Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Sessions 07-2 Performing Live – Exporting from Reason into Ableton Live”.
This is part two, where we’re dealing with exporting loops from reason and putting them into ableton live. So what i have here is a track that i wrote and produced entirely on the surface in reason which i’m now going to break apart and dump into ableton live for live performance. So, the idea being that i can take a couple of bar loops of various instruments of various parts, um export that out import into into ableton line it up in all the the the clip bits thing, mess and uh and trigger it then live to give it. Some kind of life feel i could obviously just play the song out of reason and just sort of sit there twiddling my thumbs. But that’s that’s not really what i’m trying to achieve i’m trying to achieve something which is a bit more flexible, a bit more interactive and a bit more performance like so that i can adjust the song and the piece of music as it goes now.
Some bits are going to be easier than others. I mean the guitar, which sort of starts very gently off at the start of the song. I may do that. Live i’m not sure.
Yet, i’m not sure how well that’s going to go so i’ll. Take some of that out and stick that into over to see what that sounds, or i might just re-record it into ableton, because those are the easier bits to do also with some of the parts they’re sometimes they’re, easier to just to to recreate totally from instruments. Inside ableton, rather than uh, insist on the the sounds i’ve used here i mean whatever happens in ableton. It’S going to be different.
I can’t replicate it exactly unless i just record it out of here and play it from ableton, but if i’m breaking it down into loops, it’s always going to end up being different in different ways and there’s some things that work better than others. So, for instance, i might take a two bar loop out of here, but because of the effects that are applied or reverbs and various bits and pieces, the the loop may have tails that are not going to be there when you stick it into everton live. So i have to think about that.
Perhaps you could, for instance, take a two bar loop and then also you take a chunk of the the tail as well after it, and you put that into another uh another slot in ableton. So you can go from one to the other. You know, there’s lots of different ways of doing it and there’s probably better ways or simpler ways of doing this. I mean you can rewire reason through ableton, so maybe there’s a way of doing it through there, which would simplify it, but for for the way my mind works. It seems to make more sense to to look at it in reason in depth, isolate the bits that i want to use the loops that i want to use and export those individually and then import them into ableton. That seems to be the steps that i need to take and that’s what i’m going to do all on this little thing, so i may as well start at the top on my first track, we’re in no particular order and i’ve got this cayenne. Um k, horn. We’Ve got this k and loop, so let’s bring in four bars of that eight bars. That’S eight bars, there’s been four bars of that loop, so i’m gon na solo that now it does have an effect going on.
Let’S have a look at that, so here’s our track and it’s going to this uh synchronous effect sweeper thing now. This is probably something that i can recreate in in ableton and because it changes over time – and it’s not always the same – i’m probably going to take it dry over to ableton and see what that happens. So, let’s take this out of here. I’Ve got some reverb on it, which i’ll also take out so i’ll.
Take it nice and dry so from here. I want to go file hide my what’s it export loop as audio file, i can create a new folder enjoy. Well, that should have been it with a bit of luck. In fact, what i think i’ll do i’ll also do it with the filter on, because why restrict your options really quick, so there we are great now something a little bit more complicated. Is the roads down here? Let’S check this out so, first of all, it’s going to have to be eight bars. There’S two different things going on now. There are effects on it, but it is. The loop is long enough to contain all of those within its own loop, so it doesn’t need any any special attention in that regard, and i think i’m going to leave all of those on there.
Although again it might be worth doing a dry version. I mean why not. Why restrict yourself, as i say it’s dry, and i can continue on down doing that to to all the parts along i mean the probably. The most difficult thing is going to be the vocals, because they’re performed well and the guitar for that matter, because that varies a lot um over the whole thing so, for instance, to get hannah’s vocal.
I’M going to have to decide how exactly i’m going to split that up and how best that would work uh in a loop sort of framework. But you know these things here are sent to try. Some will i’ll get on with this, get the work done and show you what it looks like in ableton. So now i’ve got my folder of loops from reason, i’m going to dump them into ableton.
Now i haven’t spent any time with aberton on the surface yet and i’ll be doing uh a nice big video all about it uh very soon, so i haven’t developed a toolbar for it. Yet that’s the reason one um, so i’m just really having to go with it and as with any fast approaching gig, you know the level of stress it’s probably going to get quite high, but i’ve used it a lot. I don’t see why there should be problems with it. I’M going to be plugging this fella in with a bit of luck later on to get that running with it, i’m not sure.
Yet what the touchscreen is going to bring to the party, because everything enables a little bit small and not designed for touch as such, but we’ll see there may be things that i can utilize within it or not. We will see i’ll get into all of that, but for now let’s see if i can recreate my reason song in ableton. So let’s add my folder here we go now. I’Ve got a list of all my various loops, starting, i believe, with the cane yeah. That seems to be holding it all right, so i’m going to drag that in to there i’m going to need a guitar number. Two, i think was the basic one.
Tempo is 125. So that’s good. Let’S pick that up! Stick in the base, there’s the house kit. So that’s sounding all right. That’S sounding pretty easy to put together, so that’s kind of my first line. I suppose, would you call these scene? That’S the way, i’m looking for my first scene, although i’ll, probably put in a simpler scene to start with with just the guitar going on and then add those other bits in now.
At some point, these bunch of pads come in and i’ve got to work out. How they relate to each other? Okay, what i’m going to do is duplicate that and stick the rising pad. I think going alongside there like so then i need to bring that down to there.
It comes down has to start creating some more audio tracks. That needs to be over there and then guitar is going to change to. I think number three, let’s see how that fits in brilliantly okay, so this is easy, so yeah that’s kind of the basis of it and then it gets there’s a bit of a break and there’s obviously vocals that go over the top, but i’m to have to Work out how all that fits in oh yeah, there’s a road now, where does the roads fit in? Let’S stick that in here now, at some point we have to have the break. So let’s stick that into something okay! Well, you can see how i’m now putting this together into into ableton, and we will come back to this when it’s a bit more finished and and see how easy it flies. Yeah. You can get your fingers, you can get your fingers in there.
I wish there was a way of making the interface bigger, though very simply that would that would be great, and there we go. Oh future, oh had to use a little bit of overlapping with the vocals, so you’ve got one vocal, which is only half as long as it should be because it goes into the next scene like this one. Here it could work with fingers, but i feel in a live performance.
It’S going to be really tricky to get there or at least to get there accurately enough. So there you go probably requires a bit more work on uh effects and sort of panning and levels, and that kind of thing which i can work on between now and the gig. But essentially the framework uh is very much there and i just need to get my launch pad plugged in so i can give a bit more hands-on, triggering in part three we’ll be looking at how to freeze tracks in ableton, live and prepare it for live performance.
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