Of all the things I’ve learned about using Ableton Live, the biggest is that it will result in questions. Lots and lots of questions, like: What’s the laptop doing?, or Where are those sounds coming from?, or I saw you hitting a lot of pads, what’s with that?, or Are you checking your email from on stage?
So, I thought I’d take advantage of an afternoon off and share with the world my Ableton Live setup for Wits, which has more things going on in the laptop than per usual for me.
Live can handle a lot of needs, and my Wits setup covers them all pretty gracefully. I’ll break up this tutorial/sneaky-peek likewise:
- Gear, lots and lots of gear
- Monitoring and routing
- Click tracks and scene changes
- Instrument sounds
- Loops and backing tracks
Now, one of the best things about Live is it’s really versatile, I mean, REALLY versatile, and there are about 100 different ways to accomplish any given task. If you’re an Ableton wizard you might sigh and shake your head sadly when you see my setup but this is what’s working for me. For the sake of these posts I’m gonna assume you’re not an Ableton Wizard but, at the least, have a working knowledge of Live and how to get around it.
Cool? Cool. First up: the gear.