This is the small version of the live set-up
that I normally take with me on tour. And I'm gonna explain a bit about how it works. So first, the hardware signal flow. I have 32 audio inputs and 32 audio outputs.
It's all in this flight-case here. So it's all running through the back all the inputs
and outputs so we can patch it for live situations. So all these little mics that you see here,
there are three mics here, and there's some line inputs, they all go through the back in there.
They run through Ableton and I send them out in groups too the mixing desk
at the front of house. The audio that comes in goes through 2 tracks.
On one track... for example this one Percussion A the audio comes in through 'External In-8',
it goes through this track here, I control all the recording I do with these Dummy Clips, which I will explain later. And audio goes into the second audio track
where I control all the effect chains per song. And then at the end of an effect chain it goes out
through an external audio object to the group I want to send out. So at the front of house at the mixing desk
my sound guy gets different groups. So for example Channel 1 is a kick-drum group.
Channel 2 is for snare-drum kind of things. 3 and 4 for Bass, 5 guitar, etc. So this percussion channel
in one song might have a snare-drum function, so then it's gonna be sent to Output 2, and in another song
it might be just a percussion layer in the background and then it gets sent to one of the percussion tracks. All the orange tracks basically are microphone tracks,
and all the blue stuff is basically line inputs. And then there's some midi stuff at the end, where I control
looping midi, for example, or changing presets by midi. The main problem I had with looping was how do I make
a song structure. 'Cause normally if you loop with a pedal
you just stack layers on top. And maybe you can stop a layer and start it.
It's mostly 3 layers so I wanted to have way more, and a song mostly consists out of a lot of layers
starting, stopping, changing. So the way I developed to be able to do this
is controlling the recording of the audio clips by a Max for Live plugin, and the plugin controls
a couple of things. First it says here, the scene where I record the samples. So I don't record samples in different scenes.
They are always recorded in one scene called: Samples... completely at the top. Then right under that is the Control function
for the Arm button on the track. So I control if the track is armed or not. This has to do with trying to avoid a bleeding of mics,
so when a track is not doing anything or when I don't need to sample it, it's off.
So you won't hear the microphone to get as less... feedback or bleeding as possible. So right under this we have the Launch button where I
control when a clip gets launched or not. And some other functions, so here's the Stop function,
which stops the clip from looping. So I might want to record, let's say a clip that I don't
want to have looping yet, I don't want to have it playing yet immediately but later,
so I'm recording it but stopping it at the end of the recording, that's what this Stop button does. Then there is a Delete button to delete the clip
at the end of the song, I programmed a Quantize function for if it's necessary, if it's too sloppy or if it's a real
like, dance track, like a 4-4 track some things need to be quantized in order to be groovy.
And here's the metronome that I quantized it to. Then there's the Loop Length.
With this function I can determine how long the loop is. So it's set for every loop I make, I set it to a certain length. And so this is where I determine how long the loop will be. So when I start it it will automatically punch out
after this amount of beats. And then there is a Delay function, which means that if I
have a Delay function of 4 beats that when I press Record the recording will actually start
after 4 beats. This can sometimes be handy for if I... want to record something and immediately record
something else after it but don't have time to press the button again
as a separate scene. So with this I can delay that recording. This plugin gets controlled by Dummy Clips.
Dummy Clips are on the tracks and they're basically empty clips, there's clips
there's nothing in there, no audio or no midi. Just automation. And I automate the buttons
that are in the plugin. So for example this clip right here is called the Rack 16,
which means it will record 16 beats. Now if I look into this clip, you can see here... The Control Midi 3 plugin, the Arm button so it first gets
armed, it's very important to have the correct order of
things, so the Arm button is as first. It will jump on. I have
the loop length which is set here to 16, so that's correct. Then half way in this loop I'm launching it. I trigger these clips before the next bar. So here in the Global Quantization I have it on 1 bar. So if I press this clip, it'll launch immediately when I press it
so it's gonna be before the bar so everything is set when the next bar comes the recording can start
of that loop. Like this I have several other clips: a Stop clip
that basically has no automation, 'cause if I launch that clip the clip I recorded will stop. And a Play clip, where only the Launch is automated
so it will start playing again. So with these clips I'm building a structure.
So here you can see on the right side... all the scenes have different names, and these are all Cues.
So basically what I have is a big Cue list that I work down. And every scene, so every Cue has different clips on
different tracks. So for example in this song the first scene the kick-drum gets recorded for 16 beats. But at the same time... Also the guitar gets recorded for 4 beats.
And maybe for the second Cue my electronic drumpads get recorded for 16 beats. And actually I changed the click here to another tempo.
So every Cue has different actions... on different tracks. In order to play the song structure that I make in Ableton
I need something to control skipping through the scenes. And I use a Midi Fighter Twister. One of the knobs
is the knob to launch the next scene every time. And this really works for me 'cause the knobs
have a certain click, so I feel when I press it and I'm certain that I can go on to the next scene.
Let me demonstrate this for you. I will start... the set, we have a little click track. And I'm using this knob to scroll through the scenes,
so pay attention to this. I skip a bit through the song
and if I launch this scene now it will stop. If I launch the next one it will play again. So what I just showed will work in most cases
but in some special cases it doesn't. For instance in this song I have a pattern that's 9/4
and it's supposed to go over a 4/4 bar. In this case I cannot record it as an audio file
'cause the audio's gonna be in 4/4 and... I need it to be in 9/4, so I use the looper for that, and in
a clip I automated the length of the looper, so it's here. It's 9 beats, and I set the looper free
from the global quantization. So it will run over the 4/4 bar in this way.
Let me demonstrate this. And now I will add the drum beat to it, which is in 4/4. Another 9/4 layer I will add now on the xylophone bars. So in this way I can have a 9/4 over 4/4.
Yea, I've been watching this dude's videos the past couple of days. So much greatness. I've learned like 6 new things from him so far.
does anyone know what kind of recording mics he is using?
does anyone know what kind of mallet/glockenspiel instruments he uses?
Is there some place we can get that max for live device or do we have to build it?
Who is Binkbeats and why has this sub been going nuts over him for the last week?
This is fascinating, and seriously inspiring, but my biggest question is how he's able to get his whole system's latency down to a manageable level, while also not having to worry about Ableton glitching out from such a low buffer size. When I tune my setup to anything around or under 4-6ms latency, the playback audio will randomly glitch and lag under any small amount of stress. More than 6 notes played on my MIDI keyboard?–Glitch. And I'm only working with like 8 tracks, yet he has 32 and it's still fine! My macbook isn't brand new, but it's still certainly up to par.
Anyone have any ideas?