Automatically Switching Time Signatures in Session View

[Cam123]

Up until now, when my band perform live we have been using Ableton in Arrangement view - with all tempo and time signature changes for the set pre mapped out using automation and locators / markers. We're looking at adding a launchpad to our rig and switching over to Session View to get a little bit more control over our set and have the option to improvise a bit more instead of being locked into pre determined arrangements.

We've been able to set up a new live set which does pretty much everything we need where we essentially start a new song by launching a scene which determines the tempo and time signature for each song as well as launching a click track and backing tracks which we then play live instruments over the top of. The only issue we have with this though is that there are sections in a couple of our songs that have regular time signature changes throughout (e.g. a repeated section of one bar of 9/4, one bar of 6/4 then 4 bars of 4/4 ) which we are unsure on how to make work in session view. This was no issue in arrangement view as it was easy enough to just add markers throughout the set which would automatically change the time signature when required - however it seems that the only way to change the time signature in session view is to launch a whole new scene. This would be fine if there was only one or two changes per song, but considering in some songs the changes need to be made every bar this would be physically impossible for us to do. We are also using a couple of instances of the 'Looper' effect which are all quantized to either 2 or 4 bars, so it's important that we're able to get ableton to keep up with the time signature changes so our loops don't go all whack.

We're also open to the idea of just keeping some of the more difficult songs in arrangement view with all of the time signature changes pre mapped out as they are already. However when we've tried this, anytime a new scene in session view is launched which changes the time signature, all of the pre mapped time signatures in arrangement view are effectively deleted until 'Re-Anable Automation' has been selected - so we're not sure how / if it's possible to have both views coexist in this way without messing up each other.

Basically thought we'd just open it up to you guys and see if anyone had any suggestions on what the best way to go about things is??

Cheers!

[sounddevisor]

Have you looked into ClyphX? I'm just going off the top of my head as I don't have Ableton running in front of me right now, but I'm pretty sure ClyphX would give you the ability to set up a Session-view clip which would change your time sig and/or tempo. Combine that with Follow Actions, and I'm thinking you can probably do what you are after.

If you're not familiar with ClyphX, do a search on the forum - it's a super-powerful tool and there are a lot of posts on it here.

[chapelier fou]

I've made a m4l patch for my live shows. Amongst many other things, it allows you to change the time signatures with simple MIDI notes in a clip, so you can automate it in the same scene of the session.
I can share of course.

[InLight-Tone]

Also check out this device from Isotonik Studios:
http://isotonikstudios.com/isotonik/mod ... es/follow/

[Cam123]

Thanks for the suggestions guys - the ClyphX and Isotonik stuff looks really useful and looks like one of them should get us to where we want to be.

chapelier, your patch sounds like it would probably be the most ideal situation however I'm only running the standard version of live 9 without max which I would assume means that I'm unable to use any max devices / patches with this current setup.

I think we'll just have a play around with the available options to see which one works out the best and I'll get back to you guys if there's any issues.

[Cam123]

Slightly unrelated to the original question...
I've currently MIDI mapped the 16 pads on my launchkey mini to certain scenes so that I can start each song in the set by pressing it's corresponding pad / scene. Below each of these main 'song start' scenes are a couple of rows of audio samples to be triggered by the launchpad for that particular song. What I would like to do is have each pad on the launchkey also select / highlight each scene (at the same time as launching it) so that when I start a different song, the launchpad page will automatically scroll down to that scene and the subsequent rows of samples for that song.

At the moment I'm able to launch a scene no worries using the launchkey pads, but the first scene in the set always stays highlighted and I have to manually scroll through scenes on the launchpad to get where I want to be.

I'm sure I had this working fine the other day when I posted this topic, but now the pads only seem to be launching each scene and not actually selecting them.

[siliconarc]

prefs > select on launch / select next scene on launch
?

[Cam123]

ahhh yep, too easy - thank you very much!