Jaime Rosselló uses Live to create music for fashion shows

seraph

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User Story - Jaime Rosselló
November 2003

Jaime Rosselló uses Ableton Live to create music for fashion shows. Recently he won two awards for one of the most renowned fashion shows, the Cibeles in Madrid.

Ableton talked to him about his extraordinary way of using Live for fashion shows.

“Jose Miro asked me to compose some music for his summer collection 2004. His collection is inspired by Japan, Africa, Cuba and India. The models came out in such a way that Africa appeared first, followed by Cuba, Japan, futurist Japan and finally India. In total, there were 36 models for whom I had to create music.

I used the experience as a study in recording. The models backstage usually follow an order but each one has her own pace, and to put her to sounds previously recorded onto CD is practically impossible. Also, on an artistic level, I needed to sync all the music through the percussion and instruments of each country, including electronics in the futuristic parts.

The solution lies in being able to do things in real-time. Someone told me about a program that could sequence in real-time; that quantizes and lets you add effects to every track. Eureka! That is, Live unites me with the percussion of each country. With the feedbacks of the delays I can unite apparently disparate percussive elements. I can rove half the world from Cuba to Africa, or from Africa to India, etc. Each country has a pad that fires off before the costumes from that country begin to appear. All synchronized!

I work with loops in Logic and then I turn them around in Ableton Live. Every model has a sound, I have a photo of the model and an announcer tells me, “model 6!” I look for her in the Live interface and two seconds before the model enters through the doorway, I trigger the loop so that the Japanese costume is greeted with a big “GOOONG!”

I work with a monitor and the models pass in front of me four seconds before going down the runway, I see them through a little window (my friends joke, “Concentrate on the Ableton window, not on the other!”), and I trigger the sample. To the public eye it looks like perfect choreography, and the result was the L’oreal prize for the best runway show in Pasarela Cibeles, the most important fashion event in Spain.”

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 7:31 am Post subject:

Great post, very interesting. There's an interview with Han Zimmer. He's into LIVE also. He says:

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 2:09 pm Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 7:00 am Post subject:

There was a positive review for LIVE in Keyboard Magazine recently.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 7:29 am Post subject:

i have Live. I got it bundled with the Firewire-410 interface. It is interesting, but I havent yet figured out how I can use it for my music. Well, it seems to be a loop player with efx and I cannot see where that one fits in with what I do.

seraph · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 8:43 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 12:47 pm Post subject:

I have the Ableton Live 2.

seraph · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:20 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 8:09 am Post subject:

Hehe.... true... yes... I can probably upgrade it. Dunno... I have no idea how I can use it yet. -But the list of version 3 features is interesting. Preparing loops for use with Live seems to me to be a lot of work, but then I might be to set in my oldish ways.