Going the live P.A. route

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0dd
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Going the live P.A. route

Post by 0dd »

Hey guys, before the actual questions, here's a little background. For as long as I can remember, I was the guy in charge of the music and the mood, whether it be family reunions, house parties, or just hanging out with friends. Then, about 8 years ago I started going to clubs and immediately I felt my place was in the booth. a few years later I got a mixer and started playing with it at home for a few years and in the last few years I did a few gigs but I always admired music that you can just hear the love, or whatever you call it, coming from the artist, you know, you can just hear the passion be it metal, techno, jazz or whatever, and I felt that was impossible or just not as possible as a DJ compared to an actual performer (please no buthurt, you know what I mean). I also got into ableton and production in the meantime, so I've decided to sell my decks & mixer and go for laptop + ableton + controllers setup. That's it for the badly written intro and now for the actual questions:
I live in a 3rd world country and I have a lousy pay, so a really tight budget, around 300e, but with what I read in the archived live gear topic, I may not even need more. I have a lap top and I thought of going for novation launch mini and something like mpk25. My idea is to to do stem/loop playback + some modulation and maybe some live melody/pads. Would you say that is ok for the beginning? Also, my mixer is a behringer nox303 which has a built in sound card. Would you advise to get an external sound card and ditch the mixer, or maybe keep it? I was looking at the scarlett solo 2nd gen. never heard how it sounds but I read only positive comments. Any suggestions or personal experience? Anyway, that's all for now, looking forward to your input. Cheers!
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Lost to the Void »

If the music is good and you have the control that allows you to mould the set to your liking then yeah. A laptop, soundcard and controller can be all you need.
Don't worry too much about it, just do it.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by 0dd »

Thanks man, I've was hoping you'd comment since you said you've used ableton for 12 years for live. I'm listening to your subsekt008 live right now, it's real nice. Do you remember what you've used for it?
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Huck Farper »

definitely all you need, a lot of top acts do live pas on just a laptop, ableton and a controller or two..

Vril, Lakker, Paula Temple (hybrid), etc. etc.

just do it.. one advantage you'll have is in setup.. bringing/carrying gear around sucks!! never enough space

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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by 0dd »

Yeah it would be cool to appear at a gig with just a backpack :D Could you recommend any more live acts?
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

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Dilinger wrote:Thanks man, I've was hoping you'd comment since you said you've used ableton for 12 years for live. I'm listening to your subsekt008 live right now, it's real nice. Do you remember what you've used for it?
Generally in my live PA`s I had 8 audio channels per track (so 16 channels, in 2 groups of 8).
As the tracks were grouped I could then mix them DJ style, but have total control over each element of each track.
Then there were 4 channels of vsti. Microtonic, Korg Monopoly, FM8 and Strobe.
Each channel had a high pass, a low pass and EQ.
The groups also had hi pass, low pass, and EQ.
There were some send effects for delay and reverb.
Then the master channel had some glitch fx I could switch in and out, and then compression, master EQ (for room/rig calibration) and a limiter.
I controlled it all via a BCR 2000 and an Ipad running Touch-able (wirelessly via an adhoc network).

Each track had various audio loops and part variations.

It was about as complex as I could go and still keep track of everything, though I did still fuck up, but if you don`t fuck up when you are playing live, you probably have too much time on your hands.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

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So like two tracks in session view at a time and then replace them with other tracks? Also, could you please elaborate on glitch fx and EQing for a room? I know what you mean by EQing for a room/rig, I would like to know how to EQ for which space, it would be nice if you could point me to some articles. Hope it isn't too much of a bother, your info is very helpful!
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Lost to the Void »

Wa?
2 tracks at a time?
Not sure what you are asking that I havent already made clear?

EQ For a space?
You play some of your tunes through the rig during soundcheck, listen to how it sounds and then tune the EQ on the master channel to correct for the room and the soundsystem.
I'm not sure if there are any articles relating to that, it's just EQ.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by 0dd »

Well you said 2 groups of 8 channels, so 2 groups = 2 tracks right? Ok, just thought maybe there's a certain way to EQ for a certain kind of room, or size of a room or whatever.. So, as always, just use the ears.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

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Dilinger wrote:Well you said 2 groups of 8 channels, so 2 groups = 2 tracks right? Ok, just thought maybe there's a certain way to EQ for a certain kind of room, or size of a room or whatever.. So, as always, just use the ears.
Oh yes, 2 groups, so essentially I treat each group as a record deck, or whetever.

All rooms are different and soundsystems are all run by different people (some good, some bad) so yeah, just use your ears.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by 0dd »

Now talk about a late reply! I was afk alot the last 6 months, my first son was born this april so yeah, not much music time.. Anyway, thanks alot man very much appreciated.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Innersection »

Steve, what you usually use to do that EQing for the room? Ableton Stock EQ?

S.

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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Lost to the Void »

When I was using ableton I used DMG Equilibrium, but Ableton EQ set to Hi quality mode is also fine.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Aureliano »

How do most people organise their ableton project for performance?

For example, the 2 groups of 8: did you just stack clip after clip in session view?

I've always wondered if people load new projects during PA's whilst running some separate audio into the mixer while the project loads. If one master project has all your tracks in, you would have to be pretty smart about organising it all if you're not just using stems.
Then there were 4 channels of vsti. Microtonic, Korg Monopoly, FM8 and Strobe.
Was that on each 'track'? 4 vsts/4 stems per track?

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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Lost to the Void »

No, very rarely all 4 vsti per song.

My session view was arranged by "song". So all the clips for a song, including loose structure of that song and variant clips and so on, were blocked together.

Then basically if I was playing a song in "deck 1" which would be the left side of session view, I could then select anynsing from deck 2, in the right side of session view , next.

Initially I would have a copy of every song in both decks so I could play stuff in any order, but it made the already massive projects mamamamassive. So if I was playing deck 1 and the next track I wanted to play was somewhere down the project but also in deck 1, I would just highlight all the clips, move them over to deck 2 and then play them.

My projects were massive. I always made sure I came to a gig with more material than needed. So if I was doing a 1h30 pa, then I had 2 to 2hr30 material prepped.
If I was doing 2 hrs, then I had 3 hrs material.


I would write new material specifically for each gig, and convert new releases to live versions too, so my parents was always evolving and never the same. Tracks that worked really well at gigs got pulled down to the bottom of the project for use at the next gig, so I would prepare a new set, with loose structure with new music, but there was always about an hour of stuff from previous sets sitting at the bottom of the project that I could turn to if I wanted, additionally to everything else.

That's why at most I would do 1 gig a month with that setup, it took so long preparing it and I didn't like repeating myself. But so much more fun , and ultimately a gazillion times more rewarding than playing records. You feel like an actual musician :o

I won't go in to my noise based setup I was doing for a while with hardware, that's a whole other conversation.
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Re: Going the live P.A. route

Post by Lost to the Void »

Here is a recording of my last Ableton PA

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Re: Going the live P.A. route

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Lost to the Void wrote:Here is a recording of my last Ableton PA


Awesome set, thanks for sharing and explaining your process.


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