1 hour hybrid live set | Ableton, Digitone and Mother-32

Elektronauts Our Music
#1

Hey Elektronauts,
I hope you are all doing great! I recently played a live set for a Swiss radio station and have the 1 hour set currently airing on my YouTube channel. In the set I used the Digitone sequenced by Ableton Live alongside with the Moog Mother-32 and some Ableton Live internal sounds and instruments. I’m getting more and more confident with this setup while doing small improvements to the set here and there. Happy to hear your thoughts too and if you have any questions just let me know!

Cheers and have a great week,
Miles

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Need gear advice to enhance DAW workflow ($500 budget)
#2

Congrats! Can’t wait to listen to it

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#3

Poor Digitakt off to the side! haha

Running Live though, I get it. You thinking this is the long term move for you? Seems to be going well the last couple of sets.

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#4

Very poor, it didn’t make it to the current live set haha. No seriously, it was a little bit overkill with Live running too. I try to keep my setup as compact as possible so it was an obvious choice to exclude it from this setup.

And yeah, I think this will be kind of the setup going forward but there are still some changes to come. In the short term I will be replacing the Mother-32 with a Sub 25. In order to make my Moog sounds more versatile I realised that I need some presets and also a real keyboard for playing it live. And as I don’t utilize the patch bay of the M-32 as well as the internal sequencer at all (which are 2 of the main features) it just makes sense. As much as I love the M-32 I think it makes more sense this way.

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#5

you’re going to really love having a sub - such a great family of synths!

I know you’ve mentioned space constraints before but definitely try the 25 and 37 side by side if you can, I was pretty set on a 25 but the extra mod bus, keys, and other controls really made it worth the extra size/weight/cost - it really opens it up for more exploration.

Can’t beat m32 size though haha

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#6

Ohh that is encouraging, thank you! Yeah I tried them both at a synth store nearby and was really impressed by both. If it was just a studio synth I think I’d go for the 37. But as I want it to be portable and as I’m totally fine with the trade offs (eg no sequencer, no arp) I will go with the 25. Carrying the 37 to gigs would be too much of a pain for me (especially when bringing the other gear too haha).

#7

Good choice on the 25. I own the 37 but only use it at the studio. Guess it’s not that great as a portable option. But being able to save your patches on 25/37 vs the M32 will sure speed up your workflow but specially allow you to move from one sound to a completely different sound on each song. That’s what actually made me sell the M32, and not having a power button. Lol

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#8

Thank you Bourn, that is great to hear! Yeah I had exactly the same issue: I never really experimented with the M-32 because I had found my settings that I really liked and was afraid to loose them. Also I was really missing a second oscillator and a playable keyboard. So after longer considerations I decided to take the downside of a bigger synth compared to the M-32 and go for it. It’s still kind of portable though but if there is not enough room at the venue to set it up, I still have the option to pre-record certain parts and just take Push + Digitone. Currently exploring it and really happy with it so far :slight_smile:

#9

I like the direction you’re taking and it’s pretty much the same setup I have. A couple or more Xone K2 would allow direct control over lots of parameters on each channel (à la Bohmer style) but it’s probably overkill. There’s actually lots of possibilities with it, control channels, have buildups ready or control Ableton looper, etc. advantage is besides knobs you have buttons and faders for faster drop of buildups for example. EDIT: a Novation XL would also work although with less features but cheaper and more portable.

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#10

Yeah I thought about that too, the Novation XL has been on my radar for quite a long time. But for now I think I’ll leave it like this and rather do a second page on my master control panel on the push so that I have a total of 16 macros to control Live that are freely mappable. I realised that too many controls accessible makes it also way harder to keep an overview and use everything. But once you get used to your setup and know where everything is, you can do awesome stuff like Ben Böhmer shows :slight_smile: