This is the small version of the live set-up that I normally take with me on tour.
And I'm gonna explain a bit about how it works.
So first, the hardware signal flow.
I have 32 audio inputs and 32 audio outputs. It's all in this flight-case here.
So it's all running through the back all the inputs and outputs so we can patch it for live situations.
So all these little mics that you see here, there are three mics here, and there's some line inputs,
they all go through the back in there. They run through Ableton
and I send them out in groups too the mixing desk at the front of house.
The audio that comes in goes through 2 tracks. On one track... for example this one Percussion A
the audio comes in through 'External In-8', it goes through this track here, I control all the recording I do
with these Dummy Clips, which I will explain later.
And audio goes into the second audio track where I control all the effect chains per song.
And then at the end of an effect chain it goes out through an external audio object
to the group I want to send out.
So at the front of house at the mixing desk my sound guy gets different groups.
So for example Channel 1 is a kick-drum group. Channel 2 is for snare-drum kind of things.
3 and 4 for Bass, 5 guitar, etc. So this percussion channel in one song might have a snare-drum function,
so then it's gonna be sent to Output 2, and in another song it might be just a percussion layer in the background
and then it gets sent to one of the percussion tracks.
All the orange tracks basically are microphone tracks, and all the blue stuff is basically line inputs.
And then there's some midi stuff at the end, where I control looping midi, for example, or changing presets by midi.
The main problem I had with looping was how do I make a song structure.
'Cause normally if you loop with a pedal you just stack layers on top.
And maybe you can stop a layer and start it. It's mostly 3 layers so I wanted to have way more,
and a song mostly consists out of a lot of layers starting, stopping, changing.
So the way I developed to be able to do this is controlling the recording of the audio clips
by a Max for Live plugin, and the plugin controls a couple of things.
First it says here, the scene where I record the samples.
So I don't record samples in different scenes. They are always recorded in one scene called: Samples...
completely at the top.
Then right under that is the Control function for the Arm button on the track.
So I control if the track is armed or not.
This has to do with trying to avoid a bleeding of mics, so when a track is not doing anything
or when I don't need to sample it, it's off. So you won't hear the microphone to get as less...
feedback or bleeding as possible.
So right under this we have the Launch button where I control when a clip gets launched or not.
And some other functions, so here's the Stop function, which stops the clip from looping.
So I might want to record, let's say a clip that I don't want to have looping yet,
I don't want to have it playing yet immediately but later, so I'm recording it but stopping it at the end of the recording,
that's what this Stop button does.
Then there is a Delete button to delete the clip at the end of the song, I programmed a Quantize function
for if it's necessary, if it's too sloppy or if it's a real like, dance track, like a 4-4 track some things need to be
quantized in order to be groovy. And here's the metronome that I quantized it to.
Then there's the Loop Length. With this function I can determine how long the loop is.
So it's set for every loop I make, I set it to a certain length.
And so this is where I determine how long the loop will be.
So when I start it it will automatically punch out after this amount of beats.
And then there is a Delay function, which means that if I have a Delay function of 4 beats
that when I press Record the recording will actually start after 4 beats. This can sometimes be handy for if I...
want to record something and immediately record something else after it
but don't have time to press the button again as a separate scene.
So with this I can delay that recording.
This plugin gets controlled by Dummy Clips. Dummy Clips are on the tracks
and they're basically empty clips, there's clips there's nothing in there, no audio or no midi.
Just automation. And I automate the buttons that are in the plugin.
So for example this clip right here is called the Rack 16, which means it will record 16 beats.
Now if I look into this clip, you can see here...
The Control Midi 3 plugin, the Arm button so it first gets armed,
it's very important to have the correct order of things,
so the Arm button is as first. It will jump on. I have the loop length which is set here to 16, so that's correct.
Then half way in this loop I'm launching it.
I trigger these clips before the next bar.
So here in the Global Quantization I have it on 1 bar.
So if I press this clip, it'll launch immediately when I press it so it's gonna be before the bar so everything is set
when the next bar comes the recording can start of that loop.
Like this I have several other clips: a Stop clip that basically has no automation, 'cause if I
launch that clip the clip I recorded will stop.
And a Play clip, where only the Launch is automated so it will start playing again.
So with these clips I'm building a structure. So here you can see on the right side...
all the scenes have different names, and these are all Cues. So basically what I have is a big Cue list that I work down.
And every scene, so every Cue has different clips on different tracks. So for example in this song the first scene
the kick-drum gets recorded for 16 beats.
But at the same time...
Also the guitar gets recorded for 4 beats. And maybe for the second Cue
my electronic drumpads get recorded for 16 beats.
And actually I changed the click here to another tempo. So every Cue has different actions... on different tracks.
In order to play the song structure that I make in Ableton I need something to control skipping through the scenes.
And I use a Midi Fighter Twister. One of the knobs is the knob to launch the next scene every time.
And this really works for me 'cause the knobs have a certain click, so I feel when I press it
and I'm certain that I can go on to the next scene. Let me demonstrate this for you. I will start...
the set, we have a little click track.
And I'm using this knob to scroll through the scenes, so pay attention to this.
I skip a bit through the song and if I launch this scene now it will stop.
If I launch the next one it will play again.
So what I just showed will work in most cases but in some special cases it doesn't.
For instance in this song I have a pattern that's 9/4 and it's supposed to go over a 4/4 bar.
In this case I cannot record it as an audio file 'cause the audio's gonna be in 4/4 and...
I need it to be in 9/4, so I use the looper for that, and in a clip I automated the length of the looper, so it's here.
It's 9 beats, and I set the looper free from the global quantization.
So it will run over the 4/4 bar in this way. Let me demonstrate this.
And now I will add the drum beat to it, which is in 4/4.
Another 9/4 layer I will add now on the xylophone bars.
So in this way I can have a 9/4 over 4/4.