Automating Solo Button

[Da hand]

Well, there are many definitions of dubbing. What is yours?

I want to automate the solo buttons in Session View.

With what exactly?

[blakbeltjonez]

I dont think you can automate the solo button, but as a work around put utilities set to reduce the gain of the track down to nothing on each track then automate the device on/off switch for these utilities.

ie. this allows you to automate turning the track on/off. Not ideal as its not the same as a solo button, but its halfway there...

Very good idea jake noise. However, as blackbeltzjones pointed out it might not be good enough for "old style dubbing". The main drawback is that you would have to do this in clip view and this would entail more steps in the process of soloing which limits significantly the flexibility in dubbing.

Hey Evon, I am still trying to understand - are you asking for an automation envelope in arrangement view or just a way to assign the solo button to a controller? You can already assign the solo button to a controller/key in Session and Arrangement views in Live 7 and 8.

As far as automation envelopes in arrangement view, how would muting - all the other tracks but the one you need - give a different sonic result than soling the track you want? Or is it purely for work flow benefit - that you want to be able to draw a solo envelope (instead of pressing the solo button yourself) in a section of the track for previewing the results right away?

Hand - what Evon wants to do, and what i have yearned for nearly 5 years, is to be able to *record* solo events, just like you can with mutes. if you screw up the solo punch, you would then be able to edit the automation data, much as you do any other automatable data. i can get around the solo limitation by doing multiple mutes, but it's a fucking ball ache when ideally i could press one button to do the same thing that takes 20 extra steps and 5 - 10 minutes.

surely at some point you've heard a song where everything drops out except a vocal, or a sample/turnaround/etc, and then the whole mix slams back in... used a lot in rap and dance music, the most obvious use of it came from early 70's dub reggae. i used to mix to a DAT and do live punches this way, but it sure would be nice to be able to render the automation of *all* mixer functions. it'd save me time and aggravation for sure.

[roblof]

Here's some crude workaround by using grouped mutes.

Depending on how complex your mix is you can include one or more sidechained gate controls on the tracks you want to mute.

Then you just record a very long sinus tone or use some midi synth, as a sidechain control track, for each group of mutes you want to control (or just use the sends and use the returns instead if you don't want to have several recorded sidechain tracks).

At this point you can now automate the sidechain(s) using mute on your control track(s) to have it affect the different groups of your choice...

Btw, don't forget to route the the sidechain sound away from your main bus

[Da hand]

Hand - what Evon wants to do, and what i have yearned for nearly 5 years, is to be able to *record* solo events, just like you can with mutes. if you screw up the solo punch, you would then be able to edit the automation data, much as you do any other automatable data. i can get around the solo limitation by doing multiple mutes, but it's a fucking ball ache when ideally i could press one button to do the same thing that takes 20 extra steps and 5 - 10 minutes.

surely at some point you've heard a song where everything drops out except a vocal, or a sample/turnaround/etc, and then the whole mix slams back in... used a lot in rap and dance music, the most obvious use of it came from early 70's dub reggae. i used to mix to a DAT and do live punches this way, but it sure would be nice to be able to render the automation of *all* mixer functions. it'd save me time and aggravation for sure.

Blackbeltjones - I understand the premise of drops/solos - they are used in all music styles. Thank you for the explanation anyway. If I didn't know, the explanation would have helped

It is just that it was very unclear to me what evon was actually trying to do - I did not get from his explanations that he was trying to record automation from session view into arrangement view. Yes, I can see how this could be a useful thing if you are trying to record things from sessions view into arrangement view - with solo automation.

For arrangement view solo automation, the crossfader method I proposed is a very close workaround. The only difference is that you draw two envelopes instead of one - one on the track you want to solo and one on the master channel. Otherwise it works exactly the same way as a solo automation would.

For session view to arrangement view recording workarounds, I guess it gets a little less elegant as it would be preferable* to use your mouse (or a knob/fader, not a button) for the track you want to solo and a button for the master crossfader. So it is not a one button solution. Here are some thoughts:

1. With the crossfader method: You can assign the crossfader to a button - it will toggle between left (A) and right (B). Again place all tracks to one side of the crossfader - say A. Have the crossfader on the A side as well. Play your song. When you want to solo a track click on B of that track and the button you assigned to the crossfader at the same time (it will jump to B). You track is in solo now - all recorded in the arrangement view. When you want to unsolo - click on A of that track and on the button you assigned to the crossfader (it will now jump to A). Again, all automation is recorded in Arrangement view for editing.

* The reason it is preferable to use your mouse or a knob/fader to select A or B on the tracks is that there is also a "None" mode. So when you assign buttons it toggles between the three modes instead of just A and B.


Otherwise, in the session view, you can make "solo" scenes with only one clip on them to solo with. This automation would also be recorded.

Anyway, I know these are just workarounds, but for the arrangement view the crossfader automation is basically the same thing as a solo automation.

[Lord Kahn]

I remember seeing this coming up in an article I read years ago (~Live 3 maybe). Which said that automating solos was actually quite difficult to do in the Live engine.

My guess is that internally the solo does the mute every other track trick, and while that's fine if it's a user pressing a button, it really won't scale if they start doing it at sample rate of the audio as they would for the automation envelopes.

[blakbeltjonez]

Hand - what Evon wants to do, and what i have yearned for nearly 5 years, is to be able to *record* solo events, just like you can with mutes. if you screw up the solo punch, you would then be able to edit the automation data, much as you do any other automatable data. i can get around the solo limitation by doing multiple mutes, but it's a fucking ball ache when ideally i could press one button to do the same thing that takes 20 extra steps and 5 - 10 minutes.

surely at some point you've heard a song where everything drops out except a vocal, or a sample/turnaround/etc, and then the whole mix slams back in... used a lot in rap and dance music, the most obvious use of it came from early 70's dub reggae. i used to mix to a DAT and do live punches this way, but it sure would be nice to be able to render the automation of *all* mixer functions. it'd save me time and aggravation for sure.

Blackbeltjones - I understand the premise of drops/solos - they are used in all music styles. Thank you for the explanation anyway. If I didn't know, the explanation would have helped

It is just that it was very unclear to me what evon was actually trying to do - I did not get from his explanations that he was trying to record automation from session view into arrangement view. Yes, I can see how this could be a useful thing if you are trying to record things from sessions view into arrangement view - with solo automation.

For arrangement view solo automation, the crossfader method I proposed is a very close workaround. The only difference is that you draw two envelopes instead of one - one on the track you want to solo and one on the master channel. Otherwise it works exactly the same way as a solo automation would.

For session view to arrangement view recording workarounds, I guess it gets a little less elegant as it would be preferable* to use your mouse (or a knob/fader, not a button) for the track you want to solo and a button for the master crossfader. So it is not a one button solution. Here are some thoughts:

1. With the crossfader method: You can assign the crossfader to a button - it will toggle between left (A) and right (B). Again place all tracks to one side of the crossfader - say A. Have the crossfader on the A side as well. Play your song. When you want to solo a track click on B of that track and the button you assigned to the crossfader at the same time (it will jump to B). You track is in solo now - all recorded in the arrangement view. When you want to unsolo - click on A of that track and on the button you assigned to the crossfader (it will now jump to A). Again, all automation is recorded in Arrangement view for editing.

* The reason it is preferable to use your mouse or a knob/fader to select A or B on the tracks is that there is also a "None" mode. So when you assign buttons it toggles between the three modes instead of just A and B.


Otherwise, in the session view, you can make "solo" scenes with only one clip on them to solo with. This automation would also be recorded.

Anyway, I know these are just workarounds, but for the arrangement view the crossfader automation is basically the same thing as a solo automation.

that seems like it would work reasonably well... thanks, i'll definitely be giving it a try. a step further might be to assign the crossfader and the A/B button to the same knobs on a controller for the tracks that you want to solo (since multiple functions can be mapped to one MIDI CC), so that it becomes a one knob solution, and that would be pretty close.

[jake noise]

Ok, I think I've got a way of doing this:

Firstly solo button's are addressable by midi right?

And recording this is the problem.

In which case the way round this is to use an external midi bus, on mac you can use the IAC bus and on Windows you can use midi ox (I think). Bear with me as im at work and this all from memory but what you want to do is midi map the solo buttons first, then connect your controller out to in of the midi bus. Route one output of the bus to a midi track and set this track to monitor in and to record, make sure the midi out of this track isnt being routed anywhere. Connect the same output to ableton as you'd usually connect you controller on the preferences.

Right, that should now enable you to record all the midi coming from your controller into a session view clip.

Now to play back this info you have two options: easiest, disable the midi record track, drag the clip onto a new midi track, no midi in for this track, midi out should go to the midi in of the midi bus. Hit play and the midi from this will go out through the bus and back in to control ableton.
More awkward method, alter the midi routings of the former record track to match the track described above. Either works.

Hey presto, recordable and editable solo buttons.

Oh and if there's latency playing with the track delay on the midi playback track.

Hope that helps and works

[blakbeltjonez]

Ok, I think I've got a way of doing this:

Firstly solo button's are addressable by midi right?

And recording this is the problem.

In which case the way round this is to use an external midi bus, on mac you can use the IAC bus and on Windows you can use midi ox (I think). Bear with me as im at work and this all from memory but what you want to do is midi map the solo buttons first, then connect your controller out to in of the midi bus. Route one output of the bus to a midi track and set this track to monitor in and to record, make sure the midi out of this track isnt being routed anywhere. Connect the same output to ableton as you'd usually connect you controller on the preferences.

Right, that should now enable you to record all the midi coming from your controller into a session view clip.

Now to play back this info you have two options: easiest, disable the midi record track, drag the clip onto a new midi track, no midi in for this track, midi out should go to the midi in of the midi bus. Hit play and the midi from this will go out through the bus and back in to control ableton.
More awkward method, alter the midi routings of the former record track to match the track described above. Either works.

Hey presto, recordable and editable solo buttons.

Oh and if there's latency playing with the track delay on the midi playback track.

Hope that helps and works

seems like that might have a shot at working as well, it's certainly plausible.

but now the question becomes, will the external MIDI kludge work when you render the track? if you recorded it in real time to an empty clip, that would be one thing and in my mind it seems straightforward - but if the mix is rendered offline, what happens to the IAC buss?

anyways, it's great to see that we've arrived at a couple of possibilities so far! i'm pretty stoked about trying the crossfader thing when i get the time early next week.

and now that i'm thinking about it, what was ever stopping me from assigning a bunch of mutes to a single button - kinda like mute groups you see on larger format mixing consoles? you pretty much know what channels you want to solo, so you get 4 or 8 buttons/keys assigned to the mutes you want, and you're off.

doh! (cue slapping forehead..) i mostly work in Live 5.2 (that does NOT support multiple automation on one CC message), so i keep forgetting about that capability in later versions of Live.

Evon, if you're using Live 7, just make a few mute groups (mute assigned to one key or button) and you should be good to go, or use the crossfader trick as discussed earlier. for dub, you don't need a bunch of channels - most of the classic stuff was done on 4 - 8 mono tracks, so if it were 4 i'd do it King Tubby style and make subgroups for bass/drums, keys/gtr, vocals, and anything left over as the last subgroup (we have the luxury of having the subgroups stereo in this day and age, though). with only 4 channels to work with, your workflow becomes more focused and jam-oriented (kinda like a live Ableton show) and you don't get bogged down with too many options.

[evon]

Evon, if you're using Live 7, just make a few mute groups (mute assigned to one key or button) and you should be good to go, or use the crossfader trick as discussed earlier. for dub, you don't need a bunch of channels - most of the classic stuff was done on 4 - 8 mono tracks, so if it were 4 i'd do it King Tubby style and make subgroups for bass/drums, keys/gtr, vocals, and anything left over as the last subgroup (we have the luxury of having the subgroups stereo in this day and age, though). with only 4 channels to work with, your workflow becomes more focused and jam-oriented (kinda like a live Ableton show) and you don't get bogged down with too many options.

Yes those two options (Mute Groups & A/B+Fader) seems to be the best workaround so far for dubbing.

[regularjack]

as a workaround you can send all other tracks' outs into a bus (an audio track) and automate the speaker on/off

[MIDIhead]

Until such time as Ableton is kind enough to supply this functionality (it is really helpful for doing drops) I'll post a quick work-around that shouldn't take much time to perform. It is the quickest method that I've found (and I need quick methods because I'm on the clock).

If you're like me and have 50+ tracks in Live you know how time consuming it is to go through and automate volume envelopes or cut a section out of each track (which we're going to do here, but in an efficient manner).

This approach is coming from someone doing a lot of edits, reverses, stutters, drops throughout the full track

Note: We'll be working in the linear timeline window (Arrangement View)

1. Render a high quality, full mix of your track.
2. Create a new track and drop the newly rendered full mix into it. Name it accordingly.
3. Locate the parts in the full mix that contain your automation and create "location' markers (up at the top of the Arrangement View window where you see your speaker icon appear). You can right-click PC or cmd-click MAC and "Drop Marker" then name it accordingly. Drop one at the start of where you want your "solo" to start and one at the end of it.
4. Click on each locator marker on the full mix track and place your cursor, then ctrl+e key combo to cut each location. Now delete the excess.
5. Click on each section of the audio you left behind (from your full mix track) and "cut" it so it's in memory, but no longer on the track.
7. Make sure you are at the top of your project and then click+drag from the left side of your locator to the right side and drag ONLY as far down as the "Master" track. Doing this will highlight all tracks. Once only the section you want muted is highlighted, hit your "delete" key.
8. Now paste the section you cut (held in memory) back on the track.
9. Adjust volume of track so it blends with the rest of your mix, and you're done!

Repeat for each edit you want to insert.

I hope this helps! It certainly helped speed this process up for me!

Best,

MIDIhead
http://www.midihead.com
http://www.ilio.com/products/ilio-downloads/edmfire