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Was wondering whats the best way to play dubstep live?

I've been performing with a band that does rock and we mixed a little dubstep elements in it and for that live all i really did was used the Akai's MPD pads controlling my Reason with my samples loaded in. With this method I'm just only allowed to play the original samples, tap tap tap .. kinda boring.

Are there any other ways I can do this but also add a bit of fun and improvisation to it like adding FX and filters stuff like that to make my live performance more interesting? Don't wanna just stand there and tap tap tap. haha.

if you have one of the mpds with knobs or faders on it then you could automate FX parameters but if you're playing in this way a lot the best thing would be to buy ableton and a new controller. expensive but this is what the performance side of it was made for

This has got to be the best way to play...

Ableton is your best bet. The Novation Launchpad that's built for Ableton is surprisingly pretty good too for it's price, and it's built for exactly what your doing.

a kaoss pad can make it more interesting

Don't bother it usually sounds shit

Echoi wrote:This has got to be the best way to play...

haha this guy is awesome

get the drummer to play to a click

have the FOH send you back a stereo feed from an aux consisting of drums,bass, whatever you want.

tweak and FX that in ableton

put triggers on the kit and trigger samples, warp them in real time

etc etc

Thanks for the reply guys.

I've been trying to look into Ableton and I see a lot of people using it. Thats the real deal for live performance? Coz in the studio I just use Protools.

For my last performance I pretty much just played everything on the MPD. Took a while to practice my coordinations with my fingers when trying to hit the drum samples while doing wobblings haha.

I have a real drummer that plays on top too he has a click to himself basically I follow him.

I saw that Novation Launchpad which has a lot of pads (buttons) are they just all sample triggers? Like is that pretty much just a bigger version of an MPD? :p

djgc wrote:Thanks for the reply guys.

I've been trying to look into Ableton and I see a lot of people using it. Thats the real deal for live performance? Coz in the studio I just use Protools.

For my last performance I pretty much just played everything on the MPD. Took a while to practice my coordinations with my fingers when trying to hit the drum samples while doing wobblings haha.

I have a real drummer that plays on top too he has a click to himself basically I follow him.

I saw that Novation Launchpad which has a lot of pads (buttons) are they just all sample triggers? Like is that pretty much just a bigger version of an MPD? :p

Yes, Ableton is the main tool for live performances.
The performance side on Ableton is based on ''clips'', which may contain loops/samples/whatever, and you can trigger those with the buttons on the launchpad, so they're a bit more than just midi sample triggers

Check out some of the live performances of Dirtyphonics.

I'd suggest something like a Muse Receptor to keep the live band look/feel. Unless you don't mind standing there with a laptop I guess. I've done this with Receptor before, it just sits in the rack with the other effects and I played MIDI controllers connected to Receptor which ran a sampler and several VST synths with no screens required. You could also just close the laptop and put it off to the side, but from my experience Receptor was much more stable and cheaper to use than buying more software and controllers. Receptor is what a lot of bands use for live music using plugins. There's several models and refurbished ones can be found pretty cheap, under a grand for older ones.