I’m new to Ableton and finding it increasingly frustrating to navigate through the song timeline, particularly when editing.
Firstly, I’m in the habit of pressing Spacebar to play, but often I’ll find Ableton will start playing from the start – e.g 1.1.1.1 rather than from the point I’ve positioned the cursor at. I then lose the place I trying to listen to and have to find it again.
On the flip side, when I do want to start playback from the beginning, often Ableton will start playing from other locations (ironic!), and the only way I can get it to go back to the start is by double clicking the stop button. I prefer to use transport controls using keyboard, so really don’t want to have to click button for this.
Also I find when editing a MIDI track for example, if I position the cursor in the edit window to play from, and press space, the track starts from the last location in the top window, rather than the position of the cursor in the bottom window (where I’m editing notes). This drives me nuts!
I have started using the locators which is OK for a few edits but when going through lots of sections, it becomes a nightmare, as I end up with 15+ locators, and have to skip through each one to play the last one I was working on – every time, and deleting them is not particularly quick and easy. Also the numbering never resets, so If I deleted 18 locators, and create a new one, that becomes 19, rather than 1.
Finally moving and zooming is quite a chore – I know you can position the mouse in the bar area and drag up/down/left/right, but I don’t want to have to move the cursor to this small area every time I want to move or zoom. I have found ctrl+mouse wheel works quite well, but then moving left and right requires ctrl+alt+drag which is a bit of a handful.
Are there more intuitive and easier ways to navigate around Ableton, as I love the power of it, but the basics are somewhat difficult to get to grips with.