The Little List of Tips and Tricks

[NF]

Tape saturation: just put a Saturator with a sinoid fold and rise the drive up to about 5dB to 8 dB but not more than 8 dB. Then adjust the dry/wet mix to taste.
Sounds very similar to Izotope Ozone 4 tape saturation.

and please don't forget the hi-res mode

[Tone Deft]

I wanted to post a solution to a technical problem: "database disk image malformed", which prevented me from: save as, collect all and save, search, and record enable.

solution (on Mac): delete files from: users/home/library/caches/index

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 2#p1331232

[condra]

MPC Slicing preset....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnW2nhxbwp0

[DuncanCox]

This is a nice list of tips and tricks. Thanks for sharing.

[3dot...]

One thing I had always been missing in Live was a per-track peak level indicator. Frustratingly, not even Spectrum had that. Well turns out there is one, it's just not visible by default. Drag the divider between Send Section and Mixer Section upward in Clip View, and there it is! Not available in Arrangement View though, apparently. Drag it up even further and you get a numeric value for the track volume. Another thing I'd been missing sorely. This is saved in the project, so be sure to update your default template.

Another hint: The peak meter shows you the absolute peak, when you click the number, it resets to the current value
This peak number is immensely important for proper A/Bing tracks when you put effects like compression on it:

- Check the dB of the original signal, write it down or duplicate the track
- put in the compressor, turn output down so it's quieter than than the original (or the track volume if you've duplicated it)
- reset the peak meter
- now slowly raise the output / track volume until the peak meter show the same dB as the original
- now do A/B comparison
- if it sounds better, keep it

This will save you from using lots of compression or likewise effects because they just sound louder, not better.

...you're mistaking peak RMS values..
if a compressed signal peaks the same as the uncompressed signal ...it'll almost always be louder...

however.. if you compare the average volume (RMS).. you can get a good a/b (more objective)

the peak value is good to determine the highest peak in a certain timeframe.. (rms uses longer timeframes so is better to detect "loudness")
mostly for mixing...and cutting the peaks...not primarily to A/B...

[condra]

To avoid compressing your reverb on a drum mix, you can use the powerful I/O capabilities in drum racks to send separate signals to your standard mixer returns.

[Muzik 4 Machines]

great tips

[microboyd]

Hold Pedal without a midi pedal work around:

If you want to play piano or some other instrument that uses the hold on pedal (midi 64) but you forgot your midi foot pedal I have a not-so-elegant work around.

Create a new midi track and make 2 new clips, 1 bar loops.
Go to the envelope section of each clip and under midiCTRL select number 64 Hold Pedal
On one clip use the pencil tool to draw a horizontal line at 127 on one clip and on the other clip use the same tool to draw at line at zero. (make sure the line goes all the way from the start of the clip.)
set the quantisation tool to zero (left of the pencil tool)
assign the play button of each clip to a button on your controller
press the corresponding button to set hold on or off whilst you play.

Its useful if you are practising etc.

Mike

[adam525]

Looks like the links quit working. My guess is that ableton upgraded phpbb and now you need a forum number along with the topic number in the link as follows...

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22700

currently just has

viewtopic.php?t=22700. If I had access to sed/awk at the moment id fix it. Might do that later on this evening.

[Spectrumdisco]

Thanks

[Vios]

Sidechain Compression Using Autopan

(See second video)

[Spechal]

This might be on here somewhere, but I didn't see it.

I think this is a useful tip ... http://quadrophone.com/use-ableton-util ... envelopes/

[peter181]

If you have a bunch of copies of Operator or Simpler in a drum rack, you can change something, right-click, and "Copy value to siblings." Really helpful if you didn't think to make a macro beforehand.

[rakim87]

i tried a lot of links from that first one "more music production videos than you can poke a stick at" and every link i tried was dead/private/broken. tried a couple other links in that first topic too and they were also broken. update please?

[Scherer]

Just a little hint, but sooo valuable:

Found out by accident that you can scroll the mixer and arrangement view left and right with holding ALT + CMD + Left Mouse Button.

This saves so much time because you don't have to zoom.