Category: 1Creating A Keyboard Set Up

One of the features I love about Mainstage is the ability to "jump to" a specific sound no matter where you are in your patch list. Today we are going to look at how to create that same functionality inside Ableton.   But first... A story A few years back I was working on a production of Guys and Dolls with a very hip group of 5th-8th-graders, who did a wonderful job overall. No matter how hard we rehearsed it, Luck Be  A Lady was always just a little bit off, and to add insult to injury we had a full band backing them up. Anyone who has spent any amount of time accompanying children singing knows sometimes you need to jump to the spot they somehow ended up at, even if it…

Creating A Patch List In Ableton Using The Chain Selector   https://youtu.be/DTXQ8F_ZMeM   Mainstage makes creating a patch list very simple. Its entire design is based around that. However, when you look at the root of what MainStage is doing, it is broken down into three parts. Part one, receive midi. Part 2, tell midi where to go based off what is selected on the left side of the screen. Part 3, allow you to switch between sounds easily from a mapped controller. Ableton has all of these features already built into it's "instrument rack". Let's take the instruments rack already intended design and set it up to make it work for our patch list by making use of its chain selector, and a single button on your controller or…

Creating keyboard splits in Ableton like you can in MainStage     https://youtu.be/iNBfTVW0mQ8   Setting a keyboard split in Ableton is a necessity. As keyboard players we are constantly required to perform musical acrobatics, playing several sounds at a time, and often covering different types of sounds and textures simultaneously. Simply because of the nature of the beast, it is essential that we can assign different sounds to different zones on our keyboard. MainStage does this using its layer editor, which is super intuitive in its design and very easy to use. Ableton creates keyboard splits by making use of its “Instrument Rack”. Today, I am going to walk you through how to set up a keyboard split in Ableton An instrument rack is where the magic happens inside Ableton. It’s…