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What's going on guys? My name's Chris and my new project Mantra is playing at a club in a couple weeks. We've put together a bunch of songs, mostly experimental dub with a heavy post-hardcore influence. He sings on the tracks, while I provided the instrumentals and do harmonies/back-ups. Anyhow, I'm somewhat limited with my equipment, only running a MacBook Pro through a Alesis Multimix 8. I've also got a modded GameBoy and a MicroKorg that I play some of the leads with. I was wondering if anyone had any particular tips and tricks for any ways I can spice up my personal performance's appearance.
Also, another concern of mine is if I should take anything into consideration when running my tracks through their sound system. Our demo is mastered, but my bandmate will only sing to the instrumentals, which aren't mastered. There's a lot of dubstep-ish breaks and influences, so the bass is very prominent in many of the tracks. Should I do any sort of quick mastering or additional effects?
you could take the individual stem tracks of the songs, invest in ableton live (if you haven't already got it) and trigger parts of your instrumentals with a control surface. Then you could add your vocals/microkorg/gameboy over the top and you could add and automate effects and in effect 'remix' your tracks as you play with ableton
you probably should do a rough DIY master to make sure your tracks are loud enough too. use a limiter on your instrumentals. i hope some of this advice is useful. i really would like to do a live set using a laptop and some external instruments myself soon
If your as strapped for time as you say you are, just do what gaslamp killer and gonjasufi do, burn your instrumentals or get them cut to acetate, you spin on the club setup while he sings...
Eventually though build your way up, get on some sort of ableton/fl/w.e. host with some midi controllers to play your stems, or go old school and get a set of 404 samplers... Play the stems on the fly, keep some beat repeats/flangers/filters/all that good stuff on the effects rack, work those...
As far as mastering goes I wouldnt sweat it too much, most clubs you walk into have a pre-determined gain limit anyway, seen alot of taped off master faders around town, ect... But, you WILL have access to the channels gains, and since they're gonna keep you out of the red by default, you should be able to meet a nice middle ground just gaining your shit up... And the crowd will love it, major fuckin dynamic range + big rigs = mmmm... Wins over beats slammed into a limiter cackstep all day long...
As far as mastering goes I wouldnt sweat it too much, most clubs you walk into have a pre-determined gain limit anyway, seen alot of taped off master faders around town, ect... But, you WILL have access to the channels gains, and since they're gonna keep you out of the red by default, you should be able to meet a nice middle ground just gaining your shit up... And the crowd will love it, major fuckin dynamic range + big rigs = mmmm... Wins over beats slammed into a limiter cackstep all day long...
thats much better than my limiting advice. i dont know that much about club rigs though...
Rehearsals and familiarity with what you're doing is best we've cut our digital/turntablism set-up right down to 2 users on one CPU. It was alot bigger at the start, becoming a more minimal set-up came with time, gigging and rehearsals...knowing the tools and what (other) tasks they can perform helped us, as we're using mutliple midi channels, 3 different programmes and multiple instances of plug-in's. Over time we've shed cpu hungry tools and hardware that were simply not worth using live...looking for alternative way's to do things e.g we now go into one mixer that is also a firewire audio interface and midi controller...it's by no mean's perfect but it's alot easier to set-up. Mastering-wise, if our tune's weren't mastered, we'd do a rough master in our DAW simply for matching volumes.
Thank you all for the helpful feedback! Looking into one-off acetate vinyl records, would LOVE to be able to spin these live, not to mention have my own personal vinyl copy of my own songs for my collection. I'd very much like to get into Ableton, I'm just totally broke right now. Perhaps when money becomes less of the issue, I'll invest in it and a controller. Don't have $800 laying around.
We've been rehearsing, but it's mostly me running the tracks through Mixxx and just jamming hard. Simple, yet effective.
xmantrax wrote:Thank you all for the helpful feedback! Looking into one-off acetate vinyl records, would LOVE to be able to spin these live, not to mention have my own personal vinyl copy of my own songs for my collection. I'd very much like to get into Ableton, I'm just totally broke right now. Perhaps when money becomes less of the issue, I'll invest in it and a controller. Don't have $800 laying around.
We've been rehearsing, but it's mostly me running the tracks through Mixxx and just jamming hard. Simple, yet effective.
DJ + vocalist = wonderfully effective if done right... If thats whats working man, dubplates and the stock decks might really be the way to go, or even cd's and the house's CDJs while you save up for dubs if thats the route you wanna go... Remember if the clubs worth a shit they've probably got decks and cdjs one hand so if you can mix fluently on mixx jumping onto cdjs wont be too hard once someone shows you the play button lol...
ctang wrote:Is ableton the only DAW you can use to play live?
What other software can you use?
i think you could use jeskola buzz but i dont know much about it and not that many people use it. Theres also sound programming languages like Max/MSP or Pure Data but they are bastards to learn. i think apart from live though the best alternative is either what Basic A said and do the dj + vocalist/instruments thing or invest in hardware like NI Maschine or an MPC or something although thats probably more expensive than buying ableton.
to the OP whilst the full version of live is really expensive, ableton live intro is usually pretty cheap and has a lot of the same features (although im not sure about connecting hardware to it like a microkorg). failing that i thought they had a 30 day free trial of the full version you could download if its just for one gig
skwiggo wrote:to the OP whilst the full version of live is really expensive, ableton live intro is usually pretty cheap and has a lot of the same features (although im not sure about connecting hardware to it like a microkorg). failing that i thought they had a 30 day free trial of the full version you could download if its just for one gig
Hahah, unfortunately we're trying to gig pretty often. I'm looking into spinning the tracks and essentially doing what Basic A mentioned (eventually), similar to the Gonjasufi & Gaslamp setup. We're playing a pretty big club that has a brilliant soundsystem and stage, so I'm hoping my work with worrying about the mix levels will be kept to a minimum. I'll be spinning my tracks + my gb/korg through my mixer and performing the back-up vocals. Looking into a site that does payment plans and purchasing the Ableton Live software & that sick pad they have out for it. But for now I've worked out interludes and some change-ups for the live-variations of the songs and for this gig I figure the simplicity will do wonders for my first time. We practiced today, and it sounds tight.
ctang wrote:Is ableton the only DAW you can use to play live?
What other software can you use?
FLStudio is slowly but surely integrating crazy live application abilities, multiple cue points and theyve always had amazingly intuitive timestretching/audio management, its really all about how you tihnk though, vaccine performs on renoise, exile uses reaktor, daedelus uses a monome based rig, ect...
New problem! I'm trying to run my MacBook through my Alesis Multimix 8 USB, and I've been having a major issue. Presently, with my ragtag home setup, I run the Macbook through an eigth inch jack (into a fourth inch plug adapter) which goes into the LINE IN on my 3rd channel of the mixer. I then have a plug from the Multimix's Main Mix Out R port into the input of my Behringer bass head into my cab. I'm only using the bass cab to run my mixes seeing as I have no smaller amps available to me right now. When I have everything plugged in as written, the only output I successfully am getting is the bottom frequencies (background noises, the instrumental bit of the track with no drums, high frequencies, whatever you'd call this) and I can't seem to figure out why. Any help? D:
EDIT: Was doin it wrong. Nevermind!
Last edited by xmantrax on Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Yo Chriss!! What's up dude, had no idea you were on DSF! Small world haha.
I myself am looking into getting a Novation Launchpad to run with Renoise and Duplex. (less then $200 all together). Basically, You would have to reprogram all of your songs into renoise, but that shouldn't take more than a few hours, especially if you save your presets on massive. I know how you hate trackers, but its a simple alternative to Ableton Live.
Here's one of veteran snares tracks being played through renoise and a launchpad.
get ableton suite and an interface for recording and midi. ableton is mainly a performance software with midi controllers and recording in, quantizing, slicing midi tracks is real easy for production. if ur gonna perform live you should get the apc its really perfect for performing live. as for your microkorg its kind hard to incorperate it into performace unless you map keys and remember all that shit. i use mine just for recording.
we've cut our digital/turntablism set-up right down to 2 users on one CPU. It was alot bigger at the start, becoming a more minimal set-up came with time, gigging and rehearsals...knowing the tools and what (other) tasks they can perform helped us, as we're using mutliple midi channels, 3 different programmes and multiple instances of plug-in's. Over time we've shed cpu hungry tools and hardware that were simply not worth using live...looking for alternative way's to do things e.g we now go into one mixer that is also a firewire audio interface and midi controller...it's by no mean's perfect but it's alot easier to set-up. Mastering-wise, if our tune's weren't mastered, we'd do a rough master in our DAW simply for matching volumes.
