dude this video is incredible its soooo helpful man, thanks so much. Really quick tho, what is the best way to perform a song with live looping (using other instruments too not just a looping pedal and a guitar)? I'd like to build up elements live on stage which would then meld back into the prerecorded backing tracks. Is there a way to do this with a similar setup to yours?
Yo, glad if it helped out! So I have a vid out called 'Using Ableton as Perfect Loop Pedal' which pretty much covers what you've asked :) can check it here if you're curious ruclips.net/video/nrsM_yIA3KI/видео.html - in this vid I'm using a guitar just to demonstrate how it works, but you could use the same method in Ableton for as many instruments you could plug in to your audio interface or mic up, also applies to software instruments on a midi keyboard etc. Also if you're not familiar, check out this artist Binkbeats, as he's pretty much mastered the concept of live looping multiple different instruments in a setup. Goes way beyond what I'm doing with setups ruclips.net/video/Ya9VaE7dE6E/видео.html
Great video ! We do something very similar , click track to the drummers headphones , ableton push for keyboards and shots. our drummer has an electric kit so we feed that back in to our focusrite interface (Clarett 8 Pre) along with vox, bass and guitars and I can give the drummer a custom mix in his headphones. We don't have monitoring for vocals, bass and guitars we just play to whats coming out of the PA , so we can't hear the click we just follow the drums. What is fun though is the electric kit has midi out so I can setup a midi channel in ableton put other weird kits and sounds triggered off his bass drum (and others) and layer plugins to glitch etc.. and then mix it back in to the main output to the PA. It's good fun and is very stable great for ideas and songwriting. When we do a live show its the same setup but we tend to do less of the main keyboard playing as I'm running around the stage and singing but I still trigger off the ableton push but most of the main elements are prerecorded midi but I still play with the filters etc.. Toying with the idea of a wireless midi controller so I can run around and still tweak things with out going back to the push. I'll have to do a video of my setup :-) Great video I always love to see these kind of setups that push the envelope a bit with a live band :-)
That sounds really fun, loving the drumkit hooked up to triggered sounds and glitchy bits! i'd be interested how well the wireless midi controller might work for a setup like this and if its stable at a gig
Has a electronic producer i would love to start playing my music live but like you said in the video the setup would be to complex for me so i might just play my music as a dj set. Great video
ah sorry to hear that mate I didn't mean to give anyone the feeling it'd be too complex for them! would be curious if there's something in particular putting you off that I could maybe cover in a future vid or something. had a listen to some of your tunes & think you could 100% do a similar Ableton setup with it if you wanted
@joshtrinnaman thanks for the reply. It's the cost of the equipment, really. Is there any way of putting an ableton setup to do live without the equipment? That would be an informative video
@@cph2004 totally understandable, yeah there's still things you can do with a lot less for sure. I recommend checking out some people who do performances with the Ableton Launchpad live, that might be useful. It's how I started out and played my first shows before gradually adding the rest of this stuff over years
@joshtrinnaman thank you. I used to have a launchpad as well. I got rid of it as i didn't really use it at the time. I will figure it out. Thanks for the help.
Great question, think I'm gonna make a video to respond to this tbh as it'll be easier to explain than with text and will probably be helpful for others too but yeah, it's definitely possible to do this with this kind of setup, albeit with a couple limitations Involves setting up Groups in Ableton containing tracks that are set to monitor 'Audio From' specific places, then naming these Groups after your bandmembers and routing each Group to seperate Outputs on your audio interface that they can then connect headphones to
Thanks for this, it's super informative. So all your tracks are going through the master out rather than individually for the sound tech to mix in the venue?
Cheers! and yeah that's correct. That is admittedly a much better method if you've got the means & budget to do it, i.e. a bigger audio interface with plenty of outputs, and ideally your own sound-tech who knows your music. I'd be a bit sceptical giving that much control to an in-house venue sound engineer, who probably won't know your tunes that well. Assuming you can pre-mix & level everything in your Ableton set on a decent mixing system beforehand, then it should translate to live venue soundsystems relatively well just out of the Master 1-2. If you need to tweak, I just walk out in front of the stage during soundchecks whilst my Ableton set plays some tracks, and if I think there's too much bass or any levels are weird, then I can adjust them myself in Ableton on-stage. Gives soundtechs a relatively easy night.
I wouldn't sell that as it's just FF sound effects I've put on a drum rack in Ableton, very simple to do. You can easily download the sounds and create one yourself here www.sounds-resource.com/pc_computer/finalfantasyvii/sound/807/
With the NanoKontrol, i noticed the SOLO buttons seemed to be momentary, is that something you decided, or is that how it comes? Also, what boxs did you have checked off in the MIDI settings in Ableton?
Yeah that's just how it comes, but think you can change that behaviour with the Korg Kontrol Editor app to change if its a toggle or momentary button. Also pretty sure you only need the MIDI Input Track & Remote buttons for the Nanokontrol in ableton prefs too, the rest can be unchecked
I tarted trying to do this on ableton but even with the same model as you M1 Pro MacBook Pro with buffer at 32 samples, the latency was still too bothersome for me. And acoustic finger style guitar is the main core of my sound so I just couldn't deal with it. I don't know if there's any other tricks I could have pulled. So in the end I used the UAD Apollo to get a few zero latency effects where I really needed them, then used Ableton for reverbs, delays and granulation effects. Things that don't mind having a small amount of latency. That has worked pretty well for me. I use the Morningstar MC8 to turn on and off all the ableton effects. Thanks for the video, interesting to see your setup.
Sorry to hear that, I also play fingerstyle acoustic through the same setup sometimes! There's a degree of latency doing things this way, so I think it's a trade-off with the creative advantages available by having the signal in Ableton, at the slight cost of timing-responsiveness. But there's some tricks or things I can point out to try & help mitigate this, 1- Certain types of FX or plugins introduce a lot of latency to your session, even if they aren't on your guitar track. Pitch-shifting plugins and limiters for example, or things possibly on Master/Stereo Out channel can add latency to your guitar input. 2- Ableton has tools to deal with this, in Audio Preferences it'll tell you in miliseconds how much latency is in your session and you can counter-act this by delaying your input signals to balance out the latency -- for example, if there's 50ms latency overall, you can use the Track Delay feature or the Input Latency adjustments to delay your guitar signal by -50ms, getting you close* to 0. 3 - I say close* cos certain plugins, no matter what, if they're active in your session they permanently add a feeling of latency that you can't get around, even at super-low buffers like 32 where you shouldn't really be able to feel it. Worth checking the latency of your non-UAD FX or processes elsewhere in the setup to see if there's something interfering.
Man, thank you so much for this. I tried watching other videos on this, and they were way too complicated.
Amazing!!! thank you!
glad if it helped you in some way!
dude this video is incredible its soooo helpful man, thanks so much. Really quick tho, what is the best way to perform a song with live looping (using other instruments too not just a looping pedal and a guitar)? I'd like to build up elements live on stage which would then meld back into the prerecorded backing tracks. Is there a way to do this with a similar setup to yours?
Yo, glad if it helped out! So I have a vid out called 'Using Ableton as Perfect Loop Pedal' which pretty much covers what you've asked :) can check it here if you're curious ruclips.net/video/nrsM_yIA3KI/видео.html - in this vid I'm using a guitar just to demonstrate how it works, but you could use the same method in Ableton for as many instruments you could plug in to your audio interface or mic up, also applies to software instruments on a midi keyboard etc.
Also if you're not familiar, check out this artist Binkbeats, as he's pretty much mastered the concept of live looping multiple different instruments in a setup. Goes way beyond what I'm doing with setups ruclips.net/video/Ya9VaE7dE6E/видео.html
Fantastic, extremely relevant to my goals.
Great video ! We do something very similar , click track to the drummers headphones , ableton push for keyboards and shots. our drummer has an electric kit so we feed that back in to our focusrite interface (Clarett 8 Pre) along with vox, bass and guitars and I can give the drummer a custom mix in his headphones. We don't have monitoring for vocals, bass and guitars we just play to whats coming out of the PA , so we can't hear the click we just follow the drums. What is fun though is the electric kit has midi out so I can setup a midi channel in ableton put other weird kits and sounds triggered off his bass drum (and others) and layer plugins to glitch etc.. and then mix it back in to the main output to the PA. It's good fun and is very stable great for ideas and songwriting. When we do a live show its the same setup but we tend to do less of the main keyboard playing as I'm running around the stage and singing but I still trigger off the ableton push but most of the main elements are prerecorded midi but I still play with the filters etc.. Toying with the idea of a wireless midi controller so I can run around and still tweak things with out going back to the push. I'll have to do a video of my setup :-) Great video I always love to see these kind of setups that push the envelope a bit with a live band :-)
That sounds really fun, loving the drumkit hooked up to triggered sounds and glitchy bits! i'd be interested how well the wireless midi controller might work for a setup like this and if its stable at a gig
@joshtrinnaman will let you know how it works out something I'm keen to ty out in the new year 🙂
legend!!
great explanation! thanks for making this video.
no worries, happy if it helped you out!
Amazing Content. Thanks
🙏 thankers ever so!
Has a electronic producer i would love to start playing my music live but like you said in the video the setup would be to complex for me so i might just play my music as a dj set. Great video
ah sorry to hear that mate I didn't mean to give anyone the feeling it'd be too complex for them! would be curious if there's something in particular putting you off that I could maybe cover in a future vid or something. had a listen to some of your tunes & think you could 100% do a similar Ableton setup with it if you wanted
@joshtrinnaman thanks for the reply. It's the cost of the equipment, really. Is there any way of putting an ableton setup to do live without the equipment? That would be an informative video
@@cph2004 totally understandable, yeah there's still things you can do with a lot less for sure. I recommend checking out some people who do performances with the Ableton Launchpad live, that might be useful. It's how I started out and played my first shows before gradually adding the rest of this stuff over years
@joshtrinnaman thank you. I used to have a launchpad as well. I got rid of it as i didn't really use it at the time. I will figure it out. Thanks for the help.
Awesome vid! I'm looking to have separate mixes from ableton for each band member on stage. Do you do separate mixes for members?
Great question, think I'm gonna make a video to respond to this tbh as it'll be easier to explain than with text and will probably be helpful for others too but yeah, it's definitely possible to do this with this kind of setup, albeit with a couple limitations
Involves setting up Groups in Ableton containing tracks that are set to monitor 'Audio From' specific places, then naming these Groups after your bandmembers and routing each Group to seperate Outputs on your audio interface that they can then connect headphones to
Thanks for this, it's super informative. So all your tracks are going through the master out rather than individually for the sound tech to mix in the venue?
Cheers! and yeah that's correct. That is admittedly a much better method if you've got the means & budget to do it, i.e. a bigger audio interface with plenty of outputs, and ideally your own sound-tech who knows your music. I'd be a bit sceptical giving that much control to an in-house venue sound engineer, who probably won't know your tunes that well.
Assuming you can pre-mix & level everything in your Ableton set on a decent mixing system beforehand, then it should translate to live venue soundsystems relatively well just out of the Master 1-2. If you need to tweak, I just walk out in front of the stage during soundchecks whilst my Ableton set plays some tracks, and if I think there's too much bass or any levels are weird, then I can adjust them myself in Ableton on-stage. Gives soundtechs a relatively easy night.
Same thing happend to me with the warp, I had no idea what happend. Idk why its on by default
absolute nightmare scenario! Ikr who thought that was a good idea
cactuar collective launchpad drumkit.... have you got that for sale with all your smaples included?
I wouldn't sell that as it's just FF sound effects I've put on a drum rack in Ableton, very simple to do. You can easily download the sounds and create one yourself here www.sounds-resource.com/pc_computer/finalfantasyvii/sound/807/
With the NanoKontrol, i noticed the SOLO buttons seemed to be momentary, is that something you decided, or is that how it comes? Also, what boxs did you have checked off in the MIDI settings in Ableton?
Yeah that's just how it comes, but think you can change that behaviour with the Korg Kontrol Editor app to change if its a toggle or momentary button.
Also pretty sure you only need the MIDI Input Track & Remote buttons for the Nanokontrol in ableton prefs too, the rest can be unchecked
I tarted trying to do this on
ableton but even with the same model as you M1 Pro MacBook Pro with buffer at 32 samples, the latency was still too bothersome for me. And acoustic finger style guitar is the main core of my sound so I just couldn't deal with it. I don't know if there's any other tricks I could have pulled. So in the end I used the UAD Apollo to get a few zero latency effects where I really needed them, then used Ableton for reverbs, delays and granulation effects. Things that don't mind having a small amount of latency. That has worked pretty well for me. I use the Morningstar MC8 to turn on and off all the ableton effects. Thanks for the video, interesting to see your setup.
Sorry to hear that, I also play fingerstyle acoustic through the same setup sometimes! There's a degree of latency doing things this way, so I think it's a trade-off with the creative advantages available by having the signal in Ableton, at the slight cost of timing-responsiveness. But there's some tricks or things I can point out to try & help mitigate this,
1- Certain types of FX or plugins introduce a lot of latency to your session, even if they aren't on your guitar track. Pitch-shifting plugins and limiters for example, or things possibly on Master/Stereo Out channel can add latency to your guitar input.
2- Ableton has tools to deal with this, in Audio Preferences it'll tell you in miliseconds how much latency is in your session and you can counter-act this by delaying your input signals to balance out the latency -- for example, if there's 50ms latency overall, you can use the Track Delay feature or the Input Latency adjustments to delay your guitar signal by -50ms, getting you close* to 0.
3 - I say close* cos certain plugins, no matter what, if they're active in your session they permanently add a feeling of latency that you can't get around, even at super-low buffers like 32 where you shouldn't really be able to feel it. Worth checking the latency of your non-UAD FX or processes elsewhere in the setup to see if there's something interfering.
@@joshtrinnaman Thanks for that, I'll check out your suggestions. Cheers!