I decided to manage my livesets as projects. I’m not talking about folder organization but more brain’s stuff organization.
Indeed, I had often designed new livesets here time I played but, because it is also totally unproductive & time consuming as hell, I want to have projects like that, finished or unfinished and to be able to retrieve the whole configuration in 3 years, to modify it etc.
This is quite easy to do, this is just a new way.

Here is another excerpt of this performance.
I’ll play the early version at polikarpov on tomorrow.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I hope people will get into it. This is very syncopated and uncanny, but not that much :p

I’ll describe my setup asap. It is based on Live + VDMX but used in very strange ways. Indeed, inside Live, I’m running some sequencers and not really sequences inside clips and in VDMX, I’m using strange Quartz Composer compositions.

If Live is my audio manager in which and into which I route all my audio, VDMX became my visuals manager too ; for this latter, so easy to change presets, to route Max6/Jitter into it (syphon rocks!) and even more.

My visuals are audio-reactive. That means some parts (fx, generators etc) are changing according to music data. You may love a workshop around this I guess. I can use anymeeting.com for that. Just tell me.

Here is a short excerpt for my next live performances

Watch this video on YouTube.

I have MANY things to write here but just not enough time to do that.

lines() is my next live act.
As you may know, I have more than one side and it often looks like schizophrenic but I’m okay
lines() is from the most rhythmic side of me/protofuse.
It has to be played with a stereo sound-system and a big screen behind me in order to integrate myself into the light, into the lines.

If you want to book this performance at your place, please use this form.

This is my official Ableton Certification for Live 8 & Live 9. I was already certified for Live 8 since year, now I’m certified for Live 9.

If you need some courses, please fill out the forms in english or french right here.
I use to provide that on Skype or on site in french, english or italian.

For many people, Live 9 is just a classic DAW. It isn’t.
It can be used on 1000 ways.
I’m currently composing a new liveset which doesn’t even use the Live’s transport (you know, the play button, the clip launching quantization etc)
Indeed, I’m using it as a BIG mixer  + multi-FX box with pure Max6 devices for my sound generation. Pure digital, pure sound.

I’ll use Live9 only for mixing all my signal and I’ll remote control ALL my sound generators using OSC via a Max6 remote controller (with Jamoma)

More infos soon.

At first, I want to thank Alex Gàmez for everything he made for this great festival !
I’d probably forget some people so I want also to thank all people at Störung + Farinera del clot in Barcelona for their kindness, coolness, happiness and energy! You are making such a huge work and you deserve to be hug !

I have been invited by Alex around january/february for playing live + make a workshop.
His (their) professionalism is really appreciate by people traveling like me and indeed, I have been guided everywhere from the airport where the nice Montse drove me to my hotel  and inside Farinera del Clot where Jose and the staff helped to make a nice sound-check + helped me for my workshop about Max6 too.

I went there on thursday and played my A/V live performance the same day at the evening.

It was a kind of electronica ambient but with rhythms too. I had a BIG screen to show up my living lines. I wanted to shoot a small video before the show of my lines meshed and rendered in Max6/Jitter.

Here is that ugly quality video, but I think some guys recorded high quality videos so, I’d post that later.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I played around 40 to 45 minutes and low frequencies were as I wanted. Low, raw, vibrating!
I still used Touchable to trigger clips but I had really a few clips. Indeed, sounds came from strange devices own made in Reaktor + Max6 too and I only tweaked some fx, some parameters related to mixer (EQ etc) on stage. Visuals were reactive so I only had to check sometimes on the screen if everything was ok. It seemed to have been okay

On the next day, I almost “ran” to Sagrada Familia place because I couldn’t miss it that time.
I worked a bit on my workshop announced for 17:30 at the same place.
The title was : “Approach of A/V performance with Max6″. I had 6 participants and it was really a nice moment.
Of course, as usual: too short!
At this moment when I’m writing this post, I don’t have the email address of all participants so please, write me privately your email on FB or on my contact form on this website. Indeed, I want to send you some links, the presentation slideshows itself  etc.

You can watch all photos on this facebook  album:

I heard and watched Jakob Kirkegaard, Mathias Delplanque, SAFFRONKEIRA, Francisco López, Frank Vigroux & Antoine Schmitt.

Unfortunately, because of my short time there, I missed some others … Moritz von Oswald, Mia Zabelka, XX + XY.

I also met some guys currently making a VERY nice and innovative iOS application for Ableton Live controlling/feedback.
This is a bit something between Lemur, Touchable. But more intuitive and which seems to be REALLY ergonomic on stage.
I’ll post more about that when I’d have tested it deeply with them

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My Arduino book named C Programming for Arduino is now VERY VERY close from the publication/release.
You can read my author profile on PACKT PUBLISHING website.

Here is the cover:

It will be available on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, barnesandnoble.com, safaribooksonline.com

It is maybe the right moment to subscribe to the dedicated newsletter and join the subscribers:

I hope you’ll like this new series of liveset .
Of course, a lot of visuals, generated real-time, blasting your eyes while the sound will scratch your ears.

Minimalistic, exploring strange musical articulations, but dancing too.
This is an A/V live set. You probably won’t se me on stage without my visuals.

Here is a VERY small teaser of some extract. Let me know if you like it on my page

Watch this video on YouTube.

I hope to be able to play in some festivals quite soon.
Some of you asking me that, I just answer them to spread their enthusiasm on festivals FB pages, for instance.

Hope you’ll like it.

Watch this video on YouTube.

CHECK AT THE END OF THE POST THE SECRET HIDDEN FEATURES I TESTED

Now, a lot of you already heard about the Options.txt file in Ableton Live.
We can find it here as proposed by Ableton:

• Mac OS X: Macintosh HD:/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live x.x/
• Windows XP (Live 4 and later versions): C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Ableton\Live x.x\Preferences\
• Windows Vista and Windows 7: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x\Preferences\

Sometimes, and initially, it doesn’t even exist.

We can create it by creating a text file named Options.txt basically.
We can put several special commands inside in order to make Live having a slightly different configuration.

Each keywords consists in a minus sign and a keyword itself like:
-ShowDeviceSlots

The official link is : https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/optionstxt-file-live

But of course, some people discovered other features.

Personally, I don’t use it a lot because with Max for Live (and Python Midi Remote Scripts) I already have everything I need…

Ableton published different official options:

“ReWireMasterOff”

Disables Live’s ReWire master functionality.

Example: -ReWireMasterOff

“ReWireChannels”

Number of ReWire channels appearing in the ReWire master when Live runs as ReWire slave.

Default = 16
Min = 0
Max = 64

You must choose an even number of channels.

Example: -ReWireChannels=32

“PluginAutoPopulateThreshold”

Auto-populates the plugin parameter list if a plugin has a number of less or equal than X parameters

Default = 32
Min = 1
Max = 128

“-1″ will always populate the list with max. 128 parameters, regardless how many parameters the plugin has (= similar to Live 7 behaviour)

Supported since: 8.1.1

Example: -_PluginAutoPopulateThreshold=32

“ThinningAggressiveness”

When recording automation data, Live smoothes the recorded data with a pre-defined value. The default value is = 0.45

Higher value = more breakpoints eliminated.

Example: -ThinningAggressiveness=0.1

“DontCombineAPCs”

Deactivate the APC combination mode: don’t align and sync the session rings of multiple APCs so they can be moved independently.

Supported since: 8.1.4

Example: -DontCombineAPCs

“AbsoluteMouseMode”

Alternative mouse mode without resetting mouse position – useful for tablets, touch screens, remote desk etc.

Supported since: 8.1

Example: -AbsoluteMouseMode

“EnsureKeyMessagesForPlugins”

This option solves a problem with certain VST Plugins (such as NI’s Reaktor), where keyboard data does not reach the plugin.

Supported since: 7.0.2b3

Note: PC ONLY!

Example: -_EnsureKeyMessagesForPlugins

(Apparently secret features)

-EnableMapToSiblings=1

Siblings are used with racks and drum racks.
You have probably had this “problem”: you put 10 times the same device in each chain of a rack and you change the value of that parameter in each 10 devices …. it is laborious and painful.. you have to make this 10 times.

By doing that one time and right clicking on the freshly set parameter, you can choose ‘copy to siblings (n)’ where n is the number of chain where Live found the same parameter in the rack.
By doing that, it copies the value everywhere for you in one click.

This feature is in the core and isn’t related to Options.txt (AFAIK, it was in the past)

So, why to talk about that here ?

Because another related feature is directly activated by using -EnableMapToSiblings=1 keyword.

Indeed, by putting this in your Options.txt file, you can also map all same parameters in all your chains o the same macro without having to select this chain, map, select another one, map etc etc.
You only have to do that one time then, by clicking right over the macro button, you can choose “Map to all siblings” and all same parameters in all chains will be mapped to the same macro.

-ShowDeviceSlots

This keyword provides the way to display new elements in the GUI.
Indeed, these devices slots are displayed between the clip state area in the track and the mixer.
We can also show/hide those slots using the button on the left under (I-O) and above buttons (S| and |R)

But it isn’t really accurate and it only refreshes the name/type of the device if you resize the track. Of course, this is a non-official feature I’d advice you to not using it on stage!

Check the picture.

I tried to read/discover others in hexadecimal editor by parsing Live binary itself, a lot of things appeared but I guess these were only artifacts and not more options.
I also read there were more unofficial, but I tested some and it didn’t work well.
If you find one, I’d be happy to test it, btw.

Here is a very messy patch you can use as a lead for many things.

Basically, you drop a movie file of any format compatible with Max6, and it finds the darker & lighter pixels and also calculates a global mean of all pixel values.

Then, I made some basic panel coloration in order to illustrate this process but with values popped out from [jit.3m] objects, you could scale and use these data to trigger things if the global level would be greater or smaller than a threshold, you could also control some drones frequencies or absolutely whatever you’d need.

I’m sorry if I didn’t achieve an example of use of that but .. let’s say … it is already a nice lead for you, I hope. Feel free to ask more in comment or on my Quora profile

Here is a liveset including the patch. The liveset is empty and only contains one track with that Max for Live device:
Download the liveset here

Here is the patch as compressed text (copy-paste it directly inside a patcher)

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