How you organize/play your live in Ableton Live.

[Marcelo Tuim]

Hi Guys!

I'd like to know how you organize/play your live in Ableton Live.

I've seen artists that uses the arrangement view mixing the tracks and uses the session view only to drop one or another effect or sample..

I have seen artists that only mixes his finished tracks in session view (In my opinion this is the same of a dj set)

And also I've seen artists that separates each element/sample in clips at session view and, for me, this is more like a live act.


So, how do you play your live? Is there a right or wrogn way?

 

[Sephira]

I currently have re-mixed special live versions of my tracks that a Jam over the top with using FX, sends and a couple of pieces of hardware.

I am moving towards a more stems based approach (Kick,Bass,Perc,Lead,FX - maybe?) that I can hopefully play some of the parts of the track with a keyboard (melodies, dub stabs, fx etc.).

I am not going to get down the right/wrong debate other than to say if you are only pressing play, you are not live.

 

[snowdogg]

I am not going to get down the right/wrong debate other than to say if you are only pressing play, you are not live.

i agree but i dont see adding spice on the top of a pre-mixed set as much of an improvement. unless there is heavy musicianship on the keyboard/guitar etc

the point is if you had a heartattack on stage would the set just keep playing through? would add a lot of insult to injury imo..

 

[Continuum]

I struggled with this.

I used to play 8 stems with an APC40, doing live eq, fx and live arrangements, all that. I was BUSY keeping it all together and quite often not very together. I concluded it was just getting really stressful and not fun to ultimately put together worse versions of my tunes for the sake of doing stuff 'live'.

These days I DJ my lovely oood-mastered tunes off a laptop or just an ipad sometimes. I know it's a bit of a cop out but this music was never 'live' in the first place. I built it out of a million mouse clicks over years and months. It's honed over a long period to the closest thing I can get to perfection.

When I get the rare opportunity to play out, in front of lots of new people it just feels daft to take my beautiful polished tunes, deconstruct them, and then rebuild them live, only worse.

There's little actual live performance in there, so what was I trying to replicate? People really don't seem to mind, I get to interact with them a bit more than just frowning over a controller.

If the music is good and people are into it, and you're nice and enthusiastic about playing it, I don't think anything else really matters.