Ableton Live vs Karma?

[osiris]

Hey all,

A friend of mine has been talking about venturing into Ableton live for performing his solo material live at some point in the future.

I'm not at all familiar with Ableton but after having a look at what you can do with it it seemed very similar to the Karma technology in Korg workstations...

So my query is: using the Karma editor software to create your own GE's, can you use it in the same way for live performance as you would with Ableton live?

From my limited knowledge, I can't see why not. I'd imagine Karma is probably more tricky to set up for a song, but with the 8 scenes, 4 modules and a full combi with 16 programs (could also throw in some sequencing and rppr too) I think it would be do-able to use all these tools similar to Ableton.


Anyone tried this? or have anything to say about Ableton or Karma?

[King_Ellesar]

To my knowledge, Karma and Ableton are completely different animals altogether.

Karma is a very unique technology that can manipulate MIDI data in realtime, and in a very expressive manner. It's as if an arpeggiator mated with a human being.

Ableton can be nearly anything you want it to be. When people use it live, they can use it as a station for virtual synthesizers and audio effects with capabilities to easily connect to any MIDI controller. It's also pretty easy to create live loops on the fly. Or, you can trigger audio files from it, backing tracks, samples and so on. It's very customizable, and you can shape it to your needs.

Your friend might be able to do what he does with Ableton in Karma, but they're really not the same thing. I guess I'm not really sure what you're saying can be done with either one.

[SoulFire]

This is true. While Abelton is a very deep DAW type program which can be used for looping, triggering samples, etc. it is very different to Karma. Karma can almost be said to be able to improvise, through what can basically be described as elaborate layers of MIDI sequences. Abelton on the other hand can just be used like most other similar DAWs to create and play loops or samples on the fly.

P.S. Osiris I sent you a really important PM that I need a reply from soon, if you can thanks! :D

Regards,

Soulfire

[osiris]

Well the reason I started this thread is one of the things I'm yet to try with Karma (cause I've not spent the £107 on the editor software) is to take an existing song, be it one of my own or a cover, and program various GE's to play the riffs, drums etc etc and have each module change to a different section of the song.

I'm sure Karma is capable of doing this and if and when I ever buy the software for it, it'll definitely be something to try and a great way to familiarise myself with it.

So really it was because of that idea, and the way I see people use ableton for performing their songs that I wondered if anyone had tried it with Karma...

Hope that gives insight into why I brought this up :tongue:

[EnjoyRC]

I started to respond to this thread with some good input... but then I returned to the thought that they are such different animals.

There are many ways to put together the parts you're talking about. Don't forget the 'Drum Track' feature in the M3 too. But honestly, it's much easier to create and edit in Ableton Live. Once you use Live, you'll see what the attraction is to Live.