Arrangement View needs lots of work.

[luddy]

I would love to able to select multiple midi clips and see them all in one view so I can write counterpoint melodies more effectively, see the bass lines and chords and everything together. The different midi clips notes could just be colour coded so you know which part you are working on.

Please do this, would make film scoring a lot easier as well.

+1.

-Luddy

[bicarbone]

OH, and as I've posted before, whenever I double-click to enter a new automation node, it nearly always changes the current value of the parameter slightly, rather than just making a node at the current value, due to tiny movements happening in the mouse at the time of the double-slick. so fucking annoying.
-M

My workaround: select the pencil tool, roughly draw where you want to insert your node, switch back to cursor, create another node in the middle of the gap you've just drawn, fine edit to taste, erase unwanted residual nodes on either side by selecting them and pressing delete. Thus your parameter value integrity is preserved throughout the track. A bit of a pain I know, but works for me.

Hope this helps. I have to agree with pretty much everything you said, though!

[milosh]

The feature that I miss a lot in arrangement view is clip grouping. Let's say I multi-tracked 10 track's acoustic drums.
When i want to edit them (warp, cut, paste etc.) I have to do a lot of mouse scrolling just to select them...
I often make mistakes by not selecting all the clips I want to warp edit...
If I could group the clips I would edit just one of them and the rest would follow.

cheers

[Der_Makrophag]

I'm such an Ableton fan boy that I rarely have days like today where I'm just fed up and have to, yep, rant about it on the forum. But TODAY is that kind of day.

Just did a four hour session working on the score to a short film. I'm using Live because for just about any type of project, Live is where I feel most comfortable. Except......doing scoring work is revealing oh so well the numerous problems I have with the Arrangement View.

1. why can't you select clips? and before you say that you can -- No, you can't. You can select time, and thereby clips or parts of clips inside that time range, but not clips. There is no multi-clip selection (like in every single other DAW) where you hold command or shift and click all the clips you want to select, then perform some action or move them or whatever. All you can do is select clips that exist within the same region of time. Which sucks, because what if I want to move two clips that play at the same time while also moving a different clip that plays somewhere before or after those two, meanwhile not moving some other clips that fall within the same region--- NOT possible. This was ranted about here relatively recently. It really blows, especially when you're doing detailed arrangement editing (like in film work) and need to change the timing very subtly for multiple clips but not for others....

2. you can't select parts of clips if that channel is collapsed. the visible rectangle can't be partially selected unless you open up the channel view and make a selection in the space below. often a time-waster, opening and closing channel views when you just want to select something.

3. why don't clips have boxes around them? why only the narrow rectangle at the top? a nearly complete song looks like as swimming mess of midi notes and audio files because nothing has a delineated border except all these little colored rectangles OVER the actual material.

To this point i totally agree!

4. Automation becomes a nightmare, because when you automate parameters their "natural" value becomes meaningless. This has resulted in the famous "utility" plugin workaround for automating a tracks' volume, so the actual volume slider can remain static while still having automation occur. There are better ways. Also, I prefer Reason's method of keeping automation inside it's own clips, rather than live's method of having one automation line that runs through the entire song, I'm constantly having to scroll through entire songs to make sure the proper value hasn't accidentally been changed due to changing one node elsewhere in the track. this happens all the time. if we could break automation for a track into chunks, like reason's clips, this wouldn't be an issue. OH, and as I've posted before, whenever I double-click to enter a new automation node, it nearly always changes the current value of the parameter slightly, rather than just making a node at the current value, due to tiny movements happening in the mouse at the time of the double-slick. so fucking annoying.

I also agree on this, but please NO Reason-like solution (see below)

5. it's ugly. it just is. nasty to look at. don't get me wrong, i really like Live's GUI overall, for session view, browser, clip envelopes, devices and knobs, the simple approach works wonders for everything EXCEPT arrangement. Look at reason or cubase's arrangement sequencers. everything is so clear and obviously defined. cutting, pasting, moving objects, all feels fluid and intuitive. live's arrangement page looks like a blurry, sandy plate of squashed boxes and scribbles.

I would have said the oppisite comparing Reasons Sequencer with Lives. Since Reason 4, I cant get any intuitive flow from reason. Thats what i love live for, despite the problems you already mentioned in the other points

6. there's no proper mixer available in arrangement view.

Thats also true, but how to do it without wasting tons of space? But as long as you can resize everything this might not be a problem after all.

SO I agree in the most points, except the Reason-like feature-request.

Why is this thread not in the feature request forum?

[3phase]

I would love to able to select multiple midi clips and see them all in one view so I can write counterpoint melodies more effectively, see the bass lines and chords and everything together. The different midi clips notes could just be colour coded so you know which part you are working on.

Please do this, would make film scoring a lot easier as well.

+1.

-Luddy

thats basicaly because life is not able to handle multichannel audio.. regarding midi the program is still centurys behind the competition.. however.. they have midi now for how many years? 4 or 5?

lets say.. the development of steinberg and c.lab or the other midi daw companys of that time within years was way faster.. but they only had to care about the midi at that time.. so its maybe just natural that a lot is missing there still..

however.. multichanel midi recording and editing is required..