So the decision to change to Ableton Live from Cubase was a massive one.
I knew about the capabilities of Live - I'd been playing around with various version of Live Lite since v4, but had never really properly got my head around how we'd transfer our songs into the Ableton way of thinking. However, to an extent, we'd already got into the whole 'songs as a series of scenes' idea, since we'd been doing loops in Cubase previously.
So the next question was one of control. With the Cubase method, we'd been using a small mixing desk to control mutes/fades for each element of the track. After some research (and friendly advice), I settled on an Evolution UC-33e. This ticked all the boxes - completely re-assignable, lots of faders, pretty robust looking... This, and a copy of Ableton Live 6, was the start of the new set up.
It was around this time that we recruited our drummer, Alex Lane. This added another problem to the mix: the drummer needs a click. Of course, this isn't really a problem - we just routed a generic Impulse drum machine playing an on-beat hi-hat in Ableton through a separate output of the sound card.
I was still running my trusty Roland JV1080 as my sound source, with piano sounds coming from my Alesis QS7. Andy was playing mostly electric guitar, and occasionally bass guitar. Owen was now a permanent fixture behind the Ableton controller, but had also added a turntable and DJ mixer to give us some scratching in the tracks that needed it. To top it all off we had a new female singer, Kay Juviler-Bacon, for a little extra flourish.
We decided it would be easier to run the effects for the vocals ourselves, to save the hassle of getting a sound guy to hook up our effects module and turning it on and off on the right tracks. This meant continuing to have an on-stage mixing console to route everything accordingly.
All these elements were giving us quite a technical headache, not least because of the amount of kit we had to lug around everywhere. We'd also faced criticism from sound guys at venues for taking too long to set up...
Investing in cases and cables is always a difficult choice. I mean, it's great spending loads of money on things that make great noises, or things covered in big knobs or flashing lights, but cases and cables are just things that make other more exciting things work better. It's a bit like trying to get excited about buying a new headlight bulb for your Ferrari.
Anyway, I had a case custom made for me by the Flightcase Warehouse - 12U top for the mixer, and 6U front and back for equipment. In this was a Yamaha MG166CX mixer, a Phonic PPC8000E power conditioner (for power distribution), a Behringer HA4700 headphone amp, a TC Electronic M350 effects processor, a Behringer 8-way DI rack and my trusty M-Audio Quattro. This flightcase was internally cabled up, including power, so that all that was needed was for the few external connections to be made into the mixer. The DI rack had a 6m XLR loom on it for connection to the venue sound rig. This whole beast came to be known affectionately as the Mega Box. It just about fitted in the car...
Additionally, I bought a Gigskinz Laptop Rack Bag with its own 3U of rack space. This held my old Dell laptop and my Roland JV1080. I LOVE these cases, and would heartily recommend them for anyone who uses a few bits of rack kit with their laptop on stage. They're hard-wearing, have a good sized side pocket, large rear access through a separately zipped opening and an access hole between the rack bit and the laptop bit, so things can be cabled up easily. Genius.
This was the complete set up until I made some down-sizing changes early this summer, and worked a treat - apart from the missions of having to lug the Mega Box around. For the first time ever in our gigging history, we had a reliable, easy-to-use, quick-to-set-up system that allowed us to deliver a quality show without worrying about the 'how' of it all.
That on-stage kit list in full:
Main Stuff:
Dell Laptop running Ableton Live 6
M-Audio Quattro soundcard
Evolution UC33e MIDI Controller
Yamaha MG166CX mixing console
TC Electronic M350 effects processor
Behringer HA4700 headphone amp
Behringer 8-way DI rack
Phonic PPC8000E power conditioner
Custom 12Ux6U flight case
Matt's Stuff:
Alesis QS7
Roland JV1080
Andy's Stuff:
Yamaha electric guitar
A borrowed bass guitar
Owen's Stuff:
Erm... some sort of DJ mixer!
Next time I'll detail how we do things now, after deciding the Mega Box was a little too Mega after all!
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