Expand/close drum with keys

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WillBarnett
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 9:29 am

Expand/close drum with keys

Post by WillBarnett » Sat Jul 05, 2025 12:40 pm

Hi all,

Something that Ive tried to find for ages is a shortcut key to expand drum racks so you can edit and mix the individual drum samples.

With no key, you have to use the god awful scroller over pad colours. Personally I find this updated functionality in Ableton live extremely difficult to see and use and you only see the scroll position by slightly darker colours. I also dont really want to have to use my mouse to get along the samples in a drum rack.

Anyone solved this or know a keyboard or Push shortcut to expand and collapse a drum rack?

Thanks,

Will

Rivanni
Posts: 905
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Expand/close drum with keys

Post by Rivanni » Sun Jul 06, 2025 12:26 am

Ive tried to find for ages is a shortcut key to expand drum racks [...] With no key, you have to use the god awful scroller over pad colours.
I assume by scroller you mean the horizontal scroll bar in session view.
How do you expand a drum rack using the scroll bar?


You can set the scroll bar to be always visible in Live's settings. This way, you have a scroll bar below the track indicators.

WillBarnett
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 9:29 am

Re: Expand/close drum with keys

Post by WillBarnett » Sat Aug 30, 2025 7:30 pm

Hi,

I meant that when you expand the drum rack (using the open/close control, when its expanded, you see that new thin scroller which I find both hard to see and hard to use.

I tend to use quite sample rich drum racks with a 909, 707,606 and other samples I use a lot in a single kit. That means Im editing samples that need lots of scrolling. If Im using Push (2) theres no single key that Im aware of that will collapse the drum rack, so I can quickly move to the next channel.

It would be great if there was a simple shortcut key or push button to open/close the entire drum rack regardless of which sample inside the drum rack is currently open.

Ableton is generally brilliant for workflow, but if I find this lack of functionality pretty poor.

Maybe its just me but keen to hear how other users use the drum rack.

pottering
Posts: 1956
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:41 am

Re: Expand/close drum with keys

Post by pottering » Sun Aug 31, 2025 6:08 pm

To expand a Drum Rack in Push 2 you just click a second time the Track that holds a Drum Rack.

Drum Racks have an Auto Select option in the bottom left, it will auto select and show the Chain of the last played pad (even with Chain List hidden, as long as you have Show Devices enabled).

You can scroll through Chains in the Chain List with mouse scroll, not need to use the scroll bar.

You can use the Arrow, PgUp/PgDn and Home/End keys in Chain List and Session View (and the pads too, after you click a pad), shift select works in Chain List and Session View.

When you expand a Drum Rack in Session View you basically get a much bigger vertical version of the Chain List.
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