Hi, I'm Rachel K Collier, and today I'm gonna show you how I create a live looping performance using Ableton Live.
So first things first, let's have a look at the project.
In my live looping performances I like to loop up lots of audio.
What you can see here is many audio channels which are names and also pre-record enabled
so I'm ready for my live looping.
I've also got one MIDI channel, and that's gonna be for my kick drum to keep me in time.
And now let's have a look at the ins and outs. We've got two inputs in this performance,
and these are channels 1 and 2, and are going into my audio interface. And channel 1 is gonna be my
vocal microphone, which is an SM58, which will be doing some percussion loops, some vocal loops.
And channel 2 is my Yamaha Reface DX where I'm gonna do some bass and synth loops.
And what's important here is that you can see that monitoring is all set to Off
for the loops on these audio channels. Now if we look at these 2 white channels here
the input are channels 1 and 2, but the monitoring is set to In here,
and these channels are gonna allow me to hear everything I'm singing or playing through my interface.
And then, let's look here at the outputs, we've got out main outs coming through 1 and 2.
But we also don't want the audience to hear the Click track, so it's important that the Cue Out is sent
to a separate output on your soundcard. In my case that's channels 7 and 8.
Let's take a look at my preferences here. I've got my audio input and output device set to my Fireface UC.
And this output configuration is super important to make sure all the stereo outs you're gonna use
are enabled, so I've got 1 to 8 enabled. Cool.
Now let's have a look at the Record/Warp/Launch. So firstly, the exclusivity here for your Arm or Record Enable
in Live's default is set to On but I'm gonna turn that off.
And then my default launch mode will be set to Toggle, Live's default will be Trigger.
And finally I'm gonna turn off the Start Recording on Scene Launch.
So now we've had a quick look at my live template let's have a look at my gear I need for this performance.
I've got my Push II here, which is for recording and re-triggering my loops.
Second is my Akai LPD 8 which I use to control all my effects and play kick drum.
Next is my Yamaha Reface DX, which I use to create my chords, leads and bass sounds.
Here I've got my super hi-tech shakers and golf ball and cinnamon stick, and these will create
the percussion parts in my performance, I'm gonna record this through my SM58 here, which runs direct
into my RME audio interface, which has multi ins and outs.
So now I've shown you my template and gear here, let's get into it and make some music.
I'm gonna start with my rhythm section, 'cause it gets me going. I'll play a hi-hat
with my golf ball and cinnamon stick, gonna play shakers and do my kick drum.
I'm gonna turn my metronome on, so I can here the click in my headphones.
I'm also gonna set a fixed length 2-bar loop on Push. And I'll turn on here a cool function: Record Quantization
on a 16th note for my kick drum. So, let's do it.
1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4...
Cool. And you can probably here there's a little effect on my golf ball there, let me solo that for you.
It's actually a vocoder, so it's a very sophisticated plugin but I'm using it in the most simple way
just to give me a nice bit of spread and thickness on that sound. If you hear it without it
you can see it makes a big difference.
So now, I'm gonna add some chords to my rhythm section. And whereas I've been recording all my parts in scene 2,
I'm now gonna record the chords part in scene 1.
And that is because when later on I retrigger this scene, I don't want the chords to start straight away.
You probably noticed that when those chords play back there was this cool rhythmic effect.
That's created using sidechain compression. And I've set that up by simply adding a compressor
to my Chords channel, and setting the audio from the RKC kick drum I created earlier.
And that means that every time that kick drum plays it'll trigger the compressor
and create that cool, duckin' rhythmic effect.
So now I've added some chords and given myself a pitch reference, I can start looping up some vocals.
I'm gonna start with this super simple one-note loop.
Now on this channel, I've pre-loaded in an Auto-Filter, and by playing with the Frequency parameter
we can start to add some color and interest to the loop. Check this out.
Now to do this live, I'm gonna MIDI Map this parameter to a knob on my Akai LPD 8.
To do this, I'm just gonna click the MIDI button here, choose the parameter I wanna map,
which is the Frequency,
click that, then choose any knob on here to map it to, twist the knob, you'll see a number pop up.
And check this out.
So now I'm gonna record the final parts for this scene which I'll retrigger
and it'll be the chorus for my song. So I've got 3 channels here, and I'm gonna record a vocal chant.
I've grouped these 3 channels because I want all these parts to have the same effect.
I've also panned the channels to the left and right.
Let's put it down.
I recorded it 3 times, cause I want it to have this really cool, thick, nice effect. And if we look at the effect here
I've got an additional delay, and also another knob here mapped to another parameter on the Akai LPD 8.
So now I've made all my parts for my chorus scene, I'll move on to my verse. So I'm gonna do that
by triggering Scene 3 here and starting a new chord loop of a slightly different chord sequence straight away.
So I'll transition from here...
And you might notice that all the clips have stopped, apart from 1, that cool little vocal hum.
And that's because I removed the Stop button for that Clip Slot. Super easy to do.
All you need to do is go to the Clip Slot while you don't want it to stop, right-click,
and in this case it says: Add Stop Button, 'cause I've already removed it.
Right-click, Remove Stop Button. And that means it will continue.
And that depends on your arrangement, on what you want to continue and stop.
So now I'm ready to sing my melody and lyrics that I've already written over the loops I just created.
But while I perform live, I like to perform using some cool live effects.
So let me show you how I've set this up.
The first thing I'll do to show you guys this is open my Sends and Returns in Live.
Here we can see my 3 different effects. First, I've got a Reverb for my vocal,
which is mapped to a knob on my Akai LPD 8.
I've got a Delay here, mapped to the 2nd knob.
And thirdly, I've got a super-cool reverb and delay here for my Yamaha Reface DX.
Let's play a bit of that for you.
It's important to note when using Return effects that these are set to 100% wet.
So before I jump in and give you a full performance I need to tell you about one more important thing.
And that is how to set up your audio routing for your performance.
So when I'm on stage performing, I like to have a separate mix in my headphones
than what I want the audience to hear out front.
For example, I wanna have that metronome playing and I'd quite like to have my vocals
way louder than what the audience might hear.
To enable myself to do this, it's super important that I have an audio interface with multiple outputs.
So step by step, let me talk you through how you set this up.
First of all, I'll open my Ins and Outs down here.
I'll make sure that I've got 4 Return tracks 'cause I'm gonna send out 4 separate stereo mixes.
Then on my tracks here I'll set the audio for every single track to Sends Only.
Now that means it will not go to the Master. So if I press play now
there should be nothing coming out of my Master channel.
And that means you've routed these correctly. Then, for each part, so for example, my golf ball,
I'm gonna send that out of my Synths and Percussion Buss. I'll send that to D.
And then moving slowly onto the vocals, they're gonna come out of F - my vocal loops
and so on, now if we go to the busses themselves,
we need to make sure they're going out of their own outputs.
Vocals and effects will go out of 3 & 4, Vocal loops, 5 & 6, and my own headphone mix will come out of 7 & 8.
And in that way you can send as little or much as you like of each sound to each mix.
So there we go, that is exactly how I set up a live looper performance to go on stage.
And in a sec I'm gonna jump in and play the whole song for you, it's a song called "And I breathe,"
and it's from my debut album: RKC, this is a cool stripped back version, I really hope you guys will like it.
And just a few other tips, before you jump in and do your own looping.
Just remember to really take time, don't rush and make sure you practice loads and loads
before you get out and go on stage, 'cause it can be scary at first, but then becomes second nature.
So, let's do this. See you next time. I'm gonna play a song.