Banking iin setlist

Feature Requests
1

Hi everyone,

hope you had a great weekend and a good start into the new week!

As a party band, we have a much bigger repertoire than what we actually play at a specific gig. That’s why some kind of banking or grouping feature in the setlist would be really useful for us.

Coming from PC Live Player, we used this all the time. I can also imagine that many other cover bands are in the same situation: bringing over a hundred songs to a show, but only playing a part of them depending on the crowd and how the night develops.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be available in Performance View. Even having it in Canvas would already help a lot. Maybe similar to the existing dividers, but with the ability to group songs underneath them.

A few ideas that came to mind:

  • Color-code complete banks/groups

  • Jump directly to a bank via a button

  • Show groups as (collapsible) sections in the setlist

Just an idea from our day-to-day workflow. Really loving AbleSet so far and appreciate all the work you’re putting into it!

Greetings from Munich,
Max

2

Hey @Basstor,

Thank you for your feedback! I’ll pass the idea along.

In the meantime, tags get you surprisingly close as a workaround:

1. Tag your songs by bank
Append tags to your song locators in Ableton, e.g. Song A #uptempo #rockset or Song B #ballads. A song can carry multiple tags, so it can belong to several “banks” at once.

2. Pull a whole bank into the setlist at once
In the Setlist Editor, hit the + button (or ⌘K), search for your tag, and click “Add all songs with #tag”. That drops the entire bank into your setlist in one go, no adding them one by one.

3. Color-code and save per crowd
Color-coding lives in the Setlist Editor (three-dot menu → Song Color), so you can visually group your banks once they’re in. And since saved setlists store their own song selection, colors, and order, you can pre-build a few named setlists for different crowd types and load whichever fits the night.

It’s not a live “jump to bank” button or collapsible groups, but for building shows from a 100+ song repertoire it covers a lot of the same ground.

You can also see this in action in the official tutorial.

Would that work for your use case?

1 Like
3

Hi Agustin,

I am currently scrolling to big colored blocks, that’s my way how to bank. But to collapse the banks would be such a cool feature! Together with potentially importing a single song more than once, this would be a crazy powerful and resource saving tool - especially for partybands!

best,

Max

4

Oh, and adding:

Tags unfortunately are not possible for us. We are playing our instruments, while scrolling. Also using the onscreen keyboard is out of scope :stuck_out_tongue:

Best,

Max

5

Hey @Basstor,

That’s totally understandable. That said, there is an OSC-based approach that gets you switching banks live with zero typing.

As of now, there’s no OSC command to add songs to a setlist on the fly by tag. But there is /setlist/load, which loads a saved setlist by name. So the workflow would be:

1. Pre-build one saved setlist per bank
Do this once at home with a keyboard — build a setlist for each scenario (e.g. Rock Set, Ballads, Party), and save each with a name (⇧S in the Setlist Editor).

2. Switch banks live via a button — no typing
Trigger this OSC command to load a bank instantly:

/setlist/load "Party"

You could trigger that from a Canvas button (OSC button type, one button per bank, tap to load) or a MIDI mapping (map a footswitch or pad to a Custom OSC action with the command above), or any OSC-capable controller (Stream Deck, etc.)

For example, a Canvas OSC button’s Command on Press would just be:

/setlist/load "Rock Set"

just keep in mind that loading a setlist replaces the current one rather than appending to it, so this treats each bank as a full setlist you swap into, rather than stacking banks on top of each other.

Would that work for your use case?

1 Like
6

Hi Agustin,

unfortunately not. I fear, that the currently playing song gets messed up or that we only can load a new setlist, when playback is paused, right?

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7

Austinvlope, in your June 15 reply, the final instruction is " and click “Add all songs with #tag”. Where is this button? I have an older beta 3.0.4. I type in my TAG, and 7 songs show up, but then there is no “button” in the setlist edit mode. What am I missing?

8

Hey @Basstor and @nevillewhitemusic,

Sorry for the late follow up on this thread.

@nevillewhitemusic, here’s how to find it:

  1. Enter edit mode in the Setlist Editor and click the + button (or press ⌘K).
  2. Type # in the search field. This lists every tag used in your session, each one as an “Add all songs with #tag” option. You can also type the tag name, with or without the #.
  3. Click the option and all songs with that tag are added to your setlist at once.

Since you’re on 3.0.4, I’d recommend updating to the latest official release first. If the option still doesn’t show up after that, please let me know.

@Basstor, loading a saved setlist while a song is playing doesn’t interrupt playback. There are two scenarios:

  • The playing song is also in the new setlist: it just keeps playing as part of that setlist, no difference at all.
  • The playing song isn’t in the new setlist: it keeps playing until it ends, but it won’t appear in the setlist view since it’s not part of the list. Performance View shows it as Skipped while it’s still playing.

So you can switch banks mid song without worrying about the current song getting cut off.

A couple of things from the latest 3.2 betas that might help your workflow:

  • If you use multi file projects, you can now queue songs and sections while Live is playing (Jump Mode needs to be set to End of Song, Dynamic, or Manual).
  • Adding a song right after the current one with ⌘K now keeps the order of the following songs intact.

Hope this helps!

9

Ahh that is how it is done.

Thnk u

1 Like
10

Throwing a vote in on this one, we do songs in blocks and swap blocks actively. It would be super helpful to not only be able to jump blocks during the show, but also build our set lists by selecting those blocks. Ours typically roll in 4-6 song sections in specific orders, which makes it some serious work to build each setlist by songs and needing to go find each order of blocks to make sure we have them right. With about 90 songs on our list and 50-60 a night it can be a mess to try to jump around during a show if we think switching would be better for the crowd.

11

Hey @KevinP,

Thanks for your suggestion! I’ll pass it along.

In the meantime, two things might already cover a good part of your workflow:

Building sets by block
If you tag each song with the block it belongs to (e.g. Song A #block1, Song B #block1), you can pull an entire block into the setlist in one go: enter edit mode in the Setlist Editor, click the + button (or press ⌘K), type # to list every tag in your session, and pick “Add all songs with #block1”. Repeat for each block and you’ve built the set without hunting song by song. Once they’re in, you can still reorder anything by dragging.

Swapping blocks during the show
Save a setlist per block combination, then switch between them live. I tested this earlier today: loading a saved setlist while a song is playing does not interrupt playback. If the playing song is also in the new setlist it just continues normally, and if it isn’t, it keeps playing to the end anyway.

You can trigger that without touching a keyboard by sending the OSC command /setlist/load "Block 1" from a Canvas button, a MIDI mapping, or any OSC capable controller. One thing to keep in mind: loading a setlist replaces the current one rather than appending to it.

This should take a lot of the manual work out of building and swapping sets.

Would that work for your use case?

12

How would you control the order within the tagged block? For us the blocks are arranged in specific order and we stick to that order.

we also occasionally change what’s in each block so would need to rearrange them.

13

Hey @KevinP,

One question: when do you build the set, and who does it? If you put it together before the show with a laptop at hand, the text paste approach covers it. If you’re rearranging blocks during the show from a tablet, the answer is a different one.

For that second case, here’s a Canvas with one button per saved setlist. Save a setlist for each block combination, then tap to switch. The button of the currently loaded setlist lights up brighter, and the label at the top shows which one is active:

[{"type":"label","label":"${osc(\"/setlist/name\") ?? \"\"}","textColor":{"type":"preset","color":"white"},"font":{"size":50},"width":600,"height":70,"x":40,"y":40,"zIndex":1000},{"type":"button","buttonType":"osc","label":"Block A","textColor":{"type":"preset","color":"white"},"backgroundColor":{"type":"dynamic","template":"${osc(\"/setlist/name\") === \"Block A\" ? \"green-600\" : \"green-900\"}"},"font":{"size":40},"width":260,"height":200,"x":40,"y":160,"zIndex":1001,"onPress":"/setlist/load \"Block A\""},{"type":"button","buttonType":"osc","label":"Block B","textColor":{"type":"preset","color":"white"},"backgroundColor":{"type":"dynamic","template":"${osc(\"/setlist/name\") === \"Block B\" ? \"green-600\" : \"green-900\"}"},"font":{"size":40},"width":260,"height":200,"x":330,"y":160,"zIndex":1002,"onPress":"/setlist/load \"Block B\""},{"type":"button","buttonType":"osc","label":"Block C","textColor":{"type":"preset","color":"white"},"backgroundColor":{"type":"dynamic","template":"${osc(\"/setlist/name\") === \"Block C\" ? \"green-600\" : \"green-900\"}"},"font":{"size":40},"width":260,"height":200,"x":620,"y":160,"zIndex":1003,"onPress":"/setlist/load \"Block C\""}]

To use it, copy the block above, open a Canvas in edit mode and paste. Then rename the buttons and the setlist names in each onPress command to match yours, and add as many buttons as you have combinations.

Two things to keep in mind:

  • Loading a setlist replaces the current one rather than adding to it, so each saved setlist should be a full set you swap into, not a block you stack.
  • It doesn’t interrupt playback, so you can switch mid song safely. I tested this from a Canvas button.

Hope that helps!

14

Thanks much, I’ll test this out. I make the sets fully ahead of time and then sometimes we determine things like “the country block isn’t a good fit” or “go to the R&B block” based on crowd response or requests.

1 Like