Automation can't be this difficult...disabling itself...

[arretx]

In arrangement view, I have a single MIDI track with an instrument. There's a clip in that track. I want to draw a curve to adjust the mixer track volume.

So, I right click the track volume indicator and click "Show Automation in New Lane"

Then, I draw in a curve to change the mixer volume.

Upon drawing, immediately the automation line turns gray and the re-enable automation button turns on, disabling what I'm drawing in.

Next to the "mixer" and "Track Volume" dropdowns in the track name are two little open circles. The automation is being drawn, but it's being disabled before it can even do anything.

If I unclick the orange Re-Enable button, as soon as the play head reaches the automation, it turns back on again and nothing happens.

What the hell am I doing wrong? This is infuriating.

[arretx]

OMG...so on a hunch, I simply turned off the REMOTE button on my IAC Driver "Input" and the problem went away.

What's that all about?

[pottering]

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/autom ... automation

If you change an automated control’s value while not recording, the automation LED goes off to indicate the control’s automation is inactive. Any automation is therefore overridden by the current manual setting.

When MIDI is routed from the outside with IAC, Live has no way of knowing that MIDI input originally came from Live itself (MIDI doesn't have metadata), so it assumes it is the user tweaking (which is kinda true in your example).

Disabling "Remote" simply means that MIDI Input is not used anymore for remote control, like MIDI assign.

Maybe IAC allows enabling input and output at the same time for the same MIDI virtual cable? That is basically a feedback loop.

If you want to re-enable "Remote" and avoid the automation getting disabled, then don't have input and output enabled at the same time for the same virtual MIDI buss.

In Windows I remember Loopmidi allowing a feedback loop, but LoopBe (which I use now) doesn't even allow it.