Thanks for the help - this gets me part of the way there but still having trouble doing what I want.
I'm new to Ableton so let me explain what I want to do, and perhaps you can help with the how!
I want to record a whole song into various clips - drums, bass, vocals, guitar - the lot.
Rather than simply launching clips when playing the song live, I want to be able to actually play some of the parts live (on guitar, vocals, whatever).
For example, see this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPX9h--CKl8
So ideally, play 4 bars of drums, and then launch drum clips for the rest of the song. Then play 4 bars of the bass line, then trigger my pre-recorded bass line thereafter. If I feel like playing more of the baseline, then when I launch the next scene, I want to be able to stop the bass clip for that scene and and play it myself. I don't want to record a bass clip live and then loop it (too much chance of messing it up), but to be able to switch between pre-recorded and live.
How do I do this?
For some more specific questions:
1. when audio/MIDI is recorded to a track, can I launch the clip and also play live on the same track? Or do I need to duplicate the track (ie, two drum racks - one for launching pre-recorded clips and one for playing live)? Doesn't this kill your CPU?
2. how do I do this with arming the tracks / setting the monitoring? If I record arm the track, then I can't use Push 2 to stop the track (since each 'blank' clip is red waiting for record, not a stop button)
3. is there any way to have different settings for clips in the same track? Let's say I have a bass synth in a track, and two clips in that track. Can I add reverb (for example) on the second clip but not the first? Or if I add a device to a track (like a reverb), does that 'apply' to all clips in that track? Would I need two separate tracks to do this?
4. if I want to use my midi keyboard to play (for example) bass for a bit, and then lead for a bit, and then to trigger some samples, how do I do this on the fly? How do I switch between tracks (this is similar to Q2). For another example, let's say I'm playing guitar (a physical guitar) thru an audio track. I want to trigger a scene which has (for example) no chorus, and then the next scene when I'm playing the guitar, I want chorus. How do I do this? (there's probably enough time to hit the launch button for the next scene, but not enough to dis-arm one guitar track and arm another)
5. (unrelated) is there some way on Live to see what note a MIDI device triggers? For example, if I hit C3 on my keyboard, can I see C3 anywhere on Live? How about for chords, if I play a c maj chord, can Live tell me it's C maj? This is very easy on Logic.
Thanks so much!!!