Ableton Forum

I have some gigs coming up and would like some tips/advice on live setup.

What are you guy using for live gigs as far as systems, cards, etc?

live: ibook, ableton (of course), uc33e, mpc1000, evolver, microkorg, kaoss 2, yamaha qy70, fw410 and midisport 2x4.

relatively cheap, simple + portable...sometimes i just bring the ibook + evolver.

i have a lot of other stuff in my studio, but find i can usually replace analog parts etc. pretty easily with the qy70 for live stuff.

My setup depends on whether I'm DJ'ing or performing my own material.

When DJ'ing I use a Carillon Centrino laptop, an M Audio FW 1814 soundcard and my analogue DJ mixer-I connect the two stereo outputs from the soundcard to separate channels on the mixer and hey-presto: I can cue & monitor tracks with ease.

When I'm playing my own stuff live I have basically the same setup (minus the dj mixer) with a few synths & a MIDI controller.

Hope this helps.

eMachines M6811 Laptop, Echo Indigo DJ soundcard, ESI Neon controller or my Hercules DJ Console.

G4 powerbook 1.5Ghz, Motu traveller, UC-33 and my Micron for triggering clips. Lexicon MPX-1 for reverb. All plugin instrument/outboard synths rendered as audio.

2 computers, mixer, keyboard, maybe some guitar fx if my damn brother brings them back to me. got a show in like 5 days and I don't have my fx hardware.

2 crap laptops,
mpc2000,
edirol midi controller,
x-session controller,
stanton mixer and a 1210
2 men

So what is the concensus on the best card for mac's now? The ozonic is out after reading hambones trouble with cracks and pops...

This is the setup for my 2-man band. Its pretty complicated because we wanted to have 16 separate outputs from Live into an anlog mixing desk so we can do extensive dub mixing on stage, trigger video clips, and have a crash-proof setup.

We run Live on two Tibook 500's, each feeding 8 individual audio outputs via two RME Multifaces. The Tibooks are both chasing MIDI clock from my controller keyboard, a Roland A-37. The A-37 and a ReMote25 are used to trigger Scenes and Clips in Live and use MIDI CCs to control plugins/effects/levels etc.

One Tibook handles the rhythm section: mono kick, snare, bass, hats, stereo perc, stereo drums. The other Tibook handles the "instruments" as 4 stereo pairs. The "Instruments" machine also has a MIDI track sending MIDI sequences to a 17"Alubook that does video (using Modul8 software) Every scene has its own video sequence plus there are "overrides" under the keys on our MIDI controllers so that I can hit say, a huge reverb dub snare and there appears on the screen a shot of a seed pod exploding.

Once the Macs are loaded at the start of the gig they do not have to be touched at all until they are shut down at the end of the gig. All the control of Live is done from the MIDI keyboards. In fact the Macs are off to the side of the stage and we do not need to look at the computer screens at any time. No accusations of email-checking here, we'd much rather jump up and down!

One Live Set is used on each machine for the whole gig. Our Sets are about 110 tracks wide and about 250 Scenes deep. There is a trick of combining lots of songs accross the Session View left to right top to bottom. You just keep adding new tracks and new scenes so all your songs end up diagonally and top-to-bottom accross the page.

The clips and Scenes for each individual song are set to receive on a different MIDI channel. Song 1 on channel 1, song 2 on channel 2 etc. The MIDI controller keyboards are set up with one patch per song, each patch transmitting a different MIDI channel. Between songs I push the patch increment button on the A-37 controller and the ReMote 25 changes patch, the Akai sampler changes patch, the hardware FX change, and the next song in Live is instantly available under the keys.

As a safety measure, each Live set has a track (which is normally muted) playing a stereo rough mix of what the other Tibook is doing in any given scene. If one Tibook crashes, we can unmute this track and "fly on one engine" while we re-boot the other Mac. The MIDI is routed so that if one powerbook dies it doesn't take the other out. In the last 3 years, we've only ever had two crashes on stage - probably due to getting too excited and HAMMERING the midi - but this backup strategy worked sweetly each time without the audience knowing a thing.

The 16 individual audio outs from Live go into a Behringer 24 ch desk on stage. We have 4 hardware FX sends on this for our dub mixing. (Two Boss SE-50s, one doing 2 delays, the other doing 2 reverbs). I play the keyboards and Mike-the-other-half does the dub and also manipulates the video from a second ReMote25.

We are still using OS9 (gasp) on stage because our Tibooks are so elderly (one Gb of RAM max) and the sets so big OSX just doesn't wanna know! But we have OSX.4.2 partitions with Live 5 and Logic etc that we use in the studio.

There is some video of us playing live and a whole bunch of mp3s over at www.pitchblack.co.nz

Live rig specs:
Tibook 500 x 2
OS9.2.2
1Gb Ram
5400 rpm internal HD
RME Cardbus/Multiface
Live 4.0.2

Alubook 17"
OSX.3
Modul8 video software

Roland A-37
ReMote25 x 2

Akai S3200 sampler
Boss SE-50 multiFX x 2
Behringer 24ch desk

Nice setup, Pitch Black! I think 2 systems with a backup of each other is definitely the way to go if you can afford it. I think that computer manufacturers should start building multicore motherboards with 2 systems on, one as a redundant backup, just in case one crashes, the other has it's back, twins, if you know what I mean!

Great music pitch black!

What instruments do you use? really nice production too!

Got yourselves a new fan!

go buy his cd. its really good. i think i may have even played a song or two during a show here or there

i have some write-ups of my current set up here --> http://sidechain.blogspot.com/
and here's a jpg diagram of my current production environment:
http://helixx.morpheus.net/tunes/current%20set%20up.jpg

my dj set up is just the mixer, the powerbook, the bcf2000 and the drives.

pix wrote:Great music pitch black!

What instruments do you use?

Cheers Pix! Just whats listed there really, Live 4 on the latest album (5 wasn't out then), Logic 6's software instruments, a little bit of Ensoniq TS-12 workstation (mostly for piano skanks/rhodes and stuff), and an Akai S3200XL sampler which I can't live without for it's filters and FX board.

cheers
paddy

hey i saw you guys at the gathering in takaka years ago

sweet you are using ableton. respect.

Paranoid wrote:I have some gigs coming up and would like some tips/advice on live setup.

What are you guy using for live gigs as far as systems, cards, etc?

i'm using a powerbook g4 with an m-audio o2 (and sometimes an edirol pcr-30 aswell) . i am also using a Boss GT-6 which is a guitar effects pedal, but it has three pedals
that seems to work fine as midi controllers, so that is plugged in aswell.

Works so far.. haven't pushed it too hard.