Creating a Live Set in Ableton Live

#1 Patchbays and Mixers

In this blog series we’ll be exploring MMS Tutor Tom Lonsborough’s live setup, and how you might look to create your own.

Tom Lonsborough is school of electronic music’s resident Ableton Live Certified Tutor, course leader for our Ableton Live Weekender Course and our longer industry music production courses, along with being general mixdown boffin!

In Tom’s other life, he’s in a successful 3-piece chuggy-disco electronic band called 2 Billion Beats, who have has a slew of over 25 releases and have toured globally. At the heart of their setup is Ableton Live, sequencing a boatload of hardware.

Recently Tom spent some time at Sonic State HQ talking through how 2 Billion Beats perform live. We’ll be looking more closely at the specifics of his setup, and answer some of the questions raised in the video series. If you have any questions that may come up relating to this blog series, feel free to get in touch.

Let’s talk gear

Flight case – essential for easy live setup transportation

Synths – Moog Minitaur (bass synth), Dave Smith Tetra (lead synth) with up to 4 note polyphony, Streichfett (alt synth and pads) for woody triangle sounds, Bombass (acid synth)

Drums – Vermona DRM-1 (drum machine)

Microphones – Shure SM-58 (microphone)

MIDI Controllers – Korg Nanokontrol (MIDI controller), Footpedal (MIDI controller), Arturia Keystep (MIDI keyboard), iPad running TouchAble (in replacement for a mixer, controlling Ableton Live)

Audio Interface – MOTU Ultralite (8 ins, 10 outs)

MIDI Interface – MOTU Microlite (5 ins, 5 outs)

Other important bits – Behringer HA400 (headphone amp), Samson S-Patch plus (24 ins and outs patchbay), and a tonne of cables!

The Patchbay

It’s a simple piece of kit but extremely important in a live setup, and is where we’ll start to map out Tom’s setup. The patchbay is useful for sending individual groups of instruments out to the Sound Engineer, eg. ‘bussing the drums out’, or a simple stereo pair with a pre-adjusted mix of your setup that you’re in control of.

The patchbay also crucially means that all the hardware is hard-wired, no plugging things in in a live situation.

Finally, the patchbay gives you flexibility to use your DAW as your mixer, and removes the need for a mixer altogether.

“I experimented with using a mixer into the setup, however the setup time greatly increased and it wasn’t doing anything which I couldn’t do within Ableton Live.”

Let‘s talk through Tom’s routing – no mixer!

MIDI is sent from Ableton Live to the hardware via the MIDI Interface (in this case, the MOTU Microlite).

The audio outputs from the hardware (Vermona – 2 channels, Streichfett – mono, Tetra – stereo, Minitaur – mono, Bombass – mono, Microphone – mono = 8 audio signals) are each routed into the top 8 inputs on the back of the patchbay.

The signals are then “normalled” i.e. hard wired automatically into the bottom outputs of the patchbay. These output connections then go to the inputs of the audio interface (in this case, the MOTU Ultralite – not to be confused with the Microlite!) The Ultralite audio interface has 8 audio inputs, just enough for Tom who has the 8 audio signals he needs to route.

The benefit of the patchbay is that if Tom wanted to sidestep this hardwired process out to the MOTU Ultralite audio interface, by connecting jacks to the top front row of the patchbay, it will break the normalled connection and route signals to the top front jacks instead (despite something still being connected in the back). This is great for when you bring your live setup back to your studio, and want to connect back into your studio’s audio interface and mixing desk, for example.

Assuming this is not the case, in a live scenario the signal is routed via the audio interface’s firewire connection into Ableton Live where mixing and audio processing can take place, in Session View.

Download MMS Patchbay PDF

Ableton Live in a live scenario is controlled by TouchAble on an iPad, but could equally be controlled by Ableton’s Push or any other MIDI controller allowing a tactile mixing process.

As the firewire can both send and return audio signals to and from Ableton Live, the processed outputs can then be routed back into the audio interface after it has been mixed in Ableton Live. For example, if the Vermona was on channels 1 and 2 going out of the patchbay, to 1 and 2 on the audio interface inputs, and the minitaur on 3, it would make sense to route the processed Vermona signal coming out of Ableton Live onto channels 1 and 2 of the audio interface outputs, and the minitaur on 3.

Still with me? Ok. So now the outputs of the audio interface need to be connected into the back of the top row of inputs on the patchbay, the corresponding jack connections around the front of the patchbay can be given to the Sound Engineer via a loom to create their mix for performance.

As you can see, Tom has marked a pen line after the 8 on the patchbay. The first 8 ‘dry’ channels are already used and going to the audio interface, mixed in Ableton, sent back to the audio interface, so then should come back out on channels 9 – 16.

As there are 10 outputs on the audio interface, but only 8 instrument/hardware signals, it means every instrument can have its own separate channel, and there can be an extra stereo pair for anything from the computer (ie samples, softsynths, or any reverb or delay that is applied within the computer).

And, if the Sound Engineer is having a freakout and didn’t want 10 outputs but only a stereo pair, all you would have to do is within Ableton Live, Ableton Live in a live scenario is controlled by TouchAble on an iPad, but could equally be controlled by Ableton’s Push or any other MIDI controller allowing a tactile mixing process.

As the firewire can both send and return audio signals to and from Ableton Live, the processed outputs can then be routed back into the audio interface after it has been mixed in Ableton Live. For example, if the Vermona was on channels 1 and 2 going out of the patchbay, to 1 and 2 on the audio interface inputs, and the minitaur on 3, it would make sense to route the processed Vermona signal coming out of Ableton Live onto channels 1 and 2 of the audio interface outputs, and the minitaur on 3.