Live PA Setup - MIDI Synchronization

One of the key points in my vision of how my setup should be is to utilize all the equipment I've gathered trough the years to it's fullest. Most notable part of it is my DJ-ing gear: Allen&Heath Xone:92 mixer and Korg Kaoss Pad 2 effect processor.

Obviously, I've been using them for many years, and connecting their audio sockets is not worth talking about, but one thing I had never tried before was using their MIDI capabilities.

Live PA Setup - Ableton Live

While Bitwig is still beta-testing, Ableton has made a smart move, announcing the long waited release of Ableton Live 9 and offering a discount for Live 8 + free upgrade to 9th version upon it's release. I decided not to wait and ordered it on spot.

It appears I finally have got all the legit software for working on my live performance as well as a great platform for experimenting with new tracks.

The only thing left now are some cables and a decent laptop for running all this stuff when not at home. I wanted to check out Windows 8 to see if it would really make my old Vista laptop less sluggish, but MicroSoft fails to sell the upgrade for Latvian billing addresses, so no luck there yet. 

But at least in home environment I've got everything I need to start preparing and learning to play Live+Reason by MIDI controls fluently.

Live PA Setup - The Big Picture

I've had a hobbies of DJ-ing and composing electronic music for quite many years now. So, the natural step of mixing these two things together and playing my own tracks at parties has bothered me for quite a while, too.

I've seen many people doing this, using Ableton Live, but, pardon me, a guy standing on the stage, clicking his mouse and staring at his laptop does not really look like any kind of Live performance. No offence, but he might as well be playing Tetris, leaving music playback to the Winamp.

Then again, I'm not a hardware purist, doing all production using tons of expensive physical equipment. Computer plus the right software and controllers seems much more efficient to me and this is the way to go.