I should preface this by saying that I'm not actually planning on playing in front of an audience. My goal is to use the immediacy of a setup designed for live use as a source of inspiration, experimentation, and to expedite the composition process. I've never worked like this before, so I could use some advice.

I'll be working heavily with loops (from various collections and of grooves created on the iPhone), as well as dropping in tracks from a pre-selected handful of plug-ins (Alchemy, Rez, Kontakt etc.). I may also need to be able to quickly drop in live audio recording, looper style. A very big part of this will be to do serious processing to the sounds in real-time. I want to be able to chop, rearrange, mangle, glitch, filter, and activate/bypass on the fly with as few mouse clicks as possible. So the more that can be assigned to a hardware controller, the better.

Reasons for doing this:

1) Lack of time.
For a long time now, I've had almost zero time to write. This has been driving me nuts for a while and I want to get myself writing again. I'm attempting to schedule some time for this on a regular basis, but I'm probably only going to have a few hours a week to work on music, if I'm lucky. I no longer have the luxury of working on tracks for hours and hours every night for a week, until it's perfected. So I need to get as much done in as short a time as possible, so I can still finish a composition or two every month.

2) I'm bored with my music.
My last creative breakthrough was 6 years ago, which lasted for about a year. After that my musical output started to drop again because I wasn't creatively developing anymore. Everything was sounding like a variation on the same themes, and the level of emotion in the tracks was getting weaker and weaker. This made me even less inspired to write...and then a few years ago my life changed and I pretty much completely ran out of time for creative endeavors. In the last 4 years I've barely written at all. That needs to change.

I'm really hoping to go in a very different direction than I had been following. If compared to visual art....if what I was doing before was landscape painting, what I want to do now is start making more use of abstracts, photography, and mixed media. Faster, more spontaneous, more emotional, more varied, less literal.

What I need advice on:

1) What DAW do you think would work best for this sort of thing? I've been a Cubase fan for the last 10 years, and in more recent years have started to like the workflow in Studio One. However, I suspect I need something less linear for what I'm trying to achieve. Also, I probably need to throw myself into something very different if I am to keep from following the same formulas as I've always used. I'm guessing Live is the way to go here (which I've already got, but have yet to learn), but I'm open to suggestions.

2) What surface controllers(s) would give the most real-time flexibility for only $300? That's about all I can budget for right now, and I'll have to buy from Amazon because the money for this is from cashing in gift cards. (I'm saving for a new car because my old one crapped out, so essentially no extra cash can be applied.) As a master controller, I'm using a pair of padKontrols. I've got a few Kaoss pads I can throw into the mix too, which gives me a total of 4 XY controllers, plus Alchemy Mobile tweaking Alchemy's remix pad. So what I probably need most are knobs and buttons.

3) For those of you who have done this sort of thing, how did you guys go about figuring out and designing optimal DAW templates for your own needs? I always worked from a blank project every time, then picked the bits I wanted to work with and started writing. That takes more time and thought than I can afford now, so I need to be able to launch the project and immediately start dropping in sounds and messing with the sounds.

So...what do you guys think? Any advice/suggestions on how to proceed?

1) audio mulch

2) i use a novation remote 25 (still going strong after 7 ish? years)
and a few other bits of midi stuff, kaoss pad as you say can be good

)i tend to open a new project, but mainly its about fading in and out on the mixer channls, throwing delays around like monkeys throw shit, tweak everything...
and record everything too, dont stop for mistakes, just cut em out and crossfade later

compress/limit and release, then run away and let everyone complain and moan to their hearts content

jeskola buzz.

http://jeskola.net/

1:

change your way about working with a daw.
100 times faster to figure it out what you want to do than fumbling with a standard mixer because the modular view IS a mixer (if you can see it like this).

2:

map your little midi controller knobs to cc's and automate the remapping with piz midi plugins.
why do you need 128 knobs?

3:

i figured out my mastering template and worked for years on it,now i just concentrate myself on making music.


my goal was to keep most things separated to let musicians play the stuff live and to have a "cd quality mastered sound".
needs a lot of visions and hard work,i would say very hard work.
but that depends on the skills of course.

Not sure if this has been released yet, so it's kinda unproven:

http://www.keithmcmillen.com/QuNeo/overview

but if it lives up to the hype this will be an excellent tool for multi-touch control of plugins.

Peace,
Andy.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

vurt / t3toooo - I had been meaning to look into those hosts. I'll check them out.

Andy - Yeah, I've had my eye on the QuNeo for months. I saw that the Kickstarter orders have finally started shipping, so resellers should eventually be getting their orders too. The price is surprisingly reasonable and I dig the idea of being able to potentially control so many parameters at once. Very cool concept, and very tempting.

Start with a set list. What songs and in what order. Assuming you've played them in the past you should be less concerned with getting new gear and work out what you've already done with the equipment you already have. Buying more gear will not make you more organized. It will do the opposite give you an excuse not to work on the material you have at hand because you are too busy "exploring the intricacies of your setup.


I used to work 70 hours a week cooking for a living. I still found time to practice one hour a day every day and host a blues jam twice a week. It's all about your commitment. If you look for excuses they will come out of the woodwork. If you focus on your goals to the point that they are needs not wants you'll make the time.

I'd say go with Live, as you've already got it and it is quite out of the paradigm of Cubase and Studio One. Some of my more 'outside the box' tunes have come from Live, and it's incredibly quick for recording bits and pieces.

This would be for writing new original compositions, rather than remixing my older tracks or for doing covers.



In general, I agree with you and I try to follow that line of thought more often than not. However, in this instance I feel that bigger changes may be required. Thus far I have always approached composition as a linear construction process. I want to instead approach it now more like jamming with an instrument. This requires a different kind of preparation, and might require some hardware just to be physically be able to do this.



Wow - we're you single at the time? If not, then you must have had a very understanding partner!

For the loops, ableton. You can set entire sets already time synced and ready in ableton just to load up and jam away. For live mangling and sampling you would be alright with a roland sp606 as an extra, I use to work with sp808ex with dual D beam controllers that are lazers you could manipulate by moving your hand over them backwards and forwards to alter things like pitch, cutoff and alter delay feed backs and stuff. It also had the roland tape delay emulation on it and a RSS delay that could make the sound delay in a 3d image through some kind of process. You might want to consider some kind of beatbox like a roland MC707 as well to run side by side with ableton and maybe use a Korg Kaoss pad for ultimate fx modulations. Ive been messing with ableton and a DJ controller and midi keyboard hooked up together. I put a lot of samples in the search area ready made from stuff like loopmasters divided into topz loops, percussion, and bass. Then audition whatever sounded good through the headphone cue and drop it on a track. Ableton is seriously good fun for working live and doing mixing. When you slam some good beats together and start getting into the groove, get your keyboard and fire up your favourite synth and play along. Good fun

Even reworking older material requires that you organize your material. Improvisation doesn't mean starting from nowhere it means starting from an established area. Creating something new from an existing framework means starting from an existing framework. Which means working out a set list of ideas to work from.