Ableton Live & Rock/Metal Music anyone?

[Peevy2000]

I've been a MetalHead for most of my life but always thought it was a bad idea to stick to just one genre of music. So I've a pretty eclectic taste in music & listen to anything from Classical to HipHop & Thrash to Funk (though I could never really get into Country or Reggae). But this past few years I've got into BreakBeat/DnB/DubStep electronic music in a big way too & have been having a go at producing some of my own.

I've been using Reaper for a few years now & totally love it (Cubase before that) but wasn't really coming up with what I felt was a completed BreakBeat tune. Rock tracks weren't a problem. I'd been reading about Ableton Live & remembered I had a Lite version lying about from ages ago so in no time at all I was creating Drumloops, Basslines & Synth Leads with pure ease ( well compared to what I was coming up with in Reaper)

The creative workflow Live offers is amazing & not just for electronic music but song writing in general. But I have come across a couple of kinks in the armour. And that would be comping & final mixing. Compared to Reaper or Cubase I think Live falls a bit short here, recording & editing multiple audio takes is so much easier in Reaper & I think you can be more accurate when mixing your track.

I'm not trying to start a this DAWs better than that war because apart form the few criticisms I had about Live I ended up buying the full version this week. Thanks to Philly at the Marketplace forum. I'm having a lot of fun with it & with Live & Reaper combined I'm looking forward to making music again

So the question is......Are there many of you out there using Ableton Live to make/record Rock music & if so how are you finding it? Or maybe like me, your using it along with Reaper/Sonar/Cubase etc. ??

Sorry for waffling....I'm slightly intoxicated at the mo

[vieris]

I was a live user from ver 2/7 but no longer. I found it to be a great pallet arranging tool, & an amazing ITB routing/automation/managing machine. But a horrible audio/midi tracking/recording tool. I will never agree with it's methods of recording post latency. This shortcoming & improvements in other DAW's finally drove me to ditch it all together.

[thinkindie]

I've been using FL 9 for recording everything (especially metal, I love metal). Recording into Edison, which is a very powerful recording/editing tool, as a track effect and dumping to the playlist is terribly easy. Plus it has such a nice interface. Everything floating in it's own window instead of tied down in different places like Live.

[robogone]

I've done a little bit of everything with it. Works fine for me when doing rock of any kind.

[siriusbliss]

Live isn't as friendly at straight tracking for doing metal/rock style production work.
So, unless you're doing Metal using lots of loops or sequences, then it's probably not as intuitive for this purpose.

You'd be much better off considering one of other DAWs.

Greg

p.s. using 95% Samplitude and 5% Live for multimedia production.

[metalifuxx]

I use it for metal and rock, and all guitar recording related things in between. I've been using Live 6 for my main host for more than 3 years.

[vieris]

It's great for arranging audio & can be used for recording if you understand the following. Unlike all other DAW's it records live audio/midi post latency. In other words it's not recording the actual timing you play, but what you hear thru your monitors.
I don't care how low you can get your latency, It's a problem when your trying to record live playing & be in sync. I did create work-arounds but over time it drove me away from Live.
The Ableton guys & myself debated & disagree about this issue.

Thread exampling the issue http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=93759

[Dean Aka Nekro]

I use live for all my drum needs for metal laying down scratch guitar tracks along with the rhythm patterns to see whats working and what is not. Then out of preference i usually take the drums into PT M-Powered and track everything else as i am used to doing it this way. There is absolutely no reason i couldn't do everything inside of Live however i am 100% certain and FWIW

Nekro/Dean

[Peevy2000]

So I've had a bit more time to get into Live. I've already almost finished 2 Breaks tunes & had a lot of fun with recording improv guitar, bass, Midi drums etc. on the fly. For me this is were Live really excels, its an amazing DAW for writing & coming up with new ideas.

I've tried a few DAWs now including cubase, FLstudio & Reaper. Cubase was the first but I ditched it for Reaper & while I was (& still am) happy with Reaper, I felt the need to try something new out. I first tried FLstudio & just couldn't get into it at all, then Podium, which was pretty good but at the same time a bit Uninspiring & nowhere near as powerful as Reaper. Then came Live & it just clicked. For me it was very easy to get into, I love the whole arrange & session view, the layering of clips & mixing things up on the fly to come up with new arrangements & ideas. It comes with some pretty decent samples/loops/FX/instruments, I absolutely love Drum Racks!

So am I gonna ditch Reaper for Live?...................The answer to that's gonna have to be NO. Reaper still has a lot of tricks up its sleeve that Live just can't compete with, such as routing, customizability, multi-take comping & mixing in Reaper is much more accurate. The Devs & the Reaper community are also amazing..........oh, this is really starting to sound like Reaper fanboyism

Back on topic. Live is a great DAW & you most definitely can use it for Rock/Metal although a DAW like cubase or Reaper might be a better choice for this type of music. I'm gonna continue using both Reaper & Live, & thoroughly enjoy doing so I'd still like to know if there's any more of you using Live for Rock/Metal or non-electronic music.

PS. if you want to slave Live to Reaper, you can use Rewire but that means you can't run vst/vsti s in Live. Your much better of using Rearoute. It acts as an asio driver for Live which then routes all outputs into Reaper, & there's no problem using plugins in Live.

[fedexnman]

im acoustic gtr singer/songwriter i bought live intro8 and a lpk25 to mess around with. its been alot of fun, looping,recording audio clips, but im getting alot of pops and clicks, with my audio that i dont get in reaper. i also wish you could loop clips with out warp, i rather play in time and make my own loops no warping. that being said it'd be cool if reaper would do a blocks and/or clip thing, with reaper 4, clips and launching are really the strong point of ableton live, its very creative .

[damoog]

Thumbs up to the OP, great topic!...i am a die hard metal fan,i live and breath it and have the full image and i grew up with synths and was a bit into the early 90's rave/acid scene believe it or not(im not now)....i use ableton for composing electronic music with some guitars in there too and nothing beats it for inspiration,i am writing a proggy electronic album at the moment and its just flowing,nothing beats ableton for inspiration,nothing

[Peevy2000]

Thumbs up to the OP, great topic!...i am a die hard metal fan,i live and breath it and have the full image and i grew up with synths and was a bit into the early 90's rave/acid scene believe it or not(im not now)....i use ableton for composing electronic music with some guitars in there too and nothing beats it for inspiration,i am writing a proggy electronic album at the moment and its just flowing,nothing beats ableton for inspiration,nothing

Thanks damoog, good to know there's another Metalhead using Live. I've a few almost finished Electronic tunes with guitar parts here done in Reaper before getting Live. I must get round to finishing them, I just need to write some lyrics for them & get a bit of time by myself to do a bit of wailing
When I get this latest one done in Live I'm definitely gonna have a go at another rock influenced Electronic tune.

Your right about Live when it comes to inspiration. I started messing with a bassline in Reaper today, threw in some beats playing along on my Dm5 Pro Kit & then that was it........just sat there looking at the monitor for what seemed like ages. But with Live the inspiration just flows out. Tomorrow I'm gonna transfer what I did today in Reaper over to Live (don't worry Reaper I still love ya) & see what I can come up with. I should really finish those other Tracks first though shouldn't I

Goodluck damoog & keep on making music!

[realsurreal]

@Peevy2000

Ive not logged in here for ages but had to for this post. I make anything from metal to electronic to space rock with ableton live. No DAW debate here but its fantastic for everything I can throw at it.

I think it just takes a little more time to get use to using guitars with it. I mainly write tons of parts in the session view So I can stay focused and in the groove. Then I arrange them looped with the synth parts and drums in the arrangement view. I came from cubase which took much longer to record and id lose my mojo because of it sometimes, but live changed that in a why I couldn't believe. I can lay down almost complete songs in 20 minutes vs 2 or 3 hours in cubase. It does have its cons for mixing and a few other things. I think however for composing quick no matter the style its badass!

here are a couple a rough demos of some metal songs that are all done in live,http://soundcloud.com/realsurreal

id love to hear what you come up with if you post anything!

Enjoy live!

[daniel_baum]

Hi all,

I had to chime in on this thread -

I've been using Reaper for a couple of years, and I've been happy with it.

Over the weekend I also remembered I had a license to Live Lite and I downloaded the latest version and installed it.

The entire weekend was like one long "oh my god" moment. . . .

I never imagined that any software could be so inspirational. I actually caught myself with my mouth wide open a couple of times. The sheer speed and ease with which things that are very fiddly in Reaper can be done is stunning.

My music is entirely electronic and it just fits me like a glove.

I have almost decided to buy the full version of Live. Any weaknesses that it may have seem to be complemented by Reaper, which I will certainly not be dumping.

Just my 2C . . .


Daniel

[emanual tehpirate]

i use live 8 (and besides its dislike of amplitube3 on my comp and resulting crashin) im very happy with it for my rock (influenced stuff). its very easy to construct the basis of a song with and mess about moving chords around. the thing i think live is the absolutly great for is the faux double tracking of guitar parts - just duplicate the track, twist the panning, move a couple of warp markers, tweak the vst amp sim settting and bingo. its a hundred times more natural than just delaying the track by some odd milliseconds. tbh i bet it wouldnt sound that bad on someones vox either. also i think the live8 added fades feature was worth the upgrade from live7 for me, but ive no experiance of other daw software - coming from a portastudio (and a drum machine) via a dj friend of mine