Layer clips in parallel on the same track in arrangement

[TheSleeve]

Layering (or overlapping) multiple clips on the same track in the Arrangement view

In most of the DAWs I have used over the years (Cakewalk Sonar, Cubase, Reaper), it's possible to have multiple clips in parallel (i.e. overlapping and playing back simultaneously) on the same track. This is great for comping tracks together from multiple takes, or recording drum parts in pieces and then stitching them together, and a number of other useful tasks in the tracking and production workflow.

In Ableton Live, however, that's not possible.

I understand the reasoning behind this, of course. In Session view, it's obviously helpful to limit each track to playing one clip at any given time. That's reasonable enough.

However, in Arrangement view, there's really no reason for this limitation. It seems artificial. I would like to be able to layer several clips to play simultaneously on the same track, just like in most other DAWs. Without this feature, I am forced to revert to other DAWs during the editing process in order to get the results I want.

As an example, check out this article on SoundOnSoung about using multiple overlapping clips in the same track in Reaper. You can see in the first image that there are 4 overlapping clips on the same gray-colored track. On playback, all 4 clips will play simultaneously and be output from the same channel. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug12/a ... h-0812.htm
Unfortunately, you would need to create four separate tracks in Ableton Live to achieve this same thing.
(Of course, maybe this feature exists and I just don't know about it... Let me know if that's the case!)

You can also see section 3.23 Overlapping Items in the Reaper User Guide for more details: http://dl.reaper.fm/userguide/ReaperUserGuide457C.pdf

I hope this feature will be considered for future versions!

Thanks,
Brett "TheSleeve" Gildersleeve

[jbaylies]

7 years later... this is still an oft requested feature.

workarounds include track groups, and legato mode.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/launc ... egato-mode

[jonljacobi]

The entire editing workflow is based on non-overlapping clips. I don’t see this changing, nor do I, or I suspect, a lot of users want it to.