Create "Group" from track selection

[mercyplease]

I seriously hope this is not the first time group tracks have been requested if it is clearly I can see why I get pissed off around here. I must be reading stuff from absaloute beginners. I wondered why no one was screaming at the ommission of this essential feature in Live six.
Come on Ableton do something about this. Your on version six now and STILL havent addressed this issue. Fair enough versions 1 2 and 3 but I thought 4 would have had it, then I thought well they will definitely have it in version five THEN I thought fucking hell, they will definitely for sure absaloutely no questions have this in version six. THese are not fancy features they are essential and totally common features except in live.

YESTERDAY I have 17 individual channels taking audio from 4 impulse cells. What a fucking hassle soloing, mixing, wishing to hear only certain elements. YOu guys know this is shite or at least Heinke must know. My wrists are killing me after a heavy multi output no safe solo/no group channels session!!!!!!!!!!! Im usre theres a law in Europe against over use of the mouse caused by badly designed software.

[webslave]

You can group / mute and almost solo tracks. The solo doesnt differenciate between a grouped track and other tracks so you have to solo the group track AND the track/tracks you want to hear. You can also just switch the tracks on and off. All this is long winded but gets the result, It could be easier.

For those who want to know how to group, and this may have been covered. Make sure you can see the routing in the session view.

1) create a new audio track

2) set the input to none

3) rename the track to whatever you want, like 'drums' for example (not vital)

4) Set the output of the tracks you want to group to that track. So if you new track you've called 'Drums' you set the output of kick, snare, overhead left and overheard right etc to 'Drums'.

5) Set monitor to IN.

There you go - one fader to control them all and you can put FX in there as well. I often use this to mix stereo pairs into on track as well. In 6 you can set the routing to pre and post fx and fader - although not something that was on my wish list.

Stew Dean

[forge]

You can group / mute and almost solo tracks....

the issue is more about soloing and hiding really - yes you can already group tracks but it is infuriating when you want to solo that group

and likewise if you have a whole kit grouped to one track, that is alot of screen real estate and you can spen your whole time scrolling left to right and expanding/contracting tracks which is a pain in the rectum

[webslave]

This is exactly the functionality I've been searching for in my current project (my first real one with Live). For a while I thought I was just missing it, that it was somehow hidden but still there.

Being able to mix down drums, for instance, maintaining the separate tracks for each instrument while grouping them under one "drums" group track and collapsing them out of view--oh, it would be heaven and make life so very much easier.

You can do this, at least in 5 and 6. See my other post here where I explain where I did exactly this.

For a bit more detail I started with around 24 tracks and grouped them into 8 which I then controlled using my X-Station keyboards faders so I could ride the vocal and guitar parts.

You can't solo a group as it mutes all the channels feeding that group when you press solo (a real pain) - you just have to switch the channels on and off to solo - not so difficult when everything is going through only eight tracks.

I use it reduce the mount of channels with fx as well - so all vocal channels get their reverb at the group stage.

I will say that it could be made much much easier to group tracks and some kind of intelligent solo would be very useful.

Stew Dean

[musick]

Yeah, better handling of Group tracks (and multi-out VSTi's) and Folder Tracks would be a major improvement to Live....

[FrankH]

Yes, i like it.

[webslave]

You can group / mute and almost solo tracks....

the issue is more about soloing and hiding really - yes you can already group tracks but it is infuriating when you want to solo that group

and likewise if you have a whole kit grouped to one track, that is alot of screen real estate and you can spen your whole time scrolling left to right and expanding/contracting tracks which is a pain in the rectum

To solo you switch off the other groups. I just did a 24 track project for a full band mix. I set up eight groups at the left of the channels to control each of the main parts. Once I've got each instrument set up, like the drums balanced with it's self and the different vocal tracks working together I spent most of my time in the eight tracks on the left getting them to work with each other, occasionaly popping back to the drums to when needed.

Top tip is to get a scroll wheel mouse and press control (forgot what it is on my mac) and you can quickly move through the tracks - I just bought a Logitech VX laptop mouse - by far the best mouse I've used and the ability to spin the scroll whell to wizz through stuff is one of the things I can't live without after a days use.

This is all realated to the session view - which is where I mix anyway. But if you mean the arrange view then that vew is currently in need of an overhaul, it needs a descent zoom for a start - it's a pain having to drag things around and not be able to zoom up quickly on a track when you need to tweak the beginning. The whole interface feels like it's set up for folks with one mouse button and no scroll wheel.

Stew Dean

[forge]

the only workaround I'm vaguely happy with is mapping a key as now in live 6 you can map lots of solos to just one key, but it would be so much better to not have to

[forge]

I'm finding lately some kind of group/hide track capability is something I'm coming up against a hell of a lot

maybe it's just the kind of projects I've been doing, but I'm finding screenspace is a real issue

[forge]

just posted this fro a slightly different take:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

[forge]

let's creat a little love triangle on these threads:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

[dr.wackler]

You can group / mute and almost solo tracks. [...]

Nice, I guess about everyone here is aware of that.
Now how do you trigger all clips of a Group at once, as if they were a single clip? (...and of course without spending hours assigning Keys or MIDI controllers to the single clips of a group... and without separating grouped clips into multiple scenes...)

[snowtires]

pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase add this. i was at a buddy's house and he was mixing something in nuendo and he had all of the drum tracks in a group, all of the guitar tracks in a group, all of the synths in a group, all of the vocals in a group, etc. it makes mixing so much easier.

[bommel lakanski]

I need it, too. It' a basic task

[mercyplease]

I was going to post a wish again last night for at the very least the ability to solo grouped tracks - so you can route a number of tracks to one trck then solo the bussed one and hear all of them

I really want to be able to bus tracks but this one thing makes it practically unusable

I totally fucking agree. With the new racks function iits now even more nescessary. I tell you forge apart from you and maybe one or two others I dont see any of the heavy post hitters around here asking for such a basic feature. I mean its so needed I find it hard to believe there was no attempt made to put this in live 6.

How difficult is it for Ableton to understand that when yuo have two impulses running with sixteen seperate drums out put to seperate tracks the operator needs to solo individual instruments without hunting down the master channe, and add thi sto grouped audio tracks and other soft synths and it becomes a mixer you dont want to use
This is 101 basic engineering. Such a shame shame shame were going to have to wait another year for this.
I would still like to know why this request is not important to many of the regulars.
Its in there now. The return tracks can do it so why didnt they creaet a new type of track called groups tracks. I hope this has nothing to do with ableton just being different for the sake of it.