I'm having a bit of issue with my new live setup. My old one had 8 audio tracks, and I'd put loops of songs, some original, some not, and mash them up live. I had the send effects mapped to the 8 knobs on my nocturn (it worked out really well because 8 tracks, 8 knobs, and 8 columns of buttons on the launchpad I use to launch clips.

I've updated my setup to consist of all-original songs, using only tiny samples of non-original stuff like drum loops and breaks, synth parts, acapellas, to add in some variation. This was working really well but I hit a bit of a road-block.

the beauty of my old setup was it was 8 audio tracks, so all the songs in my set could share the same 8 tracks. I'd love to have all my songs share tracks still with my new setup, especially now that it's all-original and I can divide into stems, but the problem is many of these live versions of songs have midi instruments. Like a piano part, or a drum rack, that I kept as a midi tracks to make it easier to customize and add in variation live, and even PLAY the parts live, with a midi keyboard or drum pads. but now I can't have all my songs share the same 8 tracks when I put them into one big project for a show. I also can't map the 8 knobs to the sends because I'm constantly moving to another 8 tracks.

Does anyone have a good workaround for this, or should I try to stick to audio channels? I'd really love to be able to have midi channels so I can have more customization and be able to literally play the instruments.

Group tracks. I generally use five groups: Drums, Leads, Rhythm, Vox, Pads.

Make a mega set with groups of 8 tracks that have the clips for each song.Lay the clips out in clip view with each group descending in a diagonal from right to left so you can move between songs but still have each song in its own area of clip view .Using automap when you click on an instrument or fx that will then give you control over it.This gives you the ability also to mix from one set of clips in a song to the next.hope this helps.

Live allows you to load multiple projects on the same time line

I was considering this but a couple things I'd need to work out:
1. would this overload my cpu? like if each song has a vsti in it, would having that many plugins be too much, or would it be okay since I'm using them one or two at a time?
2. I've noticed some problems with dragging and dropping projects when I do this. scene and/or track names tend to get lost in the process, and I was kinda hoping to take advantage of scene names to keep things more organized. Is there a better way to do this?

Depends on the plugins. Some of the plugins use CPU time even if they process nothing. I usually just turn of those I don't need. Just group all the plugins on the track into rack and turn off that rack, when the track is silent.

I don't remember having such problem.

Should be ok as you will only be playing 1 track at a time or small parts of 2 on the mix from 1 song to another.It should be a simple matter to rename the scenes etc .You could do a collect all and save and then drag the bits in individually , time consuming i know but hey you only have to do it once..Also try inserting a few extra audio tracks and route everything through them and then route them to the master.This way you can add extra fx you can tweak and drop in on the fly.Once you have the basis for this set you can continually improve on it .Good luck

Also go here
http://mrbillstunes.com/tuition/video-tutorials/
and watch how to play live part1 and 2.Bill my friend has a template you can download as well for free which might help you set your set(sic) up
Cheers

Thanks guys lots of cool ideas! I have narrowed myself down to a few main ideas:

1. an all-audio setup where I just suck it the hell up and work with 8 audio tracks, making up for my lack of drum rack and live vsti's with lots of remixing and mashing up

2. my preferred option, which is where each song has it's own track grouping, but there are a couple things I wanna see if I can do to simplify this, if not I may have to just go with 1 (which would be fine, I guess). Is there a way to map the novation nocturn (or any 8-knob controller) so I can control the sends of whatever 8 tracks I need at that moment? like, if I assign it to work with the sends of all 8 tracks of my first song in the first track group, and when I select the group for track 2, it automatically works with those? I don't wanna map 8 knobs per song for every damn concert.

3. this is an experimental idea, haven't played with it, literally thought of it as I was typing this, a combination of the above. I have 8 audio tracks, these are the ones I use clips on, then I have instrument tracks I can drag in from a special folder in the ableton instruments, which are named conveniently for the song they're in (eg "Birth Piano" "Fresh Beats Lead") and I can have those just to the side. then I just click the record enable as needed and play. it's not like I'll have one for every track, I just wanted to occasionally be able to play live piano or something. do you guys think this is viable?