Ableton Live!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > Ableton Live!

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

stun runner posted:

Also, if you have an external synth or use Reason rewired into Ableton, there's a Live instrument called "External Instrument" that basically lets you use a hardware synth or a rewired Reason synth like a native Live instrument, MIDI roll and all. You still have to record to a separate audio track but this way is very simple and I didn't know about it until recently.

This was the best thing when I discovered this. Previous to it I had reason rewired up and had tracks per element in reason, one midi out and one audio in. Then I saw a vid on youtube using this. I kicked myself, hard. It rules.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2009 15:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:20

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I use a tandem of ableton and logic. essentially I compose in ableton because i love it's streamlined composer interface, then i export each track and mix in logic because i prefer it's more traditional layout for mixing etc. Both programmes are great. I might actually look into rewiring ableton into logic, just to see what happens there.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2009 13:35

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

MrTheDevious posted:

I'm pretty sure this is a question I'm going to get laughed at for asking, but hey, gotta start somewhere...

For some reason, any time I export a song to a wav, it absolutely crushes my low end. The kick drum all but disappears. Am I missing some trick to this or do I just have to compress the gently caress out of them and boost the gain through the roof? Listening to a song in Ableton sounds fine, but listening to the exported wav sounds like total poo poo

Sounds like there's a problem with the export - it should just sound as it does in ableton. Don't start compressing stuff for the sake of it...

# ¿ Aug 4, 2009 10:11

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

MrTheDevious posted:

That's what keeps confusing me. I've tried drat near everything and nothing works except compressing and boosting the gain, and then it sounds like lovely pop music

Are you on Live 8? If you want you could upload it, or a portion of it, and i'll try and do an export, that way we'll know if it's your computer or the project file. It's sort of difficult to tell without having a look.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2009 09:41

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Ben and Stew posted:

Ok so I have a problem that perhaps one of you can help me with. I unfortunately bought Logic Studio 9 with the impression that "full Rewire support" meant that Logic Pro and Mainstage 2 could be slaved to Ableton Live like Reason can be. Apparently, that is not true, and you can only use mainstage 2 and logic as a rewire master, which unfortunately means that my hopes of slaving Logic's drum machine Ultrabeat to Live's clock. However, Mainstage a pretty flexible program, so i think I will be able to trick it, if I can do a certainly something in Live.

tldr: I need Live to be able to send some kind of MIDI message to Mainstage to indicate the kind of rapid changes in tempo that are able to be achieved through renaming the scenes to their respective tempo and time signatures. Can you make a MIDI out that sends that kind of data?

Would the IAC Bus be able to do this? you configure it in audio midi settings on the mac. I think it functions as a virtual midi cable between programs. Not sure about the clock, though. Hmmm.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2009 00:22

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

h_double posted:

Live can do MIDI sync via either MIDI Clock (master or slave) or MIDI Timecode (MTC) (slave only) protocols; check the "Synchronizing via MIDI" section in the Live manual. I've found MIDI sync can be a pain in the rear end to get set up, but I've only really used it between hardware devices (not with a virtual MIDI cable situation) but it's worth a try.

I've been alright with the sync so far, I run an ensemble with three laptops all synced to one master laptop, it's pretty groovy. But It would be pretty cool for mainstage to run as a rewire slave, just to be able to use the logic synths with the ableton front end, for composing. ES2 in Live...mMmmmmMMmMm.....

# ¿ Aug 6, 2009 10:18

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

maffew buildings posted:

HOW THE gently caress DO I EXPORT A SET WITH SAMPLES, ETC? ANSWER, ONE OF YOU loving KNOWS HOW

what a thoroughly delightful chap.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2009 19:15

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

squidgee posted:

Or you could always just load the white noise sample that comes in the Ableton library into a Simpler and go hog wild.

Does this only come with Live Suite? I can't seem to find it.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2009 21:43

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Something tells me I really should get max for live as a good way of getting into MAX/MSP. But it's more money and as much as I love live I really don't use it enough anyway. arrghhh!

# ¿ Sep 12, 2009 12:42

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Yoozer posted:

I can only hope that they set something up like how Reaktor User Ensembles are done now with Native Instruments, only hopefully with a better interface. Create your thingy, upload and share immediately.

I wonder if there will be a trial of max for live. i really can't see myself forking out for it right off the bat for something I might not use.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2009 17:25

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

For those that can't quite justify a full APC40...

http://www.ableton.com/launchpad

# ¿ Oct 1, 2009 19:14

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I've not even had chance to have a full read about it yet, haha.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2009 20:21

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Yeah, I want one of those controllers now. Will see how I get on with the APC40 I have access too first.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2009 16:55

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I'd love to get one of those launchpads, but i'm getting gear lust. It's not actually going to enable me to write better electronic music, because I suck at it. Sigh.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2009 14:25

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I have a question about drum racks.

If I drop a sample onto the rack's grid, I am assuming it is essentially just putting that sample into a simpler. This works fine with my trigger pads, however not quite how I want it. It's almost like it's in 'gate' mode, where the sample only plays for as long as I hold the pad down. I'd like to just hit the pad and trigger the sample for it's full length, for programming beats. The only way I can see of defeating this is to drop an impulse onto a rack grid, but this seems like it might be a bit of a waste of processing power, plus you don't get the control you do over the sample as with simpler. Is it a toss up between the two i'm going ti have to live with, or am I missing something crucial? Perhaps my mindset to programming beats is wrong.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2009 14:26

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Rkelly posted:

Look on sampler and change the release time to a however long you need it to be.

You can play a 25 second sample all you got to do is increase release time.

Oh yeah, thanks. Now I feel stupid

Lewk fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Oct 6, 2009

# ¿ Oct 6, 2009 15:40

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I may be goign about this the wrong way, but is there a way to do sort of 'logic' operations in Live? sort of like Follow on actions I guess. I'll explain what I have here.

3 kick drum patterns, all triggering the one kick drum.
1 kick pattern which is very low, rolled off at 138hz, to provide some 'subliminal energy' if you will. Obviously this creates a bit of a mess at the low end with 2 kick patterns, so I do the opposite filtering on the first three kicks. this unmesses the low end. However, when the 4/4 kick pattern is playing, i'd like ableton to automatically only use the filtered drums.

so basically, play patterns 1-3, IF kick 2 is playing, only play patterns 3-7. this probably doesn't make sense but i'm trying to explain it as best i can...

# ¿ Oct 9, 2009 16:57

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Computer Jones posted:

I'm a little confused here, but maybe you could use sidechaining to mute one set of drums while the other is playing?

I thought about sidechaining. I'll try to re-explain and see if it makes more sense.

I have 2 midi tracks. They both send midi data to the same drum rack. One of them contains six clips, which are really 2 sets of three clips, because each one contains the same rhythm information, just triggering different drums (the different drums are filtered) The other just contains one clip, a 4 to the floor kick pattern, with a lot of low end. If this one pattern is playing, i'd only like the filtered three drum patterns to play. if it is not playing, I would like the non filtered patterns playing.

I suspect I should just sidechain an auto filter to kick in over the regular beats, triggered by the one clip.

I'm sure there is a more efficient way of going about it, but it's turned more into a thought experiment for me.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 16:48

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Mandals posted:

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but here is a really succinct and amazingly informative tutorial on sidechain compression: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQnOQWLURFU

I've had it explained to me 1000 times without success, but this video singlehandedly made it all click.

He also has a kickass name.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2009 11:01

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I don't quite get what the bottom left corner button on the drum matrix is doing?

# ¿ Oct 27, 2009 08:53

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

k0konutz posted:

Is he selecting different drum loops he's recorded?

I don't think so, because he seems to record them in. I don't know, maybe i'm going crazy

# ¿ Oct 27, 2009 23:43

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

k0konutz posted:

Yeah, he recorded them in a clip during his performance, and then launching them?

ah! yeah that would make sense i guess!

In other news, I have an APC40 to play with. I like it very much. It's kinda got some flaws (seems to map to effects racks well but not to single reverb units, for example) but i suspect bomes or whatever it's called is a good way to customise it. All in all, much fun.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2009 09:44

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

I love this program but i'll be damned if i ever finish any music in it cos i'm too busy just playing with it.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2009 00:50

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Is suite really worth it though? I have logic studio and reason. Not sure if I really need yet more sound making devices. hmm.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2009 18:18

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Mandals posted:

And now for my own question:

Is there any way I could use Logic Pro's effects in Ableton? I don't see them show up in my browser, but I may not be checking the right folders for them.

I think logics synths and effects are locked in to logic only. Kinda makes sense commercially. You could export the audio and whack it into logic then bounce it out again. Or possibly run ableton as a rewire slave to logic though i've never done this myself.

Generally I mix all my stuff in logic anyway.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2009 19:34

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Ok, here's one.

So I want to do a rhythmic displacement thing, where you have say a piano riff going on it's own, then the drums kick in, but beat one is not where the ear has established it to be with the piano playing on it's own. Thus creating a weird but cool groove thing.

In a trad sequencer I would simply do this by chopping up the midi region, getting rid of certain bit, then playing it, and in kicks the beat. I can do it the same way in the arrange page. But i'd like to get the clips just to do it automatically. Is there a way to have, for example, a bar and a half, play the first half bar then loop round the whole bar, as if that beat (say 3) is actually beat 1?

I wish that made sense. I've got a 1st class degree in music majoring in bloody composition and music technology and I can't for the life of me explain what I mean properly! Perhaps it's time for bed.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2009 00:00

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

mezzir posted:

Not sure if this is what you're talking about but in a midi clip there's the brackets for the beginning and end of the loop, then also flags for the where the clip starts, and you can drag the beginning one a bar and a half before the loop starts, or just have it start halfway through the loop or w/e.

Yeah, i've been playing with these. But for some reason it doesn't work quite right. I'm going to have another go now and see what happens.

Yeah, I just cant seem to get it right. I don't know if it's me or ableton. iv'e tried loads of cominations but live always seems to start the drums on the beat I want the brain to think it's on, but it's not actually there.

So I have a 2 bar loop. The first note, on the loops beat one, is what I want the brain to hear. But I don't want the kick to start on this. The actual note I want as the real beat one is actually beat 1.3.2. I'd like the loop to play as it is now, but when i set the kick to go off, it actually hits on beat 1.3.2. Or set 1.3.2 to be beat one. I've messed with the clip loop and start points but the kick always seems to fall on the beat I don't want it to.

Lewk fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Nov 6, 2009

# ¿ Nov 6, 2009 17:43

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

prom candy posted:

Is this what you're trying to do? http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128490

Not really, but the quant settings is a way around it. Moving the kick waveform might be a way around it, but ideally I want the kick to be on the actual timeline beats of 1-2-3-4 because the kick is the 'true' beat. The ostinato previous to that is an illusion, to make you think the first note is beat 1, but it could be any beat, the kick displaces it into proper time.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2009 01:29

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Grease Faucet posted:

Does anyone know anything in the vein of tutorials that would help me make my MIDI basslines sound more punchy?

http://bit.ly/w1Bl8

is a great vid. an hour long. he's done another 9 which costs $10 to access. I've got them all and they've taught me, so far (i've only watched 2) loads. and i'm getting more ideas and more 'electronic' in my compositional thinking.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2009 20:31

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Mandals posted:

Whoah, this is loads better than those tutorial DVDs I bought a few years ago. He's really good. I'm strongly tempted to shell out the $10 now.

Thanks for this link.

Do it. It's a dollar a video. I found it really worthwhile.

prom candy posted:

Man that guy is thorough.

I know! Thing Is, i know all the theory of synths, etc. Like I said earlier, i've got a degree in all that stuff. But i've never really been able to put it all together musically. Suddenly this guy seems to have made it somewhat clearer. An excellent 10 dollar I dropped.

I'd just like to chip in here that Ableton Live is bloody awesome. Earlier, I jokingly suggested to a friend I could turn The Kinks' 'Village Green' into hip hop. He laughed and challenged me. So here I am, trying to turn 60s very english beat rock into some sort of cheesy ghetto and suceeding in like an hour. Unbelievable!!!

# ¿ Nov 11, 2009 21:56

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

rustyw posted:

I tried just puttin an amen break on top of that first 2 bars of the album but it's kind of out of time and warping it made it sound like poo poo (surprise surprise)... godspeed

Warping worked fine or me, in complex pro and doing my own markers. It's only a joke, but somehow it's ruddy working. Music makes me smile so much.

On a more serious note, in those videos I linked earlier he uses the arrange window to do all his jiggery pokery. If you put automation lanes in the arrange, is there a way to convert this to clip automation? If I consolidate and paste to a clip it doesn't bring across the automation from arrange. This would be really handy.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2009 22:13

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

prom candy posted:

You must post this when you're done.

Well, ok! bearing in mind I know very little about hip hop, and might be inclined to do a toff rap over the top of it. If you think you can hack it...

# ¿ Nov 12, 2009 00:19

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

rustyw posted:

That's a good idea... maybe instead of using automation (which is just a pain in the rear end if you wanna make big changes a lot) I should just do all my automation on a clip-by-clip basis.

Up until those videos i've been using Live in scene view, because I didn't really see the point in using arrange cos I got live to be different from usual sequencer layout. I can see the advantages now though. Except i'd love to work on something as he does then whack it all into the scene view. Have you tried dummy clips yet? They are awesome mechanisms for doing stuff like filter sweeps across stems. Clip automation is great.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2009 00:51

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

pennywisdom posted:

Is there a similar feature in ableton to elastic audio in protools? Even a plugin I could check out would be great.

Ableton is all aboutelastic audio. It's one of it's core features.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2009 00:56

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Plavski posted:

So the APC20 has been announced.

It's essentially just an APC40 cut in half with all the pots removed and the send/pans shifted to an awkward shift+fader combo. It might be handy if you're used to fiddling around with bcr's or the like or just need the pattern layout rather than the effects but I know I'm not going to be dropping my 40 for it any time soon.

Anyone looking at this with envious eyes?

Only in the sense I can use it to expand my APC40, which I don't use enough anyway

# ¿ Jan 14, 2010 17:44

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Ableton and Serato present: The Bridge

http://www.ableton.com/thebridge

I don't DJ so it's of little use to me but looks like fun...

# ¿ Jan 14, 2010 20:18

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Just chiming in again to say how reason + live is great. I use Live, Reason & Absynth. all merrily working together. It's great.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2010 13:46

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

k0konutz posted:

Do you think that the iPad could become a $500 Lemur?

I really don't see why not. It's the only reason I'm remotely interested in one. TouchOSC on the iPhone is great, just let down by the screen size. If they do a large version, which they'd be silly not to, it will rock.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2010 19:10

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Well, exactly. I mean, if you can afford the 2k and you're heavily heavily into your programming etc. then yeah Lemur is worth it. But for the common man who wants to experiment with that sort of stuff, then TouchOSC is great. It's also good from an educational point of view, i've had a couple of ipods rigged up with students on the other end of a classroom controlling a group project. Much fun.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2010 22:48

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:20

Lewk: May 22, 2001; We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

you're all tuning in to the 365 live tips, right?

...right?!?!?

http://www.heatercore.net/livetips/index.html

# ¿ Feb 3, 2010 20:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > Ableton Live!

«‹›2 »