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brighton, uk

Dweeble, with the help I gave you on IRC did you get your drumkit working?
I'm here if you need any help with Ableton stuff, always willing to share knowledge smile
I can also share or make presets for people if they are in need of something specific.

I use Ableton for all of my music, and it was the first DAW I chose when I started out 2-3 years ago.
I learnt with a friend, with trial and error, mostly making terrible acid house and noise.
Since then I've used almost all of the commercially available DAWs in a studio environment, and nothing compares for an easy creative process.
I'm still to try out Max for live, it really interests me, but it's time and effort to learn something new with so much going on right now.

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Tokyo, Japan

DJ Bravetti has some superb tutorials on using Live creatively:

this one is a must see:

http://vimeo.com/5962875

Truly creative uses of Lives more "hidden" features.

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Kiel, Germany

I'm not that much into it yet, but what helped me was to get renoise connected to it via rewire so I had my usual tracking environment combined with the live stuff. Then I hooked up lsdj to it and voila - best live sound environment yet

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Los Angeles, CA

I had a song I had recorded tracks for, but it just wasn't working. I was able to drag all the tracks into Ableton Live, try effects and EQ on the fly, fix missed notes and places where the rhythm had gone wrong, and layer in extra tracks to fill it out.
It saved the track, and ever since then I have used nothing else.

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WOW MAN!

It took me a while to "shift my thinking" having grown up with Cubase (from it's Atari ST days). I would never go back now though. I always considered Live to be just that - for live work/manipulation - which it does like nothing else in existence. But it's also capable of doing so much more and I don't think I'd ever even more than glanced at the arrangement view until I worked through some of Tom Cosm's tutorials. I remember one pivotal point in my thinking when I went through his tutorial on how to create a 16-step sequencer by chaining the audio path of 16 tracks together and you end up with this crazy feedback machine. I think I lost about 5 hours of my life playing with that smile

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WOW MAN!
cheapshot wrote:

this one is a must see:

http://vimeo.com/5962875

Truly creative uses of Lives more "hidden" features.

And I've just had my mind blown yet again. Great video smile

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Westfield, NJ

It's all about live (session) view. You can put a combine a bunch of audio samples and midi instruments on different "tracks" (the vertical bars) and then play them together, and add audio effects to each one or to the master track, or even on send channels. You can then experiments with lots of different sounds without having to arrange or track anything. Then you can record your actions live and the results will be places on the arrangement view without any destructive changes whatsoever. That's the beauty of Live for me. When it comes time to lay out the song, I already have a good idea of what each part will be like, because I've already experimented with everything beforehand.

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PARIS

Actually, it took me time to understand Live workflow.. but now I can't go back to the other sequencers.

Now with the pad controllers like the Novation Launchpad or the Akai APC-20/40 it's just one of the easiest piece of software to master in order to "improvise" on your sequences. Especially now with the Monome "emulators" found using Max4live.

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Europa surfing on the monolith

Ableton Live is one of the most powerful DAW's on the market at this point in time (If not the most Imho, for non tracker based composing, I swear by it, I've been using it since it came out), It comes with its own set of lessons in the HELP tab that will literally teach you the program from scratch (complete with its own audio samples / templetes / instructional presentation).

Sound Design, Multi Track Recordings, FM Synthesis, sampling, VST/VSTi full support, Rewire Support, Numerous Midi Controller support onboard (let alone being able to use just about anything on the market or self built that communicates with midi in general), Re sampling of its own output into another channel, Live Loop Triggering, Grid style Session Sequencer, the ability to use it as a Live Instrument  & Live Performance Suite as well as a recording suite....


What ISN"T there to like about ableton live?

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Los Angeles
nkogliaz wrote:

What ISN"T there to like about ableton live?

Laptops.

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Europa surfing on the monolith

Agreed... If I ever drag my software crap out out the studio (seldom, but happens on occasion...), I bring a 4u rack pc. xD

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trash80 wrote:
nkogliaz wrote:

What ISN"T there to like about ableton live?

Laptops.

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Tokyo, Japan

I have spent a couple of very educational sessions on Ableton live with a couple of very knowledgeable chaps. I am slowly getting my head around the software and I am warming to it as a tool. I am not so much thinking about what it does in as much detail as nkogliaz but more in terms of how it would help me solve the problems I have with performing

I like making music on all sorts of hardware and software which I haven't been able to think of using in a performance setting without either taking a shopping cart of gear or compromising what I like to make music with. Large complex set ups also seem worrying fragile and Ableton seems like it will let me compose in more or less what I want, sample clips of it into Live and be able to play it with a backpack size set up of a Lappy, soundcard and a couple of controllers while being fairly robust. Also has the added bonus of making hassle at immigration less likely.

Getting quite into this idea.

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New York City
trash80 wrote:
nkogliaz wrote:

What ISN"T there to like about ableton live?

Laptops.

Also, all what Lazerbeat says is what turned me into using it for live performance. I keep all my gear at home and then I travel as light as possible. 1 year of touring around everywhre taught me this is a smart thing. But I'd love to have an MPC as my main sequencer. Maybe at some point...

Last edited by akira^8GB (May 10, 2011 2:00 pm)

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Chicago IL
Decktonic wrote:

It's all about live (session) view. You can put a combine a bunch of audio samples and midi instruments on different "tracks" (the vertical bars) and then play them together, and add audio effects to each one or to the master track, or even on send channels. You can then experiments with lots of different sounds without having to arrange or track anything. Then you can record your actions live and the results will be places on the arrangement view without any destructive changes whatsoever. That's the beauty of Live for me. When it comes time to lay out the song, I already have a good idea of what each part will be like, because I've already experimented with everything beforehand.

i've been using ableton for 6 years and i barely understand what you're talking about.

but it seems like it can be boiled down to 'i like using ableton as a sequencer, and i also like using automation'

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Europa surfing on the monolith
Saskrotch wrote:
Decktonic wrote:

It's all about live (session) view. You can put a combine a bunch of audio samples and midi instruments on different "tracks" (the vertical bars) and then play them together, and add audio effects to each one or to the master track, or even on send channels. You can then experiments with lots of different sounds without having to arrange or track anything. Then you can record your actions live and the results will be places on the arrangement view without any destructive changes whatsoever. That's the beauty of Live for me. When it comes time to lay out the song, I already have a good idea of what each part will be like, because I've already experimented with everything beforehand.

i've been using ableton for 6 years and i barely understand what you're talking about.

but it seems like it can be boiled down to 'i like using ableton as a sequencer, and i also like using automation'


I think what Decktonic was trying to get across was Live's ability in Session view to be able to improvise your loops and midi sequences a bit before you actually commit to laying them out in Arrangement View (If you even use it, a lot of people don't, it varies on what I'm doing weather I do or not.. recording / live pa..), plus unlike most hardware sequencers, it gives you the ability to be able to jump around in different parts of different rows of sequences (mixing and matching between columns, firing off loops from different columns is especially fun with a monome / apc / mpd / launch pad / uc33e / etc, rather than just firing off one set row of sequences / channels like most conventional hardware sequencers), giving you a more versatile approach to your sequencing rather than just recording one row at a time.

btw Saskrotch, found you on ocremix years ago, nice tunes, you may like some of mine also, i'm all about the choppage.