Even though I’ve described some other approaches to performance, my main tool for performance in Live is the mega-set. This just means that I keep adding new material to my set as I develop it until it eventually has hundreds of clips. If I want to change directions during a performance, it’s just a matter of scrolling up or down to a different part of the set.
My sets tend to be organized into “neighborhoods” of tracks that work well together:
These clips fill up the 8 x 8 grid on my Launchpad (with two empty tracks to separate the pairs) and for the most part, they all mix into each other pretty well. Bear in mind that for my performances, a “song” consists of two tracks – one containing a mixed track (“Tracks”) and another containing vocals or samples of some sort (“Hobos”).
There are two main problems with this approach. First off, when a set gets really big, scrolling from one neighborhood to another can be a bit clunky and confusing. Secondly, there’s the problem that some tracks can’t be mixed into others because they live in the same track. For example, what if you wanted to mix “Alonzo” into “LaLaLa” (see above) ?
We’ll take a look at these issues in the next couple of tips.
