Ableton as Live Improv Tool
May 14th, 2008 by proj
So I’ve got 10 of my songs chopped up into samples and loaded into ableton:
This makes for a really nice live improv tool. I can create mixes on the fly out of my music. The mixes are totally dynamic and never come out the same. I can mix pads from one song with the bass of another song.
The scheme I’m using is to do the following:
Each track represents a song component, drums, pads, leads, fx. I don’t have any vocals yet but eventually I would like to get some vocals in as well. I have a few tracks where I double up for more variety where layering doesn’t screw up the mix too bad (drums, FX).
Everything is labeled with the tempo to speed up cleanup within ableton. That’s probably not super necessary but it does make things faster.
Each song is a specific color so that I can visually find parts that should be together.
For drum parts I started labeling them with the type of drum pattern that is available and the song they came from.
For all melodic parts they are named first with the key they are in so that I can easily mix and match the songs that share the same key (amin = A minor, emin = E minor, f = F major).
FX are just named with the style of effect that I have.
All the sounds are my own creations from syths. Often the samples are recorded wet so I double up with a dry version if it makes sense.
I will post my first attempt at mixing this set after it’s encoded. It was rough in spots but has a some good moments.
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