Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting January 1st 2024 GMT each participant will have one week to upload one finished composition. Any style of music or selection of instruments are welcomed and encouraged.
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Hey guys I need some insight on live performance set ups. Up until now i havent been too much interested in the live aspect but my friend wants me to play at an event hes curating.
Right now im on ableton and use an APC 40 with midi keys.
I would like to utilize my tools to their maximum sonic potential.
If you guys can suggest me any templates or sets on how you do your thing.
......you turn me on 
We have a laptop which we use for our fasttracker tunes, the Atari ST uses STj and the Amiga 500 Protracker 1.3b. Mixing is very hard with the difference in tunes so we try to choose songs that fit together more or less to make mixing a bit less hard. Although the occasional crossfade mix happens a lot.
Here's how a Peaches set goes.
As long as everyone is having a great time, who cares if you're playing every note live or just hitting play.
Hey guys I need some insight on live performance set ups. Up until now i havent been too much interested in the live aspect but my friend wants me to play at an event hes curating.
Right now im on ableton and use an APC 40 with midi keys.
I would like to utilize my tools to their maximum sonic potential.If you guys can suggest me any templates or sets on how you do your thing.
......you turn me on
i do a live setup sort of similar to this. have a push paired with a livid alias8 now, but used to have the apc40.
i typically create a new set file for the tune to be played live, and then spend some time bouncing audio, freezing tracks, basically getting it to the point where minimal real-time plugin/fx rendering is needed for the basic mix of the track. i'll freeze all of my guitar amp emulations, bounce external instruments, etc etc. following this, i will bounce further (if needed) until i have 8 or less logical tracks with corresponding clips (one for all percussion, one for all guitar, etc etc).
this will then leave me with a session view with no more than 8 tracks (no left-right scrolling), arranged by scene so that if i were to just go top down by triggering scenes, you'd hear a very basic and acceptable (albeit uninteresting) arrangement of the song.
from here, i move on to sliders and knobs. sliders i typically leave bound to track volume, but i re-do ALL the encoders. i typically use the top eight for beat-based effects (different one-knob beat repeats, filters, delays on different percussion sounds, dub effects, etc). the bottom eight are effects for the overall mix, or for different instruments. usually a few delay and reverb sends to build up walls of sound behind the mix, filters on different things, stutter/repeat effects for the overall mix, etc. a collection of interesting tweaks and sounds set across 16 different knobs.
a few notes on midi mapping - get into multi-mapping! map multiple parameters to one knob, and set their max/min travel values in the midi window. can make one knob to plenty of interesting things by doing this.
having all of this, i'm now equipped to travel through my song live, either mixing and matching clips/scenes as i go, or playing "straight through", depending on my mood or the vibe of the crowd. i can use my 16 macros to introduce even further live manipulation and jamming to the arrangement.
i use my mopho keyboard on stage, usually set to a fairly basic mellow lead patch and hooked up to my memory man. i will use that to add texture, do little solos, or outro jams. sometimes i feed it midi from live, as well, depending on the song.
here's a photo of my live setup now:
and here's a straight board recording of a full set.
godspeed!
For me, it's depended on what instrument I'm playing. When I was doing more accompanying of belly dancers (really), I was playing guitar and uke along with percussion in Live, doing looping on the fly, etc. Sometimes I'd just mouse around to trigger stuff, but it's hard to do when you're playing guitar. I used a Digitech foot controller to trigger stuff in MIDI; I don't know if I ever got really comfortable with it. For random access of rhythm parts, I'd often mouse around anyway. It's quicker than scrolling around with the foot. For more synthy/live remix stuff, I've left the foot controller at home and just used point-and-click.
Now that I have some more guitar-based stuff coming up again, I might have to revisit the foot controller, though.
Interesting thread... I would love to play live but don't know how to go about finding a venue. I mean do you just call people up?
Interesting thread... I would love to play live but don't know how to go about finding a venue. I mean do you just call people up?
Well you gotta find a place that would suit the kind of music that you play first and that can be harder than anything else.
Interesting thread... I would love to play live but don't know how to go about finding a venue. I mean do you just call people up?
my favorite shows to play are house/basement shows. i guess it's mostly about being friendly with the right people, putting yourself out there and trying to make new connections. i have been in bands around my town for a few years so finding a venue for my solo musings was never too tricky, but i'm lucky in that regard.
colorful grey wrote:Interesting thread... I would love to play live but don't know how to go about finding a venue. I mean do you just call people up?
Well you gotta find a place that would suit the kind of music that you play first and that can be harder than anything else.
Yeah... that's true ;-) Nothing like going out more I guess!!
I took the easy route, and just play my electric violin
I usually use my Push to control the scenes and clips, also to control some devices (which I rack and Map Macro - auto map with Push).
I still have my APC 40 but I wonder if I will sell it or not, because I don't use it mush anymore. But the APC 40 is wonderful to control the sends and the devices parameters, I really love the knobs and in a live set it is really nice to play with both Push and Apc.
I control my synths (Prophet 12 and Pulse 2) with Ableton for the launching of sequences, but I tweak the parameters of the synths directly on them which is more fun ^^
I also use a Korg Kaos pad Quad for the send A effects, which is also quite fun and convenient. It permits some nice transitions and give a more live aspect to the set.
I generally write everything in a single session (duplicated in many other sessions for work and tweaking), I write midi clips for the drum racks and my synths and I use many samples (freezed and flatten). I generally have 8 tracks (one or two drums, 2 synths, 4 samples).
I like to play like it, fell free to give a try
And good luck.
here's a snippet of a set from this weekend, i did only weeklybeats stuff. my girlfriend did the visuals.
i used to use audiomulch for live performance but i got out of the habit of using that program a while ago. mostly i just make a playlist of pre rendered material and do slight tweaks on it live. then every show is different re accompaniment. ive used keyboards to add a new layer; my monotron for a sleek setup; tried to play guitar along with my tracks; had a sax player play along with sitari once. dont be afraid to experiment because chances are few if any will know your material well enough to know the difference, and if they do they might appreciate the new way of hearing it. so i guess basically laptop plus whatever else you want to bring. i would really like to have a live drummer play along sometime.
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