As far as live performances went, I would create a song on my emx, and save all the synth notes sound levels to 0. A friend of mine had owned a nice set of JBL crowns, and after tinkering with those for a few days, i came up with a pretty basic idea of what drum/snare values were just right, to high, and to low. After a bit i wound up making a preset template, DARK bassdrum, 808/707 snare, the HH-nrm2c and maybe a reverse Clap, that sound fine on any speaker system. Now synths were tricky because i wrote a strange style of dubstep, and used multiple layers of basslines, some with low-pass, some with high-pass, and some that were bit crushed beyond all reason. So i wound up keeping all of them saved with the sound off, so when i would set up at a show, depending on the amount of subs/moniters they had, i could improvise and on the spot moniter what was going to be just right, and what was going to be brutal on the ears.
Thats just the way i did it though, of course every now and then you might wind up at a gig thats got 15 subwoofers, and 2 moniters, and improv can get a litty tricky.
Ive heard of other ways of doing this to, I.E. investing in a nice set of head phones, and using a mixer to set the levels of each sound, while playing a rhythm in the background while you get your sounds ready.
This is a problem i ran into a few times though. Mostly because i drool when i hear the the SIN wave basslines from even the simple oscillators in the machine. That thick sound is a must in my music, but without spending time on a speaker system that was closely related to the ones i would be using at shows, I would wind up with a very murky sounding track.
I wound up just recording individual basslines, chorus's, snares, drums, and high hats through Logic, and saving them as a smaller sound file, and doing anything i wanted to with them after. I.E. running them into NNXT in reason, and using some of the sample Refills I have to make a stranger sounding song, or just loading up 100 sounds into Ableton live, and using my PadKontrol to active each part in order, while knowing ahead of time I wouldnt be hitting any notes to hard, to low, or to soft.
It all just depends on what you have at your disposal. If you've got time, i reccomend recording each sound and mastering them in software, and creating your song via Logic/Ableton.
If you all about the live feel of the electribes, maybe show up at the gig early and ask if you can tinker around with your sounds before the show starts so you dont blow someones ear drums out of their head.
Hope this helped
