Ableton Forum

Hello Everyone
I just purchased Ableton Live 8 and I have been searching the forum, the user manual and other places to try and find easy directions on how to use multiple keyboard sounds from different Vst's and be able to split a midi keyboard

Example Bass on lower 1/4, Piano and Strings upper part of the keyboard.
Also to be able to layer keyboard tones on top of one another and be able to have control over them such as lowering the volume of tones and bringing able to bring them in.

One last thing do you save these as presets and what is the easiest way to use these in a live situation to be able to change from one layer or split to another.

I have looked on how to do this and only found one discussion on the forum for Live 6. Does anyone out there have an easy way to accomplsh this any help would be appreciated.
Thanks Ray

You might want to start with this thread
The video posted does a pretty good job explaining the basics.

You can map the racks macro knobs to various parameters in your instruments and midi map a controller to them. Or just midi map directly to the devices parameters.

As for changing instruments, I'd suggest doing a search for "mapping chain selector" or using different midi channels depending on what suits you and your gear.