Recommendations for setting up my bands Ableton Session with Ableset

Tech Talk
1

Hey everyone,

as I’m new to Ableton and Ableset I would love to hear your thoughts on some questions I have in mind. We are switching from a hardware player to Ableton and Ableset. I plan to buy a Mac Mini for this, which will be connected to our Allen & Heath SQ Rack.

We will have around 3-4 audio tracks, a sync track for our light tech, and some MIDI tracks to control our guitar setup. So far so easy, but I still have some open topics and questions for best practice. :slight_smile:

  1. Do you have any recommendations for a simple MIDI device? I need to connect 3-4 devices which will be controlled. Rack mountable would be nice but I can live without. :slight_smile:
  2. We have some songs without any playback, just with a click. Most of the time those songs doesn’t have a fixed time, sometimes we let the audience sing or stuff like that. I’m thinking about two scenarios here. Setting up a X minutes click track or a shorter click track with a loop section at the end which will repeat until someone stops.
  3. For some songs we have interludes or intros but we don’t use them every time. It depends on the setlist, stage time, instrument changes and so on. Here I also see two different scenarios. Setting up a song version including the interlude and a second version without the interlude. Second scenario would be setting up the intro and the song and configure this with Ableset inside the setlist and the correct jump markers.
  4. Our drummer will be responsible for controlling Ableset on stage. I think of two options here. A simple Streamdeck or he uses a tablet connected to our WiFi. As WiFi and stages could cause problems we will have a screen setup at our rack anyway so if it fails someone can jump in. Sadly we don’t have an operator from our crew to control the set. :blush: On the other hand the stream deck would require a longer USB run.
  5. I would like to use some volume automations inside Ableton to finetune the playback tracks if we recognize something is too quite or too loud or anything like that. Is this a good and stable practice or would you do this by cutting the events, or do the automation and than re-render the audio files.

That’s all for now, thanks for any help or advice from the real world I would like to avoid as many user errors as possible before going on stage with this setup. :slight_smile:
All the best and good shows.

2

If you’re switching from a hardware player to Ableton. Congrats! It’s a big step! but VERY useful! But, it IS definitely a can of worms!

The SQ Rack is a great option, but pretty much ANY interface. x32, WING, etc… that allows bi-directional USB 2.0 is perfectly adequate. Just Make sure you can hear yourself, your click & your bandmates and it serves the purpose. Core audio on Mac is FAR superior in stability/reliability than ASIO for PC’s, so that’s a great choice. But, with programs like Audiomovers OMNIBUS now available for PC’s. It’s less of an issue.

Just to note; If you are running a Mac mini. Make sure you figure out HOW you are going to view the desktop screen. Either through a headless KVM style approach. Through your iPad or other similar method. Because you WILL need it. And carrying around a monitor, no matter how small, Is just one more thing.:person_shrugging:

Pay attention to the options in settings for MacOS. “Keep mac from going to sleep” is NOT 100% reliable. There is an app on the Apple store called Amphetamine that can help with that. Works on all MacOS products. Better still you can set certain apps as triggers for that app to make sure it’s engaged during your show. I set Ableton on my band’s Macbook, to make sure that it doesn’t sleep during our set.

  1. “Simple” MIDI depends on how you WANT to connect things. CME makes great products! And we used their wireless WIDI Master for quite some time. Partnered with their UHost for the Mac. (MacOS has ‘built in’ bluetooth MIDI but it’s VERY unreliable) Until the reliability of the WIDI Master and the repeated disconnections AT SHOWS got to be too much. Now we rely on a wired solution of my own design. Basically, an Ethercon snake, that transmits both stereo guitar audio TO the rack & MIDI FROM the rack to a breakout box near the pedalboards (Quad Cortex & Helix’s). Ableton send MIDI over USB to a CME Pro U6MIDI in the rack. That sends MIDI down the ethercon cable to both guitars & Bass. (we’re even considering doing it for patch switching for my drummers E-kit elements that he’s added to his acoustic kit.) Whilst that same breakout, sends the pedalboard audio back. Since switching to wired…NO issues.:sign_of_the_horns:

  2. You can use MIDI or OSC to control repeats or loops or mutes of parts in Ableset. OSC commands are VERY powerful. Or just simply PAUSE your click for those parts if you’re brave enough! I can tell you, audiences don’t tend to stay on metronome/click track time very well. But, they CAN be guided. Say, with lighting changes/choices & an engaging vocalist. :grin:

  3. This comes down to choices in how you program your setlist. Remember, intros & interludes are just noise/music played out over time. So if you want your clicks & cues in your ears. But don’t want certain tracks playing during certain gigs. Set it up THAT WAY. There are no rules saying you have to have only 1 Ableton session with 1 way of doing things! My band has MULTIPLE Ableton sessions. Some with intro’s & interludes, Some with just song after song. We tend to use the song after song if we’re just jamming at practice to get through the setlist.

  4. Don’t make it JUST your drummers responsibility 100%. I know he’s “just sitting there”. But, they also kinda have a few things to keep track of…in my drummers case, a lot of things. Remember each drum or cymbal IS an instrument. And from my own experience, drummers forget…A LOT! We all have access via our phones to Ableset. If someone need to tune in between songs…hit the loop button. Tune up, adjust your IEM mix, UN-loop…Back to work! As far as WIFI. It’s NOT that big of a deal! And of the many gigs we’ve done, it is RARELY the problem. Set it up right, and it won’t be! Check out this other post I made here on this forum for further info/ideas. Stream Decks are a viable idea. Just remember, they require a rated USB 3.0 Type-C cable with PD capabilities. And THOSE kind of cables are generally under 10ft. {Since USB 3.0 reliability limit is 10ft}. ElGato DO make a wired network hub to connect a stream deck, for $80. Separately powered…just run an ethernet cable back to your router for connection. But I haven’t tried it yet. Only heard the reliability wasn’t rock solid. Use at your own risk.

  5. Set your backing track levels and “bake in” volume changes before you get on stage! These should be just like stems you’d send to someone mixing your songs except FULLY mixed and EQ-ed properly by themselves. The stage is for performing, not for adjusting. Feed the FOH guy a usable level. Then everyone should be happy. Personally, I made a interlude that plays before we play. (An idea I stole from Slipknot’s road engineer) A sample plays, that contains sub bass, an ambient loop and an unprocessed spoken word poem of sorts, 3 tracks. Set at our prefered levels from practice. Using MIDI commands into Ableton and TouchOSC. Built an “interface” on the iPad to adjust all of them up or down to taste. Based on how that interlude sounds, I set the levels for those 3 tracks. And have the our various Ableton backing tracks volumes linked to those 3 tracks volume changes. Sets the levels & works like a charm!

Best of luck with your shows!
I know you’ll kill it!

3

Thanks a lot for your time and sharing your experience :slight_smile:

Our live foh tech is running SQ5/SQ6 so we are fully in the A&H world which is awesome for routing options and so on.
The Mac Mini seems to be the best bang for the buck right now, of course we’ve planned an external screen, we have two options, a drawer or an external screen mount, we have both available and will test, which fits best to our needs. Thanks a lot for the hint with the power management options, I will have this in mind.

Sounds great, I will have a deeper look into that. :slight_smile: We are running 6 signals from the front stage, 3 instruments and 3 wired backing vocals with opto gates. Hopefully some manufacture will some day develop an opto gate option for wirless microphones. And we will leave the Quad Cortexes at front of stage, in some songs we have to do sound switch manually anyway, we have some ballads which we play without any click.

Ah well of course. :slight_smile: that’s an option too, I will have this in mind. Can’t wait to have the first session up and running, we will take our time before we switch and it will go through some tests before the first shows with it. It’s nice that we will keep our hardware system as a fallback for the first season with the ableton setup so if something goes wrong we can switch instantly. Won’t be a perfect show than but better than nothing.

Luckily our drummer has some experience by controlling our actual system too, but we also want to have several options available if something goes wrong. We have a small crew and sometimes we have a guy available who is a pro touring stage guy and we also want to give him the option to control our show from the side stage. When he is available we have the best shows because he can do nearly anything stage related but sadly he often has better paid jobs than us.

Ah nice one, we have kind of a backing - track - soundcheck / linecheck track for this too.

This sounds great too, I will have a deeper look into TouchOSC, I know the name but I never had an indepth look into it. :slight_smile:

Thanks so much, I can’t wait to start this, a few days ago we built our setlist for the spring tour and it’s such a pain if you have to do this on our hardware system with re-arrangig thins back and fourth, testing transitions and so on. Takes too much time and is actually not flexible enough.

All the best.