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[Alume]

Hey guys,

So I might be looking at some first gigs in the future and I am planning on practicing a liveset instead of djing.
Its pure because I dont enjoy mixing that much, maybe im not good enough or I have to experience it. I dj vinyl so I guess if I dj digital I wont have any problems, but still. A liveset might me cooler.

I was thinking of getting a tr8 and build my setup around its usb interface. This way I can process the tr8's drums in ableton to my taste. To make them sound like the way I want things to sound. Furthermore I would add a APC40 to cliplaunch other elements like rythms, loops, pads and textures. Maybe I will sell my minibrute to get a microbrute for some added tweakable elements or basslines.

So what are your thoughts on this subject? Do you have tips and tricks, experiences and could the setup i have planned be interesting enough? In my tracks I almost only use the volume for automation and stuff, the rest is all self automating stuff like auto filters and M4L lfo's on parameters.

The ideal situation is that I have everything prepared in ableton and that every clip goes with every clip, I know its a lot of work but I'd still rather give this a go than dj.

Thanks

[winston]

Keep it simple, at least to begin with, then if you want to, add more complexity. And rehearse beforehand, so you know if or where the cpu will spike and drop out. When deconstructing your tracks to turn into a set, if you don't think you want to tweak part of it, then bounce it to an audio clip so it doesn't need any effects running. You've only one pair of hands, so you are limited as to what is possible to tweak and change. And follow orders (i think that's what they are called) that run between shorter clips of 8 or 16 bars rather than playing over 3 or 4 minute stems gives you more freedom. Have a ipod connected to the mixer so you can quickly bump up a tune if your computer goes fanny up.

I have only played one gig and one warm-up/practice in an empty club to rehearse (outside of my home), but i went into it wanting to do too much. I had one Live file with separate channels for each song with each song taking up between 6 to 10 channels, so it was like 70 channels wide and about 100 scenes in height: way too much. Each time a big scene launched, the sound would stutter a touch. in contrast, another guy who was playing, and had done so many times, had a much smaller and compact Live project with more parts bounced into stems and it was much better than mine all round.

i feel the same as you about having the drums live and then being able to change how they sound, but having them already processed and then triggering the samples via midi clips or midi step sequencer might save on cpu and also physical workload. i reckon its a balance, you don't need to be doing it one way the whole way through.

i get you on the more enjoyable than djing part too: i don't have my decks anymore, so djing using a controller isn't as fun as it used to be. trying to make it not fall to bits was, i guess, what i enjoyed about djing.

[Barfunkel]

Whatever you do, keep an element of surprise in. Don't do like most do, who basically just DJ their polished music with Ableton, with no live tweaking, no chance of mistake, nothing raw about it. That's boring as hell.

The TR-8 makes a wonderful live drum machine, just remember to play with the sounds and those lovely little faders.

[Alume]

Good advise guys. Yeah keeping it simple is a really good idea. And I agree with barfunkel that polished isnt always agood thing. I want the set to be more dance orientated as well. Maybe I can better buy a mixer and integrate my machinedrum as well for the element of surprise so to speak. It would be cool to have all kind of tribal percussion samples on the machinedrum and the basic kick, hh and stuff on the tr8.

Im not sure if cliplaunching and two drum machines might give syncing problems. Im not a majoy midi fan. though I think its essential to have some ableton goodness in the mix to have atleast alittle bit of the style that I make in the studio as well.

Keep them coming! Learning a lot already

[Patriek]

Good luck Alume Keep it simple, make sure you master the hardware like a 'real' instrument! And let me know when you will play somewhere...might come over to take a look

[Barfunkel]

Im not sure if cliplaunching and two drum machines might give syncing problems. Im not a majoy midi fan. though I think its essential to have some ableton goodness in the mix to have atleast alittle bit of the style that I make in the studio as well.

Depends on luck really. With some computers syncing midi units with a DAW works with zero problems, with some other computers there's a huge amount of problems. It's not midi's fault, as you rarely get sync problems when you're 100% hardware, particularly if you have modern hardware. Or at least I've never had any problems, unless the midi chain is really long (and that's easy to fix with a cheap midi thru box).

There exists dedicated midi sync boxes, if you weren't aware. They work by using audio from a DAW instead of midi, then convert that audio to midi clock in that box. Those are usually a bit expensive though, but if you can't otherwise get Ableton in sync with the drum machines, then that offers a solution.

[Alume]

Thank man, it will take some time though. At least a year I guess. So I'm starting early:)

[Alume]

Im not sure if cliplaunching and two drum machines might give syncing problems. Im not a majoy midi fan. though I think its essential to have some ableton goodness in the mix to have atleast alittle bit of the style that I make in the studio as well.

Depends on luck really. With some computers syncing midi units with a DAW works with zero problems, with some other computers there's a huge amount of problems. It's not midi's fault, as you rarely get sync problems when you're 100% hardware, particularly if you have modern hardware. Or at least I've never had any problems, unless the midi chain is really long (and that's easy to fix with a cheap midi thru box).

There exists dedicated midi sync boxes, if you weren't aware. They work by using audio from a DAW instead of midi, then convert that audio to midi clock in that box. Those are usually a bit expensive though, but if you can't otherwise get Ableton in sync with the drum machines, then that offers a solution.

Thanks man, I have got them close but to be honest I havent deticated my time to that problem that much.

[winston]

i can't get my tr-8 in time with ableton, but i haven't tried that hard as i am just jamming patterns along with basslines so it is close enough for just me to listen to. i think i have read somewhere that the tr-8 is a better master than ableton, although i have never tried (or i might have misunderstood).

i watched an ableton presentation with the dreaded god of all techno ITCHY Whoretits? last week (it was a year old i think) and he said that he found the best way to get things in time was to start one and then just start the other and nudge ableton to get it in sync. he said thats what he does when using traktor and thats what they done with Narod Niki. i don't know how plausible that is though, but it could be effective with plenty of practice.

[Lost to the Void]

Make sure your setup is not too large, there is very little room in a lot of DJ booths.
Make sure your setup is stable.
Practice setting up so you know what you are doing blind (because sometimes you might be setting up in almost blind situations)

Rehearse a lot, you need to know what you are doing, and also to be able to recover from a fuck up quickly.

Flow, it`s all about flow, nothing worse than a live PA that goes down to bare bones between each track, you want to work out a way of getting the flow that a DJ mix has, otherwise you will constantly be losing energy throughout the set.

You don`t need to be doing something all the time - have places in your set where you can relax a little. I`ve made sets where I have been at the limit of my physical capabilities as to keeping track of everything, and those sets are not enjoyable, and you lose your connection with the dancefloor.
I try to keep my sets to 12 channels of "stuff" max.

Get your levels locked down, that all comes as part of rehearsing, but you really wanna control your levels.

Leave room for improvisation, but don`t go too far and try to improvise everything. This isn`t jazz, techno is about structure, and thoughtful constructed trance inducing grooves, no one wants to hear someone tuning a sound in for 5 mins before the tune actually locks in to being something.

I had a whole lecture I used to do at universities on live electronic music performance, but we never bloody filmed it, rather stupidly....

As for running the TR8 into ableton and processing them live, I don`t think that`s a good idea. Using ableton as a live sequencer and clip launcher is fine, but using it to start mixing stuff live and I expect you might run in to problems.

[Alume]

Make sure your setup is not too large, there is very little room in a lot of DJ booths.
Make sure your setup is stable.
Practice setting up so you know what you are doing blind (because sometimes you might be setting up in almost blind situations)

Rehearse a lot, you need to know what you are doing, and also to be able to recover from a fuck up quickly.

Flow, it`s all about flow, nothing worse than a live PA that goes down to bare bones between each track, you want to work out a way of getting the flow that a DJ mix has, otherwise you will constantly be losing energy throughout the set.

You don`t need to be doing something all the time - have places in your set where you can relax a little. I`ve made sets where I have been at the limit of my physical capabilities as to keeping track of everything, and those sets are not enjoyable, and you lose your connection with the dancefloor.
I try to keep my sets to 12 channels of "stuff" max.

Get your levels locked down, that all comes as part of rehearsing, but you really wanna control your levels.

Leave room for improvisation, but don`t go too far and try to improvise everything. This isn`t jazz, techno is about structure, and thoughtful constructed trance inducing grooves, no one wants to hear someone tuning a sound in for 5 mins before the tune actually locks in to being something.

I had a whole lecture I used to do at universities on live electronic music performance, but we never bloody filmed it, rather stupidly....

As for running the TR8 into ableton and processing them live, I don`t think that`s a good idea. Using ableton as a live sequencer and clip launcher is fine, but using it to start mixing stuff live and I expect you might run in to problems.

Thanks for your extensive reply. Yeah I figures that udb plan might be to rocky. I guess Im better of with just the tr8(and some fx, compression pedal) for drum elements and possible the md on the side as I mentioned. Then using ableton to fill it up with textures and elements an maybe add a small midi keyboard to be able to do some long pads.

The things you mention are quite interesting, they are obvious but so essential and easy to forget as well. Are you able to squich enough material out of 12 channels? I presume you have some machines as well like the virus.

I fun to think about, these kind of things I've alway pictured myself djing when I would be doing gigs but now that this idea has come into my head I am not going to gig until I nail this.

[Lost to the Void]

Currently I`m just using the Octa, A Virus, my feedback matrix, contact mics, and some back end fx to run it all through.
More than enough for me.
Might start doing live guitar and vox too, but not techno.

[Alume]

hmm cool, so you wont be needing a lot of channels with that set up anyway.

[Lost to the Void]

No, I keep my setup manageable and portable, it's kind of a necessity really, most of my gigs are abroad.

[Alume]

Give me a shout if you ever play in the netherlands. Would love to hear you live.

[Lost to the Void]

I`m not sure I`m going to be doing any more techno gigs.

[Alume]

I'm not talking about techno man, I know your taking a bit distance of the techno stuff. I can appreciate any kind of genre if its well performed.

[Lost to the Void]

Well, this year singularity is only releasing albums, and hopefully We will be doing a number of label gigs around Europe with the artists, so I'll let you know. It'll be electronics of all sorts. Industrial, techno, doom metal, orchestral.

[surface]

Sounds decent. If you hit Irish shores let me know as well.
Reckon it be worth the venture .
Hard to please us Irish lunatics though.
Don't think 12 channels would cut the colonel mustard
(looks like we can only handle one channel, 16 bit mono, about . eleventeen db, any time before six thirty pm and we'll expect a warning! Legal requirements. Actually, skip it. I 'll just go to hamsterdam for it) ..

[Lost to the Void]

Yeah, there's a shocking attack on clubland going on in Ireland ey