Dubstepforum.com

Does anyone know how to run either multiple instances of ableton live, so you can mix two of your own tracks together (ie: doing a live PA so you can drop the drums in from the next track and build up a full set.)

I don't think it is actually possible, but you see acts doing sets which are seamless with only one laptop. Do they have all their scenes/samples etc... all in one single Live set?

The only way I could think how to do this would be two instances of ableton (on two laptops) with something like MIDI over LAN syncing their timing data.

Been trying to nut this out for a while, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

devnull wrote: Do they have all their scenes/samples etc... all in one single Live set?

yes.

takes a ton of work to get a live set living and breathing. Kush Arora, David Last, and our own DJ Shiva are the folks i'd seek out for ableton advice. Kush i know breaks each tune down to it's elements and re-builds (and re-writes) live. David Last's stuff is crazy organic and the vids i've seen of Shiva are wickedly inspiring-- and it's all in 1 instance. build your shit up big and spend a long time prepping, and it'll work great.

Looks like with Ableton 8 and the "Group Clips" option this will make it a bit easier. Guess I just have to be patient... or get a second sound card and another laptop if I ever want to do a live PA....

Although any other ideas still welcomed

I am pretty sure you can do multiple instances. I think you have to click something in the preferences. I don't know how useful that is tho.

I don't think you need a second sound card either. I would get one that has 4 outputs. You can get them pretty cheap. I would probably just use my Torq Connectiv if I was to do something like that.

devnull wrote:Looks like with Ableton 8 and the "Group Clips" option this will make it a bit easier. Guess I just have to be patient... or get a second sound card and another laptop if I ever want to do a live PA....

Although any other ideas still welcomed

You can combine two ableton sets easily, open one and find the other in the built-in browser. You should be able to drag and drop all the audio and midi tracks into the set...

For live stuff I actually tend to bounce sections in groups (e.g. intro - bass, percussion, melody, fx). It makes it a lot easier to manage, and there's still space for improvising.

There's a lot of different ways to do the live thing with ableton, don't think group clips or two laptops are the answer tho...

Are you the breakcore devnull btw?

go to preferences and click the look feel button then turn "allow multiple instance" on. simple

broken note play sets using 2 laptops. they use a midi cable to sync them up but i am not sure exactly how its done

Thx caunterstrike

The 2-laptops thing have actually been thoroughly explored by the Ableton community so, I'd try do some searching on the Ableton forums and see if you can't dig up some on that. I've heard a lot about using MIDIclocks and wires so might be an idea to throw in that to the searchbar as well. A big pro of using to machines would be that you'll split up the CPU usage on each individual one, and that it looks pretty cool jumping between two computers.