OK, so where were we? Before I went on that little Group track tangent I was talking about “speed production” or creating music on a short timetable, specifically for live performance. Once I’ve got the basic ideas together, the next step is to create a quick arrangement. The purpose of the arrangement is not to […]
ABOUT PLUG-IN PARAMETERS
Today’s tip isn’t really a tip. It’s a bit of background information before we get into a few related tips… When Live 8 came out, we finally got the ability to fully automate and remotely control plug-ins with greater than 128 parameters. Along with this came the configurable parameter area: For any plug-in with less […]
SAVE PARAMETER CONFIGURATION
As I’ve alluded to a couple of times already, the most complete solution to the hassles of plug-in parameter configuration is to create a Rack that contains your fully configured plug-in. The process looks like this: 1) Configure the plug-in’s parameters 2) Use the Group command to put the plug-in into a Instrument or Effect […]
ABOUT COLLABORATING
The next topic I’m going to spend a few days writing about is collaboration. In particular, we’re going to look at some of the thorny technical issues that come up when moving a Set back and forth between multiple machines, and having people both make changes to Sets on their own, which then need to […]
COLLABORATING: ANTI-FREEZE
While Freeze is a pretty great technology, expecting that it will solve all of your collaboration woes will lead to disappointment. My experience is that as Sets get large and complex, it gets easy to accidentally miss a track that needs to be frozen before you hand it off. A few thoughts to help improve […]
COLLABORATING: THE COMMITMENT ESCAPE HATCH
Some of this stuff about workflow and committing to ideas really isn’t limited to collaboration… it applies just as much when you’re working on your own. But here we are. So… Sometimes you want to commit to an idea by freezing and flattening, but you still want to leave yourself the option of going back […]
COLLABORATING: ABLETON INSTRUMENT AGGRO
If you have the Live Suite, or any of Ableton’s add-on instruments (or the Corpus effect), you have to be extra careful if you’re transferring a Set to a user that doesn’t have the same instruments. The issue is this: any set containing unauthorized instruments will be opened by Live in Demo mode – which […]
COLLABORATING: COLLECTING ALL
This tip might be a real snoozer for some of you more advanced users, but it’s one of those things that all sorts of folks aren’t completely clear on, so here goes… Live lets you drag in samples from all over your hard drive. Loops, drum hits, field recordings, whatever. When transferring a Set to […]
THE MEGA-SET
Even though I’ve described some other approaches to performance, my main tool for performance in Live is the mega-set. This just means that I keep adding new material to my set as I develop it until it eventually has hundreds of clips. If I want to change directions during a performance, it’s just a matter […]
NAVIGATING THE MEGA-SET
If you’re navigating through a set using a Launchpad or an APC-40, the obvious way to do it is using the buttons on the controller to move the colored rectangle up or down to the new location in the set. On the Launchpad, you hold down the Session button, while using the up/down buttons to […]
