digitalworship.net

I lead worship currently for a 8 month old church plant just outside Dallas. We are about 100 strong and have some killer musicians playing each week… only thing is we are missing a drummer at the moment…. well kinda…

Enter Ableton Live. I program all our drums and percussion each week using nothing other than Live, some 3rd party sample sets/loops, and my M-Audio Trigger Finger.

Your first thought might be…. lame… a real drummer is better. Yes and no. Yes that a real drummer would be better (if they are good then no doubt), but not so lame. Overall its creates a solid, in time, perfectly mixed set up for our sets. the best feature is the drums are perfectly controlled in our worship auditorium. There are cons, but there are definitely pros as well.

Basically I have a couple Impulse instruments set up with “real” sampled drum hits. Check out previous posts for some sites you can check out. With a little reverb and some processing (EQ, compression) I can get the samples sounding pretty killer… most of that is added though Sunday during sound check.

A couple elements go into this set up:

1. Ive found its best to create each part, verse, chorus, bridge, intro, etc as individual clips. Keep them simple but add enough “touch” so they arent so “fake” (vary your velocity and use the swing feature in ableton).

2. Fill in the verses and chorus with a shaker or tambourine. You’ll be surprised how much these help.

3. Next record the layout and then use the “consolidate” [apple+J] (right click on the loop you just recorded) and compile the track that will take it from being just a looped file and lengthen it to how many times it actually looped. The reason is then I usually manually add in fills between each section. If you dont consolidate the loop it will play the fill every time it loops around.

4. Next, search for good cymbal sounds… grrr… this has been the biggest pain for me. What I finally did was sampled my own kit and use those… although I’m sure there are better out there. I’ve found if I keep them set back in the mix and not to dominate it works. Once you have your samples layer them on separate channels from your impulse set (seems I find people try and use them in their impulse kit… but i’ve found they sound better on separate channels, except my hats and ride of course). So I usually have a left and right channel for two different crashes.

5. After you have the song layed out how you most likely would play it live you can do two options. The first is render it and use that file and “play along.” or you can highlight each section and copy that over to the main view as “clips.” So you would have the intro as one set of clips (drums, where cymbals might hit, etc) that you can trigger via the master clip (far right of screen), then you could have the first verse, next the chorus. What is important is that you have the fills that lead to each part. OR, and this takes a little getting used to, but you could create clips that are larger sections… such as intro through the first chorus, another from where you left off to the bridge, next from there to the ending. With that you could create a double back to the chorus through the ending. This give you some flexability when leading if you want to “flow” more in the set. I would suggest looking at bwacksforum.com for some more ideas on how you can accomplish this . You’ll need either another band member triggering your sections for that, or a foot controller if you plan to change them.

6. I guess I should have put this first… you have two options for staying in time… run a click :(, or keep a constant rhythm element in the song (shaker, glitch, whatever you can follow). The later is how I usually roll when playing with other people… I’ve found few people are comfortable playing with a click in their ear. To start songs I usually have some sort of count off (sick count off, cymbal count off, or sometimes just a loop starts the song).

So thats a simple version of how to use ableton as your drummer. I’ve been doing it for 8 months, every week, and we are to the point that people dont even notice we dont have a drummer. I had someone ask me the other week who plays drums and if they play off stage to hlep control the volume (we meet right now in a 250 person auditorium where real drums could be a huge sound problem). So it can be done… just takes some practice.

And last but not least, here is a track for the new Redman song “All Around The World” giving you an idea how this whole gig might work. These arent mixed completely and are a little tinny cause its in an MP3 format.. but you get the idea. There is a heavy reverb loop at the beginning that plays by it self, then the band hits with the intro.

All Over The World Drum Track

NOTE: Under no circumstances may any of the contents of this track be used in a recording, neither live nor studio.

Just for kicks here is our set list this weekend…  with two acoustic guitars, electric, bass, keys, 3 vocals. Ill be running the drums,  cello + violin, and a second electric guitar programed in Ableton. This week we are gonna use the “play along method” with acoustic transitions between each song.

Set 1:

Awesome Is The Lord Most High (Tomlin)

You Are The Light (Fee)

Everlasting God (Brown)

Set 2:

In Christ Alone (Matt Papa version)

Let God Arise (Tomlin)

Just if anyone is interested…

1. Sing To The King

2. Marvelous Light

3.  How Great Is Our God

(Set 2)

4. In Christ Alone

5. King of Glory

6. Let God Arise

* We really wanted the music to run seamless so we pre-recorded most of it in Ableton. This is the most channels I have ever run out of Live (Drums on 2 channels, string arrangements on one channel, an extra electric guitar playing some extra rhythm parts and a percussion channel for extra congas etc). This and we have keys, bass, acoustic and electric plus 3 vocals playing live sunday.

Ever since I upgraded from my powerbook to a macbook I have had weird delay issues when recording real instruments into live (ex. electric guitar, bass, etc). I finally was able to correct this using Abletons “Driver Error Compensation” tutorial. I figured I would share this since just in case your having the same problems. It fixed my slight delay perfect.

Here is a little database I use when choosing songs. I put it in a more readable format for a friend recently and thought I would throw it up if you wanted to use and add/tweak with. Just comment back if you use it.

Worship_Database.xls

The only this this has to do with Ableton is that the entire song was created in it.

Here is a little song I call, “The Show.” It was used recently in a video about forgiveness. You can see it by searching iTunes for “Cornerstone Rockwall.”

THE SHOW.MP3

copyright 2007 Nineteen80

I use Ableton two ways in worship: The first is by pre-recording the songs I plan on using in a set and “play along” with these tracks (with other band members playing along as well). The second is by triggering sections at specific points in a song.

In the first way I will usually set up and pre-record all the necessary tracks in Ableton for each song. A intro, verse, chorus, etc. Usually this includes drums, lofi beats, pads/atmospheres and percussion elements (shakers, tambo, clicks, etc). If I’m short a guitarist or other instrument I usually track those parts in as well. This is a lot of work though. A whole set can take me a good two days to put together this way.

The pro’s: You don’t necessarily need a click here. As long as the band can here the rhythm. And if you can stay in time the band can sound really tight.

The con: Your stuck playing/worshiping with the song “set” in stone. One way I get around this is to start or end songs without the pre-recorded track and allow the Spirit to direct those moments. Usually this is a good time anyway to scale back to acoustic parts where the people can sing out.

Last, usually when I run sets this way I will export each song and then reload them into Live. Then I can start each song without having to open each song file individually. It’s important to make sure if you do this to disable the “warp” on each track. That will keep it from locking in with the tempo set. Here is an example from this last weekends set:

**note that the warp is set to off. This week I wanted to layer in some second electric parts as well as our bass player was sick so we pre-tracked his parts as we would normally play the song in a set. We routed those in live to different outputs on my firebox so the sound tech could control their individual in the mix. Just as a side note. We also had acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keys, and 3 vocals playing in this set.

The second way I use ableton is to create “sections” in Live. Usually this is two or three simple loops (intro, verse, chorus) and a “hook” (like the electric part that starts “beautiful one”) that you can bring in and out of the song.

Once I have these all set up you want to set the clips up horizontally. Then you are able to trigger multiple clips via the “master clip” slot. I usually route these to an m-audio trigger finger’s pads. Then have a member (usually the keys player) trigger sections as they come in the song. Its best to set the transfer of clips to 1bar.

The Pros: Flexible.

The Cons: You have to be on with the transfers between sections. Also, a click is pretty necessary if your going to bring a loop in and out. If I do this you’ll need In Ear Monitors with the click routed on a separate channel or use a small mixer with in ear headphones sent to key band members (drummer and maybe the keys and main guitarist)

Thats all for now. Hope this is helpful. Next I think Ill talk about how we re-create a drummer using live (if you dont have a real drummer for your band) .