Ableton Forum

In some DAWS when you click on a track (or anything within that track) it arms it automatically for recording. I find this very useful.
Is there a way to auto arm selected tracks in Live?

Someone mentioned Bome's Midi Translater Pro, but I find it a bit difficult to understand.

Any advice?
Thanks for any help.

Well, this as far as I can think of would be the next best thing: http://stc.wiffbi.com/

I found a way


I've been looking to do this for a while so now that I found out how (thanks to nativeKONTROL), I thought I'd share it here (apologies for the writing: english is not my main language). It looks a bit long, but it's quite easy and once it's done it's a relief to not have to think about arming tracks.

I ran into LPC-Live http://www.nativekontrol.com/LPC-Live.html for the Launchpad a few months ago and thought it was amazing. But I didn't notice TrackDefs then (you don't need a specific controller). TrackDefs is a configurable MIDI remote script for Live 8.1.3 or later that allows you to define default settings to use for inserted Tracks. Unlike other remote scripts, this one actually doesn’t work with a particular MIDI controller. Instead, it changes default behaviors in Live that apply when you’re using any MIDI controller, or a QWERTY or a mouse.


Here is a step by step tutorial for setting the Auto Arm Selected Track feature, I'll paste instructions from nativeKONTROL.
First go to this page http://beatwise.proboards.com/index.cgi ... thread=709 and grab the current free version of TrackDefs. The folder named ‘TrackDefs’ needs to be placed in Live’s MIDI Remote Script directory. Please close Live before transferring this folder.

On Windows, this directory is located in: Program Files\Ableton\Live 8.x.x\Resources.

On OS X, to get to this directory: 1. Go to Applications, find Live.app, right-click and select Show Package Contents. 2. The directory is located in: Contents\App-Resources.

In Ableton the following settings will be found in Preferences on the MIDI/Sync tab. Select TrackDefs as a Control Surface. Leave the Input and Output set to None.

Then you’ll need to go modify the file named TrackDefsUserConfig.py, which you’ll find in the TrackDefs folder. You can modify this file with any text editor (like Notepad or TextEdit). The file itself includes instructions on how to modify the file along with descriptions of all the included options.
Look for "EXCLUSIVE_ARM_ON_SELECT = 0" and simply replace 0 by 1. That's it! DO NOT change any of the spacing in this file. DO NOT change the name of this file or its file extension. When done making your changes, just save the file. After saving this file, you will need to close/restart Live for your changes to take effect.

Check the other settings in the TrackDefsUserConfig.py file and check LPC-Live, for real! There's a huge amount of intelligent work there!


Note: If you are using Live 8.3:
On Windows with 8.3, the new default location for Live’s MIDI Remote Scripts directory is: C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 8\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts (Windows Vista and 7) C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Ableton\Live 8\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts (Windows XP)
On OSX with 8.3, the new name for Live’s app is Ableton Live 8.app, so you need to locate this app, right-click on it and select Show Package Contents. Within the package, the MIDI Remote Scripts directory is where it has always been: Contents/App-Resources/MIDI Remote Scripts


Many thanks to nativeKONTROL.

Found a neat workaround to this today.

I remembered how with Push tracks would auto arm when scrolling between tracks, so I simply added in MIDI Preferences an attached controller (in my case Maschine Mikro) for Control Surface input and output, but selected Push from the drop down menu for Control Surface. Voila - instant auto arming when selecting a track.

Now, this could cause some unwanted side-effects of Ableton expecting my Machine messages to be Push messages - not sure, just stumbled on this. I will update here if something arises. Anyone know of any or have used this method or something like it?

You can also do this using the Options.txt file (I've had it in my file for a while)

If you add -EnableArmOnSelection to the file, it will work

The file goes in your preferences folder, if you dont' have an Options.txt or are not sure where to put it you can read about it here

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209772865

Hope that helps! One of my favorite options to have enabled personally.

I'm having a weird problem, Live doesn't auto-arm tracks when I'm recording. X_X I tried the options.txt suggestion, it still doesn't work. I'm at a loss at what to do. I don't even remember it not auto-arming tracks in the past... T_T

Did you manually disarm a track? If so it should work once you manually arm a track again. Then it will auto arm from that point on.

I'm probably doing something wrong as this didn't work... I will triple-check my settings when I can. Thanks for the tip.

For now I split my midi controller into 4 zones with 4 different midi channels, so I can play/record this way.

saintjoe wrote:You can also do this using the Options.txt file (I've had it in my file for a while)

If you add -EnableArmOnSelection to the file, it will work

The file goes in your preferences folder, if you dont' have an Options.txt or are not sure where to put it you can read about it here

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209772865

Hope that helps! One of my favorite options to have enabled personally.

Very useful tip Thanks. Doen't seem to work in Live 10 unfortunately or does it?

willardj wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 02, 2018 10:41 am

saintjoe wrote:You can also do this using the Options.txt file (I've had it in my file for a while)

If you add -EnableArmOnSelection to the file, it will work

The file goes in your preferences folder, if you dont' have an Options.txt or are not sure where to put it you can read about it here

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209772865

Hope that helps! One of my favorite options to have enabled personally.

Very useful tip Thanks. Doen't seem to work in Live 10 unfortunately or does it?

Yes, it does. I use that feature in Ableton 10.1.