Blog #4: Ableton Live Tricks – Real Time Rendering
I realise that this is going to be of no interest to 99% of you, but is more for the benefit of future Googlers who are lucky enough to own Access Virus TI synths and use Ableton Live.
I love both, but one thing has been driving me nuts for ages, and everyone had told me it couldn’t be fixed.
One of the seemingly most commonly requested features amongst Virus TI users who also use Ableton Live (including me) is real-time rendering. Because the Virus can’t render its parts offline, it is necessary to render sets in real time, but Live seemingly provides no options do do this.
Users resort to all sorts of annoying workarounds to this problem (myself included, until I worked this out), such as bouncing the Virus parts down to separate audio tracks, then doing an offline render, or setting up a resampling record track and bouncing the entire arrangement, then fishing around in the project folder for the file, which they would then need to reload in a new set and dither down to 16 bit separately.
However, it is possible to trick Live into rendering your set offline, by making it think that there are real external synths involved in the set.
To do this:
- Create a new empty MIDI track
- Add an External Instrument device
- Route the MIDI to a real hardware MIDI out that isn’t in use (there’s usually one around somewhere!). In the screenshot I have routed it to the spare output on my FW 1814 soundcard.
- Route the Audio back from a real hardware audio input (can be in use for something else – it really doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a real input, not rewire or a multi-timbral plug in). In the example I have routed it back from inputs 7/8.
- Turn the gain on the external instrument down to -Inf so the low-level interference from your sound card doesn’t affect the output.
Now when you render, Live will detect the presence of a “hardware” device and assume it has to render in real time, meaning that all your Virus parts will also be rendered in realtime.
Joy.
Blog #1: Ableton. It s***s all over Logic
Disturbed by this self-indulgent ranting? Hear my bleating excuses.
Right. So let’s start with the #1 most-asked question. It’s usually worded along the lines of: “What do you use to make your music? Logic?”. Such questions often go on to ask about which plugins I use to make basslines or leads or pads.
I’ll enthuse about plugins, sample libraries, synths and so on at a later date. The thing I want to talk about right now is sequencers.
Specifically, Ableton Live. Quite simply, it rocks. That’s right, I don’t use Logic. And I am aware this casts me as some sort of dangerous eccentric, so I am going to attempt to both justify myself and to suggest that you, too, should give the alternative approach a try.
I’ve tried all sorts of environments. In order: Fruityloops (albeit a much earlier version; I understand the recent versions, now called FLStudio, give just about any DAW a run for their money), Reason (soo much fun, but so limiting), Cubase SX (possibly my darkest and least productive musical period ever), Logic, a brief dalliance with Jurrane’s all-hardware setup (based on an RM1X groovebox) and now Ableton.
And I’ve never looked back.
Logic sounds lovely. It really does. But now Ableton boasts a 64-bit summing mix bus (see, I told you I was a geek), I don’t hold with the view that Logic inherently sounds better. I like to think people don’t listen to the stuff I produce and say “ooh, that sounds rough, must have been done on something other than Logic”.
No, the reason Logic sounds lovely is because it comes with some very Trance-friendly synths and plugins, or rather: synths and plugins which have been so heavily used by a generation of producers that they have become synonymous with the sound, and have thus become the target, the benchmark. And my view is that just because that’s how everyone else sounds, that’s no reason you have to sound the same.
Controversy! (Still, as I pointed out in my reply to Mat Lock’s comment, I’m not implying everyone that uses Logic sounds the same, just that achieving “that sound” is what I think people may be getting at when they think Logic sounds better, and maybe aiming for “that sound” isn’t necessarily the best thing for every aspiring producer to be doing).
So OK, one big concession I will make is that Ableton doesn’t have a built-in suite of plugins that rival what comes bundled with Logic. What it does have, though, is some very very interesting plugins. Stuff that could give your sound the edge. The Operator synth is probably one of my top 3 synths, and at first listen it sounds brittle and digital. It’s raw, it’s gutsy, and once you’ve learned how to use it, then like Native Instruments’ FM8 or other all-FM synths, you can make sounds on it that you just can’t make any other way. I could write a little introductory guide to FM synthesis soon if anyone’s interested?
It can use VSTs just the same too, and I’ve built up a big collection of fantastic synths which, I feel, more than make up for the absence of the Logic staples.
So that’s the negative side. The positive side is the compelling side. The positive side is the workflow. Ableton have designed an application which is so quick, so slick, and fits in so neatly with the loop-based composition approach, that once you’ve given it the obligatory month to try it out, you’ll never look back either. For me, starting with a kick drum and going all the way to a completed bass, kick and percussion groove, the music will never stop or glitch, once, even when adding plugins or to save. It’s magical. You’re sitting there, writing a dance track from scratch, and it feels more like playing an instrument.
Give it a try, run through the tutorial. I fully admit that people with plenty of Logic experience will be happiest to stick with the environment in which they are, doubtless, very productive. But if you’re starting out, and can afford the comparatively inflated price, you won’t regret it.
Now, knowledgeable people… feel free to comment and disagree 
