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.