Hello friends.
I've recently decided that I wanted to take my show to the next level, and be able to wow people from the minute they get in the door. Long story short, using an interesting control scheme, I am able to control up to six parameters at the same time, each individually. I've got some ideas...but I'd like to get some advice from people with more experience than me when it comes to this sort of thing (coming from a producing background with few/no controllers or knobs to twiddle). So, I guess the simple way to ask it is:
If you were going to play live and could control any six knobs individually at the same time (imagine you had six hands, I suppose), what would you have them control?
Thanks,
The Asterite

HP filter sweep, fade to grey, stutter button, flange, phaser, downsampling


all of these control multiple parameters making use of ableton racks. any of yall feel free me up on AIM if you want my effects rack that makes use of these features and more my sn is -- ianks07.

hope that helps!

Yeah, fade to gray is really good, I also have the finger which is awesome

finger??? ....curious.

I'd say it really depends on the material your playing.

If you play stuff people might recognize, a lot of times its best to not touch it at all with effects.

That's what i've learned at least.

if your using live, just start experimenting with different different effects using macros so you can assign multiple parameters to just 2 knobs. set up a chain selector to one of the knobs so you can go back and fourth in deciding what effect you wanna use and set the other to tweak out the effects that your using. so long story short, you can tweak multiple effects using only 2 knobs and can have several of these that are all different. just play around with it and you should be able to figure it out. happy accidents are the best way to learn

Are you playing your own tracks, or DJ'ing other people's tracks? I have very different set-ups for these two things...

I like to hear that!


The Asterite
IMHO efx are overrated.. a solid tune shouldnt need a DJ to add EFX at every break down or during every mix.
In order for a "DJ" to catch my attention you got to be doing WAY more than playing other peoples tunes and playing with the EFX knobs/buttons... but Im old

And remember if you are playing other peoples tracks live, someone might know that track already, so when you are twisting that knob and getting all hyphy... one of your listeners might might be LOL because they know you are doing nothing but twisting a knob and controlling the efx.

^^^ haha thats funny, ive always wondered how many cats that play live load up ultra complex sounding songs or mixes and try to trick the audience into think they're doing something next level. i mean some serato dj's coud probably be playing pre made mixes out of ableton with the decks turned off and a lot of people probably wouldn't even know. anyone heard of this sort've thing happening?

visit the ableton forum. there's a thread devoted entirely to user-made effects racks. definetly some gems to be found in there. also might wanna check out tom cosms megasets. they're designed for optimizing live performance, with macros already mapped, and i've heard nothing but good things about it.

check out justice slaying it with that mpd 24.. absolutely murdering it. knockin do much sense into those pads that they dont even need a USB port anyport any more



not that i support this by any means, if you are gonna act like you are doing something, at least make it believable. like at least assign a dead knob or dead pads and bang em in time. i have seen so many djs acting like they are getting down, but actually playign the air controller (making the motion of turning a knob in the air, or banging on a pad, WITHOUT EVEN TOUCHING ANYTHING!?) come on, it looks retarded, and your credibility goes down the shitter. i ahve seen seen some people throw on a jantsen track and act like they were remixing it right on the spot. or even worse i saw some shitty top40 DJ throw on an eminem/biggy mashup that someone else did it and try to make it look like he was a DJ god or something. sad thing is, most people believed it, and were like "OMG he's so amazing." bit my tongue pretty hard on that one.

i agree with konekta, too much effecting can be wayyy over the top/cheesy. granted, when i am fuckin around at home, i go batshit with knobs and effects, but in a live setting, it can be a quick way to clear the dancefloor of any XX chromosomes. through my experimentation and observation, time stretching, quick tempo change, and triplet beat repeats are the most effective at

Best advice of the day

haha yeah that justice picture with the mpd that's not even plugged in. good stuff

LMFAO @ pretenda slayer! That pic is hilarious

YES. And think about applying large (1/8th, 1/4th, 1/2) grid values in ways that make structural sense--so use it repeatedly at the same place in every bar to mix up the music a bit. You can also prolong chords that way, which can create some pretty cool effects that don't sound like "he's tweaking a knob." Beat Repeat is NOT tacky when used with precision, an exact sound in mind, and attention to overall structure. That said... it's really easy to go overboard. Still working on developing that kind of restraint.

As far as other effects, my arsenal currently consists of:
-cut to reverb (fades over to a reverb tail)
-chopper (automatic volume gate)
-bitcrush (just live's redux device)
-granulator thing (a delay, 100% wet, 85% feedback, delay time between 3ms and 30ms or so assigned to a slider)
-combination low/hipass filter (I use the single knob filter by fzero, google it)
-and of course beat repeat

What I would do if I could control 6 parameters at once is assign them all to different glitch effects that work well alone but also combine nicely. I never put Glitch Mob-esque glitch edits into my tracks, because compositionally they don't make sense to me yet, and I do them live to some extent but only with the effects I just listed. If I could control 6 parameters at once I'd make some crazy rack that's capable of all kinds of sounds and use that.

Hi friends,
Thank you for all your replies to my query. I've started testing out the effects you all suggested, and the interaction of them an create some really awesome stuff. I guess it's only fair to reveal to you all a bit more about this mysterious supercontroller I'll be using, and the live setup I'm planning on going with. First of all, i'll explain to you the routing options that I have for sound. Three audio tracks, a, b, and c. They are routed such that the audio of track A always goes to deck A, audio from track B always goes to deck B, and the audio from track c goes either to deck a or deck b depending on the options selected. The audio from c also goes through its own effect chain before linking to A or B. Deck C is used for acapellas exclusively: this allows me to havea complete control of the sound on every level (just the acapella, each individual track, track + aca, or the master). When I play live, I play a... well... interesting set. I try to play things that will get people moving, that I know have a particularly good rhythm, etc... and just really go with the flow and feel of the crowd. So when I play I drop everything from more popular/well known songs to the real classics (talking about funk/soul/disco) with everything inbetween. I learned very quickly the importance of giving the crowd a mix they can connect to, and still have a fun and exciting time. I also learned very quickly that too heavy a hand on the FX rack will kill an otherwise phenomenal mix, even if everything is in time. At first I was amazed by ableton's syncing ability and I used to have too heavy a hand simply because I learned everything fit. Then, slowly, I started to learn the value of restraint. I think of FX chains now like a boy who jokingly cries wolf. The first time he does it, and then tells you he was sorry, you might think of him as amusing. regardless, you'll certainly check to make sure. But too much to quickly and it becomes worse than just commonplace: it becomes annoying. And there may be some time when such a chain or such a shout would be not only justified but perfect and engaging. If your hands are too heavy on the FX, they'll simply stop caring, or become annoyed and walk out. So I will state this now to all who told me not to fuck around with FX live... that was not the question. Though I'm new here, I'm not a novice. I asked this question for one specific reason.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiVxac3lG7M&feature=related[/youtube]
[edit (youtube embed didn't work, here's a link)]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiVxac3l ... re=related

This is the type of controller my new liveset is utilizing. Released for the original Xbox, Steel Battlion is known for having been the most expensive and complex controller ever released for a console system. When it came out in the early 00's it cost $200. The controller boasts more than 36 buttons, and has two joysticks, one of which has an additional thumbstick on top of this. Each of these thumbsticks can control an a seperate parameter on each axis. Each stick has two axis, so this means, by moving both of my arms and my left thumb at once, I can control up to six parameters both individually and simultaneously. Had I been using an actual bank of knobs, it would take me six arms to do what is possible with only two on this controller. I hope this gives you a bit more insight into why I am asking this question.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say (because you are still reading this, so you deserve to be rewarded) that if you are trying to find a controller, especially on the cheap, don't think that you are limited to the two options of either using one "meant" for music or building one yourself. Thousands, if not millions of controllers have been made not for music, but for videogames. Oftentimes, if these are simple, you can pick them up for under a dollar, or for only a few. Most can be easily converted to a usb interface, or there is an adapter available for you to hook it in through a usb port. You can manage (IIRC 16) usb midi devices in the newest ableton. If you are trying to make a set cheap or interesting, think of all the interesting methods of control that you've seen (or browse them if you haven't). Things don't have to be used for what they are made for. re-purposing a controller is often both cheaper and more effective than either building your own or buying one "made" for music.

Thanks for the advice though. I'll continue to reveal more details of my setup in the upcoming weeks if you all are curious, and I can try to record either a video or audio of a liveset in the next month as well.

Good luck in all your endeavors, and thank you for your assistance in mine,
The Asterite

Should throw out an audio and video recording using the controller. When that game first came out i was so psyched to buy it but never did. Awesome idea though!!

tape and analog delay is all i seem to mess with. and the occasional airhorn for bangers

lol love the airhorn!!!

ok that picture of justice is from a soundcheck when they were setting up their gear.

also to answer the OP question, I have it set up with very basic functional stuff on my MPD24.

highpass a
lowpass a
highpass b
lowpass b
flanger
fx send (multitap delay)

and i have effects racks set up for all of these so i can turn them on by moving the fader rather than pressing a button.

yup, thats waht i get for beleiving a blog... assume = ass outta U and ME. sorry justice!

quote from justice: "Yeah, shit happens! (...) I didn't notice at first, because as you can see I was looking at the computer to launch the next vocal hook and right after I realised that the blue screen went black, so there was no way possible it could work. So I plugged it back in, big deal! And the next thing you know is this picture."

Thank you everyone for your advice! i managed to get my hands on one of these for $125 shipped on ebay, and it's on its way. I already have the software necessary to use it as a USB controller. i'm setting up racks and eagerly awaiting it's arrival. I'll keep you posted.
Eprom I dig your idea on mapping to faders, this was one of the things i had been planning to do with my mpd, thanks for reinforcing that it may be a worthwhile idea.

later.

i've got instajungle into 4x beatrepeat (with pitch decay) mapped to keys, - don't have a controller with pads - along with bitcrush , buffer effect (sloper vst) dubstation a lpf on each channel and a hpf on the main... currently i've a reverb on each channel but it sounds like shit on eco and might get a bit intensive otherwise but its good to crash to reverb and bring another track in with lpf fade

i intend to re-do my whole set-up soon - i've never heard of fade to grey and have yet to try effectrix or the finger

thinking of using mousemod from pluggo

i use a novation remote zero mkII on the "user" midi map mode. The buttons are all set to "instantaneous" so I can press each on to toggle fx on and release the button to toggle them off. Sometimes they are set to dry/wet parameters, sometimes the device on/off, and if I'm using sugar bytes artillery or NI the finger they are set to midi notes instead of ccs and routed to the device. I prefer using faders to control the parameters of the effects because I can use all my fingers to control things simultaneously, as opposed to being limited to basically one nob and an effect otherwise. I still use nobs for certain one trick things though. My favorite effects are:

sugar bytes artillery (everything). this is how I set up my beat repeat effects, since different sized repeats can be easily set up across the keypad
NI The Finger (everything)
high pass
low pass
bitcrush/downsampler
micro delay (i.e. comb filter, but using an actual delay to do it)
dblue stretch (i abuse the shit out of this)
uhbik G (also completely abused by me)
delay effects (long tail) on a send (set one of the button holds to the send control, that way you can punch the input to the delay and have it cut off immediately for clean delay send effects)
various racks with combinations of effects to get unique sounds. usually set up with a wet/dry control that is mapped either to a toggle button or a fader/nob (depending on the effect).

I'm very curious as to what makes the finger so special.
Also, whether it is more or less CPU intensive to use individual fx rather than artillery as I wil not be using a keyboard live. Any insight into this matter?

I'm very curious as to what makes the finger so special.
Also, whether it is more or less CPU intensive to use individual fx rather than artillery as I wil not be using a keyboard live. Any insight into this matter?