Fun with Ableton

So I've spent the past few days setting up a live set using Ableton and my Novation X-Station. So far it consists of 7 audio channels, most of which have a dedicated effect, with a bunch of stuff pre-mapped to the X-Station.

Here's the channel breakdown as it stands now:

• 1: Beat repeat, EQ3 & auto filter
• 2: Dry
• 3: Saturator
• 4: Phaser
• 5: Grain delay
• 6: Dry
• 7: Auto filter
• Send A: filter delay, compressor
• Master: compressor

Channels 1 & 2 are used for drums, and channel 3 for bass. Everything else is used for whatever.

I've mapped 7 of the sliders on my X-Station to the channel volumes, and the buttons above to the mutes. The rest of the knobs and buttons control various effects parameters. Here's the template from the Novation X-Station editor so you can see what I mean:


Here's a run-down by section:

OSCS-MIXER

• SEND A: send A level (ch1)
• REPEAT: toggles beat repeat (ch1)
• LOW CUT: cuts the low on EQ3 (ch1)
• S. LEVEL: saturator dry/wet (ch3)
• S. BASE: saturator base level (ch3)
• P. LEVEL: phaser dry/wet (ch4)
• P. RATE: phaser rate (ch4)
• G.D LVL: grain delay wet/dry (ch 5)

FILTERS
The filters section is mapped to the auto filters on channels 1 & 7 (toggled via the 1-2 button). Ideally I'd have a separate controller for each filter, but this should do for
now.

• F. FREQ: filter frequency
• FLT. RES: filter resonance
• F.E. AMT: filter envelope amount
• F.L. AMT: filter LFO amount (filter 1 only)
• F. TYPE: filter type
  

LFOS

• FLT. RTE: controls the filter rate for filter 1

EFFECTS

• SEND A: feeds send A back to itself
• F.D. FRQ: filter delay filter frequency

As you can see, I still have a few more sliders I could map to an 8th and 9th channel. I'm thinking about adding one channel for MIDI clips, and one for general effects (swooshes, etc.) that I could trigger from different keys. I was also thinking about setting up some side-chain compression, say, take the low-end from channels 1 & 2 (beats) and use it to side-chain the bass channel and possibly my "swoosh" channel.

More to come on this as it evolves :)