http://www.mudpeople.lsdxm.com/mudliveoutline.pdf

Wrote this last night, its a general outline of my live setup

its no longer idk wtf, because, i know wtf now

This document is sorta geared for intermediate skill levels, and is only my own way of doing things, I just figured someone might find it useful or at least entertaining

check the post in the dj/live set section for an idea of what this setup sounds like

Just recorded this little 13 min piece of kuso

http://soundcloud.com/mudpeople/jammin-wit-jello



13 mins til I trainwrecked (not really, pretty hard to do that w/ Live but I did FUBAR hehe)

http://screencast.com/t/6aQ7bv2Q2e5m

So that is how Ive laid out the set so far.

Channels-
1. Renoise rewired
2, 3. percussion loops
4. backing loops
5. sweeps/pads/atmo loops
6. 1-shot sfx
7. 1-shot vocal/warped sfx
8. 1-shot sfx effected
9. breakbeats w/ kick for like, break type stuff
10 and 15 are the 2 dj groups, 3 band EQ on the groups with 4 separate channels in each, one for my tracks, one for techy/prog tracks, one for full power tracks, one for any other tracks
20. master recording channel
21. dj groups recording channel

And the rest are the MIDI rack. Still playing with that, finding what sounds best with least cpu use. Im still working on streamlining the whole thing. The only effects are on the return tracks and a few on the master (stutter/pan/reverb/dbglitch/etc type).

curious nice layout indeed, very cleanly organized

very cool idea mate

looks like you have been busy

VERY busy

Part of the reason its so clean.. My midi controller lost 2 fader knobs so ive got to work with 6 for now. Helps cut the cpu use too which is nice

started a new set in Live 7 instead of 8, it seems to run less CPU and the older warping system is so much better IMO. Im basically starting from scratch for fun and so far so good.
http://screencast.com/t/5tXTeHIceP

trax;
1. bassline Renoise
2. kicks
3. perc 'meat'
4. perc single hits/sfx
5. synth loops
6. 1shot sfx
7. Claw for arps, has nice clean filter sweep and lo cpu
8. Analog Warfare 3 for analog tweety stuff
9. Synth1 lead type riffer thing for playing
10. full tracks with 3-band
11. master record
Return 1 has 2 major effects so far, a glitch/resonance box and an LP filter

LOTS faster than the last setup so I get to play around with synths live, which is a lot of fun, the Claw makes some nice Goaish acid lines if done right and is fun to knob-twist on, all in all i had all 3 MIDI and all the loop tracks going with the CPU using no more than maybe 30%ish.

splitting the kick from the bass was a good idea too, i was running kicks and bass from Renoise, but the idea of juggling cut/pastes of bass AND kick was looking to be daunting enough to try out just bouncing a bunch of kick loops and runnign Renoise as straight bass which gives more flexibility to cut the kick without bass or vice versa which seems to IMO give the whole thing a more improvisational feel.

so something of a short update

Resurrected the live and improved after main file vanished

tried using vst for kick, didnt like, went back to loops

have currently 9 i thnk MIDI elements, which are 2 synth1s with backing type sounds, 2 Peaches for chiptune sound, 2 more synth1s for analogish squidge, an Operator lead (thanks Andy for getting me thinking that direction) slash-fm-thing, Tweakbench's Field ambient sound module, and a Synsect, those last 2 are for ambient nonsquenced constantly playing noise. The pairs are crossfader assigned so I can change voices quickly, or whatnot, even mid-play (the arm buttons of each pair are the same mappings).

All this and a Renoise rewire run around 30 percent cpu on this dual core 2.6 3gb RAM win7 machine, with Live 7.0.3 and no changes to display settings, and thats all-loops-all-midi. Could stand to be more streamlined tho.

Operator seems to run very light on CPU, also Linplug FreeAlpha runs pretty light for how it sounds though i usually just use recordings of it rather than active MIDI, Synth1 v1.12 rules all around and with a bunch of these preset packs has a ton of great sounds, and of course the Peach is light as hell plus i found sounds cool just flipping thru the wavesets as the pattern plays.

The Field is a neat thing that has all sorts of found-audio looped recordings, with the controls mapped to its own scene I can mess with their levels and get all sorts of varied atmospherics that I think helps fill the sound out more without too much more effort on my part. And the Synsect is a neat little thing that ive found makes neat granular sounds and of course bug sounds. Ive been trying to find things like this that i can run in the background that add more depth with minimal additional CPU. (so any suggestions are welcome)

trying to get a good master-channel fx set, so far ive got the K Kammerle Looper for slicing dicing and reverses, an Auto Filter bandpass, and a cutomatic + beat repeat chain. Kinda not happy with everything but the Looper (I set the mode selection to a knob so when I turn it it cycles thru all the different slice modes, less control but more efficiency).

Also so far, this is all in one MIDI scene on the microKONTROL, wiht a 2nd scene for the Field. Probably going to be mapping the synths to their own, when i get around to it, or something... I tried having a separate scene for arming midi and triggering fx but it was too awkward and I wanted to have fx triggers alongside channel triggers...

Oh yeah, i mapped all the main loops to toggles on the pad bank instead of faders to free the fades for MIDI (and cuz im down to 6)

And put a Blue Cat Stereo Triple EQ on the DJ channel and am going to be using it for dj eq from now on as it doesnt affect the sound at all, plus gives bandwidth options. Ill figure out something to use for kills. (I had tried this one dj eq, LSSDJ, I found somewhere out there, and it didnt color the sound, instead it threw off the channel playback like half a tick whchi is lame as hell)

So yeah sorry for long quick update. Just sharing progress.

Have a finished track to download!
http://soundcloud.com/mudpeople/entangler

http://imageshack.us/f/153/mudlivesetupdiagram.png/

Current iteration, this one is all MIDI, all synthesized, all in Ableton 8.2.2

all prearranged sequences are templates to build on, Thesys patterns to mutate, or general drum sequences courtesy of Era.

There's only 8 channels, it just looks intimidating with the racks open, the control is quite streamlined and lots of fun.

Ive been trying out various non-303 bass synths, loving the SH-101s and Micromoon, Smartelectronix Taurus emu is good but lacks release controls, ViCON is a Technosaurus Microcon emu, and the 2 303-inspired ones on the end of the bass rack both have full ADSR, the TDAI has dual oscs and the Redstair is polyphonic, which makes for some interesting sound, and has their overdrive plugin built in. The Micromoon, though, is my favorite in teh rack followed by SH-101 (thats its name, unlicensed use I believe, it says in the GUI 'Roland SH-101 its free but not from KVR.) The Mercury also is a good one.

Ive used 303s for basslines for years, mostly sampled in Renoise and volume-enveloped to kill the darn pesky lack of release controls in most emulations and of course, the real thing (Venom VB-303 has a note-length control on the sequencer and sounds better than ABL2, has 2 oscs, distortion, and more than however few octaves ABL2 has, plus all sorts of back-panel options, a lower panel that I dont know what does what and has no GUI yet, X/Y control, 3 filter falloff settings, and TONS of presence in the mix, you all should get a copy of the beta and drool in the KVR thread with me and the rest of the KVR Roland Groupies. Many of whom own real TBs, x0xb0xes, and other 303 emu hardware and are helping make the Venom as close as possible to the original Transistor Bass as possible as well as adding features that everyone always wanted the original to have, but didn't because it was supposed to be soemthing for studio guitarists to use as a standin for real bass guitarists when making demos, with the 808 as drummer, back when the Linn LM-1 was king with its 5000 USD INITIAL PRICE in f@#king.... 1980... AND ITS SOUNDS ARE SAMPLES. The story is backwards, now, the analog is expensive, the sampled/wavetables are cheap. I dream of time travel to back then and scoring massive on cheap analog, just a 303 here, Juno 6 there, SCI Proph 6 over there... And top it with a nice shiny Octave Kitten, ah hell why not make it the full Cat, and pour that Memorymoog over everything, don't skimp on the MIDI interface, Im hungry NOW!)



/tangent

Also theres an effects rack for synths, and one for bass/perc, on return tracks, and a couple Minimal Systems' BK Filter, bandpass for now that does the typical CDJ100 type filter fx. The rack has a Glitch chain, an Ohmicide chain, a Turnado, a chain of Melda fx, and a SupaTrigga with grANALator after, on the end. The synths' rack and bass/perc's rack both trigger individually, as do the filters, but the chain select and Turnado knobs are all the same mappings for consistency and easy operation, a second set of Turnado knobs would need a whole other control scene, since 2 other fades, ahem, 'became autonomous objects' and Im down to 4 til I manage the delicate process of dismantling the entire microKONTROL to extract the control PCB and superglue the damn things back into their 1.1mm deep plastic sockets for good and all, and see about resoldering a couple of the pots if its not rocket surgery.



All the synths in all the racks are constantly being messed with, so theres hardly any potential for playing the same sounds twice. Most of them are freeware analog-emulations, just like I like em. Formerly there was a 303 rack but I haven't really felt the need to TB, yet, and too many different sequencers to mess with can be overwhelming.

However.... The more options there are the more variation there is, the more interesting the sets are, and the more fun to play they are, and fun is inspirational, which can only be good for studio work.

Also, there are MIDI fx racks on everything that sends or receives note data, filled with Scale devices cannibalized from Axis Mundi's MIDI rack plus the ones I made looking up exotic scales on Wiki, all racks have the same 2 control mappings, so everything is always playing in key, which of course makes everything sound cleaner, and key changes are just a matter of a knob twist. Considering getting pretty intricate with individual racks' keys, exploring complimentary scales, so for example the bass can be Mixolydian but the synths Pythagorean (idk if those are complimentary just the 2 that popped into my head), or perhaps bass Mixolydian with base note E1 and the synths Mixolydian with base note D#2 (again idk if thats accurate musicologically but whatever)

http://imageshack.us/f/851/new2kj.png
Streamlined down to 5 main synths, a string synth, and kicks and basses racked, 3 synths run by 2 Thesys... Theses, program changes handled by m4l devices, and the 2 main axes Sylenth and Diversion run by Kirnu arpeggiator.

Highly tweakable in realtime. Im trying out how Kinisis fits with the rest, loaded with analog waveforms for REAL analog sounds, mutant-style.

Turnado on teh master lets them eat cake. And granulated stuttered slotchyblootch.

wrote up an outline of the setup for anyone who might be curious

http://www.mudpeople.lsdxm.com/mudliveoutline.pdf