Live 2.01 Impressions, or "ableton listens, users rejoice" Options

[filarion]

Paid my 80 Euros to upgrade to Live 2.0 a couple of days ago. Awesome new features like different timestretch engines (acoustic guitar tracks actually can be used in Live now), ability to turn those engines off for individual samples, better automatization, etc.

Performance looks to be the same like 1.5 - which means that it still isn't Altivec optimized, and faster on PCs, but the Ableton guys are Mac users themselves and are promising to add this (requiring a bunch of rewrites) for the next upgrade. Anyways, especially with software like Live the performance is nowhere near as important as creativity.

[charlieb]

from an artist's pov I'll heartily suggest Live, especially since you're in a dynamic environment and not only producing by yourself

I'm not really comfortable with suggesting Reason as addition, but it is the easiest way to create new sounds to use in Live without external gear - well, sampling your soundcard's input is even easier if you want to use external gear. For instance, I usually play my Waldorf Pulse basslines into Live - loops really come to life when recorded live in my opinion. extreme vocal manipulation and basic "clean" vocals work in it too.

OK, so we are getting closer, and perhaps going in the same direction that others have suggested.
To be clear:
1. I want to be able to compose some interesting music, and then have that music on CD and play the CD as part of a workshop. So sort of, "OK, let's begin to relax by listening to some music and loosening up some." and then the music starts.
2. AND, the entire workshop gets recorded and then severely edited as there is always a LOT of wasted space.
So, I do not currently plan on actually "Performing" any music I create on the spot, just popping in various CD's. Paying full attention to the people is already a full time task.
3. And yes there could be times as I do now where I would fade one of MY songs into something by someone else, but again, I would prepare this ahead of time, so as to not get lost in the equipment.
4. I would do prepared CD's that I would sell, where my voice is added to some music tracks to create hypnotic suggestions. But again, not live.
5. I do do a fair amount of hopefully interesting talking while music is playing in my workshops, but this is just getting picked up by a mike that is picking up the entire room.

Sorry, but "Sampling your sound card" is something I do not understand
at all.

Reason seems to be the synth that most people have suggested, and even though you have reservations, this seems to be your suggestion as well yes?
Interesting that you say that Logic is best from a producers point of view, but perhaps Live is best from an artistic point of view. Very interesting difference.

Yes I have tried the Live demo some and it seems pretty accessible. Again, a shame that there isn't any Logic demo. I live in Japan, and I might try to find a place that might have a demo.

Again, thanks for sticking with me.

Regards,
charlie