Changing MIDI Instruments Quickly for Live Performance

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igneous
Posts: 54
Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2015 9:40 am

Changing MIDI Instruments Quickly for Live Performance

Post by igneous » Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:25 pm

Hi forum,

I'm going to be the keyboardist for a live act that involves me playing a lot of different software instruments – synths, pianos, orchestral instruments. Does anyone have advice on switching between these instruments on the fly during a performance?

I'm seeing tutorials that involves arming every single instrument in the set, and then using the chain selector feature in the racks to turn racks on or off. I can make big global shifts by having the scenes send chain selector info for multiple tracks. It's done in this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcdLKrSuYDE

Is this the best way people have found? Would keyboardists recommend I just use my Nord Stage 3 instead? Thank you!

Greenapples2019
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: Changing MIDI Instruments Quickly for Live Performance

Post by Greenapples2019 » Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:42 pm

Hi, although I'm not a keyboardist I do use the drum racks in Ableton with a live band and there's a couple of keyboardist videos that I found helpful as starting points for what we needed to do:

Anomolie: https://youtu.be/P-kJaD6htbg
Bad snacks: https://youtu.be/OiwWwIFzqqI

igneous
Posts: 54
Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2015 9:40 am

Re: Changing MIDI Instruments Quickly for Live Performance

Post by igneous » Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:40 am

Wow those are incredible video tutorials... thanks so much!

Greenapples2019
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: Changing MIDI Instruments Quickly for Live Performance

Post by Greenapples2019 » Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:42 am

You're welcome, and good luck! In my experience changing sounds and turning unused racks on/off all works really smoothly.

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