Changing instrument racks / drumracks between songs on the same Live Set

[Alexis83]

Hi,

I intend to create a Live Set that would gather various songs for a live performance with my band. For each song, there are instruments (mostly synths - both hardware and VST) I will be playing live while other tracks will be dedicated to playback (for drum loops and synth basslines mostly)

To do so, in session view, I think I'll structure songs through different scenes (with corresponding BPM) and a "stop scene" at the end, before moving to the next song.

The question I have is is there a way to automatically change instrument racks / drum racks when moving from one song to another? I'll use specific drum racks and instrument racks for each song and I don't think my CPU would allow running a Live Set with more than 10 instrument racks and almost as many drum racks open.

Thanks!

[Greenapples2019]

Hi, yes you can do this by combining a few different techniques: set up a chain for each patch, give each chain a separate value (say 1 for first patch, 2 for second and so on) and map the on/off of each instrument within the patch to that chain number. This means instruments/devices will only be on when that particular chain is selected. Then map the chain selector to a macro and you can control which chain is selected with a MIDI controller, dummy clip or snapshot. There's lots of info in the manual and loads of YT videos showing in detail how to do it all; try searching for chains, chain selector and dummy clips. Once you've got the basics the possibilities are massive, and it works like a dream.

We use this approach live with drum racks, FX chains, works like a dream. If you want even more capability, Max For Live and ClyphX Pro are good options.

[DunedinDragon]

Personally I've done this now for a few years and I don't use MIDI in the live performance in terms of the backing tracks. I have a source machine where I build the tracks and produce the individual instrument audio tracks in arrangement view that are then individually copied over to the performance laptop with each scene being an individual song performance with each instrument as a separate component in that scene. This reduces the possibility of any technical issues that could crop up during a performance and it allows me to manage the mix on each of the instruments and send them to the mixer on their own channel. I do have certain MIDI tracks in each song but those are used for performance automation of other devices such as lights or effects as well as automating certain things internally in Ableton like stopping the play of the song when it reaches the end. This is all controlled on stage through a Morningstar MC8 MIDI foot pedal. So the performance consists of one footswitch to select the song and one footswitch to start it.