i've been wondering lately about how much 'live performance' goes into peoples' studio prodcutions. do you play any of the parts on keys, pads or controllers? do you do 'old school' automation, recording fader rides and knob twists?

i keep telling myself that i should be doing more of this, especially working with ableton, which is not so curve friendly in it's envelopes/automation. old habits die hard.

I have just started producing and I have tried to limit myself to nothing that I can't do live with my apc40 (other then create the loops) I feel like this would make playing live even more fun, but unfortunately I am finding it quite challenging.

*side note* if anyone has any tips on this method fill me in

When I started producing, I was ALL about using a midi controller keyboard. I stopped recently, just 'cause I had left it elsewhere, but since I've gotten it back I haven't used it once. It's not particularly great though. Tiny as fuck. The full-size keyboard I have that I actually wanna work with requires an actual midi connection to use, and I can't use that with my current computer setup. So poop on my dick ya know? Productions gone better than ever with mouse/keyboard only though.

I play everything live. Just recently started checking out step sequencing, but so far I don't really get it.

i play all my keyboard parts in on a midi keyboard and all my drums in on a set of vdrums. i don't get step sequencing either.

Recently moved from sequencing to playing in both on a drumpad / keyboard (with quite a bit of editing once I have played them in). Absolutely loving the workflow.

After starting to play all your parts I've finally realised the importance of having a solid self made soundbank, its really gutting now having to kill the workflow to make a sound, something which didn't seem to bother me too much when I was sequencing.

I suck at playing my midi keyboard but it's the only way I can get nice sounding melodic progressions... my ideal scenario would be to plug my guitar straight into Ableton and have it record what I do as Midi.... I've heard rumours that this may be the way that games like Rock band could be rigged in the future??? That would be fucking awesome

Most of my production is actually a live set that I've preset different scenes for and am able to roll those out while I'm working on the pads of my MPD24. As far as sequencing goes, I'd have to say it's a blend of many ways. Some times I'll just hammer out a drum loop and then add additional sequencing. Some times I'll sequence what I want and add texture by doing work with the pads or keyboard. Essentially it all just boils down to workflow and what I feel will be best at the time.

I do both.

Generally speaking I "program" my drums... because I've made it my habit to visualize the drum patterns I have in my head/beatbox out loud and draw them. There is only so much you can do with a couple of fingers on drumpads for the patterns I make nowadays. (If i was making hiphop i'd probably go back to mpc style)

The keys on the other hand I play live, velocity sensitive on a weighted full size keyboard.

And then there is the performance of the kaoss pad, which is controlling 3 parameters with 1 finger at once... quite expressive depending on how you connect it to your custom instruments.

I sometimes do some fader fade-ins and outs.


It all depens (on what music you want to make) uknow.
if you wanna make music that is abstract an supernatural, you'll probablly wanna "edit" the heck out of the samples and outomation to get results you couldn't perform live as a human.
On the flipside, anybody who wants a drum section to feel like its played by a drummer or whatever is probablly gonna tap in all the bits him/herself.

Both really.
Although I program a ton of automation, edits, etc, I often play around on a keyboard or PadKontrol to get ideas, melodies, grooves. Once I find something I like, I will make it move and dance though lots of synth automation - played around live at first, and then usually recorded or hand written.

There are many things easier to just program in a piano roll or something, and others easier to just play live.

There are times when I like a tight quantization and others when I need some humanity. Music is balance and I think it's good to play around with different modes of inputting sonic information.

Step sequencing is a bitch and a half. I do it occasionally on my electribe but only if there's no way around it. In Ableton I usually click in my drums, because like Tobias I know what I want. Plus I don't have a great pad controller as part of my regular setup so it's way more practical to sequence it out with the mouse and then move things off the grid if that's how I want them.

I sometimes play in keyboard lines and synth melodies. Usually if I came up with it on the keyboard I record it, but if it popped into my head or it's something I can't play I'll program it in. Lately I've been automating filter stuff by slowing down the tempo a bunch and then working the cutoff knob by hand, which usually ends up sounding better than just an LFO or the straight automation lines. And that tip is kind of straight from the Bil Bless Q&A--getting in any kind of playing by hand definitely imparts more human quality to the music. Sometimes it's fun to find really subtle ways to do it, like pick barely-noticeable parameters on your synth and try to automate them in a way that adds to the groove.

Check out Widi Vst. Converts audio into midi as a midi plug in. Put it as an insert on the audio channel that your guitar is coming into, then create a midi channel with the input set to widi, voila.

http://www.widisoft.com/english/mp3-midi-products.html

Good note on manually changing sublte things in synths.

Sometimes you can have like a really warm rhode sound. and the synth does change over time, but it's usually some LFO's working together, and in the long run the instrument sounds the same.

But you could use some macro controls to tweak some parameters that define the "intensity" of the sound. And manually record a fader/knob over the whole length of the track to accentuate it suitable for every part of the song.

@zarkov: thanks for the tip on widi vst...i will have to be using that pretty soon

@squeak: why arent we using that yet? in combination with that external we dont have yet, so that most of our production minus edits is performance?

@plus2: what kind of manipulations are you doing with the pads of your controller? are these played in a live kind of way or gone back and reworked afterwards?