Ableton baffles me....never does what I expect

[Tweaking Knobs]

have you bothered reading the manual?

for myself Live has been so simple and easy to pickup. It lets me not deal with all the technical stuff and just lets me focus on creativity and experimenting. Try reading the manual. it'll answer most of your questions.

Reading the manual ? are u freakin crazy ?

[Piplodocus]

This is all pretty basic Live-specific functionality in a very easy to use DAW.

If you can't be bothered to read the main parts of the manual to find out how it works I suggest you give up on all but the most basic of music production tools.

Buying a $400 product and not being bothered to use the manual sounds suspiciously like either a dodgy warez downloader, or someone who's trying the demo, but doesn't really want to see what it can REALLY do or how it works. If the latter then you should take more care about what you might be about to blow that kinda money on.

[EX]

"Ableton" always seemed acceptable synecdoche for "Ableton Live" given that Ableton don't make anything else of significance

[Piplodocus]

"Ableton" always seemed acceptable synecdoche for "Ableton Live" given that Ableton don't make anything else of significance

I agree. Especially without the inflexions of real speech for use on a forum, and also when talking to other producers/muso's who don't use Live and get very confused about what you're on about:

I live in the city and use live when I'm playing live, and also use live instruments as well as using live instruments.

or:

I live in southampton and use Ableton when I'm playing live, and also recording live instruments as well as using Ableton instruments.

Option b please! Otherwise we'll need the grammar nazis ensuring Live always has a capital L and anything else live isn't allowed to begin a sentence!

[synthbob]

"For instance, here's a weird problem with Live I haven't figured out...say I want to record a pad or something freeform and not a loop....well, my timing sucks and I need to try to move the notes where I want them in time....but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this in Arrangement View. I only seem to be able to move the WHOLE recording, not the individual notes. I can cut and move, but I have to do this with every note, and when notes overlap, then it ruins it."

Double click on it and you can edit the notes in the piano roll at the bottom.


"a word of advice though: dont automate the track volume instead drag lives Utility device onto the track and automate the gain (in the 2 boxes described above select Utility in the top one and Gain in the other... or just click and move the gain knob in Utility and the automation line will appear) this means now that your overall track volume can be changed without affecting your lovingly created fades and stuff as these are done now by the gain knob and not your main mixer.
If its too late and you have automated track volume already you have locked out track volume and will have to use Utility as your overall volume"

Great advice. I would add you can also group a track to give you two volume sliders, one for automation and the other for manual mixing.