What are the cliches of Ableton Live?

M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
I've seen people complain about this app's cliched uses, e.g. that album by The Field seemed one that people commonly dismissed as sounding much too "Ableton".

I was wondering, what are some of these cliches?

Re: The Field, does Live let you sample-and-hold things rhythmically, e.g. snatch half a bar and loop it for a while? Rephrase samples rhythmically and shift presets to rearrange them?

Does it do delay-chain granular synthesis? Thinking of techno(-y?) artists like James Holden, Stephan Bodzin, Gui Buratto that seem to love washing things out with massive randomisation of delay times and pan, then pulling right in to no delay and no panning. Seems popular at the mo. There have been free VST plugins around for longer than Live that do this stuff, of course, but I wonder if the effect has become more common because it's an out-of-the-box thing in a popular package?

Feel free to hit me with technical speak, cos I won't necessarily know what Live's names for things mean.
 
D

doom

Public Housing
Beat Repeat!

Aaarrrgggghhhh!!!

I think the delay stuff you are talking about in Bodzin, Boratto etc. is just a product of easy / OTT automation in DAWs, not somuch a specific plug or app. Back in the day you could only automate mutes, volume, maybe pan if you were proper posh. Now you can automate the studios toilet to flush during the breakdown!

"Mash-Ups" in general could be lumped into the Ableton Abuse catagory, makes it so easy to just lump things together for ironic effect, things which have no place being used as music!
 
M

muser

Well-known member
people say it about every music app thats become popular, that sounds too 'reasony' etc, its only really noticable if someones using the samples, effects/synth presets without much alteration or imagination.
 
D

doom

Public Housing
muser said:
people say it about every music app thats become popular, that sounds too 'reasony' etc, its only really noticable if someones using the samples, effects/synth presets without much alteration or imagination.
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Oh for sure, & I don't think for a moment people weren't saying it about electric guitars, or multi-track tape machines ('too overdubby') once upon a time!


michael said:
Heh, so is that doing what I described above, i.e. sampling and looping stuff rhythmically?
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Pretty much. Like a cross between a delay line & a sampler. Insert it & it sounds basically like a quantized cd skipping. It can be used in a subtle way, but more often than not isn't. Once you automate it it'll make those chopchopchochochochchchchccccccccccccc sounds.



# 1 Cliche of Ableton Djing / live sets = Same Tempo for 2 hours!
 
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straight

straight

wings cru
the irony is that boratto is an old school studio demon and the field does his tracks on an old buzz tracker. ableton made techno/audio manipulation very easy because people at the top of the game (monolake) were involved in its genesis. The reverb with a granular freeze on it as well as the grain delay are very easily spotted. I think when people are speaking about cliches though it tends to be when the preset drums and operator are used.

Its made doing edits very easy but then again so did acid pro (which i think todd terje still uses). Its just that abelton put everything in the one place when they introduced midi and mp3s in version 4. when i think how lazy ive been in recent years, i pretty much do everything within it. i used to cut all my samples by hand in sound forge which were brought in from cds or vinyl one track at a time and id have to think about what i was using, now i have literally thousands of tracks sitting there to nick from it can be a little overwhelming. Thats why ive recently made sure i had a concept for a track before i sit down rather than hours of aimless tinkering
 
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Alfons

Alfons

Way of the future
doom said:
Oh for sure, & I don't think for a moment people weren't saying it about electric guitars, or multi-track tape machines ('too overdubby') once upon a time!

# 1 Cliche of Ableton Djing / live sets = Same Tempo for 2 hours!
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Which sucks because its so easy to go 5,10 or even 20 or 30 bpm up and down, you don't really notice the speed change if its done over an extended period of time

straight said:
Its made doing edits very easy but then again so did acid pro (which i think todd terje still uses). Its just that abelton put everything in the one place when they introduced midi and mp3s in version 4. when i think how lazy ive been in recent years, i pretty much do everything within it. i used to cut all my samples by hand in sound forge which were brought in from cds or vinyl one track at a time and id have to think about what i was using, now i have literally thousands of tracks sitting there to nick from it can be a little overwhelming. Thats why ive recently made sure i had a concept for a track before i sit down rather than hours of aimless tinkering
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It does make you very lazy doesn't it. Still my fav. daw, use it for pretty much everything.

doom said:
Beat Repeat!

Aaarrrgggghhhh!!!
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CANT STAND IT
 
straight

straight

wings cru
beat repeats a fanastic tool for mixing when used lith longer loops considering it has its own xy filter and so much other ace features. its just annoying when its used lazily, as with everything
 
D

doom

Public Housing
Alfons said:
Which sucks because its so easy to go 5,10 or even 20 or 30 bpm up and down, you don't really notice the speed change if its done over an extended period of time
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Totally. I'm not gonna pretend I havn't been guilty of this in the past, compare the mixes in my sig. the 1st one goes from 130 down to 126(ish) then up to 143(ish) - its taken awhile to get to the point where I'm happy with it (changing tempos gradually) but its so easy to link a knob to tempo & constrain the min. & max. then just fux with it. I've been messin with linking " \ " to bpm as well and totally flipping tempo mid breakdown, done at the right time it can be mad hype! (mis-judge it & its a total fucking nightmare tho)

Like anything tho, its easy to use badly & kinda hard to get to the point where its transparent. The problem is you can use it badly, within 5 mins of 1st getting it & come up with stuff that doesn't sound 'that bad' I've taken that as a challenge to elevate shit above n beyond 'not that bad' 'pretty good' & 'it'll work'
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
i
red_heart.gif
ping pong delay delay delay delay...
 
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D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
yah i was going to say, who doesn't love ping pong?

its like dub saturation or the classic, um, whats its called, 3 step delay?

classic technique...
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
People should only use synths they built themselves and sequence their tunes on spliced reel to reel tapes, Delia Derbyshire style.
 
wreckTech

wreckTech

Wild Horses
whenever i criticize something as being too abeltony it usually refers to the sound of the time stretching, the 'beat' preset especially has a very signature sound to it.

bad producers using ableton and reason make things that sound very 'boxy', which is a combination of rigid sequencing and uninspired mixing (esp in terms of intense lows and highs). reason is worse for this IMHO.

Abelton 7 really was the change in sound quality i wanted, however, and i use Ableton more than Cubase now.
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Yeah, when Acid was really popular among bedroom producers timestretching artifacts were everywhere. (Am thinking back in the days of MP3.com pre-buy-out) Then I guess Fruity rose in prominence as the hacked, easy music production app and that's much more focused on sequencing single hits and/or softsynths.

Sadly with Live they're back, although admittedly it seems to do a much better job than older things with on-the-fly timestretching algorythms.

I guess I should look into Live some time - did a gig the other week with 4 live electronic acts all using computer setups and only one was using Live. Was quite surprised. Then again, we're all in our 30s.
 
straight

straight

wings cru
michael said:
I guess I should look into Live some time - did a gig the other week with 4 live electronic acts all using computer setups and only one was using Live. Was quite surprised. Then again, we're all in our 30s.
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what were they using? its the epitome of the abelton backlash to make loads of noise about how you now use a custom max/msp patch which you've most likely just downloaded off the internet and hacked a bit anyway. I know I have.
 
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