Whats The Trigger?

Anyone know what he is triggering?

Trigger Finger Set Up / Screen Shots

Here are two screen shots for this weekends first set:

Just so you can see how we lay it out…

And here is mapping for our Trigger Finger. Pretty simple set up. Ill try and shoot a picture of the actual trigger finger cause we have it all labeled… but until then:

Beat Deconstruction… That David Crowder Sound

This week I am going to be scaling things back a bit and leading with just acoustic guitar, piano, and ableton running a simple beat/loop for each song. This is actually one of my favorite ways to lead. It’s simple and usually gives way to a killer atmosphere for worship. The only downside can be that the loop gets stale after a while… well, until… enter “beat deconstruction.” You hear some form of this in David Crowders stuff or in a lot of electronic music today and one of the best ways to mix up and have a loop sound a bit more interesting and not so static is to throw in a little beat deconstruction (between sections or at breakdowns in the song).

Our keys player is gonna run this from a trigger finger. Its a pretty simple set up actually. We route two loops (one for a verse and another for chorus/bridges) to two of the pads, and then use one of the rotary knobs as an on/off switch for the deconstruct effect (mapped via the midi map function).

Seems like I have wanted to do this forever live, but never found a good way to run it or have a good sound come out each time. But today I was tweaking around and stumbled across some settings in beat repeat and wanted to pass it all on to you…. so here are some files that I hope bless you.

The files are for the new Tim Hughes song – Highest And Greatest. Great song for the church. This is our scaled back version (like I mentioned below). I sampled out the piano lick although our keys player would play it live actually. We do reverse that loop for the verses… sounds killer though. Oh, its in the key of A (1/2 step down from the CD)
Highest And Greatest Example *the example starts on the chorus and then there is a little deconstruct breakdown for 2 bars and then the 2nd verse hits right away. Listen to the original CD and you will get the idea for the layout.

Highest And Greatest Project ; *Here is our file. Use the midi route function to map an on/off switch for the beat repeat plugin (on the main loop track) and mess around turning it off and on… You will get the hang real quick.

Beat Deconstruct Setting *Just the setting file.

Ableton Live In Worship (Part 5 – With A Band)

Here is a response to a question I got about using Live with a full band:

Yea we use a trigger finger to trigger specific loops throughout a song. Here is a screen shot ( below) from this past week showing how we would set it up for the song “All Over The World.” We map each section (verse/chorus/etc…) using the master slot on the far right to specific pads on the trigger finger (using the midi map function in the top right of ableton). Our keys player then trigger each section 1 bar before the actual part hits. So in this song I was missing our electric guitarist this week so I pre-recorded the electric rhythm parts. Note that the part doesnt loop (loop is tured off) but the far left “main loop” is set to loop. If we doubled the chorus all she had to do was re-trigger it 1 bar before we loop.

Depending on the “feel” for the set determines what we add into the loops. Sometimes it is string arrangements or extra lo-fi beats to add in. If we are missing a band member like this past week I usually play his basic parts so they arent missing.

So as for the transitions they work great with a 1bar grace. As long as the band has good dynamics and what is looped isnt a dominate feature (and more a support element) it works great.

Im blessed to play with killer musicians so the click hasnt been a problem yet. In just under a year we have only had two minor train wrecks, although we recovered quickly. I dont use a metronome click ever though. I usually create a simple lofi beat that sits in the song nicely that fits through each section. Sometimes it is routed to the FOH, other times just our monitors.

Hope that helps. Let me know if I can answer any more questions.

-G-

Hello Drummer… Using Live With A Full Band

Interestingly enough… especially after the last post (about using ableton as your drummer), our team is blessed to have a new drummer coming on to play every week. So the majority of my week has been figuring out how I will be able to implement a drummer with our current setup. So for example purposes… here is how we are gonna roll this week:

Myself playing electric and leading vocals, acoustic guitarist singing backup, keys player singing back up,  bass player and the new drummer… and of course… ableton.

The set list:

1) All Over The World

2)Everlasting God

3)You Alone

4)Grace Will Be My Song

5) Nothing But The Blood

All of the songs except You Alone will be played with the full band. You Alone I’ll rock acoustic with the keys playing a string arrangement behind it. So the question is how we will use Ableton in the set…

We have a basic loop that the drummer controls throughout the song. Basically it plays through the entire song and is light enough in the FOH that the people can hear it when the band it light but once they kick in it it masks it. The drummer has it pumped in his monitors (IEM) to keep in time. Our keys player has a trigger finger run from the Macbook (with the drummer) and she can trigger scenes during a song. For example we have a killer loop playing through Nothing But The Blood that drives the verses. Just before we hit the Chorus the keys triggers the violin loop we have set up for the Chorus. The are single shots and dont actually loop and set up exactly the length of the Chorus/Bridge (this is so they simply stop after they run their course, if we double she re-triggers it). We have the lead in set at 1bar.

On Grace Will Be My Song I recreated a lot of what you hear on Steve Fee’s CD track that we will play along with. Right up the the end where the track ends and the drummer takes over and the band hits nice and big. So the end of the song is played without a click or rhythm track of any sorts.

So thats the plan. Should work like a charm.

Hope that is somewhat of a help.