live performance mode
Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 11:00 am
here's a little to-do i think would be a killer feature for live. it's a bit of a funny request, because it's about a new set of features for using live in a live context !
I will explain. I am not a dj. I make music in my studio and sometimes perform it on the road using Live 3.0. my recent project involved spending my holidays learning to play dub reggae classics on my bass, transcribing it via keyboard into my desktop as midi. (sometimes straight to the keyboard) and recording the result playing a synthesiser, adding most of the other parts, sometime improvised, sometime original melody (so they really are 'covers' in some cases sans vocals). then i take the recorded audio chunks and use live to arrange the bits that go together.
When I make a track with live, I put all the major elements into a live song as clips, arranged into convienient scenes, with some effects and what have you and I jam the song live with a novation remote25 controller keyboard. so far so conventional.
but i don't want to make one big messy song with all clips in it. i need to make a individual song arrangement.
it comes down to song management. instead of using one big live song for the whole set, I prefer to make each song i do a whole live song by itself. this way i can have individual tempo settings per song and different effects and so on. musical key is important for my music as well, typically.
anyway, what live seems to lack for me, is some way to load one song while another is playing, and transition between the two. i realise this is a very complex request, potentially with conflicts that require effectively two instances of live running at once, or other issues that might be very difficult to resolve.
one idea might be to have a 'clip group'. this is a variable rectangular area of slots with defined clips in each slot. you could drag and drop clip or slot group chunks into the session page. like a spreadsheet copies and pastes groups of cells. there you go, excel-o-music, now i remember what i was reminded of when i first saw that grid interface. ((it should be row and column sizable like spreadsheets too then !!)). or a block of 'core' memory, which i had worked with in the r.a.n., was the other thing i was reminded of but grids are always like that i suppose.
another way to acheive it might be to develop a something which i will call the 'performance' for the sake of my argument. performances contain sets of songs. not their order. you use the
the performance could resolve potential conflicts by having settings that override conflicting settings in songs. such as by overriding insert effects, and storing information on tempo matching and morphing behaviour and quantise and mix settings. e.g. whether to simply cut mix to new song settings or morph the tempo over some x num of bars at what point and for how many bars.
songs clips would each go to dj mix bus thus allowing audio mixing of the songs in dj familiar fashion. this setting overrides song setting. individual clips settings entirely from song or clip. e.g warp, loop,
you could horizontally 'split' the screen to show song 'a' containing a session of clips upper and song 'b' clips session page lower, or horizontally depending on screen layout. ( i have widescreen, so two songs can live for me side-by-side best).
you could have a switch and a fader(s) that controls the settings - a tempo mix slider <--> between the two song regions. the fader controls the % 'mix' of a range of preset mixer parameters via a selectable curve function. same sort of control surface as a dj x-fade.
audio mix controlled separately as simply two stereo channel mixers. double the track capacity (potentially) necessary as just one song though, so therefore songs have a complexity limit of some kind.
performances saved seperately and include the set of directories 1 2 3 - locations where candidate songs are available to drag onto session A or B.
arrangements disabled?
save as self-contained performance copies the lot, clips and songs, to a nominated directory using the performance name, just like self contained songs work. self-contained performance also performs necessary operations to alter the copies of the song copies, which are now each, self-contained.
also interface requires hover/ballon help system. right mouse button needs to be respected. as its familiar interface paradigm and saves keystrokes.
I will explain. I am not a dj. I make music in my studio and sometimes perform it on the road using Live 3.0. my recent project involved spending my holidays learning to play dub reggae classics on my bass, transcribing it via keyboard into my desktop as midi. (sometimes straight to the keyboard) and recording the result playing a synthesiser, adding most of the other parts, sometime improvised, sometime original melody (so they really are 'covers' in some cases sans vocals). then i take the recorded audio chunks and use live to arrange the bits that go together.
When I make a track with live, I put all the major elements into a live song as clips, arranged into convienient scenes, with some effects and what have you and I jam the song live with a novation remote25 controller keyboard. so far so conventional.
but i don't want to make one big messy song with all clips in it. i need to make a individual song arrangement.
it comes down to song management. instead of using one big live song for the whole set, I prefer to make each song i do a whole live song by itself. this way i can have individual tempo settings per song and different effects and so on. musical key is important for my music as well, typically.
anyway, what live seems to lack for me, is some way to load one song while another is playing, and transition between the two. i realise this is a very complex request, potentially with conflicts that require effectively two instances of live running at once, or other issues that might be very difficult to resolve.
one idea might be to have a 'clip group'. this is a variable rectangular area of slots with defined clips in each slot. you could drag and drop clip or slot group chunks into the session page. like a spreadsheet copies and pastes groups of cells. there you go, excel-o-music, now i remember what i was reminded of when i first saw that grid interface. ((it should be row and column sizable like spreadsheets too then !!)). or a block of 'core' memory, which i had worked with in the r.a.n., was the other thing i was reminded of but grids are always like that i suppose.
another way to acheive it might be to develop a something which i will call the 'performance' for the sake of my argument. performances contain sets of songs. not their order. you use the
the performance could resolve potential conflicts by having settings that override conflicting settings in songs. such as by overriding insert effects, and storing information on tempo matching and morphing behaviour and quantise and mix settings. e.g. whether to simply cut mix to new song settings or morph the tempo over some x num of bars at what point and for how many bars.
songs clips would each go to dj mix bus thus allowing audio mixing of the songs in dj familiar fashion. this setting overrides song setting. individual clips settings entirely from song or clip. e.g warp, loop,
you could horizontally 'split' the screen to show song 'a' containing a session of clips upper and song 'b' clips session page lower, or horizontally depending on screen layout. ( i have widescreen, so two songs can live for me side-by-side best).
you could have a switch and a fader(s) that controls the settings - a tempo mix slider <--> between the two song regions. the fader controls the % 'mix' of a range of preset mixer parameters via a selectable curve function. same sort of control surface as a dj x-fade.
audio mix controlled separately as simply two stereo channel mixers. double the track capacity (potentially) necessary as just one song though, so therefore songs have a complexity limit of some kind.
performances saved seperately and include the set of directories 1 2 3 - locations where candidate songs are available to drag onto session A or B.
arrangements disabled?
save as self-contained performance copies the lot, clips and songs, to a nominated directory using the performance name, just like self contained songs work. self-contained performance also performs necessary operations to alter the copies of the song copies, which are now each, self-contained.
also interface requires hover/ballon help system. right mouse button needs to be respected. as its familiar interface paradigm and saves keystrokes.
Maybe the gap you get between loading songs in Live is due to jet lag