I'm about to buy Ableton Live mainly for using it in gigs. I'm a keyboard player and I primarily rely on a stage piano (Roland RD700SX) but use some pc stuff as well. I've done some research (=googling) on how to fulfill my needs and looks like Ableton Live would do the trick. There seems to be many ways to do the same thing so I'm asking for opinions on my current plan.
I have currently a live setup that consists of the Roland and a laptop. For some songs, I use Reaper to be a VSTi host so that I can augment my Roland with the world of VSTi when needed. This requires too much effort when changing songs. I'd prefer keeping the laptop lid closed anyway.
Roland obeys midi and changes presets when commanded. I'd like my laptop to do the same. I'm planning on putting together a simple midi controller which enables me to create song index for sending the midi commands to both Roland and Ableton. With the external controller I can use it even without the laptop. I'll get a polysynth (midi->audio) soon so I thought controlling that plus Roland using one device would already be a win.
As an Ableton-newbie I found it easiest to think song presets as scenes with various instruments as tracks and put everything in one session/project. Ableton midi automation enables me to teach a midi controller to select scene using a parameter. However it looks like for this to work, I have to create exactly 127 (or 128?) scenes as the input value is scaled. This feels a bit off-putting, but I might learn to live with it.
Instrument rack seems to enable me to create tracks for the main stuff like "Pianos", "Organs" and so on and vary which VSTi to use with dummy clip with midi controller value.
Arming a track is teachable, but I couldn't find a way for toggling it either on or off. Only to change it to the opposite. I don't find this reliable for remote controlling Ableton to arm only specific tracks as a single miss-arm keeps haunting until the project is reopened. Without this, I would just arm every track for listening separate midi channels and make sure I don't accidentally send anything to them.
With the external controller and backup presets my world shouldn't come done if some pc stuff fails. But now that I'm re-building this stuff I'd of course like it to be as robust as possible
Ableton, the custom controller and making the presents don't come easy or free so I'd appreciate any input!