Ableton Live - I don't "get it"

[polyslax]

Well, I took to Session view right away and I've pretty much stuck with it. When I want to complete a track I'll sometimes play my Session clips into an Arrangement recording, but often I'll just play them to a resample clip in Session. I always render midi clips to audio before final recording of a track and I tend to use a lot of clip envelopes.

Arrangement view just feels very alien to me, not sure why. I think I just prefer the vertical layout/mixer analogy going on in Session and between scenes and follow actions I feel I'm covered. I also like having a gridwork of individual components. The only other software sequencers I've used are Reason ('scuse me but Yuck! on the sequencer) and Cubase (v.1 I think?) on a 1040ST.

I keep thinking one day I'll spend some quality time with the Arrangement view and do some bonding, just hasn't happened yet.

[djshiva]

i found live to be a huge step up from the typical "draw boxes on grids" concepts of other DAWs when i first stepped to it. not to say i am an expert yet, but one day i hit record, and it drew in the boxes for me. then i clicked and dragged, and they moved where i wanted them. i could cut n paste, cut the clips wherever the heck i wanted and if i wanted to rearrange or throw something new in, i just dragged it to arranger.

perhaps my background in playing live music helped, just in the sense the the session view made sense as a jam session, to be further arranged in the arranger.

it seemed more logical to me than most, but ya know, it took me forever to figure out how to make the damn subtractor make sound in reason, so perhaps it all comes back to the diff'rent strokes concept, eh?

good luck with yer noodlings...one day it dawns and that's when the REAL noodling will begin. promise.

[divonic]

yeah reason was a little weird. When I first got the demo It took me 20 of the 30 mins you were allowed to use it to figure out how to assign it to my soundcard.

I like reason (I don't own it) but I think that the sequencer sucks. As for live I love it, I started using acid so the arrange view made sence but I didn't even find the arrange view while messing with the demo. only session and I was blown away.

[NTstateOFmind]

apologies in advance for gravedigging this old thread, but I had a question for the OP (or anyone that can offer their 2c)

I'm also a new Live user (via demo) that migrated over from Reason, and I've been messing around with the DAW for a few days, but I just cant completely grasp the whole Scene vs Track concept. In addition to having to unlearn what I thought I knew about DAWs (reason is my only point of reference), I was hoping to get the following questions answered.

some background info that might help answer my questions:
- 90% of the time I create hiphop beats (BOTH sample based and composition)
- I've worked with Reason for almost 7 years now, so most of my questions will be about parallels between Live and Reason
- while im nowhere near a Reason expert, I'm interested in learning a new DAW to see if a new way of thinking about composing music will open any new doors to the creative process.

[1] is it best to think of Live tracks as Reason channels? basically, should i have just 1 instrument (sample, bassline, keys, etc) per Live track?
- i read theres a way to chain several instruments onto 1 track; but thats a story/question for another day

[2] in regards to drums, if I load a drum rack onto a Live track... should i have the drum sequence ALL in 1 clip? or should i have each drum sound (kick, snare, hat) in its own clip as to better manage them?

[3] since all i know about sequencers is from Reason's (which i hear is pretty poor from ppl who use multiple DAWs), should I be dragging each Live track (or is it clip?) onto the sequencer view when im all done?
- Im trying to understand how i'd sequence the following scenario... i have a 16 bar 'verse', and an 8 bar 'hook', do i click/drag the 'verse' and 'hook' from the track/clip view to the sequencer view, then do all my copy/paste over there in order to have verse-hook-verse-hook ?

[4] track vs clip... are clips intended for live sets/performances, or is there any value to using them in a strictly production-minded environment?

[5] is there an instrument in Live that I can load a single bass sound (for example, in the C# key), and assign the sound as C#, then be able to use a midi piano to play that bass sound in scale? (in Reason, theres the NNXT that lets me accomplish this)

[6] Midi track vs Audio track, in the track/clip view. Aside from loading samples for chopping/slicing/editing, is it a safe assumption that I wont ever be using Audio tracks in a strictly production-based environment? are audio tracks mostly used for live sets/performances?

[7] in regards to samples- im loading mp3s into an Audio channel, adding chops (or warp markers), then exporting to a midi track to be played and sequenced. Is it just me, or do the warp markers not 'snap in' at logical points (or not exactly where i place them)? To add, I am magnifying the wavelength view, but placing warp markers dont seem precise.
- with Reason, I've been using Recycle to chop samples, and its night and day when compared to Live's sample editing from a performance standpoint- playing each chop, placing chop markers, setting start/end points, etc.


apologies for all the detailed questions, I wanted to give the Live demo a fair tryout before committing to purchasing it (or moving on to other DAWs).

thanks in advance!

[login]

1.- Yes.

2.- Drum racks are used to make managing drum tracks easier. You can do it both ways, it's really aboput preference. Also when you finish your drum tracks and want to mix them seprately you can "ungroup" the drum rack.

3.- You can drag the clips or you can record an arrangement while you trigger clips.

4.- The purpose of clips is being able to combine them without commiting to a timeline, usefull for Live performances or composing.

5.- yes: Simpler/sampler

[NTstateOFmind]

login- thanks for the input. I added 2 more bullet points to my post. when you have a sec, can you talk to those points as well? thanks again.

[kb420]

1.) Yes. But remember, in Reason you can have a Combinator on a channel. In Live you can have an Instrument Rack on a track. See the similarity.

2.) That's entirely up to you. It depends on how you would like to work. I don't think there's any way anyone else can answer that for you.

3.) You can do it like that if you choose, or, in the Session View, you can arm the toolbar for "Record" and then simply trigger all the clips you want and your performance will be captured in the Arrangement View.

4.) Clips are good for both live performance and production. It's just a way of working in a non-linear environment before actually creating an Arrangement. If you've ever sequenced a song on an old hardware sequencer, it's kind of like working with different sequences first before arranging them in a Song mode.

5.) Yes there is an Instrument in Live. It's called "Simpler". If you have Live Suite, there is a more advanced version of Simpler called "Sampler".

As far as workflow is concerned, there's so many different ways to work in Live that I'm sure everybody has their own unique workflow. Live is very flexible. There's a reason that it's talked about so much in magazines, forums, etc. Since you are coming from Reason only, I think that you should really put in some serious time in Live before you decide if it's right for you or not. Personally, I think that Live has something to offer everybody that uses DAW's, but my opinion is definitely biased.

[kb420]

Wow! I didn't realize "login" answered you already. Oh well.

[jlgrimes]

The confusing thing about Live is figuring out when to use Session vs Arrange View.

Generally Session View is better for composing especially when creating songs that have Multiple defined sections, notably when you need to be able to trigger different clips or collection of clips in musical time. . I like to think of Session View as "pattern mode". This is also a good mode for Live performances of clip improvisations.

Generally Arrange View is better for creating detailed edits in the arrangement, punch-ins, long live recordings, and transitions. I like to think of Arrange View as "song mode".

Songs usually start in Session View and end up in Arrange View.

You need to learn both and how they interact with each other to get the most out of Ableton.

Ableton is a lot like learning to drive or ride a bike. It gets more natural eventually.

[Steve Glen]

6) you can route audio, for further processing, to audio tracks as a bus. Although y9u can d9 thr sme with Group Tracks or Sends, Audio tracks are unique because they can record output from the Master, post fx, by Resampling.

You will also note that midi tracks become audio tracks after the instrument part of the device chain. Midi in, audio out. If you dont put an instrument in, you get midi in, midi out.

7)nope, no problems here. Maybe you gotta turn off grid?


Next time start your own thread. Or several threads, itll be easier to answer.

[forestcaver]

That kind of frustration is absolutely normal with any new software or hardware ( anything new , even girlfriend)
Manual and tutorials are not enough, except for the very experienced individuals.

Never found a manual much good for girlfriends (maybe I'm not that experienced) or are you suggesting videos to ease frustration?

[NTstateOFmind]

thanks so much for everyone's input here, its starting to make sense to a certain degree

@Steve Glen - apologies about adding more questions to an existing thread, ill go ahead and create a new one with these same questions and try to get some more info.

btw- im diggin this forum. ive gotten a lot of questions already answered just by digging through the archives.

[jlgrimes]

Hi,

My first post here.


Me and Ableton don't seem to be getting on very well.
The main problem being I don't know how to start making tunes, and adding layers to build the song up.

I bought Ableton on the basis of playing around with the demo, and making some good sounds. However, now I want to start putting something together, i'm stumped.

The session and Arrangment View confuse me... do I ignore the session view if im making tunes? I record a clip of beats to the session view say the first 4 bars. Then I want to add say a bassline to the beats after the 4th bar, so I create a new bassline clip, record to the arrangement, but the bassline comes in at the start rather than after 4 bars. Also how come when I play a clip the arrangement starts playing (and the other clips)? etc etc

I know its supposed to be easy but I just haven't found actually putting songs together very easy at all.

Im frustrated because I have good ideas in my head.

I've read the manual and done the tutorials but there doesn't seem to be any info on actually creating a proper song from scratch. Creating a clip is easy, but how do I start putting it all together?

*goes back to read the manual for the 4th time*

When I started using Live, I was in a similar situation. I was previously using Sonar and Reason. I had a love/hate relationship with both sequencers. I used Sonar the most because of VSTs. While Sonar was great for most tasks, it lacked real-time quantize (at least back then), and Session View style sequencing. Session View style sequencing always intrigued me since I used to use an MPC2000 and Session View's real-time workflow of chaining Scenes seemed very similar to chaining MPC sequences in real-time. I immediately developed a love-hate relationship with Live.

I fell in love with the responsiveness of the audio engine (Sonar back in 2007 would pop and click if you attempted almost any editing of note/audio in realtime).

I also liked the Ableton piano roll. While it didn't have the powerful features as Sonar's feature by feature, it had IMO almost exactly the type of stuff I was looking for in a piano roll (Note muting, (Sonar did not have that then), Fold feature, (Sonar did not have that feature)), I also loved the grid in Ableton which was very user friendly and had a very well thought out key commands to easily/quickly access them.

Warping Audio was foreign to me but that wasn't my main reason for going Ableton but once I figured it out, I realized how easy Ableton made warping compared to other DAWs (at that time. I believe many other DAWs have now caught up now but I could be wrong).


My actual hate relationship was the Session View sequencing. In some aspects I liked its intentions and its workflow which almost reminds me of Passport Trax (the very first computer sequencing program I became comfortable with).

The things I didn't like/understand was its relationship to the Arrange-View, lack of automation and the 1 bar new clip defaults (I still don't like this to this day), and how confusing it was to manage clips especially if trying to record punch/fill ins.


The things I didn't like as much caused me to want to go back to Sonar and one day I did and when I got back in Sonar I couldn't even use Sonar anymore for making tracks. Sonar just didn't click with me anymore. I still used Sonar for audio recording and mixing for a while (until I went Reaper, then Studio One).

But basically I've now reached a point where I have owned and used most sequencers (with the exception of Cubase), and my top two sequencers for composing goes to Ableton and Reason and to be honest I don't use Reason that much anymore although I always feel like I can easily go back to it and be in business.

I eventually got a better understanding of Ableton's Session/Arrange relationship and Session View in general and eventually Ableton made more strides like Session View automation/Drum Racks which has kept me in Abletonland.