Re: hows Live 4?

[Per Boysen <per@boysen.se>]

On 2004-07-11, at 19.32, Matthias Grob wrote:

> Hey, Per!
>
> maybe you will tell the list anyway... we wonder whether its better 
> loopabale now!
> are you fine?
> I am at mom...
>
> kiss
> Matthias
> -- 
>
>          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org


Hi Matithias,

Good to hear you're at mom's now. Guess you're getting a good cake 
refill then ;-)

Ok, I'll send over a short take on the loopabilities of Live 4 and I 
hope you don'¨t mind if I forward it to the list as well. I'm spending 
a lot of time with the Live 4 beta version for three reasons; helping 
Ableton with the beta testing and doing what I can to make the software 
better for live-looping, preparing a review of Live 4 in a Swedish 
Computer Music Studio Magazine and finally preparing a gig at a Swedish 
festival, http://www.norbergfestival.com

Well the short answer is that Live 4 is a little better than Live 3 for 
looping, but only if you adapt to its limitations and to take advantage 
of it's special abilities. The biggest limitation is that there is no 
way to do overdub looping. But this is not a limitation for all 
musicians, only those who want to make music that evolves seamlessly, 
endlessly... In Live you record a loop and then it sits in a slot to 
repeat itself until you turn it off. And on the other hand, if you are 
into music that relies on steady repeating loops you will find Live a 
very good looper. There are practically no limit to how many loops you 
can have spinning at the same time. All of different lengths if you 
want. Even very long recordings, like an hour or so, can be played back 
while are looping. Tempo can be changed, "elastic audio" will adapt. 
You can also change the pitch of individual loops, but not by external 
midi (a big bummer).

Another area where Live is excellent is to replace a mixer, a patch bay 
and an effect rack. Remember that you advised me to look for "a midi 
controllable mixer" when we were playing together last year? Well, Live 
4 IS that mixer now. Thanks for the tip ;-)

New in Live 4 are almost endless possibilities to rout audio and midi 
streams. The looping set-up I have now assembled is a Powerbook with 
Live 4, an EDP, an AKAI MFC42 analog filter, a Lexicon LXP-5 reverb, an 
Evolution UC-33 midi controller/mixer and a Behringer FCB1010 foot midi 
controller. The computer also has an external firewire 800 hard drive 
and a RME Multiface 8/8 +digital soundcard/break-out box.

I devoted a couple of days to see if it was possible to loop with only 
software and I found this to work quite ok. I could actually play a gig 
with just laptop, FCB and my instruments. Then I'm using a software 
plugin for overdub looping, the Lexicon PSP42. This is just like 
looping with delay units and feedback pedal (the Polish plug-in 
emulates the legendary Lexicon well). In Live 4 I can set up the PSP42 
on one track for looping (controlled by FCB1010) and then route the 
output of that track to another track that I have set up to record up 
to 9 loops in one go. 9 was choosed because I have instant access to 
nine foot pads on the FCB. Each FCB pad is addressing one slot on a 
Live track. The last pad, the tenth, addresses "record enable" of that 
track. The reason I'm not recording on the input track is that I'm 
using it for monitoring of my instrument, to add Live's effects to my 
instrument sound (delay, reverb etc). This is delicate because with the 
buffer I'm using for the Powerbook hardware I'm getting a 12 ms latency 
of the input signal.  I'm blending that 12 ms late signal with the 
direct hardware monitoring signal of the RME, going right out into the 
PA with no latency. The blending of those two signals is a delicate 
quest, to avoid phasing. But it's definitely possible. I'll post 
recordings later on.

Well, the second reason for not recording on the input track is that 
Live's built in latency compensation is only active when a track is set 
to not monitor the signal. So when I'm stepping the record button on my 
FCB, my instrument noise gets recorded on a different channel than the 
one I'm listening to and Live immediately moves the recording 12 ms 
into the future.

This also means that if you need to have loops start playing back at 
the very moment you stop the recording, you will have to live with a 
little latency of the recorded loops. Not acceptable for most 
instruments IMHO. It destroys the feeling and the magic of music 
making.

In my "big" laptop set-up I have connected the hardware reverb to Live 
4 exactly as you would connect it to a normal mixer. The UC-33 is midi 
mapped to Live and I can "play" 8 tracks volume and three effects: two 
in Live and then the Lexi reverb. My instruments input signal  (2 mono 
channel inputs used:  one mic and one guitar pre-amp), into the Live 
laptop is also tapped and sent into the EDP. From the EDP the output, 
it goes into the filter-bank which stereo output is fed back into live. 
I have the same arrangement in Live for EDP/filterbank as I did 
describe for my live instruments. In fact I record to the same Live 4 
track and then, when I'm satisfied with the number and quality of the 
recorded loops (they don't play back yet) I'm moving them with the 
mouse to other slots on other tracks for playback. The sound-design 
actually happens in the playing and in the EDP and filter-bank FCB 
manipulations. Live 4 is the midi clock master and EDP and filterbank 
(beat synced LFO stuff) follows the Live tempo. The filtering beat sync 
division is mapped to one expression pedal on the FCB and the other 
pedal is mapped to EDP feedback, in all banks. I have one FCB bank for 
EDP control, one bank for recording into live and a third bank for 
jumping between "scenes" in live.

A "scene" in Live means all the slots that have been filled with a 
loop, called "clips", on all mixer tracks. (the mixer in live is 
actually called "the session view"). As you see "a scene" is a 
horizontal row of clips and each clip plays back on a dedicated 
(vertical) mixer strip ("channel", "track").

The strategy for a live-looping show with this set-up is to first build 
a foundation of looping clips in live, using instruments and 
EDP/filter. You don't have to keep all of them sounding all the time. 
Live has the function that if you select a certain scene, from the FCB, 
all silent clips in that scene will start playing back (if looped, they 
will loop. if set to "one-shot" they will play and then stop). Now, if 
some clips were already playing in the selected scene these clips will 
now be turned off while the others, that were silent, will start 
playing instead. This opens up for many combinations of improvise 
arranging on-the-fly.

I have also put VST and AU effects on all the Live tracks and these 
effects are midi controlled in real-time. Yet another trick for a more 
organic control by the musician. I especially like the option with Live 
4, compared to my EDP/Repeater set-up, to make dramatically quick 
changes of the sound. Kind of "re-mix" or "reverse engineering" of ones 
own playing.

Ok, the last thing I want to say about Live 4 is that it now comes with 
midi sequencing and two built in virtual midi instruments, a sampler 
and drum sample player. The midi sequencing is called "midi clips" and 
they look just like audio clips in the GUI when you are looping with 
Live (yes, Live 4 has "midi live looping", I remember that discussion 
from the list). There are also midi effects and I'm finding them very 
powerful. By that I mean the possibility to set up random processes 
that change the velocity and pitch just a tiny little for all midi 
notes. The impact of these small random processes is huge when 
listening to a drum beat played back. Very "alive" sounding. One of my 
eight live-looping tracks in Live 4 is "a midi track". On this track I 
can throw in midi patterns for drumming. I have some favorite patterns 
of traditional african drumming that I have loved for years and I keep 
them as "midi clips". After the midi clips I have put midi effects for 
"slightly randomization of velocity" and a "pitch filter". The pitch 
filter is mapped to a physical knob and the more I tweak that knob the 
higher percentage of the streaming midi notes are getting transformed 
by a random interval between 1 and 6 half notes down. Since the drums 
are mapped with kick drum on lowest note number and the hi hat on top 
"the drummer" will then start to play a "minimalistic solo" more and 
more getting into the darker drum sounds. This is very cool, a bit like 
Numerology (but that software is more powerful for stuff like that). 
Actually Live 4 has got a little of The Numeroolgy Spririt ;-)  With 
the new feature "follow actions" you can set up how a clip will play 
and what will happen when it stops. Like "play next clip", "play the 
clip before" etc etc. You can also randomize the probability between 
two different scenarios. So you can actually design a system that 
creates complete random music or just induces a little variety into a 
sequence of loops. The live recorded loops you are recording can be 
dragged with the mouse and dropped into these "follow action prepared" 
clips. What happens then is that the new loop is taking over all the 
sophisticated settings of the old loop.

Oh, one last thing. The drum player can send drum sounds out on 
different channels. I'm taking advantage of this by using three 
different Supatrigga plug-ins on three different drum sounds. Combined 
with well programmed midi patterns as raw material, and the partially 
randomizing midi plug-ins you can create very organic and interesting 
drum music in Live 4. It's never getting boring!

Well, that has to be 'nuff for tonight. ;-)

ciao

per