Overlapping clips in arrange view

[Synthbuilder]

I would like to have the option to merge clips instead of the only default action of one clip playback at one time.

A lot of my loops have audio tails to them, that is, reverb tails, cymbal decays, and synth release tails.

I'd like to be able to stack a loop one after another and not have the newest loop eat into the end of the previous loop.

Right now, I have the option of having two tracks open and placing clips in each one alternatively. Or even loading up a sampler with the appropriate wave and using midi to fire it off.

To be able to do this with midi clips would be great too. That is, the first note of one clip won't necessarily bite off the tail of the last note in the previous clip.

[djsynchro]

You can do this in Logic put two MIDI clips on top of each other and it will play all the notes. REALLY BAD IDEA! it might come in handy but IMO it's a messy way to work.

[amo]

Hi,

I've said that before but will repeat in case someone at Ableton would not have noticed: Cubase SX style overlapping and crossfade is the best to my knowlede: on key to crossfade two overlapping clips, then if you move one of the clips, the crossfade follows, it's elastic (good concept for Live isn't it ?), then a double click on the crossfade lets you choose fade curves, and you actually can hear the result before you close the dialogue box, thus you can try different curves really fast. Sounds good ?
Cheers,
amo

[grfld]

Magix MusicMaker, MusicStudio, Samplitude and Sequioa provide crossfades for objects on the same track, too.

It is really handy, because your project stays organized and you don't need a bunch of tracks only to do a simple fade between two objects.

Acid Pro also doesn't allow overlapping (in fact, every sample has its own track), but they provide folder tracks, that means you may group a number of tracks to a folder and fold them (and mute or solo them all together with a single click).

x/heiko

[Scoox]

Probably beating a dead horse, judging by the age of this thread, but I would like the ability to overlap both clips and also MIDI notes. Other DAWs can do it no problem.

Overlapping MIDI notes may seem pointless but most polyphonic synths are happy to play the same note twice ore more simultaneously, if it receives multiple note on messages but no note off messages. Of course this will sound different from interrupting a note to play the next.

Overlapping audio clips can be used to achieve a number of artistic effects in sound design. ATM I have to create two tracks and stagger the clips.

[jonljacobi]

I missed this at first, but I’ve grown to appreciate it as is.

[Scoox]

I missed this at first, but I’ve grown to appreciate it as is.

There's ways around it, me course. I'm not sure I like the way a clip 'eats' another clip when dragged over it, maybe there are times when this is useful? It definitely would be more intuitive if clips could overlap when doing cross-fades.

[jonljacobi]

I don't love everything Ableton does (or doesn't) do, but I have grown to appreciate many of its methods. As long as I can get there one way or another I don't worry too much about it. And to me there's a certain amount of confusion that comes with layered clips that will probably suck more time than keeping them on different tracks. I can remember splitting them out onto different tracks for that very reason. I think as is, it's probably better for liver performance.

[AlKal]

I am coming to Live from a different DAW, and frankly I was quite surprised to see that Live does not provide this functionality. There are actually quite a few practical applications for this. As an example, I was recently developing a song, starting in session view, where some of the sections have a 2-beat pickup, i.e., there is a 2-beat rest at the begging of the clip (we'll call this A). Some of the other clips start on the downbeat (clip B). When moving these clips to arrangement view, you can simply start B two beats after the end of A. But if you want to put A after B, you would have to slide A, 2 beats to the left such that it overlaps the last 2 beats of B. If there is no material for these last 2 beats of B, no problem. But if there is some material there, leading up to A, then that will be lost to the 2-beat blank space of A.

My workaround was to drop into the MIDI clip view and copy/paste the midi data from A over on top of B, starting at beat 3 of B, which gives the desired result. There are 3 problems with this approach: (1) it destroys the structure of your arrangement, where you are getting locked into larger sections, making it difficult to rearrange later, (2) it is time consuming, and (3) it's a royal PITA if you have to do this for several clips over multiple tracks. If you could simply blend the data of the clips (maybe by clicking on the + like you for overdubbing midi in arrangement view), life would be so much simpler

[Fotis K]

For me this is one of the biggest drawbacks on Live and I still can't wrap my head around it. I might move around clips on the same track or import a sample only to find out that whatever I had on that track has now disappeared, has been eaten by the new clip. And if you don't notice immediately say good-bye to your arrangement work. I mean..come on, this is worse than rave ejay and I'm so puzzled why it works like that.

Am I overlooking something??

[Scoox]

For me this is one of the biggest drawbacks on Live and I still can't wrap my head around it. I might move around clips on the same track or import a sample only to find out that whatever I had on that track has now disappeared, has been eaten by the new clip. And if you don't notice immediately say good-bye to your arrangement work. I mean..come on, this is worse than rave ejay and I'm so puzzled why it works like that.

Am I overlooking something??

Yeah, never mind the limitations of this design, it's the fact that if you casually drop/resize something in the arrangement it's easy to overwrite existing material and not notice till much later, at which point undo would be useless, whereas two unintentionally overlapping clips are very easy to notice and fix at any time.

Sadly, Ableton will probably never grant this request because it's a design choice and considering how slowly meaningful updates trickle in I wouldn't hold my breath. But I hope to be proven wrong.