Ableton "Misery"

Other Gear
41

@ludicrouSpeed man so much of what you just said reflects my feelings about ableton/push/controllers. It’s the weirdest balance of promising you the world and then snatching things from your grasp. I had a big session with a Push (1) the other day and definitely would require a second controller to use it live. Just not enough stuff is quick, not enough free knobs, too much weird automapped stuff. In this regard, Maschine absolutely takes the cake for me. BUT, maschine can’t have multiple scenes with different tempos, which completely destroys it’s ability to function as a live tool for me (my tempos range between 80 and 130 in a set).


Still eyeballing the Livid OHM and CNTRL:R, but both would require a good amount of time midi mapping


BUT BUT BUT just had a play around with an Octatrack and my god it might just be the one…
42

Since I got into Elektron, I use Live only for recording, and possibly rearrange the session.
For this, I found mouse is the right tool.

Maybe at one point I’ll be confident enough to just record what’s out of the machines without a computer.
Elektron gear really freed me.

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Since I got into Elektron, I use Live only for recording, and possibly rearrange the session. For this, I found mouse is the right tool.

Maybe at one point I’ll be confident enough to just record what’s out of the machines without a computer.
Elektron gear really freed me.

Yep, after messing around with the Octa first hand I can see how it lends towards a true alternate to using a laptop/cpu. My fear was that it would have a really defined elektron “sound” that is easily identifiable, but it didn’t. it was open, like a DAW. Surprised me.


Gonna keep an ear to the ground for a cheap one!

44
dangit, now I want a Push 2 SO BAD!! LudicouSpeed, how is it working for you so far? is it helping bridge the gap between controller and Live? Have you upgraded to Standard or Suite yet?
Short answer: stop thinking about whether you need a push 2, and make a sick bea(s)t with what you got and then pwn the dancefloor with it <3 you'll be happier.

THIS. RIGHT. HERE! Yes, ludicrouSpeed. I think you are correct here. I fret about equipment so dang much that I end up spending all my time either learning new gear or fretting about gear I need. I just bought a used Roland Gaia (even though I have a ton of Roland gear, it was too good a deal on a used unit in mint to pass up!) and I’m now thinking I’ll find a pad controller that works with Logic Pro X. I have ZERO issues using Logic, ZERO! I love it for how simple it can be and how deep I can and will go. I didn’t even realize it but it has a pretty awesome Custom Drum Machine function that allows you to build your own, set it to play on whatever pads or keys you have to trigger it, OR just draw it in using the pencil tool, quantize, swing it and sequence it.


So that is exactly what I’m going to do, make a sick beat with what I got! Thanks!

45
dangit, now I want a Push 2 SO BAD!! LudicouSpeed, how is it working for you so far? is it helping bridge the gap between controller and Live? Have you upgraded to Standard or Suite yet?
Short answer: stop thinking about whether you need a push 2, and make a sick bea(s)t with what you got and then pwn the dancefloor with it <3 you'll be happier.

THIS. RIGHT. HERE! Yes, ludicrouSpeed. I think you are correct here. I fret about equipment so dang much that I end up spending all my time either learning new gear or fretting about gear I need. I just bought a used Roland Gaia (even though I have a ton of Roland gear, it was too good a deal on a used unit in mint to pass up!) and I’m now thinking I’ll find a pad controller that works with Logic Pro X. I have ZERO issues using Logic, ZERO! I love it for how simple it can be and how deep I can and will go. I didn’t even realize it but it has a pretty awesome Custom Drum Machine function that allows you to build your own, set it to play on whatever pads or keys you have to trigger it, OR just draw it in using the pencil tool, quantize, swing it and sequence it.


So that is exactly what I’m going to do, make a sick beat with what I got! Thanks!

Very happy to be of any assistance. Suitably, I’ve been absent from this thread, and other on here that I’m looking forward to jumping back into, as I’ve been furiously clicking away on ableton, setting up a DJ / live vocals set. Occasionally, I get to hit a pad on the push, and its glorious. Haha, it’s not that bad, but I’m trying to take my own advice. Ie. Mouse annoys me, but just make the damn session work however you can, have a long view of having all the optimal workflows sussed. We creatives thrive in creating first, learning how to create second ( I think )…

Looking forward to more "foruming’ tonight, though.

46

So I have talked myself right out of Push 2 and Ableton Live again. I’m going to use a Korg PadKontrol for logic drum designer and logic for recording but I’m thinking of getting back into an all hardware set up. Maybe some Kaoss Pads, TR-8 or DrumBrute, use my OP1, Roland Gaia, Roland SH32 (if it doesn’t sell). We’ll see. I may get frustrated again and head back to Push.

47
So I have talked myself right out of Push 2 and Ableton Live again. I'm going to use a Korg PadKontrol for logic drum designer and logic for recording but I'm thinking of getting back into an all hardware set up. Maybe some Kaoss Pads, TR-8 or DrumBrute, use my OP1, Roland Gaia, Roland SH32 (if it doesn't sell). We'll see. I may get frustrated again and head back to Push.

Work dat! :slight_smile:

48
@ludicrouSpeed man so much of what you just said reflects my feelings about ableton/push/controllers. It's the weirdest balance of promising you the world and then snatching things from your grasp. I had a big session with a Push (1) the other day and definitely would require a second controller to use it live. Just not enough stuff is quick, not enough free knobs, too much weird automapped stuff. In this regard, Maschine absolutely takes the cake for me. BUT, maschine can't have multiple scenes with different tempos, which completely destroys it's ability to function as a live tool for me (my tempos range between 80 and 130 in a set).

Still eyeballing the Livid OHM and CNTRL:R, but both would require a good amount of time midi mapping


BUT BUT BUT just had a play around with an Octatrack and my god it might just be the one...

Hey mate, sorry for delay! Wanted to reply to this right away, buy was on the way to a gig… Thennnnnn… It’s now, now!

Yep, “weird auto-mapped stuff”… I feel it… I know it would be hard to please everyone… But still, some stuff that seems obvi to me, they just completely leave out and then have hard-mapped buttons for stuff I don’t really need. Trying to stay open to those functions becoming useful in certain scenarios / once this painful initial learning curb is over. Embrace what it is, and accept what it’s not kinda thing… Ya know…

Interesting about Maschine, I’m completely foreign to it at this stage.

Those controllers both looks sexy as… I’m trying to embrace a modular thing… Multiple controllers, with a long view to replacing / downsizing as I learn what I need / what works. ATM, I see push 2 as my “2nd keyboard / monitor w/ pretty lights for clip launching”… APC as my faders + knobs / crossfader + pads, also launches clips, but replacing a lot of the pads with custom midi functions. Then I’ll just be adding either a launchcontrol or an Arturia beatstep to place above the APC 40 for 16 extra pads / knobs custom mapped…

Looking more at the ableton Looper plugin, it’s pretty deep and flexible… Resampling on the fly is gonna be fun. Looking at one external input Looper for Pocket operators 12/20/28, and you can feed it back into itself via another fx channel in ableton…

Then finally, when it is working :'(… Op-1 with a split of the output to resample in a different way, and paractise tape tricks etc… manual bpm setting instead of dealing with ground loop.

I am super stoked to get an octatrack. Looking forward to hearing about your experience when you get one… I always enjoy your insights, as you give a lot of detail which feeds my morbid curiousity :wink:

I’m planning on picking up opz at launch, and hopefully early next year will be OC + PO32…

Why did I write this all on my stupid phone, my MacBook is literally in front of me face palm haha

49

You can nudge any track in ableton with the track delay setting.

50
You can nudge any track in ableton with the track delay setting.

Yeah, thanks for the tip. I’m aware of that though, and it doesn’t​ work for my needs. Most clips groove just fine, but there are just the odd few which need a lil nudge. Track nudge + resample seems like overkill… In pro tools, you just hit the nudge button, which can be samples or ms… Really straight forward.

I think you can nudge in arrangement view, but I do all my performance in session.

51
@ludicrouSpeed man so much of what you just said reflects my feelings about ableton/push/controllers. It's the weirdest balance of promising you the world and then snatching things from your grasp. I had a big session with a Push (1) the other day and definitely would require a second controller to use it live. Just not enough stuff is quick, not enough free knobs, too much weird automapped stuff. In this regard, Maschine absolutely takes the cake for me. BUT, maschine can't have multiple scenes with different tempos, which completely destroys it's ability to function as a live tool for me (my tempos range between 80 and 130 in a set).

Still eyeballing the Livid OHM and CNTRL:R, but both would require a good amount of time midi mapping


BUT BUT BUT just had a play around with an Octatrack and my god it might just be the one...

Regarding that big Push 1 set… have you tried using Clyphx? You can do quite a bit with it based on clip scripting. You can have a rack in one track control another, or several, you can script devices on and off in scenes, automate some other stuff. It’s wild. I use Push in a live band, with some backing tracks, and the synths I need are there exactly when I need them, no mucking about with changing crap on my end… like having a stage tech!

52

@ludicrouSpeed man that sounds like a wild midi idea - I can def see how the Push and APC would work really well together. I’m really someone makes a launchpad-esque script for Circuit so I can use it like a poor mans push (launching clips, mapping macros to stuff, hold buttons for fx sends etc etc) and maybe pair it with my midi fighter for finger drumming styles. Nice and compact, but I think it’ll be a bit too minimal. I need to stop pussying around with it lol


I keep trying to work out a CPU-less system, and go straight hardware, but I think I’ll forever be strapped to the mac - even if just for backup purposes… sigh. >insert first world problems here<
53
@ludicrouSpeed man that sounds like a wild midi idea - I can def see how the Push and APC would work really well together. I'm really someone makes a launchpad-esque script for Circuit so I can use it like a poor mans push (launching clips, mapping macros to stuff, hold buttons for fx sends etc etc) and maybe pair it with my midi fighter for finger drumming styles. Nice and compact, but I think it'll be a bit too minimal. I need to stop pussying around with it lol

I keep trying to work out a CPU-less system, and go straight hardware, but I think I'll forever be strapped to the mac - even if just for backup purposes... sigh. >insert first world problems here<

Haha, yup. Having tried a few different things over the past little while, where I’m at is that I love disconnecting from the mac for creativity / refreshment / some other work flows, but I’m a bit more heading back to “ableton joy” mode, now that I’m building my set up, and working through the learning curb. The flexibility (for all it’s annoying bugbears) is very freeing… That’s just where I am at the moment, the pendulum swingeth: thesis >antithesis >synthesis (>antithesis)

54
You can nudge any track in ableton with the track delay setting.

Yeah, thanks for the tip. I’m aware of that though, and it doesn’t​ work for my needs. Most clips groove just fine, but there are just the odd few which need a lil nudge. Track nudge + resample seems like overkill… In pro tools, you just hit the nudge button, which can be samples or ms… Really straight forward.

I think you can nudge in arrangement view, but I do all my performance in session.

Nudging affects session view too. Not sure what the issue is with this solution, it’s set and forget. Nudge track by xx ms, done.

55

Thanks again @Anfim, the problem is that I need it on a per clip basis.

The other thing is with track delay, that it apparently delays every other track if you put negative values in to get your chosen track ahead of the beat.

56

If you need to nudge a clip, just do it with warp start and loop points. I never use track delay. I always use the above method. If you become skilled with clip view, there’s nothing that cant be fixed.

57
If you need to nudge a clip, just do it with warp start and loop points. I never use track delay. I always use the above method. If you become skilled with clip view, there's nothing that cant be fixed.

I was going to say something similar. I just zoom way in on clips and drag the start point until it slides into place. You can get very precise.

58
If you need to nudge a clip, just do it with warp start and loop points. I never use track delay. I always use the above method. If you become skilled with clip view, there's nothing that cant be fixed.

Thanks for that. Yeah that does work. I just strongly dislike using the mouse. I wish there was a simple nudge button to push or pull by ms/10ms or samples.

The other issues with using warp start / loop points is that one doesn’t necessarily want the audio outside of the loop brace / start point to be audible… I guess crop clip (right click only?), then dragging the start points around would solve that… It’s just all extremely mouse focused, and for me it feels lamé. I hate to sound like a broken record, but back in my pro tools glory days, I would get around super fast, doing almost everything with the keys… Of course, then I would have to manually fade all my edits with the mouse, cause there was no auto fade or similar thang… And anyway I’m happy to be on ableton, cause I love session view (for the most part,)

59

@ludicrouSpeed I LOL’d at <span style=“color: rgb(37, 38, 30); font-family: “lucida grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 255);”>lamé

<span style=“color: rgb(37, 38, 30); font-family: “lucida grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 255);”>
<span style=“color: rgb(37, 38, 30); font-family: “lucida grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 255);”>Also, were you on PT before Batch Fade? Makes my life so much easier whenever Im using PT. Which TBH is rarely these days (mainly just teaching), but whenever I go back to it I do enjoy hot-keying like a mad man. Wish there were more hotkeys in Ableton (gimme zoom functions dammit!)
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@ludicrouSpeed I LOL'd at lamé

Also, were you on PT before Batch Fade? Makes my life so much easier whenever Im using PT. Which TBH is rarely these days (mainly just teaching), but whenever I go back to it I do enjoy hot-keying like a mad man. Wish there were more hotkeys in Ableton (gimme zoom functions dammit!)

Haha! Yeah, that was a bad film which made me laugh much more than I wanted it to deserve.

Yeah, I had a digi001 to begin with…

Man, I feel you. If you shift+tab you can switch detail view to devices, and back to clip, which puts focus on the clip, you can then +/- to horizontal zoom, (I’ve noticed), but then, hey I wanna use the move loopbrace shortcuts and sorry, you have to click on it first. I want my clip detail view to take up half screen, “just drag it, guy… The mouse is great”. Noooooo, the humanity.