One month ago the Knob Jockeys upgraded to Live 8. We’ve been talking about it for ages, James has been chomping at the bit since it came out, and since we were still on version 6 there would be plenty of new stuff for us to get our teeth into.
We’re long term users of Ableton Live. We can’t completely remember which version we started with, back in 2001, but we’re pretty sure it was either version 1 or 2. We had a gig to play (back when we were part of Strange Angel), and we needed a decent way to turn our collection of tracks into something resembling a live show. We downloaded demos of a handful of apps that purported to offer some sort of live control over wav files and tracker files (as most of our tunes were still Fast Tracker 2 creations back then), and in the end narrowed it down to two. Whilst testing, one of them crashed, the other didn’t. That was our decision right there – we knew which one we’d rather go on stage with. The app that didn’t crash – Ableton Live.
Of course, we didn’t really have any idea how to use it. Or what it was capable of. All we knew was that it could time-stretch and compress our tunes in real-time in a way we’d only ever dreamed about. And it never crashed. Ever.
The setup we used that day was probably the strangest setup anyone will ever use for an Ableton Live gig. We cut our tracks up into sections, and assigned every single one to a key on a MIDI keyboard, and stuck labels on every key. Then, we used a Roland JP-8080 entirely as a mixer, giving each track its own channel. The only saving grace was that we had decided not to use the CV/Gate and ZX Spectrum controlled TB-303 that day. It was all very odd, but it worked. We had never used Live before, and knew of no-one else using it, and so we were just making it up as we went along. Much was the Strange Angel way, if I’m honest. But that was one of the reasons Live really showed promise – it didn’t dictate how it should be used, it was just intuitive and flexible enough to be used any way, no matter how perverse a set-up was asked of it.
Since forming the Knob Jockeys, we’ve come to know Live a lot better, but still probably use it in a pretty unorthodox way (we’ll describe our set-up in a post soon). Faithfully moving through the versions: 3, 4 and 6 (we were a bit cash-strapped so we missed out 5), the app has grown but the way you use it hasn’t had to. Ableton have worked hard to keep consistency in the user interface, and it’s really paid off. After an update, there’s never been that feeling of being lost or bewildered by new features, but instead they’ve gradually oozed out whilst you’ve carried on working and experimenting. It’s these qualities that that has allowed Live to grow from an application into a tool. Ask three graphic designers how to perform some task in Photoshop, say cutting out a foreground object and adding a shadow, and you’ll be shown three completely different but valid ways, such is the flexibility and comprehensiveness of Photoshop. Live is reaching that sort of level – ask three producers how they carry out a task, like cutting up a sample and adding a filter, and you’ll get three different answers. This is what we love about Live. Oh, and did I mention it doesn’t crash?
And so, to Live 8. The final turning point was when the Live 8 roadshow came to town, and we trekked down to our local music shop in the rain to see all the new features being demo’ed, and all the ways in which we’d never even thought to use them. A few days later, we bit the bullet and bought it. Since we’d skipped version 7, there were some obvious changes that we were expecting and would have to get used to – specifically the new style of marking up. I had actually played around with a demo a few months before, so I was prepared a little, but it still took us quite a while to get into it. That was fine – it was something that needed to change to allow for more complex operations, grooves, and so on, and an improvement in the long run. So we marked up some tunes, played with new effects, cut up samples to MIDI parts, viewed countless envelopes…
And then it crashed.
And restarted with all our work saved, retrieved from the Undo history – brilliant! And then it crashed again.
And again.
Ok, so maybe without Reason running? Maybe a plug-in issue? Ok looking better, just drag this wave into Arranger view…
Crash.
It’s fair to say that the MacBook Pro we use for playing out, and I use every day, gets quite a hammering. It is chockfull of development stuff, music apps, iTunes gumph, and it rarely gets a day off. But Live 8 isn’t crashing when we throw huge projects at it, give it loads of USB controllers, make it run Reason and a bunch of plug-ins. It crashes when we drag a file in, or move a selection, or copy and paste. And that’s why I’m worried. And nervous.
For ten years, we’ve never been nervous of using Live. And now, with four days until our next gig, we are. The installation of Snow Leopard and fresh install of Live 8.1 that I’m carrying out as I write this might fix all these, which will be great. But now that that nervousness is there, it might not go away quite so easily.
