Why are there no 'MIDI' LFOs in Live ?!?

[rasputin]

First: I am the King of Live fanboys. Since v3 I use it for 90% of my production work. It's been the most productive, fastest, most intuitive, most enjoyable tool in my studio for years.

I also agree that it's wonderful when Robert H comes to the forum and explains in a straightforward and factual way why certain things are the way they are -- and maybe are likely to stay that way. It might also be good to reflect on a deeper meaning of his comments about the impossibility of implementing (e.g.) MIDI LFOs. Live's internal (music non stop!) and UI designs are completely brilliant but they aren't infinitely flexible.

Now Live is in it's 7th year, and a huge number of new features and enhancements have been added. In fact it's as if a child's wagon has been converted into a luxury jet liner by the incremental addition of a number of features; but there must be an engine or foundation design at its core that has to remain somewhat consistent for everything which has been built on top of it to keep working.

There must come a point at which a decision will have to be made by the engineers whether more features can be loaded on top of this foundation, or the product will have to be stabiliized in favor of a completely new design.

This is a wild ass guess but it's something to keep in mind.

Frankly, if Live froze at its current version, I would be a bit sad, but I would probably continue using it until something better came along. And I have a hard time imagining what that might be. Anyway, I have too many Live sets rolling around on hard drives to be able to abandon it in any case.

[forge]

...this is a long story. I try to make it short.

Wow thanks Robert - you know if you had posted this a while ago I'd probably have half the post count! surely that's incentive enough!

Actually we have even discussed this in person more than once and I still didn't grasp it as well as with this post...

It raises questions like: Is there automation
in the clip or in the arrangement or both? If so, which one wins if you move/delete
things?

this bit I still dont get - at the moment we have the back to arrange button for exactly this reason - if you trigger a clip in session then the light comes on and arrange is bypassed - so surely it would be the same?

I guess the reason might be because you would no longer have the choice of using automation in arrange view and the clip view being relative to it, but would a button in the clip envelope section 'relative/absolute' solve this? I don't think I would really want the automation in arrange if I could do it in session in most cases

of course another addition here that would dramatically help this situation would be to have BTA buttons on every track so that you could choose which tracks worked in which way

How to visualize multiple modulations?

well as we now have multi-lane automation, couldn't we just press 'absolute' on the clip in the envelope view and have them the same thing, ie edit it in arrange using the multi-lane?

However, it might turn out that the changes would be so drastic that it would be
impossible to open older documents in that new version and things like that.
Things we simply cannot do anymore, too many users rely on us.*

again, if there was a relative/absolute button couldn't the default set of all sets be to have relative engaged so that when you load up an old set it is exactly the same until you press the absolute button? Like the high-quality modes of auto-filter etc?

Of course, speculation on my part, I'm sure it sounds a lot simpler than it is

*as a side note, this happens to a lot of companies: Mac OS 9 had to die because
there was no way to maintain and improve it anymore. Protools has this huge
legacy of the TDM hardware, that makes it hard to re-write the audio engine
without making customers who payed a gozillion for their old systems totally
mad...

tricky situation for sure, and one I'm sure we've all been burned by at some point - plenty of people experiencing it with VIsta currently

thanks again for the post

[12ax7heaven]

So out of curiosity how does Live deal with Midi Lfo's currently? I have twice - with some difficulty - used external Midi Lfo's to control parameters inside Live. The result was great but the procedure was a pain in the rump.

[Johnisfaster]

so how bout this, in clip view for each clip env parameter you select there could be a button that lets you select between clip env/lfo. so if you select lfo it replaces the env with an lfo which in theory wouldn't be any different than if you had drawn a curve in the clip env but the lfo would have rate and depth of course which would be no different than automatically redrawing the clip env. I mean, for all I care you could actually have it redraw the clip env so when you change the rate you see the clip env redraw accordingly.

I can't see why that would need an intense reworking from the ground up. unless you actually wanted to have clip env still active while using lfo which would present a problem I could see.

[djod]

...this is a long story. I try to make it short.

*as a side note, this happens to a lot of companies: Mac OS 9 had to die because
there was no way to maintain and improve it anymore. Protools has this huge
legacy of the TDM hardware, that makes it hard to re-write the audio engine
without making customers who payed a gozillion for their old systems totally
mad...

Some nice concept have surfaced already. My view would be that it would be a midi plugin ( lfo / stepseq / loopable multisection envelopes, ... with smoothing, freetime or synced and retriggerable) so you could drop and copy it anywhere. There would be a routing section where you can select what tracks/plugins/parameters you would like to control (like the sidechain section) or more in Macro style with the top window to edit the controles. All lfo/stepseq,.. parameters should be modulatable by another lfo/stepseq, e.q modulation source (imagine controling the speed of the seq, while it still quantizes to the beat, wohoo...)

As far as the quoted rewrite problem goes, wouldn't it be possible to design it so that you could automatically convert old sets to the new engine. And the Idea of Forge sounds conceptually logical. I can even Imagine the Absolute to relative button to have a range and it to be automatable. By doing so you could fade between absolute and relative mix. This could potentialy solve gitches in the automation. Or maybe an Auto fade option of some sort (Long fade/sort fade).

If you think of it why not put the input of the plugin after the point where the arrange and clip automation mix. Old set would have the same structure to 'talk' too. After that structure a new insert would be added for the midi plugin automation. If the plugin would be in relative mode it add or substracts, if its in absolute mode, it would override.

I'm really digging this Absolute / relative mode option idea. This would give so much freedom. To beginners the idea of Ablosute/Relative is maybe mindbending at first, but they have to understand it eventualy when they go from session to arrange, so why not make this concept more intergral to the hole Live workflow and use its benefits. Now its more behind the scenes and obscured, when I first started automating in arrange, after starting out in session with clip envelopes, I was really puzlled why it did not behave as expected, after understanding the absolute/ relative concept I understood what it could be used for. So to overcome this "unintuitive" annoyance I first had to understand it.
Now it seams not having the relative/absolute option is holding the development and innovation of live back, and maybe for the wrong reasons...

I think there is some major room for innovation here and that is what made ableton what it is today, so keep at it

Djod

[3dot...]

I suggest 'modulation tracks'...

each track can have number of destinations (params)...
and can be composed of different modulation devices...
the the effect of the modulation is relative to clip envelopes ...
if there are no clip envelopes however...for that param...
then it acts as a clip envelope...which moves relative to the 'arrange' automation...
...anyways... hope this makes it in ...someday...

[forge]

How to visualize multiple modulations?

well as we now have multi-lane automation, couldn't we just press 'absolute' on the clip in the envelope view and have them the same thing, ie edit it in arrange using the multi-lane?

thinking about this further...

obviously the disadvantage with this suggestion is it requires the clip to be also in arrange view, but I don't think that is a big deal - because if it was absolute then you could just drag a clip into arrange, expand the lanes and edit them, then move the clip back into session

another common feature request that could be solved at the same time here could be linked/alias clips - maybe you could hold ALT while dragging to arrange and the two would be linked so that you don't need to drag it back, you just keep a copy somewhere in arrange in case you want the multi-lanes, add a right click option 'edit in multi-lanes in arrange', but aside from that it could be visualised exactly as it is now - just the red dots in the drop down menus in the clip envelope section, they are just absolute instead

but another thing you would have to sacrifice is the 'unlinked' option in clip envelopes - basically automation would now become limited to the length of the clip - but if you for example deleted a break point in arrange view so that it would just carry on at the same value until the next breakpoint as you do now, then any clips that are in the path of that automation would have to take on those values

so from this perspective it makes sense that the clips would be linked because now whenever automation is changed in the arrange view, any automation in the clip view is also automatically changed

when I think through it from this point of view it seems like the only thing that is actually going on here is the interface is interacting with the automation in a different way, which makes me wonder why this would require an engine rewrite

for example, if in absolute mode clip envelopes and arrange automation become exactly the same thing, then surely the only thing that is occuring is you are controlling the same automation from the clip view instead of the arrange lanes

isn't that just a GUI thing, and if so wouldn't it be simple?

[8O]

Cool, thanks for taking the time to explain, Robert - interesting reading.

[Jekblad]

this is great stuff!

I think my vote would be to suffer the growing pains now and do a re-write. I think most users would be down with a little brow-furrowing with older sets in exchange for awesome new possibilities.

as far as money, it should cost more. If people don't want it, they can sit with their current version of Live until they see the light.

I feel that the Live audience is one who needs a big playground... More like "bigger" playground cuz we'll start griping about something else right after.

[Soma]

Fuck that sucks but I know how that goes from a SDLC standpoint.

[forge]

Fuck that sucks but I know how that goes from a SDLC standpoint.

so maybe now is the time for everybody to put their brains into it

not saying that we could hope to solve it without knowing the details of why it is hard to implement or being programmers, but maybe the discussion could produce the odd thought that could snowball....ya never know!

[Jekblad]

yeah i'm in for that.

there's got to be options no one's thought of yet...

[b0unce]

god damn it.

as ethios said, make us a lfo midi device for the time being.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

[p0unce]

god damn it.

as ethios said, make us a lfo midi device for the time being.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

[nebulae]

This sounds all very exciting, and would improve Live dramatically. However, it would be the one single most complex re-design of the software since version 1.0.

If you goddamn socialists didn't take August off to party in Ibiza every year or take your 3-day weekends, or your 6-hour workdays, or your 8-weeks of vacation, or basically stop doing all things un-American, I suspect this would be a 2 week effort!