Best way to switch between 'backing' track and live instrument

[mu71rd]

I've been using Ableton 10 for quite a while now, and would say that I'm pretty solid on how it all works.

I'm interested in hearing the best way of dealing with a scenario of live performance, whereby I may have prepped some instrument parts in the arrangement view, but may at any given moment want to either a) have playback, b) play it myself live, or c) record something new to loop/select.

I'm mostly concerned with the monitor section, and the best way to 'choose' what I hear.

Lets assume there's a keys part, and for the most part I will play that live myself. I have also tracked the keys part in arrangement mode in case I decide to play a different instrument for a bit and want to flick 'keys' to 'backing track'. As I understand it, any track can be record armed or not, and also it can be set to 'in', 'off', or 'auto' for monitoring.

At the beginning of the track, what mode does it need to be in so that I can play myself (backing track not playing)? Presumably I can press 0 to mute the clip? That's a bit fiddly live as I need to use a trackpad. I would have thought selecting 'in' would put the track into input monitor and ignore any clips. But that doesn't seem to be what happens. Also, the track behaves differently depending on whether I'm in 'record arm' or not - again not something I expect to have an effect unless I actually press 'record'.

I come from a recording studio/pro tools background where input monitor kills any track playback, and 'record arm' is only arming, until record is pressed. In pro tools, I'd go into input monitor to hear my own keyboard playing, and disable input monitor when I wanted to hear playback. I'd press record if I wanted to record something new.

This all sounds a bit garbled, but that's because Ableton is not following a pattern I'm used to, despite the 'terms' being the same.

As a further thought, I have a multitude of midi mappable buttons on controllers, and also have a Push 2 - but the Push frustratingly doesn't have easy access to the 'monitor' controls.

Look forward to any help or advice.

[mu71rd]

I should add that I am reluctant to just have duplicate tracks for everything - ie one that's live, and another that plays back. However I can see that would be a good option.

The reason I'm reluctant to do it is a) in a live setting I want as few tracks as possible to prevent clicking the wrong thing and b) on the whole I am using power-hungry instruments - keyscape, Superior Drummer, Trilian, Arturia V.

I could render some instruments (or freeze them) but then I'm into having to warp if the tempo needs to be different, which preumsably has further penalties with processing and sound quality.

It may be that rendering and additional tracks is the answer, but if there's a neater solution (along the lines of my Pro Tools scenario above) then that's what I'd choose first,

thanks.

[Angstrom]

In the past I've done it this way: two tracks, let's say one has a piano VST on it, the other a recorded Piano part. Enable Monitor on for the VST track. Group them and call the group "keys".

Now you have one track which you can apply send effects to, and control the volume of with your main mixer-controller.

Naturally triggering the clip on the group will play the clip in the playback channel and nothing much in the VST channel. I press an empty clip and it silences the playback.

In the clip section of the VST track I usually have clips which are controling program change, or chain selects. That way I can trigger a scene and the instrument rack preset changes to reflect the new song.

[mu71rd]

thanks for that. I'm now looking at instrument racks too - interested to see how many interations of the same plugin I can have in a rack - if i manage to get the switching on/off working...