MIDI jamming

[DashNY]

Hi there,

I was wondering if there was a way to hook up several computers running Ableton Live together for live jamming.
E.g. I want to invite 2 more people into a jam session. One person will be responsible for drum & bass sounds, the next one will provide pads and riffs, and the 3rd person will do special FX. We would also use "Global Record" button in Live to record each person's sessions and then merge them together into one ALS file for further processing.

Apart from connecting all 3 computers' audio outputs into a single PA (through an audio mixer), I understand there needs to be a way to sync MIDI clock between all 3 computers so that we could take advantage of Live's global quantization settings. E.g. launching a clip on one computer should be in sync with the other 2 computers.

What kind of hardware/software would we need to accomplish that? Preferably nothing too expensive.

Thanks.

[oddstep]

Midi cables. Or midi over lan. Patience.

[DashNY]

Midi cables. Or midi over lan. Patience.

Actually we're using laptops with no built-in MIDI ports. Can this be done with USB cables somehow?

[oddstep]

There are a variety of usb to midi converters out there. There's also midi over LAN as an option.