Multiple arrangements in a single set

[lowEstring]

When creating a song the arrangement view is an essential tool for creating the structure of a song. At different points during the creative process I often find myself using the arrangement view to audition alternate song structures or to zero in on one section for the purpose of recording many iterations of an idea. To do this currently, I essentially have to undo work only to have to redo it later. To get around this I currently store different arrangements as session scenes, so I can rebuild them in arrangement view at a later time if I need to. To me the arrangement view is like a sketch pad to sketch out different ideas, but in Ableton it's like getting only one sheet of paper in the pad. So I'm sketching an idea, erasing it, trying something new, redrawing the first one, erasing it again to try something else etc. Tedious! What I think would be helpful is the ability to create multiple arrangements for a single song. Perhaps a tabbed interface where each separate arrangement is stored under a separate tab in Arrangement view ( similar to tabs in a web browser, or a spreadsheet program).

[jonljacobi]

Why don't you just move further down the timeline?

[tjspurge]

+1000

Tabs for different arrangement variations

[monophonic101]

This would be a fantastic addition in the arrangement view. Moving down the timeline and using labels to jump to different ideas/arrangements is not really idea and can easily be forgotten.

Having tabs/layers as mentioned will easily allow for different versions of a song to be tried out without the arrangment view becoming messy

[Angstrom]

It's something I've been advocating for nearly 20 years. !!

Initially Live became famous for its nonlinear session view. The arrangement timeline needs some of that juice. There are many video editing programs which use timelines and allow segments of arrangement to be encapsulated. I proposed that these should be possible in Live and called "MetaClips". Like an expansion of a scene, but also atomic in that a meta clip on a track could contain a sequence of clips (pulled from the timeline)

A long time ago I actually tried to convince Gerhard of this idea. Unfortunately he said that many users were already confused by the correlation, or lack of it, between Session Clips and Arrangement Clips and so a further level of abstraction would probably be a bridge too far . He felt that users would get lost in the relationship between session clips, arrangement clips, metaclips, etc. etc.

I believe that since that time Bitwig have introduced MetaClips, I've not had time to check that app out though. I probably should.

Here's me talking about MetaClips in 2005. Holy shit. And I thought I was old and knackered then!
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=27826