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need advice on playing "live"
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vector_0
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
113
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1191
Posted : Dec 12, 2010 00:18:18
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Hi guys, I know this is a hotly debated topic, but I was hoping to get some advice on playing "live." I'm a producer and former DJ and have been approached to play out at a party...I've been asked this before but turned it down because I had no idea what to do. A TRUE live set from me would probably require about 2 months per song and be very monotonous and maddening for the audience. But so many producers out there are getting booked for parties...I know there are varying degrees on how they play "live"; some who just push play and others who do all sorts of layering and tweaking.
I just want to know what I, a newbie, should do for my live set? Would it be okay if I just brought my laptop (or CD's) and essentially did a DJ set? What do you think is expected of me if someone likes my music and wants me to "play live"
I have no idea what I should do
  http://soundcloud.com/rob-vector |
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A.Rosengren
Solid Snake
Started Topics :
266
Posts :
4139
Posted : Dec 12, 2010 00:39
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I'd start out with a laptop and a midi controller, you can map anything you want inside of Ableton Live and with this flexibility the choices are endless.
Start by exporting stems from your tracks and organizing them neatly (this will help you later) and set up a set of audio tracks that will hold all these stems. Now you can make this automatic by telling ableton to arm your tracks individually after each other or you could trigger them by yourself individually (or you can trigger scenes which will trigger every sample on that very row in the session view, these scenes can be found on the master channel). When you got a hang of this, try adding midi tracks to each seperate track in the sequencer view. Don't forget to have them muted until you need them.
With this small yet powerful setup you are more than free to mix up elements from each track and/or just following the track as you produced it without improvising. Try adding different effect-chains for different tracks and just map the mix/output to a button you prefer. See what comes out. This can also be altered while you are performing for some fun results. However these improvised tweakings usually end up in disaster if you do not know what you are doing.
What I especially like to do is export dry material one-shots/chords/various samples from tracks we did and putting them in what I call a "trigger channel" where I can add effects, pitch them and do whatever I want to do to them. This way you can create great transitions between different tracks.
When you get a hang of all this, you can get more toys to add in your arsenal, we use the very common korg kaossillator and some alesis midi drum pads.
I hope I helped.
Cheers,
A
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vector_0
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
113
Posts :
1191
Posted : Dec 13, 2010 19:43
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Thanks, thats a great idea! I will play around with my stems this way and see if it sounds alright.
Do you think promoters have any expectations on what a producer will be doing live, or are they just expecting an hour of sound?
http://soundcloud.com/rob-vector |
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Shiranui
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
116
Posts :
1219
Posted : Dec 13, 2010 19:52
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Afaik, the only thing that promoters care about for "live" sets is that the music you are playing is your own.
You could just load up a single wav file and hit play and probably no one would complain (many many producers do this, including some big names).
Oh, which brings up a good point: have music on CD as backup, already in the CDJ and ready to go in case your live setup fails.
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Shiranui
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
116
Posts :
1219
Posted : Dec 13, 2010 19:54
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Another thing you could do is bounce a version of your set minus the leads to CD, play that as a backing track and play just the leads off of your laptop w/ a midi keyboard.
This of course only works for certain styles of music. |
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Ascension
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
170
Posts :
3642
Posted : Dec 15, 2010 21:42
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Playing live is totally dependent on your style of music, but as A.Rosengren said, bouncing stems is a great way to go.
For your first time I would suggest doing very minimal amounts of remixing/effects, you probably won't do everything you plan in the studio during the performance anyway. I would suggest pushing your practice to the maximum of what you want to do to make sure your computer can take it and won't clip or crash. Practice in the same state of mind you plan on performing in too (sober or not- you get the idea).
http://soundcloud.com/ascensionsound
www.chilluminati.org - Midwest based psytrance group |
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mudpeople
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
113
Posts :
1785
Posted : Dec 16, 2010 04:48
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Ive been working on a live set inspired by Electrypnose's tutorial on his site. Basically Ive got 6 loop channels, on rewire channel for Renoise bass, and 3 midi channels with low-cpu-load vstis to play with (reFX Claw is great for that), and one more channel for complete tracks with a 3 band EQ on it. basically I want to try to move as far away from playing pre-produced tracks as possible and do as much as possible on the fly. Basically Ive been bouncing between complete-live arranged-complete, messing with whatever while the complete tracks are playing, setting up a bass, picking percussion loops (I have 3 perc channels, 1 for kick, one for hat/clap 'meat' and one for single-instrument accent loops) and whatnot.
Ive found that just changing the bass can make even the same set of loops sound different. Renoise is generally low on CPU so its great as a bass box, and the interface si familiar and editing is easy and quick (i mean, for experienced users  ).
Also Ive got a few fx groups on teh master, such as a dblue glitch grouped with some other fx so it doesnt sound so obvious. These are all defaulting to off, and ive got the on-off switches mapped to toggle buttons, so the fx are only active if im pressing it. Also have a few fx controls on knobs so i can do the famous knob twist .
Still futzing around with it, dont really have a clear idea of how to go about making it into a 2+ hr set without being too repetitious, but its fun nonetheless.
I think Electrypnose's site is just electrypnose.com, look in the tutorials section (theres a lot of good advice).
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