Ableton Forum

Hi, I'm going to be making a technology purchase soon and want to
consider Ableton Live as an option. My hope is someone here can
provide some advice.

I'm wanting to use looping technology in a performance for three
musicians, the loops would be used to augment live performance on
acoustic instruments. I want each musician to be able to create and
manage loops on the fly. I want the band to determine the tempo of a
piece at performance time, rather having it pre-set. So here are the
questions I have been able to think of.

1. Is this something Ableton Live can do?

2. Can all 3 musicians each have their own loop controllers? If so,
what hardware is needed? (both for audio input and loop control)

3. would using a laptop for all of this require a lot of frenetic
pointing and clicking during the performance?

4. Obviously latency would be dependent at least in part on hardware
support, could a standard modern laptop meet the need with minimal
latency? or would we need something really beefy?

Thank you for any insights you can provide.

1. Is this something Ableton Live can do?

Yes you could do this. I have done this with a single machine as a master controller/looper. We used an instance of looper per person.

2. Can all 3 musicians each have their own loop controllers? If so,
what hardware is needed? (both for audio input and loop control)

Yes. In the rig I was using we each had a FCB1010 foot controller. Both programmed the same but on different MIDI channels. Minimum setup would be a Laptop, Audio interface with MIDI in, and the FCB1010. Might want to get a 2x2 or 3x3 MIDI interface as well.

3. would using a laptop for all of this require a lot of frenetic
pointing and clicking during the performance?

If you created a template with all your MIDI mappings done as default and practiced using this template it shouldn't be a big deal. Almost like using a stomp box. My friend and I would just boot one machine with one interface and plug in the FCB1010's and start playing. We had a color coded cheat sheet to reference what banks and buttons did what.

4. Obviously latency would be dependent at least in part on hardware
support, could a standard modern laptop meet the need with minimal

We would run this on a laptop with a decent interface. But we played into our amps directly and split a signal to Ableton just to record the loop. Then when the loop played you would hear it through the monitors. That way while playing you would have zero latency. A interface with an on board DSP mixer feature would work just as well if you want to monitor through the interface.