Post your most obscure Ableton Live knowledge

[ezelkow1]

Great thread. Not obscure but this popped to mind.

In a drum rack, to use your set's send effects on an individual drum hit rather than the ones in the rack itself, drag and drop a utility as a send effect in the rack. That will let you use "Audio To" in that chain on the rack to route just that hit in the drum rack to the set send track without effecting the audio.

Speaking of utility. This tip is also cool. How to Mid/Side anything:

You dont need a utility to do this either, just right click in the drum racks send/return area and hit create return chain, then you get an empty return with an 'audio to'

[H20nly]

*bookmark*

tips guys. thx Angstrom.

[djadonis206]

right click on the bar of ping pong delay / simple delay and change between delay type. fade / repitch

Nice and obscure. I'm feeling this easter egg basket thread!

[pepezabala]

I guess that 95% of all Live users never unlinked a clip envelope and played with envelopes that have a different loop-length than the original clip.

You can use this feature for many different things, e.g. trance-gating, evolving textures, everchanging pads, everchanging melodies, clicks'n'cuts, there are endless possibilities.

[Amaury]

Clicking the "Start" or "End" labels in the MIDI editor's Notes panel scrolls the MIDI editor there. Clicking the "Length" label in the Loop section zooms the loop into view. Equivalent labels in the Audio clip editor work the same.

[simmerdown]

whao, that is obscure amaury, did you write that?

maybe morein the 'hide in plain sight' category...(which took me a year to notice, by accident,lol)

for the asio users who want to switch and hear some utube or whatever else...clicking the cpu meter turns off/on the sound engine, soz you dont have to go into prefs every time....

[ttilberg]

After using Live for many years, two cool things I've only learned this past year:

A) (pseudo) step sequencing (kind of 303 style):
1. Create a new midi clip, and click anywhere in it to set a play head.
2. Make sure monitor button is on (little headphone right above the piano roll) and you can hear your synth.
3. Hold a few notes down on your keyboard (midi or qwerty) aaaand
3a. Press the right arrow key. You just drew a note (or chord) the size of your grid.

I find this helpful for testing chords out, and when I get the right one, save it by pressing the arrow. You can also of course insert rests by pressing the arrow right without holding keys.

B) Spreading a note pattern across a midi range (similar to how more advanced arps work)
1. Create a midi clip for your synth. Maybe for cheddar's sake, something like offbeat 1/8s lol. Make them all the same note (or feel free to add a fifth in there where you feel appropriate, or whatever you want).
2. Enter midi mapping mode (requires proper keyboard, won't work with qwerty keyboard mode )
3. Click your clip and press and hold a note, like C3.
3a. While holding, press a note higher (and lower if you wish) like C4, and C2 -- and let go!

Your clip is now mapped to a range of keys, each key will transpose your line.
Your first note will act as the root, and your other keys pressed act as the min and max transpose range.

These are probably in the manual, but like I said, I went many years without knowing about these cool tricks.

[timday]

You can trigger video clips in sync with audio clips and scenes by MIDI mapping locators in the arrange page. It's a bit fiddly but seems to work OK.

It shouldn't be that obscure but as far as I can see it is.

[synnack]

Clicking the "Start" or "End" labels in the MIDI editor's Notes panel scrolls the MIDI editor there. Clicking the "Length" label in the Loop section zooms the loop into view. Equivalent labels in the Audio clip editor work the same.

wow! Now you have me doubleclicking everything i've never double clicked to see if there's anything else like this. Nice!

[ian_halsall]

Yep - one of the best threads - for a long time.

I have nothing obscure to add - yet.

[cybersytes]

What a great thread!

I just found out about this (been there the whole time!)

Groove/Swing control for Arpeggiator

Using the Arpeggiator, when you drop down the Groove Chooser
and select any of the choices (swing 8,16,32) the amount of swing can be set using the Global
Groove Amount in the Groove Pool Control area. It has really helped control the feel of my Arpeggiated tracks.

And another: Cool stutter effect for audio

This happen in the Clip Options when using Audio Clips:

In the Sample Section under Warp - choose warp type: BEATS for your audio clip.

In the Transient Loop Mode chooser (the little arrows) choose Off (one arrow pointing right).

Then in the Preserve Chooser (also called Granulation Resolution) choose your resolution (I use 16ths a lot) and then in the Transient Envelope (default setting of 100) lower the value. It really kicks in one you get below 50 or 40. Instant, controllable stutter. So far I haven't been able to assign this to a midi controller. But sometimes it is just the thing - take a bebop solo sax break, add this effect and then transpose down 2 or three octaves. Very cool rhythmic bass. It really gives the same audio clip another place to go.

[simmerdown]

"humanize' drums (esp hihats too) with Groove

drop a groove on you midi drum clip. any groove will do cuz first thing is to set all groove settings to 0

get it playing and listen as you move up the 'random' and 'velocity'..very small amounts

another way:

on an individual pad (i always do this to hihats a lil bit)..go into simpler, turn on the LFO,sine (or square) turn freq to about 80, retrig OFF,
then
bring up the lfo's to taste, usually less than 10%, on Transpose, Vol, Velocity, even pan if wanted

[Amaury]

Ah! Just remembered a nice one: in map mode, MIDI or Key, you can map the "track status" in Session view. That's the area to the right of the stop button of a track.

When you click this area, it reveals whichever clip is playing, and displays it in the details view. Now, if you map this area, you can use the mapped key any time to reveal the playing clip, even if that clip is in the Arrangement, while you are looking at the arrangement. This may save some double clicks actually.

[ezelkow1]

Groove/Swing control for Arpeggiator

Using the Arpeggiator, when you drop down the Groove Chooser
and select any of the choices (swing 8,16,32) the amount of swing can be set using the Global
Groove Amount in the Groove Pool Control area. It has really helped control the feel of my Arpeggiated tracks.

Nice, I always avoided using the groove in the arp since it always sounded way overdone, looks like I will finally be able to get back into the swing of using the arp groove . That'll teach me not to read the manual when I want to know something

[Valiumdupeuple]

Ah! Just remembered a nice one: in map mode, MIDI or Key, you can map the "track status" in Session view. That's the area to the right of the stop button of a track.

When you click this area, it reveals whichever clip is playing, and displays it in the details view. Now, if you map this area, you can use the mapped key any time to reveal the playing clip, even if that clip is in the Arrangement, while you are looking at the arrangement. This may save some double clicks actually.

Waoh! This is fucking useful!! If we could do this by mapping the Master track instead, and having the highlighted track showing it's clip when clicked, it would be perfect.
This + a global solo/unsolo mappable button would definitely save a lot of time/mouse movements.