How Matt runs
the whole show.

Ableton Live plays the backing tracks: prerecorded musical parts that accompany the people onstage. Setlist, a software device from Strange Electronic running inside Ableton, organizes the songs and controls playback.

Matt operates it with a 10-switch MIDI Captain. Its footswitches send control messages, letting him start or stop songs and choose what plays next without reaching for the laptop.

That combination also lets him hold a section of music while he talks to the audience:

1. Start the loop. Setlist can use a named marker on Ableton’s timeline to start repeating a chosen section of the song.
2. Keep it going. The music repeats while Matt talks. The set waits for his cue to move on.
3. Loop out. When he is ready, Matt presses the assigned MIDI Captain footswitch. Its command tells Setlist to turn off Ableton’s loop, allowing playback to continue into the next section.

“And only I know when to get out of the loop with this button.”

He gets a prepared show without having to time his conversation to a fixed gap between songs. Setlist’s manual explains the loop markers and MIDI-mappable exit control ↗

Matt’s custom floor monitor also serves as a plug-in point for his MIDI Captain and Eric’s guitar processor. USB and XLR sockets on its side let them connect at the front of the stage, with separate runs back to the computer and audio rack.

1. Foot controller → computer. The MIDI Captain plugs into a USB socket on the box. A USB extender carries that connection back to the computer. MIDI messages are commands, such as changing a preset—a saved guitar tone.
2. Eric’s guitar processor → audio rack. Eric connects his processor’s audio output to the monitor’s XLR socket with a short XLR lead. Radial Catapult modules carry that analog audio over a separate Cat 5 or Cat 6 cable to the rack.
3. Laptop → floor screen. An HDMI transmitter and receiver send the laptop’s picture over a dedicated cable run to the display. The exact extender model still needs confirming.

The Catapult cable specification matters. Each Cat 5 or Cat 6 run carries four balanced audio channels on its four twisted pairs. Radial recommends shielded cable for noise rejection. To pass 48V phantom power, both the cable and its terminating connections must be shielded; shielding is beneficial but not required for line-level audio. Radial’s cable requirements ↗

Extending a desktop gives one computer more screen space. Matt drags application windows onto that second display and resizes them with the mouse. The stage screen can therefore show several useful windows at once.

Ableton provides the playback session. The guitar editor shows the selected preset. The setlist and lyric tools provide performance information. Each is a software window arranged for the performer to read.

That also explains the HDMI connection described earlier: it gets the laptop’s display output down to the floor.

The band plays to a click, with lighting cues programmed to follow the songs. The setup includes tube lights from BOTH Lighting USA.

Matt explains the trigger in his replies: a MIDI note at a chosen point in a song tells SoundSwitch, the lighting software, to launch a scene—a programmed lighting look or sequence.

SoundSwitch generates the DMX lighting commands. A 2.4GHz DMX512 transceiver sold by Hollywood LEDs, used here as a transmitter, sends those commands wirelessly to receivers built into the fixtures. DMX tells each light what to do, such as change color or move. The fixtures are assigned DMX channels so the commands reach the right functions.

Control and power take separate paths. The wireless signal carries the instructions; each fixture’s battery supplies its operating power. That is how the lights can sit away from a power lead during the show.

Matt tests the fixtures backstage before placing them. His comment replies describe the SoundSwitch configuration and the receivers built into the lights.

The floor screen is the operating position. The rack handles the sound: in-ear monitoring, wireless microphones, wireless guitars and outputs from Ableton playback.

In-ear monitors, or IEMs, let musicians hear a mix through earpieces. The mixer combines the sources for that listening mix. In a wireless IEM path, the mix feeds a transmitter, a bodypack receiver receives it, and the connected earpieces deliver it to the player.

His RF Venue antenna combiner brings multiple IEM transmitter feeds to a shared transmitting antenna. It is doing a radio-frequency job; the audio mix happens upstream in the mixer.

Audio-Technica gooseneck condenser microphones capture the crowd and room ambience for the band’s in-ear mixes.

Locking connectors resist accidental disconnection, while rubber shock mounts cushion the equipment against bumps and vibration. See Matt’s rack tour and replies for those details.

Jason’s drum kit has a small microphone setup just for the band’s IEMs: a Yamaha EAD10, plus additional snare and kick microphones. The venue can keep using its own drum microphones for the audience mix.

1. The EAD10 captures the kit for the band. Its sensor unit clamps to the top of the kick drum’s batter-side hoop. The built-in stereo condenser microphones capture the whole kit from that position. The EAD10’s audio output and the additional snare and kick microphones feed the band’s mixer for its IEM mixes.
2. The venue’s drum microphones feed the audience system. They connect to the house console, where the engineer builds the sound sent to the room’s speakers. This is the front-of-house mix.

Matt keeps those drum paths separate. For the other sources, including his vocal microphone, he says the band splits the signals so its rack and the house can both receive them.

The band also records from its own inputs, so they can mix those tracks later without asking the house engineer for a recording.

This is Matt’s arrangement. Agree on the microphone and split plan with the venue before placing extra equipment around a shared kit.

The words scroll because Matt has prepared them inside the same Ableton session that runs his backing tracks. The demonstration shows a track named Lyrics with a Strange Electronic lyrics device on it.

1. Write a line in a MIDI clip’s name. Here, the clip is a labeled block on the timeline. Matt says the notes inside it do not matter for this job; its name is what the lyrics device reads.
2. Place that clip at the right musical moment. The timeline sets when the line should appear.
3. Let playback trigger the display. When Ableton’s playhead—the marker showing the current playback position—crosses the clip, the device displays that line.

Matt demonstrates a correction by renaming a clip, then passing the playhead over it again. The displayed words change with the new name.

The setlist tool lives on its own track in the same session. As Matt explains in his replies, those tools follow Ableton’s playback together. Preparing the timing is what makes the onstage display automatic.

First, the band recovered at the show. Matt says the other musicians kept playing while he checked the rack. He got it running again in about five minutes, then it shut down a second time. The sound technician reported that the PA—the audience sound system—was cutting out too.

Matt suspected the power supply. A gasoline generator was available in a pickup truck, and they used it to power the stage rack for the rest of the show. That was the immediate workaround.

Afterward, he added a battery backup. It sits in the rack’s power path so stored battery power can keep the equipment running through a brief interruption to the incoming supply. Matt demonstrates the rack operating from it during the video.

The generator and the battery backup solve different moments in this story: an alternate supply rescued that show; the later addition is intended to bridge interruptions. Matt’s suspected cause is his account, rather than a confirmed electrical diagnosis.

Matt’s control room is in the house. The larger live room, where musicians and microphones go, is in a separate barn. He kept the existing control room and its small vocal room, then connected the barn to it with fiber.

The audio travels digitally. In his replies, Matt identifies Dante, a system for carrying digital audio over a network. Fiber provides the connection between buildings. In the control room, a RedNet audio interface receives the network audio. A DigiLink audio connection passes it to his HDX recording card, which works with Pro Tools, the recording software.

In the demonstration, Jason plays in the barn while Matt can record from the control room. The buildings are separate, but the audio connection lets them operate as parts of one studio.

He also needs to see the performer. That uses a separate camera path, shown below.