So I’ve spent the past few days setting up a live set using Ableton and my Novation X-Station. So far it consists of 7 audio channels, most of which have a dedicated effect, with a bunch of stuff pre-mapped to the X-Station.
Here’s the channel breakdown as it stands now:
- 1: Beat repeat, EQ3 & auto filter
- 2: Dry
- 3: Saturator
- 4: Phaser
- 5: Grain delay
- 6: Dry
- 7: Auto filter
- Send A: filter delay, compressor
- Master: compressor
Channels 1 & 2 are used for drums, and channel 3 for bass. Everything else is used for whatever.
I’ve mapped 7 of the sliders on my X-Station to the channel volumes, and the buttons above to the mutes. The rest of the knobs and buttons control various effects parameters. Here’s the template from the Novation X-Station editor so you can see what I mean:
Here’s a run-down by section:
OSCS-MIXER
- SEND A: send A level (ch1)
- REPEAT: toggles beat repeat (ch1)
- LOW CUT: cuts the low on EQ3 (ch1)
- S. LEVEL: saturator dry/wet (ch3)
- S. BASE: saturator base level (ch3)
- P. LEVEL: phaser dry/wet (ch4)
- P. RATE: phaser rate (ch4)
- G.D LVL: grain delay wet/dry (ch 5)
FILTERS
The filters section is mapped to the auto filters on channels 1 & 7 (toggled via the 1-2 button). Ideally I’d have a separate controller for each filter, but this should do for
now.
- F. FREQ: filter frequency
- FLT. RES: filter resonance
- F.E. AMT: filter envelope amount
- F.L. AMT: filter LFO amount (filter 1 only)
- F. TYPE: filter type
LFOS
- FLT. RTE: controls the filter rate for filter 1
EFFECTS
- SEND A: feeds send A back to itself
- F.D. FRQ: filter delay filter frequency
As you can see, I still have a few more sliders I could map to an 8th and 9th channel. I’m thinking about adding one channel for MIDI clips, and one for general effects (swooshes, etc.) that I could trigger from different keys. I was also thinking about setting up some side-chain compression, say, take the low-end from channels 1 & 2 (beats) and use it to side-chain the bass channel and possibly my “swoosh” channel.
More to come on this as it evolves 🙂