Live at Last

By Joe Gore

In our last two installments, we scoped out the new ReWire functionality of Pro Tools 6.1, which lets you incorporate the sounds and sequencing of Propellerheads' Reason into your PT sessions. But Reason is only part of the story. ReWire also supports Ableton's Live.

This is big news — and massive news if your music routinely involves any sort of looping. Live is, simply put, the most powerful loop-manipulation program available. It also boasts a sleek-looking interface, formidable plug-in power, and brilliantly intuitive operation.

Did I mention that I like this program?

Live does many things, but its signature feat is the ability to alter the time and pitch of audio loops in real time. In previous LE Boot Camp columns we've learned how to synchronize loops originally recorded at different tempos using PT's AudioSuite functions. But Live automates the process.

You can, for example, start a track in Pro Tools, fire up Live, and troll for inspiration by auditioning any audio loops in your library, automatically synched to the master session tempo. Once you've settled on promising sounds, you can warp them with Live's editing tools and audio plug-ins. Then you can record the results back into your Pro Tools session via ReWire, or create an arrangement with Live's own sophisticated sequencer, which will run in perfect sync with Pro Tools.

You can download a trial copy of Live 3.0 here. It's a fully functional demo, save for the fact that it doesn't allow you to save your creations. Here is our ongoing PT practice session for Mac and Windows, and here are some beat loops to use for this workshop for Mac and Windows.

 

Going Live Before integrating Live into a Pro Tools session, let's open it in stand-alone mode and learn some basic moves. Remember, this will be a sketchy intro to a deep program. If Live sparks your interest, you should definitely read the manual included with the download. But having said that, you'll probably find Live to be one of the most intuitive audio programs around. Install the demo as directed, and click the "Run Demo" button when prompted. Like Pro Tools, Live relies on two basic screen views. "Session" is the one you see when you first open the program.		Click to enlarge
The other view, "Arrange," appears when you tap the Tab key. (Just tap it again to return to the Session view.) As you can see, the Arrange view looks a bit like the Pro Tools Edit window, while the Session view resembles the Pro Tools Mix window. For now we'll focus on Session view, where each track is represented by a mixing-board-type module, with faders, routing assignments, a pan pot, and mute/solo buttons. The slots above the send pots are where you load your loops. (Check out one of Live's most user-sycophantic features: the info field in the screen's lower-left-hand corner. Just drag your cursor over any of Live's controls, and it's automatically identified here. Once you know what you're doing, you can close this view by clicking on the adjacent arrowhead icon.)		Click to enlarge

		To the left of the screen is a file browser. Use the up/down arrows at the top of the browser to find the "Live Loops" folder you just downloaded, and then click on the folder icon to reveal the files within. Make sure the little blue headphone icon is illuminated — that way, you can audition files simply by clicking on them in the Live browser. Try it. All the loops play at the default tempo of 130 bpm, even though (trust me on this) the actual audio files are at three different tempos. Live doesn't write new files at the new tempo the way Pro Tools does. It simply reclocks them on the fly. Slick. The loops sound a little too frantic, don't they? That's because they're — surprise! — designed to fit in with our ongoing 107 bpm Pro Tools session. So lower Live's tempo setting by typing in a new value, or just click/drag on the tempo indicator.

Select the "Conga Loop" file and drag it to Track 1's top slot. Then put "Spooky Loop" in Track 2's top slot. Click on the little arrowheads next to the loop name to play each one. To silence a loop, click on the square in any empty slot on the same track. Alternately, press the space bar to start Live's sequencer, in which case any loop with an illuminated arrowhead will play. Try clicking the arrowheads on and off while Live is rolling. To stop playback, just press the space bar again. If you have you own loop library, now would be a great time to try dragging some into the Live session. Chances are you'll find exciting possibilities almost immediately.

The Warp Factor
Besides synchronizing your loops, Live offers powerful tools for tweaking them. Let's look at one of the most important ones: the ability to "redraw" the feel of an audio loop.

Let's try it out on the "Conga Loop" file. Reveal the audio file in the edit field by double-clicking on the words "Conga Loop" beneath the "Track 1" heading.

If you look closely at how the beat lines up to the grid, you'll notice that the clapped backbeats arrive a bit behind the beat.

Zoom in on the first big backbeat by placing the cursor near beat 1.2. The cursor changes to a magnifying glass icon. Click/drag downward to zoom in, and upward to zoom back out. Now click on the 1.2 marker so it glows green.
Finally, drag the 1.2 marker to the right. Now the backbeat will fall exactly on the beat.
Zoom out and repeat these moves at marker 1.4. Now listen to the two loops together. A bit tighter, eh?

Plug-in Power
Time for more instant gratification: Try playing with some of Live's built-in plug-ins. Open the plug-in browser by clicking on the cable icon.

Specify the destination track for a plug-in by clicking on the track name. (Track 1 has been selected.) Then double-click on the plug-in you want. A plug-in parameter box will appear at the bottom of the Live screen.

Add more plug-ins with additional clicks if you like. You can change the plug-in order by click/dragging the effect modules. The procedure is the same when inserting plug-ins on the master and send tracks.

The Live manual offers fine introductions to the individual plug-ins, but allow me to call out a few flavors and features that have no direct counterparts among the basic Pro Tools plug-ins.

• With Auto Filter, you can have your audio file trigger the filter frequency, like on those funky '70s envelope-generator pedals.
• Erosion, Redux, and Vinyl Distortion let you dial in the perfect amount of hiss, crunch, crackle, and pop.
• Resonator lets you impose vocoder-style pitch content on non-pitched material.
• Many Live plug-ins let you control multiple parameters simultaneously by dragging their little green ball icons. In the filter delay, for example, moving the green ball manipulates both filter frequency and bandwidth.

VST, Anyone?
As you probably know, VST is a very popular plug-in format — and one that Pro Tools does not yet support (though FXpansion recently announced an application that will transform VST plug-ins into Pro Tools-friendly RTAS plugs). Any valid plug-ins installed in your "VST Plug-ins" folder appear in Live when you click the little plug icon. This only works when Live runs in stand-alone mode. Once it's slaved to Pro Tools, you can't use the VST plugs.

So why bother mentioning it? Because there's some very cool VST stuff that has never appeared in RTAS incarnations, and some of the coolest plug-ins are free. If you own the non-demo version of Live, you can process files with VST plugs, save the results, and then import them into PT. A great resource for VST freeware and shareware is www.kvr-vst.com. Here you can find some of my favorite freebies, including the powerful More Feedback Machine delay, the feisty Blockfish compressor, the tone-shredding MadShifta, and SupaPhaser, an evil little phase shifting/distortion effect. All work with the demo version of Live — you just can't save the results.

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Putting It All Together
Finally, let's try opening Live within Pro Tools. Quit the Live application — Pro Tools must be booted up first to control Live. Create a new stereo audio track in our ongoing Pro Tools practice session, then click on an insert slot and select "Ableton Live" from the "multi-channel plug-in" menu.

Click on the plug-in icon, and set the output to "Mix L – Mix R," like so:

Now reopen Live. The session should display 107 bpm, the tempo of the Pro Tools session. Browse to the downloaded "Live Loops" folder again and reload "Conga Loop" and "Spooky Loop." You can start and stop play from either Pro Tools or Live — the two transports are linked. Evaluate how these three loops sound together. Make time adjustments till they feel good together. Try mutating the loops with plug-ins and edits. And try incorporating other audio material into this groove.

A final exercise: Try dragging the "Swingy Loop" file onto Live's Track 3. It will sound awful — as the name suggests, it has a strong swing that doesn't jibe at all with the near-straight time of the other beats. But by adjusting the individual accents in Live's sample-edit screen, you can make it groove beautifully. Try it! (When you're through working, remember that you must quit your ReWire slave applications before exiting Pro Tools.)

The Tip of the Proverbial Iceberg
There are many more features of Live we didn't get around to here: The MIDI implementation. The ability to automate almost every onscreen control. The possibility of editing subsections of an audio file. Animating loops with volume, filter, and panning envelopes. Not to mention everything pertaining to the aforementioned Arrange view. But this little introduction should give you some notion of how Live can make composing in Pro Tools freer, faster, and more fun.

Click here to read previous columns.