Be Prepared



Dear friends,

glad to see you again. Today I'm gonna show you one simple method how to bring your tracks to the stage with Ableton Live. It's very easy, all you need is a finished mix of one of your tracks. Then you can just follow along my step by step instructions. I am going to use a techno track (because I am mainly playing live techno sets), but I really can be any kind of genre. It doesn't matter.

Step 1: Export Stems From Your Mix


Go and open the mix you made (doesn't matter in which DAW you produced).
To export STEMS you need to figure out what kind of sound material belongs or fits together.
All Material that belong together can be bounce into on STEM.

E.g. when I bounce my STEMS, I look for material which is similar in spectral or pitch. Think of which "layers" of your music you want to have single control over.
And think about separating drums from instruments.  Keep rhythmical elements distinguished from string or pads (separate long from short decay instruments).
If we need to compress it later in the live set, it makes sense to apply a different release for some stems. I would use one STEM for my kick drum (KICK), one for percussion (PERC), cymbals (CYMS), bass (BASS), rhythmical instruments (RYTM), leads and pads (LEAD).
SOLO all tracks that belong together and bounce them through the MASTER (if you got send effects) out to one folder.
It also helps to write the BPM in the folder name, if you need to warp again. Then name the tracks in the same order you chose in the mix, for less confusion. 1 for KICK, 2 for PERC, etc...












In the end I got 6 stems in total. It makes sense to name them in the right order [1 ... 6]. To keep everything nice and tidy. So you can find your bounced audio files real quick. It's important to stay organized, especially if you are working on huge productions. It's always good to have a plan. Develop a format that works for you and stick to that.

Step 2: Import The Stems In Your Live Session

Once we got all the STEMS you can open a new Live Session and import them.
Working with STEMS give you the opportunity to adapt to a any environment or live setup.
Wanna add a drum machine? No Problem! Just mute the drum tracks (KICK, PERC & CYMS) and start play your drums live. The kick drum sounds mushy in the club? No Problem! Add an EQ and notch out room modes. You get the idea. In that way you have all the important elements at your finger tips and can make a live remix of your tracks/songs.







Step 3: Experiment!

Now feel free to experiment with your stems. Try to loop different sections in the clips or just stick to your original arrangement. My approach to play my tracks live is almost like DJing. I like to loop my drum section (which very often have a long intro section) and then be able to slowly fade into the next track by triggering the next clips. There are different ways to do this. Ableton has a crossfader, as well.

When I started to play live I had a lot of tracks with different methods to mix them. Which was a total mess on stage. I was always thinking about the next step. It was a hard time. But once I came up with the idea to make them all fit the same scheme I felt redeemed.

Here's a video of my first live performance:

Go and find your own way! Try different concepts. Fail and do it again. Learn from your experiences. This manual is just one way to do it. And it took a while to commit to this way of performing.

Here's a video of a performance with the method from today's post:


Yours,
Ben Haviour

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