the ultimate "I love Ableton BUT..." thread

[Angstrom]

My only complaint is that there's a few menu commands that have no key commands, and that would speed things up for me. Something like Crop Clip I use CONSTANTLY, and there's no way to do this without right-clicking and choosing it each time. Not even with OSX keyboard shortcuts, since it's context sensitive and not a permanent menu item.

Ideally there would be a way to create/customize key commands or create macros (Studio One comes to mind)

Yep. Mac people at least have a workaround available, but us Windows people are left scratching our heads at this ommision. I have an ancient freeware to-do list app which has configurable save-able keyboard shortcuts. It's about 1meg of ancient freeware and it handles key shortcuts better than a £500 multimedia suite. It's a bit weird.

[Machinesworking]

The key command thing is one of those head scratchers. No matter if their concern was/is workflow intuitiveness, initial transparency when you first start using Live etc., the lack of more than a handful of global key commands after your first month or so with Live is a workflow problem, period. This is regardless of whether Live is designed in the future more for the studio than for stage.

Mostly though, again for me it's frustrating that live performance features have been deregulated in Live to the point to where Push is designed even with more of a song creation focus.
Yet, compared to a dinosaur DAW. Live lacks dozens of little features for studio use. This isn't anything new in the direction Live has been headed in, but for me anyway it's still a frustrating bone of contention, all of us that ask for more song creation features are effectively taking away from Lives potential as the premier live performance device.

[cskracer]

I'd love the ability to setup a keyboard shortcuts.

In my day job I use a piece of software called voiceattack (http://www.voiceattack.com/) which allows me to use speech to trigger keyboard shortcuts. It's great. Much faster than clicking. Well it is when my wife isn't in the background yelling out "delete".....she thinks it's very strange for me to be talking to my computer.

[Grill Pheiss]

I'd love the ability to setup a keyboard shortcuts.

In my day job I use a piece of software called voiceattack (http://www.voiceattack.com/) which allows me to use speech to trigger keyboard shortcuts. It's great. Much faster than clicking. Well it is when my wife isn't in the background yelling out "delete".....she thinks it's very strange for me to be talking to my computer.

that kind of customisation seems like the bare minimum nowadays !

[doublestop]

I am a brand new user of Ableton 9.5. I do really like a lot of aspects of it, but AAAACK!!! The lack of the ability to customize and save Keyboard shortcut schemes is really lame!!! I know you can use the "key" button ... but why do I have to re-invent the wheel on every project?

For example, I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a keyboard shortcut for turning on the click track. As far as I can tell, there isn't any! Am I wrong??? Really? I have to reach up with the damn mouse and find that little tiny icon? I know I shouldn't compare, but I also have Cubase(8.5) and It's SO NICE to be able to call up a stored Shortcut configuration file that customizes my preferred workflow!

ok.. my humble 2 cents.

[Tarekith]

Yeah, it's a little different in Live for sure. Best option is to open a blank project, make all the default key assignments you want, then save that project as the default in Live's preferences. Now everytime you start a project those key commands will be ready.

[fishmonkey]

My only complaint is that there's a few menu commands that have no key commands, and that would speed things up for me. Something like Crop Clip I use CONSTANTLY, and there's no way to do this without right-clicking and choosing it each time. Not even with OSX keyboard shortcuts, since it's context sensitive and not a permanent menu item.

you could make a keyboard macro to do that using Keyboard Maestro:

https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/

[Tarekith]

Thanks, I'll have to look into that for sure.

[The_Subject]

What I want in ableton, and have ALWAYS REALLY wanted in ableton is to make it more like Ms Excel.

Not being funny, I've toyed with writing my own sampler in excel anyway, its a program I love, and the layout has obvious massive similarities.

So - track 1 = column 1, scene 1 = row 1.

Having options like clip 1/1 (track 1/scene 1) is sidechained to Clip 5/7 (track 5, scene 7) for instance, without all the chain selection and all that, that you could do to make this happen. Imagine ableton was a top of some hardware, and you took the lid off and could do some dodgy wiring underneath.

More excel plug-in stuff, having the ability to connect stuff via a mathematical formula would be amazing.

So this macro control is connected to these three parameters, but if you could see the "wire" connecting them, double click it, and have a little window pop up where you could say rather than x=y on this control you want x=(INT(y/2) type options.

[H20nly]

^ Max4Live

[pencilrocket]

Just let piano roll have Chop and Articulation tool. There is already empty space at the left of piano roll....

[doublestop]

Yeah, it's a little different in Live for sure. Best option is to open a blank project, make all the default key assignments you want, then save that project as the default in Live's preferences. Now everytime you start a project those key commands will be ready.

Ok! That sounds like maybe I could make that useful! Hey, do you know if some functions that are not a button on the interface (like go to next or previous track for example) are controllable by a Midi controller? I'd like to be able to move from track to track (or depending on the context even clip to clip or scene to scene!) from a MIDI controller, but that does not seem to be an ability from the "key" or "MIDI" buttons in Live.

[H20nly]

yes. you can do that. some controllers integrate better than others with Live, but many have that level of control.

[Synthbuilder]

Improve (actually fix) the midi throughput integrity. midi when sent into Live and then straight out again will be messed about with. Note lengths are subtly changed and midi CC data is lost. I've reported it several times so I'm hoping it's going to get fixed at some point. It's a nightmare when using external sequencers and hardware with Live.

Just make the step input in the midi editor work like everyone else's. That is, new notes should automatically be placed in the next available time slot and not require use of the QWERTY keyboard to advance to the next step.

Proper sysex support.

Automation of midi CCs in the arrange window.

Treat third party midi plug ins like Live's own midi plugs. That is, they can be used inline to affect midi data.

Time to revisit Live modulation effects; phaser, flanger and chorus. Because they sound horrible...

[nathannn]

And just to cement how out of the loop of the modern Live is becoming, I've ordered a Slate Raven, a relatively cheap software and multi touch interface.

This looks pretty cool.
I just watched the product introduction video on slates website and it felt like I was watching a commercial for Oxiclean