Does anyone NEVER use clips in mixer view?

mission · Post by **mission** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:45 pm

Everywhere I look, I see pics of Live with rows and rows of clips on the mixer view accompanied by commentary about the arrange window and how it needs so much work but aside from that Live is great blah blah...

I dunno...

I do EVERYTHING in the arrange view. All my midi gets recorded straight to the track, all my audio from mic/mpc/fantom... To me, the ease of the arrange window and how its all RIGHT THERE is the reason I switched to Live from Logic.

Am I missing something tho? I feel like I am getting the results I want but I also feel that Im using this program at half staff.

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:49 pm

The clip matrix is geared toward live performance. It makes it easy to change parts and edit parameters on the fly. Doing it this way, you'd be using Live as a sequencer/sampler.

mission · Post by **mission** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:50 pm

the_planet wrote:The clip matrix is geared toward live performance. It makes it easy to change parts and edit parameters on the fly. Doing it this way, you'd be using Live as a sequencer/sampler.

well thats what i figured but it seems the audio journalists, everything they talk about, focuses on using ableton from this view... even from a strict production standpoint.

ive tried to make full tracks doing this and it just seems ridiculously unintuitive.

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:51 pm

When i start a track ill usualy make several loops over a few scenes, then jam them out live into arrangement view. then i go back through the arrangement/yhings ive made looking for nice sounding things or tidying things up/rearranging things. Its invaluable - capture things id never think of/ do simply in arrangement view. brings a whole live/organic feell to tunes for sure

jaffadj · Post by **jaffadj** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:51 pm

i guess it depends on how u use Ableton and what for. I used to not even know about Arrangement view and did all my work in Session view. But now i know about arrangement i also do some work there, especially to work on the automation once i have recorded my 1st attempt at a particular mix

session view is still useful to warp tracks and create some loops out of audio clips, and probably other stuff that i cant think of at the mo

but theres no universal truth, depends what u do with Live - production, djing, creating loops,sampling....

mission · Post by **mission** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:03 pm

jeskola wrote:When i start a track ill usualy make several loops over a few scenes, then jam them out live into arrangement view. then i go back through the arrangement/yhings ive made looking for nice sounding things or tidying things up/rearranging things. Its invaluable - capture things id never think of/ do simply in arrangement view. brings a whole live/organic feell to tunes for sure

i can see that for sure... do you find yourself doing this out of habit alone? reading that, the first i thought was: "why dont you just record for a 64 bars in arrangement view and cut out the riffs you like?" maybe "scenes" confused me. it's quite different from logic in that regard.

thats what i do since im not a champion keyboardist and out of bunch of midi there is always something in there that sounds like i DIDNT play it. whatever doesnt sound like me, is what i use. it's usually really hot!

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:07 pm

That's just how you work! You're more used to dragging and dropping, and the people in the magazines are just recording straight from session. They are doing this to point out one of Live's most intuitive features that makes it different than other DAWs.

I suspect that most users of Live do a combination of the two - I do. I start by screwing around in the session view to get a feel of how I want it to sound while recording. Then I go back into the arrangement and edit edit edit.

mission · Post by **mission** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:11 pm

the_planet wrote:That's just how you work! You're more used to dragging and dropping, and the people in the magazines are just recording straight from session. They are doing this to point out one of Live's most intuitive features that makes it different than other DAWs.

I suspect that most users of Live do a combination of the two - I do. I start by screwing around in the session view to get a feel of how I want it to sound while recording. Then I go back into the arrangement and edit edit edit.

Well... Golly gee!

I love this damn program.

Every time I get an itch to try a new DAW, because Im not completely sold on the summing engine in Live, I just get completely turned off by the workflow of shit like Cubase and Sonar. Im gonna stick around, Im sure the Abes will get rid of the here-and-there negatives over time.

Even the stability of Live has improved greatly since I jumped on the bandwagon.

EDIT -- clicked your link btw. Read about a PA with Paradox. If that happened, damn, I would have loved to hear that. I heard he has been live for a minute now. How was that show?!

Lo-Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo-Fi Massahkah** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:48 am

I always start in session view - that's the reason I switched from Cubase/Tracktion that I was using at the time.

Getting a "skeleton" down by playing with combination of clips. Usually percussion, bass and a few hooks. Then when I have my structure I go to arrangement to add the "flesh" - pads, textures and vocals; the long shots...

By doing it this way I don't necessarily get stuck in 16+8+16+4+8 kinda arrangements. but get something more organic. At least sometimes...

-M

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:02 am

Howdy.

I find the session view more comfortable for auditioninng devices and recording audio.

I also use go back and forth between the two windows, recording improvisations non-linearly, and then editing them linearly. I wonder if that is how you spell linearly. Hmmm.

Anyhoo, it makes for fun stuff. Mixes things up a tad. BTW, I just got finished watching Tideland and my head is all messed up.

G'night!

Bombastic · Post by **Bombastic** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 9:29 am

im the same as U. always using arrange. its almost like session view is not even there.

minimal · Post by **minimal** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 9:58 am

it took me one year to get my head around session wiev, this excel like thing.
I was coming from classic linear sequencing in cubase, so when I first bought live I used it only in arrangement wiev, the "back" was just to set levels in the mixer.
One day a friend of mine showed me his way of working with live, I was really impressed on how quick he could draw sketches of songs with the session wiev. I started making loops like a mad, so now each time I will jam I only have to drag my loops into session and voilà, ready to rock.
It's worth to take some time to get used to session, I use it now for everything, live playing, jamming with friends or alone and even to make pre-arrangements.

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 1:16 pm

I find that if I move from Session view to Arrangement view too soon, I get completely tripped up. Live's editing paradigms work just fine for me in Session, but in Arrangement I feel hamstrung, like I'm back in Sonar but all of the tools I need are conspicuously absent. I don't think I could use arrangement for anything other than dropping a few overdubs and polishing things up. If I wanted to do heavy work in a linear view, I'd sooner go back to Sonar.

(But implicit in this is the fact that I do think it's best to migrate to Arrangement at some point in the process; I just think it needs to be pretty late in the game.)

This may be a matter of not being proficient enough w/ Live Arrangement view, but man I have tried.

JDSampo · Post by **JDSampo** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 1:30 pm

mbenigni wrote:If I wanted to do heavy work in a linear view, I'd sooner go back to Sonar.

I actually do go back to Sonar. After playing around in session and recording a good sketch into the arrangement (or a bad one as the case may be

) I sometimes export the whole mess to Sonar and work from there. That job is made a lot easier now that you can export individual tracks in one go.

I imagine I do this because I've worked in Sonar far longer than Live and I'm used to it. I also tend to view Live as more of an instrument than a DAW. Right tool for the job and all that.

--jd

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:00 pm

I sometimes export the whole mess to Sonar and work from there.

This would be "the best of both worlds" except I imagine the transition can be a considerable amount of work to get done right, no? Before I got into Live I briefly used Project 5 (ugh) and I would try to start ideas there and then migrate to Sonar. The process of getting dry tracks (audio and MIDI) over, and then reapplying all of the VSTs/ VSTis/ DX/ DXi and getting levels and pans just so... it was daunting to say the least. I never got a mix to translate effectively from one environment to the other. Maybe part of the problem was "falling in love" with the rough mix a little too much, and not accepting that the Sonar mix was just going to be different, period.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Sonar 6 is def. a superior mixing/ mastering environment, especially with the new Vintage Channel plugin - which cannot be used in other hosts, regrettably...