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You'll be able to find many things on the internet, but there is no such a thing as a guide to building a Live Set. A few example Live Sets can be found for Ableton Live, but that doesn't teach you anything about the reasoning behind some decisions that performers make when crafting their set. 
Personally, I have crafted many different Live Sets that never ended up "The Live Set" I was going for.
To put it simply: I want a Live Production Set!
I don't want to figure out how I can get my existing music into a LiveSet. I want to figure out how to craft a set that allows me to becreative and have fun.
So I'll be building a new Live Set again, as I have done many timesbefore. Only this time, I will properly document it for myself andeverybody else who might be interested in following this process.
Instead of having hundreds of ideas floating around in my head, I willwrite them down in order to prevent my brain from getting overloadedwith details that are better of in writing anyway.
For the sake of clarity, I'd like to stress that this blog post is not a guide on how to build a Live Set.
It is merely the documenting of my processes, problems, solutions and decisions. Almost everything I will mention can be done in Live 6. I'm working in Live 7 but that doesn't really matter.
When I refer to my BCR2000, keep in mind that almost any other MIDIcontroller can be used too. I will try to be as detailed as possible inthis post. So you may come across some information that does not applyto your specific situation.
There probably are an infinite ways to get started. If you have beenusing Live for a few years and are still chasing that "perfect LiveSet", you will surely have experimented with countless differentmethods and ideas that never metabolized as a playable Live Set you aresatisfied with. If you are new to Live, you will be seeking guide andexperimenting with many different setups before you can craft a Liveset that you are truly satisfied with. The First StepsMy first steps are to set some restrictions. Knowing Live as well asI do may be my biggest disadvantage, because I always find a way tomake things more complex. But making complex setups isn't my goal. Andmore than often, the complexity of a Live Set is exactly what makes itend up like a tedious unfinished project.
Defining the restrictions is a bigger task than it sounds, because inreality I'm making them up as I go along. The difference about mycurrent process and all my other failed attempts is that there arerestrictions.
I start with defining the project I intend to do. The project is "Building a Live Set".
The next thing I do is defining a goal I need to achieve to make this project happen.
The first goal I work towards to is: "Making a track that contains the basic sound elements of a song".
I'm not thinking about how I implement my existing tracks. I'm notthinking about how everything will be triggered and controlled. All I'mfocused on is building a simple 1 scene project that contains a trackfor the beat, the bassline, the secondary bassline and ambient sounds.
The First Scene
On the first track I have a Drum Rack with a kick, snare, closedhat and open hat. The kick is a sample, everything else is generatedwith Operator.
On the second track I have my bassline. The third track contains thesecondary bassline and the fourth track is used for an ambient sound.
I'm not going for a carefully crafted piece of music at the moment. Thebeat is a standard four on the floor, the bassline is on the off beat,the secondary bassline is a simple bass loop with sidechain compressiontriggered from the kick and the ambient sound is a sequence of a lovelyOperator patch called Aquanaut. Its about as basic as it gets.
Defining The Controls
It is time to start thinking about how I am going to control thisset. This is usually the part where I get myself into trouble. Thereare so many options, its enough to drive anybody nuts.
For my project "Building a Live Set", I have reached the first goal that I had set.
Now it is time to define my next goal. My next goal is: "Working out which parameters I want to control".
One restriction I have currently set for myself is to NOT think about how I am going to trigger clips.
I currently have a BCR2000 in front of me and I am going to focus on controlling the sounds within my one scene.
The BCR2000 is another problem I have to set some restrictions for.Because the hardware controller has so many available knobs andbuttons, it is easy to get lost in hours of trying to assign everything.
I may want to control the mixer, the sounds, the clip grid and theglobal transport. But that is not my current goal. So I wont even thinkabout all of that.
I will avoid using the top encoders on the BCR2000 for now. Becauseeach knob is actually 4 knobs and a button. I don't want to deal withfiguring out what to do with those now. I will use some of the 20buttons and 24 knobs that remain free.
Another measure I have taken against "brain overload" is to start from an empty BCR2000 template.
Since I know how to program the BCR2000 on the fly, I don't really mindstarting from a blank slate and add the parameters I need as I discoverI need them.
I've drawn out a BCR on a piece of paper and started numbering the buttons and knobs.
The top 8 encoders are going from 1 to 32, the 16 buttons below it gofrom 33 to 48, the 24 knobs below that are numbered from 49 to 72 andthe 4 remaining buttons go from 73 to 76.
I plan to use this schematic later on, when I start to write down all the parameters I have assigned.
- Click here to view the Schematic. Assigning The Controls
Think JEEP! Just Enough Essential Parts. Or in this case parameters instead of parts.
I start with the mute buttons. I have 1 scene with 4 tracks that contain a combined total of 7 sounds.
Sofar my set is all MIDI, so just assigning some buttons to the trackmutes will not give me the result I wish. Pretty much all mute buttonsin Live are "Audio Mutes". Meaning that they cut of the sound that isplaying when it is muted.
To get real "MIDI Mutes", I will need to set up a MIDI Effect Rack onevery track so that I can mute the MIDI before it goes into myinstrument.
Firstly I have to do the Drum Rack. The Drum Rack has MIDI assignablemute buttons, but they are "Audio Mutes" and therefore useless to me. I prefer MIDI Mutes over Audio Mutes because MIDI Mutes cut the MIDI that goes into your instrument. Audio Mutes cut the audio that comes out of your instrument and all the effects that may be placed behind it, which in some cases causes clicks and pops.
The first thing I reach for is a MIDI Effect Rack called "MIDI Note Namer" and place it before the Drum Rack instrument.
The MIDI Effect Rack contains 128 chains, one for each note, each chainis assigned to a note with the Key Zone Editor within the Rack. Thismeans I have 128 MIDI Mute buttons for the 128 slots on the Drum Rack.You will find this Rack in our Patch of the Week section.
I only have 4 sounds in my Drum Rack. The Kick is at C-2, the snare atC#-2, the closed hat at D-2 and the open hat at D#-2. The hat soundsare assigned to Choke Group 1, so that the closed hat will cut into therelease of the open hat.
I assign the first 4 buttons on my BCR (33 to 36) to the mute buttons of the first 4 chains of the MIDI Effect Rack.
Currently I can (MIDI) mute any of the sounds of my Drum Rack. Now it is time to do the mutes for the other tracks.
On the tracks that contain melodic parts, I don't want to mute individual notes. I want to mute the whole sequence.
For that purpose I have created a Rack called "MIDI Muter". It simply is a MIDI Effect Rack containing a single chain.
When placed in front of any instrument, the MIDI signals will be forcedto go thru this Rack. I can (MIDI) mute the whole sequence with themute button on the first and only chain. I put one of these Racks onthe 3 tracks that contain melodic parts. Then I assign the 3 firstbuttons of the second row of buttons on my BCR (41 to 43) to the mutebuttons of the Racks on the 3 melodic tracks.
So now I have a one scene loop and I can mute all the sounds I wish to mute.
Next up are the knobs. This will again be a case off self restraint in order to get anything done.
For the drum sounds, I'm going for 1 knob per sound. On the kick Icontrol the Decay, on the snare I control the Time and on both of thehats I've assigned a Filter Cutoff.
I have chosen the first 4 knobs (49 to 52) on my controller to operatethose functions. Incidentally, these parameters are under theirrespective mute buttons.
For the melodic tracks I'm reserving 2 parameters per track. The firstset of parameters are assigned to the 3 first knobs of the second rowof knobs on my controller (57 to 59).
The second set of parameters are assigned to the 3 first knobs of the third row on the controller (65 to 67).
The bassline has a Filter Cutoff that is assigned, the secondarybassline has the Filter Cutoff and a Coarse parameter assigned and theambient sound has a Time parameter assigned. The knobs for theseparameters are also aligned under their respective mute buttons.
My First Performance
All work and no play makes Bjorn a dull boy!
Every set needs tobe broken in eventually. I started out with 4 MIDI Clips that containvery basic song elements. A beat, 2 bass sounds and some bleepybackground sound.
I then proceeded with assigning MIDI Mutes and assigned a few knobs from my controller to Live in order to tweak some sounds.
I got 1 kick drum sample and everything else is something I whipped up quickly with some Operators.
So here I am. I got something that can be played. I'll have a play and record the results.
- Click here to listen to the recording.
Well that was fun! I went a little overboard with the Coarse knob on the Operator, but what the hell!
This wasn't meant to be a song, just a little test project.
Now its time to add a second scene for a different "song", work out howI will assign the parameters of the additional instruments to mycontroller and finally assign them.
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