Pure synthesis <====> Pure mixing WAV

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
julienb
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Pure synthesis <====> Pure mixing WAV

Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:28 am

I would like to know what is the main concept you use to make your live set for the stage.

I exactlty know this question isn't very precise & rigourous..
of course, it depends of music style, sounds etc... but..


I just would like to know if a lot of people make synthesis real-time on the stage or if the major parts of people uses live as a big & powerful tool for cut & paste sample of their pre-builded songs.

I mean:

By doing pure synthesis, of course, on stage everything can be changed , touch, modified etc
but there are risks of cpu peaks, if we want to assign knobs: we have to create a very rigid/solid configuration that will never really change etc etc

By doing songs before (with live, reason, or what we want) and exporting ALL tracks in wav (one WAV per tracks or more...) and pasting it just before the stage in live: one scene per song, or 2 or 3 scene per song (in order to play with a little loop in the middle of the song), controller can be assign only with effects & common master things, cpu will be sleepy, live is more secure, complex things are already made before but we loose a lot of control


Pure synthesis <=================> Pure mixing rigid already made song

in the second case, we could imagine that the live set contains:
a lot of audio tracks, effects on each tracks
we can imagine making music with a lot of soft etc ... with no limits!



and you, what do you think about that?


I'd say that I like pure synthesis...
because I had hardware in the past ...
with hardware, I think I won't extract/export in wav...
but with only live + vst + reason + + + + , be rigid seems to be an heresy...
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jahnlay
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Post by jahnlay » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:04 pm

I think a combination of the 2 works best
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Post by elektrovert » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:18 pm

I mostly use all audio and effects.
but I'll chop each track of each song into 1 to 4 bar loops
I don't trust VSTs live (or to be more accurate, my processors ability to handle VST's).
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Post by elemental » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:31 pm

I'm in the pure wav camp... but at the beginning I was really against this.
I was surprised tho at how much you can still do with pre-recorded tracks with filters / delays etc.

But I'd still really like to start doing more "live" synthesis - live drum pattern editing, live synth tweaking. Trouble is, with my synths I tend to process them quite a lot and a lot is from hardware, so I either take out half my studio (not really an option most of the time esp as I dont drive!!) or just record all the parts.

I like to think of my approach as like the old dub engineers... use the mixer as an instrument. Except in Ableton we have much more control than an old mixing desk.

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Post by Tarekith » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:42 pm

In the past I've done the pure wav method. I think for my new sets I'll be running a combination of things though. Waves for pads and background effects, VSTi's live for leads and bassline, and either hardware or Battery 3 for drums.
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julienb
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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:28 pm

jahnlay wrote:I think a combination of the 2 works best
it means that wav things are like "sample stuff"
I mean: several riff are sampled and play in audio tracks, and rythm (or others) are live synthesis

it is an answer


it asks the following question:
what do I want to make on the stage ? :-)

in my case, I don't want to play some parts (notes)
I just would like to keep the possibilities of movings knobs while synthesis.


That I would like to do:
-create songs that could contains complex part, complex break etc... AND some parts that could be looped.
-alter things in live (not really for the main structure, but just keep a part longer for playing with effects etc) => looping, effects etc etc

probably, the solution is
- making music with live, reason, tructrcu, azerttyygh etc
- export all my tracks, all my parts (number of clips will be Ntracks x Nparts etc)
- using live only for (only, but very useful!) assembling wavs, using scene & effects, looping a parts for making a longer pleasure on stage etc


it could be my solution


I really would like to know how Lawrence, Alex Smoke, Monolake(!), etc uses Live Ableton ... and in general, how do they do their lives on stage!


any ideas?! :-D
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Benshik
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Post by Benshik » Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:37 pm

personaly id say this is absolutely not important... moreover, after Ableton Live, audio stopped being RIGID to become ELASTIC, right?

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julienb
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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:31 pm

Benshik wrote:personaly id say this is absolutely not important... moreover, after Ableton Live, audio stopped being RIGID to become ELASTIC, right?

Ben
My so poor english is here ...
I don't really understand what you mean..
zorrrry :(
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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:50 pm

I just have another question about this post..

in the case I export all my tracks in WAV, is there problem of sync while playing long play audio files?

I mean, if my song is 5min long, if I lauch my scene with my 8 tracks each one during 5minutes, is there a problem of desynchro???

see u, precious people!
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ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:14 pm

I like working with wavs. Its easier on the CPU, you can still have serious fun, and you can get a better sound by sculpting each part beforehand to get a more "studio" sound that fits better with everything else. I've just heard too many Live PA acts with crappy sound compared to a DJ.

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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:37 pm

ethios4 wrote:I've just heard too many Live PA acts with crappy sound compared to a DJ.
"Live PA Acts" ?
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ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:49 pm

a live PA act is an act that typically uses all hardware live to create the music - sequencers controlling synthesizers and samplers, people tweaking knobs and playing parts in by hand.

The problem I have with it is that it sounds very very different than the way studio production sounds, which often makes a live PA act sound out of place if placed between 2 DJs who are spinning studio productions.

Live PA sounds more like a band to me, which is fine, but personally I like the advantages of being able to perfect the audio in the studio before using live.

Here's an example : by using wav files in a live set, I could add a true reversed reverb to an instrument. That could never be done with a live PA. Monitoring is often difficult, so its really hard to tame those filter tweaks and not blow out the speakers, etc....

I think the real solution is probably to use both wavs and synthesis - I just think you have to be really careful with live synthesis for it work well.

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Post by tricil » Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:39 pm

just do what sounds good.
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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:45 pm

8)
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julienb
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Post by julienb » Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:45 pm

8)
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