Very inefficient user interface

[EricBuist]

Hi,

I am trying to use Ableton's Live since a couple of months, without real success. Most important problem is inefficiency. Everything is so small I have trouble seeing the screen and trying to magnify just makes some part of the screen inaccessible, no way to scroll through. I tried using the Windows magnification tool (the Windows-+ key), that helped a bit, but now the mouse pointer goes out of the magnified window all the times and does not come back in unless I move the mouse tens of times. In general the mouse pointer is regularly going away and I have to move the mouse ten times to have the pointer reset at top left of the screen when I can find it. If everything was accessible from the keyboard, it would be a lot better, but the keyboard just allows to start/stop the playback and do some other rudimentary operation. It doesn't allow to start/stop clips, change the armed track, etc.

MIDI editing is now failing, preventing the entry of any note, and MIDI output just doesn't work while it did last week. There is probably yet another setting that changed without me noticing it and I can't find what. Or this is a new Windows 10 issue.

Is there something such as s simplified mode that would put less stuff with bigger fonts on the screen and configure defaults that would work better? Currently everything can change anytime, leading to a need for constant troubleshooting. Is it because Ableton released the Push that the software program is now unusable without it?

Absence of comprehensive tutorials for Live ALONE (not involving the Push) is also a shame. All I can find are specialized videos showing how to build a particular type of sound, but nothing that would allow to come up with an efficient workflow.

Thanks for any idea.

[login]

Well glasses or contacts help a lot with reading well books or screens. I can't use computers well enough without my contacts that are better than my glasses by a lot.

As for tutorials, there are tons of tutorials for live without push, on ableton site, on youtube and on sites as Groove3 or Askaudio, there are general ones and genre specific ones.

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/learn-live/

https://www.coursera.org/learn/ableton-live

https://www.groove3.com/ableton-live-tutorials

[jlgrimes]

Hi,

I am trying to use Ableton's Live since a couple of months, without real success. Most important problem is inefficiency. Everything is so small I have trouble seeing the screen and trying to magnify just makes some part of the screen inaccessible, no way to scroll through. I tried using the Windows magnification tool (the Windows-+ key), that helped a bit, but now the mouse pointer goes out of the magnified window all the times and does not come back in unless I move the mouse tens of times. In general the mouse pointer is regularly going away and I have to move the mouse ten times to have the pointer reset at top left of the screen when I can find it. If everything was accessible from the keyboard, it would be a lot better, but the keyboard just allows to start/stop the playback and do some other rudimentary operation. It doesn't allow to start/stop clips, change the armed track, etc.

MIDI editing is now failing, preventing the entry of any note, and MIDI output just doesn't work while it did last week. There is probably yet another setting that changed without me noticing it and I can't find what. Or this is a new Windows 10 issue.

Is there something such as s simplified mode that would put less stuff with bigger fonts on the screen and configure defaults that would work better? Currently everything can change anytime, leading to a need for constant troubleshooting. Is it because Ableton released the Push that the software program is now unusable without it?

Absence of comprehensive tutorials for Live ALONE (not involving the Push) is also a shame. All I can find are specialized videos showing how to build a particular type of sound, but nothing that would allow to come up with an efficient workflow.

Thanks for any idea.

What OS are you running?

Are you using a Retina display or 4K type monitor. Ableton does look tiny on a default Retina display. I had to decrease the resolution to get a better view of the GUI on my mac.


What are your main goals? Ableton starting off takes some patience. It works a bit different than other DAWS.

If you are new I suggest creating a template to help speed a few things up.

[yur2die4]

Instead of Windows zoom, try the zoom in Ableton Live's preferences.

Also, since quite a long time ago, I've deliberately made my mouse pointer slightly large in order to always be able to find it.

Be careful with zooming in Windows. I've seen where people have had trouble using Live's controls when that feature is being used.

[Khazul]

What ^^^ said for zoom - it actually works ok on my 2560x1440 monitor, however even with my shitty half man-made eyes I prefer to work on un-zoomed just for the extra space and being able to see all of a large session. I can live with some things not being easy to see - the knobs and buttons however are OK - its just text size/contrast isn't ideal for me regardless of theme used.

Also get to know the keyboard shortcuts - https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/live- ... shortcuts/.

Knowing your way around the shortcuts can make a lot of live very quick and direct to use.

If you have ever seen Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) using it - he only uses his pc keyboard to drive with mouse just for focussing, selecting, drawing notes etc. No fancy controllers / midi keyboards etc and he does stuff in Live as fast as anyone Ive seen using almost any DAW even with high end console controllers.

I don't know what your background production experience is, however it is worth noting that for someone newish to a specific full DAW it can take a very long time to gel with it and get efficient with it (6 months) - thats even the case when you have a very long background in commercial audio production never mind if you might be learning all the technology and jargon at the same time.

Having used cubase and logic a lot, I actually quite the simplicity of abletons UI even if i may be rather spartan to look at compared to the latest alternatives. Think of it as them having adopted the modern metro UI style a decade before anyone else

[login]

A good thing to do is to use keyboard shorcuts so you can open/close Live brower and detail view easily when you need it.

[EricBuist]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice. I am using Windows 10 on a 1080p monitor (not Retina, not 4K, I will stay away from 4K until everything is high DPI aware). Being visually impaired causes me a lot of issues with Live. As I wrote, I tried the Live's zoom, it worked relatively well at start, but it makes several features inaccessible: no way to create new rows in the session view after I have 2-3 rows already, no way to access the I/O settings of the tracks unless I hide the mixer setting (with the mouse, no keyboard shortcut I could find, so super inefficient). I have an audio interface with multiple inputs, so when I add a new track I need to alter audio settings to assign it the correct input corresponding to my synthesizer or groove box. This is with 150% zoom. With 200%, things become even worse.
I would prefer to use Live's zoom, knowing that external zooming solutions can cause all sorts of issues.

I may have hardware issues with my mice. I cannot believe I don't see enough to use a computer, loosing the pointer pretty much all the times. I am starting to observe that the pointer jumps from one place to another, a little bit like when I tried a MacBook Pro a while ago. I tried a couple of mice and then ended up misbehaving after a while, so probably a USB issue that will force me to switch motherboard, very very bad.

I am pretty newbie in music production and trying to create electronic music using a synthesizer, groove box and Live as a sequencer.

I'll check the keyboard shortcuts, pretty sure it can help. But last time, I didn't find anything to start/stop clips, solo/mute tracks and start scenes. Maybe I'll have to manually assign a key to each clip, track, scene, but I'm worried this would stick per project, forcing me to redo all this each time I start something else.

[yur2die4]

You can also map keys. I have a few for myself that make a lot of sense (especially to me anyway).

An example is the \ is set to 'launch highlighted row (and the squared brackets are to move up and down scenes).

And ! is for metronome.

[Stromkraft]

I'll check the keyboard shortcuts, pretty sure it can help. But last time, I didn't find anything to start/stop clips, solo/mute tracks and start scenes. Maybe I'll have to manually assign a key to each clip, track, scene, but I'm worried this would stick per project, forcing me to redo all this each time I start something else.

33. Live Keyboard Shortcuts (Live 9 manual)

Return activates a clip slot. If it's a clip it will start. If it's a Stop Button it does its thing. I actually didn't know this (I use Push or the mouse). It took me a few minutes playing around with a clip and my keyboard.

Get a second hand Push 1 or APC for Clip control. It's like something else.

[102455]

I am using Windows 10 on a 1080p monitor

What size is the monitor? By the sound of it, too small to give you a decent size Live GUI.

I've recently gone from a 23" monitor to a 32". Same resolution, which means things on screen are bigger.

[kitekrazy]

Instead of Windows zoom, try the zoom in Ableton Live's preferences.

Also, since quite a long time ago, I've deliberately made my mouse pointer slightly large in order to always be able to find it.

Be careful with zooming in Windows. I've seen where people have had trouble using Live's controls when that feature is being used.

Unless I'm missing something it doesn't go past 100%.

[jlgrimes]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice. I am using Windows 10 on a 1080p monitor (not Retina, not 4K, I will stay away from 4K until everything is high DPI aware). Being visually impaired causes me a lot of issues with Live. As I wrote, I tried the Live's zoom, it worked relatively well at start, but it makes several features inaccessible: no way to create new rows in the session view after I have 2-3 rows already, no way to access the I/O settings of the tracks unless I hide the mixer setting (with the mouse, no keyboard shortcut I could find, so super inefficient). I have an audio interface with multiple inputs, so when I add a new track I need to alter audio settings to assign it the correct input corresponding to my synthesizer or groove box. This is with 150% zoom. With 200%, things become even worse.
I would prefer to use Live's zoom, knowing that external zooming solutions can cause all sorts of issues.

I may have hardware issues with my mice. I cannot believe I don't see enough to use a computer, loosing the pointer pretty much all the times. I am starting to observe that the pointer jumps from one place to another, a little bit like when I tried a MacBook Pro a while ago. I tried a couple of mice and then ended up misbehaving after a while, so probably a USB issue that will force me to switch motherboard, very very bad.

I am pretty newbie in music production and trying to create electronic music using a synthesizer, groove box and Live as a sequencer.

I'll check the keyboard shortcuts, pretty sure it can help. But last time, I didn't find anything to start/stop clips, solo/mute tracks and start scenes. Maybe I'll have to manually assign a key to each clip, track, scene, but I'm worried this would stick per project, forcing me to redo all this each time I start something else.

If you are starting off, my first two recommended key bindings is binding the Session Record button (I map mine to "o".). This keeps from having to mouse around to record an idea in Session View.

My second recommended binding is mapping the metronome. I map mine to "c".

I would do that and save as template as a minimum. Live in its default state probably is inefficient until you start mapping some of your commonly used buttons to keep from having to mouse around.

[EricBuist]

That means I will have to tweak keyboard shortcuts, save a dummy project and then, each time I start something, think about opening the dummy project and not forget to SAVE AS a new name. Ok, that's better than redefining the shortcuts every time from scratch but would be better if these settings were global. Probably I will end up searching for another DAW, this is really too hairy, but I am reluctant since I already paid for this one.

[yur2die4]

You can save a default set in preferences.

Basically, open a fresh set, don't touch anything you don't want changed and do the key mappings.

I don't agree with the mappings suggested by the previous poster because they interfere with some of Ableton's already available default mappings. Plus, since mappings are case-dependent it is not always clear if you are about to use it or not.