input, so it's crucially different.

I don't understand your "record all" idea though. I already record all clips first as midi, then as audio. The question is how to smoothly overlay new audio from the same instrument to an already playing clip. Thanks for mentioning Max4Live though. I don't have it in my Live, because I was a cheapskate and only got the no frills Standard version, but now that I think of it, I can probably rig up something using the IAC drivers and Pure Data.

Here's the scenario I'm imagining:

1. Track A1 is playing audio clip 1, track N1A is playing it's corresponding midi clip.
2. I record another midi clip to track N1B.
3. Track X is receiving midi from both track N1A and N1B. I record the combination of those clips as a new clip there.
4. Track X is sending midi to ALL NOTES, which routes the combined midi back to N1A, and I record it as a midi clip there as well.
5. Now I can stop the clip in N1B and record the new audio to A1.
6. ** somehow all the above steps could be automated by some clever midi routing changes using pure data **
7. Profit & lush tunes!

Hmm, this is indeed quite fucked up and convoluted.

Edit: I'll just go to sleep now and maybe the gods will smile on me and reveal the secret in my dreams.

OK so kind of got it to work like this: I made a group with 2 audio tracks - external input and a dummy track which receives from a return track ©. I set all the tracks I wanted to record clips into to receive audio from the group. So each time I would want to layer new midi, I would first send it to return C, record a copy of the clip to the dummy track, then arm the original track and stop the original clip that was playing. Now I can record new midi and audio on top of a copy of the original loop and be good to go. Essentially the dummy track functions as a copy-paste buffer and I can route any track into the send buss to be mixed with incoming audio from the synth.

While this sounds kind of good, there's something weird going on with the audio - after three layerings I'm hearing a sort of buzz in my left channel, so I guess it's amplifying some sound card noise. Also, now when I'm at three looping layers, I'd want to fade out the first two, but since theyre all in the same audio clip, it's not possible this way.

So in conclusion I'm probably going to have to try something else. I think I should pivot to MIDI and figure out some way to have several clips playing at once which I could then individually mute or mess with the note velocities to fade in and out. Live doesn't support multiple clips playing on the same track so it seems I'll have to figure out how to build a set with track groupings in a sane way.