Lately, I’ve been doing a fair amount of “speed production” while on the road. This just means producing tracks with only my live set in mind. Rather than try to create something that develops over 4-7 minutes and is ready to release, I’ll create material that works really well for two minutes during a performance.
I typically would do this in a separate Set, export a stereo file, then bring it into the performance Set. But lately I’ve found a better way: work directly in the performance set. The advantage here is that I can listen to other material in my set while developing the new beat. This is really helpful because it allows me to hear how everything will mix together.
The trick to keeping this manageable is to use Group tracks:
The tracks at the far left are two Group tracks containing two different production sessions. My normal performance set begins with the track named “1 – Tracks”.
The advantage here is that you can unfold the group to work on the new beat…
…or fold it to treat the scenes as if they were clips. The group track also serves as a master channel so you can listen with some limiting to get it up to the volume of finished songs.
Once you’ve got your basic material for the new track together, just grab the group track and drag it into the browser to save the new song as its own Set.
Now the group can be deleted from your performance set.
There’s lots more details to discuss regarding this process…more tips to follow…
