the biggest frustration using Live live....

[Machinesworking]

OK this is why I'm interested in using third party AU/VSTs. Most of my third party plug ins accept program changes, plus Kore solves this problem for me. In Kore you can set up multiple presets such as three soft synths on three preset patches, selcting a preset via a program change selects a synth and disarms the other two, thereby saving releasing CPU on the two disarmed tracks. I set this up via a knob in the Novation, and I select between three instruments in a song, and on the next song I select different patches from a single synth.
I agree it's silly that Kore gets this right, and Live doesn't, but that's why I won't buy into just one companies agenda, or embedded plug ins. Can't use Live plug ins in kore, Logic, in Mainstage or any other DAW. You get better compatibility, but at the cost of versatility.
Kore also allows you to rearrange the order of addressed parameters in a plug in, so you can circumvent Live's 128 parameter limit.

Anyway, sorry to hear there's no real solution to this. My old way of dealing was to use the arming of tracks to select separate synths, but that doesn't allow for stacking or preset changes on FX, synths etc.

I'm sure people will rag on about NI, but they at least are thinking about these things and doing something.

[nowtime]

Wow, thanks @ Mike - Trackteam Audio. I will check that out and dive deeper.


Upon further reflection, my frustration is about IMMEDIACY.

Like a mute button. It's a mute button - there it is, you always see it, you press your controller button, it lights up, and it is there forever and always accessible and GREAT FUN to dub-out with. It is reliable and always mapped.

I don't mind taking time and clicks to make something happen. I'm just tired of such a high percentage of having to create workarounds for every idea i have.

I suppose there's just too many options to have such immediacy with all the essential controls, but i will look at parent/child racks described above.

What if Live was able to save midi-mappings with .alc or .als and saved track routings too?

[nowtime]

OK this is why I'm interested in using third party AU/VSTs. Most of my third party plug ins accept program changes, plus Kore solves this problem for me. In Kore you can set up multiple presets such as three soft synths on three preset patches, selcting a preset via a program change selects a synth and disarms the other two, thereby saving releasing CPU on the two disarmed tracks. I set this up via a knob in the Novation, and I select between three instruments in a song, and on the next song I select different patches from a single synth.
I agree it's silly that Kore gets this right, and Live doesn't, but that's why I won't buy into just one companies agenda, or embedded plug ins. Can't use Live plug ins in kore, Logic, in Mainstage or any other DAW. You get better compatibility, but at the cost of versatility.
Kore also allows you to rearrange the order of addressed parameters in a plug in, so you can circumvent Live's 128 parameter limit.

Anyway, sorry to hear there's no real solution to this. My old way of dealing was to use the arming of tracks to select separate synths, but that doesn't allow for stacking or preset changes on FX, synths etc.

I'm sure people will rag on about NI, but they at least are thinking about these things and doing something.

Yeah, it seems the thing about Kore is it was successfully designed with the live musician in mind, sitting there on stage pressing buttons in between and during songs.

It blows my mind that Ableton hasn't grokked this yet. If Live was wrapped in some kind of performance/programme shell, so we could setup all our songs, all our soft AND hard presets, all our effects changes and automation.

I mean, I was quite impressed with Henkes' recent video - what he could do with such minimal material. Very cool.

BUT LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUTTONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does that tell you about how important it is for Live to have exquisite external control?

C'mon Ableton!!! Quit fighting him and let him (us) have his ultimate live performance Version.

I'll pay the money.

[forge]

@Mike - that is a good point about competition and that has been kind of my point - there IS no competition in this area hence why I think there is a greater need to make sure it is right - it's easy to work around missing DAW features because there are so many (even free) available now, it's not so easy to work around missing Live features - but your workaround solution is a good one and probably an indication that this needs looking at from a different angle now

@Kenporter - Actually I was meaning people use Live as well as the other DAWs - but seriously, you say 'if Live had more DAW features' - Emagic, DIGIdesign and steinberg etc have all been going for a very long time and Ableton would need to do a hell of a lot to catch up - really heaps of stuff if it is to satisfy engineers as well as musicians/performers - in actual fact it benefits me a lot that they've added things like video because I've earned money with it, but I've also used Live for working on phone content where there's hundreds of prompts and it was a really bad move - there will always be areas where Live can't perform well and I dont want it to try - I want THE ABSOLUTE BEST Live sequencer instrument possible because there is no alternative

again I have to stress most of the DAW stuff I actually like and use, I just think it should have been lower down the list and they should have totally focused on the real-time side and got that right first - better to be master of that than jack of all trades and not really get them all totally right


@Machines working - actually I've been really appreciating what's good about NI lately for a change - now my system is stable and everything's working as it should I've been using it more again and one thing that can be said about them is they sound fucking great -- and if anything using Pro-53 again has been another thing that;s sparked all this off - the interface is right there, you can see all the knobs and touch them right away - Analog is the antithesis of that and bewildering that it should come in an application intended for live performance.

[Michael Hatsis]

OK this is why I'm interested in using third party AU/VSTs. Most of my third party plug ins accept program changes, plus Kore solves this problem for me. In Kore you can set up multiple presets such as three soft synths on three preset patches, selcting a preset via a program change selects a synth and disarms the other two, thereby saving releasing CPU on the two disarmed tracks. I set this up via a knob in the Novation, and I select between three instruments in a song, and on the next song I select different patches from a single synth.
I agree it's silly that Kore gets this right, and Live doesn't, but that's why I won't buy into just one companies agenda, or embedded plug ins. Can't use Live plug ins in kore, Logic, in Mainstage or any other DAW. You get better compatibility, but at the cost of versatility.
Kore also allows you to rearrange the order of addressed parameters in a plug in, so you can circumvent Live's 128 parameter limit.

Anyway, sorry to hear there's no real solution to this. My old way of dealing was to use the arming of tracks to select separate synths, but that doesn't allow for stacking or preset changes on FX, synths etc.

I'm sure people will rag on about NI, but they at least are thinking about these things and doing something.

Yeah, it seems the thing about Kore is it was successfully designed with the live musician in mind, sitting there on stage pressing buttons in between and during songs.

It blows my mind that Ableton hasn't grokked this yet. If Live was wrapped in some kind of performance/programme shell, so we could setup all our songs, all our soft AND hard presets, all our effects changes and automation.

I mean, I was quite impressed with Henkes' recent video - what he could do with such minimal material. Very cool.

BUT LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUTTONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does that tell you about how important it is for Live to have exquisite external control?

C'mon Ableton!!! Quit fighting him and let him (us) have his ultimate live performance Version.

I'll pay the money.

Henke gets a lot of help from Max/MSP and a hacked LiveAPI script, so he's definately not getting all that out of Live itself. The great thing for us Live, Live performance users, is that the cycling/abes collab wants to make communication between the two easier...
So im keeping my fingers crossed that this is where we will see all of the Live performance benefits, we'll just have to build/port them.

Was really impressed with Kore 2, definately got it right the second time around...

[forge]

OK this is why I'm interested in using third party AU/VSTs. Most of my third party plug ins accept program changes, plus Kore solves this problem for me. In Kore you can set up multiple presets such as three soft synths on three preset patches, selcting a preset via a program change selects a synth and disarms the other two, thereby saving releasing CPU on the two disarmed tracks. I set this up via a knob in the Novation, and I select between three instruments in a song, and on the next song I select different patches from a single synth.
I agree it's silly that Kore gets this right, and Live doesn't, but that's why I won't buy into just one companies agenda, or embedded plug ins. Can't use Live plug ins in kore, Logic, in Mainstage or any other DAW. You get better compatibility, but at the cost of versatility.
Kore also allows you to rearrange the order of addressed parameters in a plug in, so you can circumvent Live's 128 parameter limit.

Anyway, sorry to hear there's no real solution to this. My old way of dealing was to use the arming of tracks to select separate synths, but that doesn't allow for stacking or preset changes on FX, synths etc.

I'm sure people will rag on about NI, but they at least are thinking about these things and doing something.

Yeah, it seems the thing about Kore is it was successfully designed with the live musician in mind, sitting there on stage pressing buttons in between and during songs.

It blows my mind that Ableton hasn't grokked this yet. If Live was wrapped in some kind of performance/programme shell, so we could setup all our songs, all our soft AND hard presets, all our effects changes and automation.

I mean, I was quite impressed with Henkes' recent video - what he could do with such minimal material. Very cool.

BUT LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUTTONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does that tell you about how important it is for Live to have exquisite external control?

C'mon Ableton!!! Quit fighting him and let him (us) have his ultimate live performance Version.

I'll pay the money.

again, Robert's example is a bit of a case in point - he had to spend a year building his own controller and make a complicated max patch to make it work - i dont think Ableton should expect that of it's users

anyway, I really do hope this is all just impatience and we will find out the Live 8 has addressed all these things, because I for one have been waiting for a very long time



I just really did think Live 7 would be that version and it has seriously made me doubt that because it seems to have gone in totally the opposite direction which has made me seriously question how they're seeing it

I feel genuinely concerned that we will probably never see automation in session view and it seems to me that without that Live will always be crippled

[Machinesworking]

I feel genuinely concerned that we will probably never see automation in session view and it seems to me that without that Live will always be crippled

Personally I think half the reason is because they're concerned with how to manage the data between Arrangement and Session View. I dunno maybe they can't get around possible conflicts?
The other thing is it probably goes against their interface and ideological thoughts on simplicity. To have both Session and Arrangement View capable of recording automation would require some real thought in regards to the end user. Some sort of switch, probably not associated with the Tab key and changing views would make the most sense, otherwise advanced and beginning users would have times when they butt up against situations where it would be clunky. Conversely, being able to record into a clip in Arrangement View would confuse the hell out of new users and the whole "Live is so sweet! all the other DAWs were like advanced math, but Live is tres cool cuz it's wicked simple!" crowd would be getting their panties in a bunch every time they messed something up using this "advanced" feature.

Man, I wish Ableton was still doing the camps in a way, because I would say forge the best thing to ask of them at this point is to add features like that to the Preferences panel as "advanced features" that you can "unlock".

Now how cool would that be?

[forge]

I feel genuinely concerned that we will probably never see automation in session view and it seems to me that without that Live will always be crippled

Personally I think half the reason is because they're concerned with how to manage the data between Arrangement and Session View. I dunno maybe they can't get around possible conflicts?
The other thing is it probably goes against their interface and ideological thoughts on simplicity. To have both Session and Arrangement View capable of recording automation would require some real thought in regards to the end user. Some sort of switch, probably not associated with the Tab key and changing views would make the most sense, otherwise advanced and beginning users would have times when they butt up against situations where it would be clunky. Conversely, being able to record into a clip in Arrangement View would confuse the hell out of new users and the whole "Live is so sweet! all the other DAWs were like advanced math, but Live is tres cool cuz it's wicked simple!" crowd would be getting their panties in a bunch every time they messed something up using this "advanced" feature.

Man, I wish Ableton was still doing the camps in a way, because I would say forge the best thing to ask of them at this point is to add features like that to the Preferences panel as "advanced features" that you can "unlock".

Now how cool would that be?

yeah I dont know - we discussed the issue at both camps and I certainly didn't come out any clearer as to why they cant do it - just that it was a big PITA to put it in and they might never

if you could have a button to choose between relative and absolute then you could decide whether you wanted to have it work as it does now, or have any automation played by a clip overwrite the Arranger automation

so for example, in Absolute mode if you press play on a clip in session with automation in it then the BTA button lights up and if you hit record it will overwrite the automation in arrange

the absolute/relative button could be in the clips like master/slave is now

when recording from a MIDI controller then you could choose which mode and if it's absolute then it just records it in session, relative - just how it does now - and you could choose the default in the preferences

if you have a clip marked "absolute' and you press the button to change it to "relative' then maybe you get a dialog "do you want the current envelopes to be moved into arrange view?"

but as far as implementation goes it just needs to work exactly as it does now with VSTs

if you copy or record a clip into arrange then how it behaves depends on which mode is selected - if it is 'absolute' then it gets recorded into arrange and from then on works as it does now, if set to relative then this is where you could potentially have a problem because if you then record the automation into arrange and the clip is still there in session then when you play it again the automation that was already there would be relative to the same automation in arrange, which would mean the values would be less

but in this case maybe you could get a dialog "do you want to remove the envelopes from the clips, if you select no the clip will sound different" or something like that...

[leedsquietman]

As someone who has only used Live in a performance environment a couple of times, I probably am not the best qualified to comment, but what I do know is that in comparison to using a trad daw like Logic or Cubase or even something more live orientated like Project 5, that it is still the best app for this type of work, even if it does have limitations and require some workarounds.

I personally moved to Live because of dissatisfaction with Steinberg and Cubase, and when it was just an audio tweak tool for DJs as in Live 3, I was not interested as I didn't want to be a wannabe DJ waving hands in the air, etc, nor put on light and ambience shows to music. The unusual effects, on the fly tools and session view were originally seen as a way to compliment what I already had but I only jumped on with L6 when MIDI, VST, and racks were features I really was interested in.

But Live works as a DAW too, we don't need to get divise and say 'FUCK DAWS', the majority of people using Live need DAW facilities too.

However, L7 delivered quite a bit of functionality on the DAW front, and pretty much all we need on that side is cross fading of audio clips in automation, folder tracks and proper dual monitor support (arrange on one side, session on the other etc), give or take a feature or two.

But in terms of the live environment, there are many enhancements that can be made and probably need to be made because there will be serious competition for Liver sooner rather than later, certainly the 128 parameter limit and # of assignable macros are recurring themes, more hardware support for these exotic controllers with easier ways to access them without extra third party intervention needed would be appreciated and as someone who is unlikely to use these enhancements myself, I still appreciate the Live community and their needs, which are totally valid.

[forge]

As someone who has only used Live in a performance environment a couple of times, I probably am not the best qualified to comment, but what I do know is that in comparison to using a trad daw like Logic or Cubase or even something more live orientated like Project 5, that it is still the best app for this type of work, even if it does have limitations and require some workarounds.

I personally moved to Live because of dissatisfaction with Steinberg and Cubase, and when it was just an audio tweak tool for DJs as in Live 3, I was not interested as I didn't want to be a wannabe DJ waving hands in the air, etc, nor put on light and ambience shows to music. The unusual effects, on the fly tools and session view were originally seen as a way to compliment what I already had but I only jumped on with L6 when MIDI, VST, and racks were features I really was interested in.

But Live works as a DAW too, we don't need to get divise and say 'FUCK DAWS', the majority of people using Live need DAW facilities too.

However, L7 delivered quite a bit of functionality on the DAW front, and pretty much all we need on that side is cross fading of audio clips in automation, folder tracks and proper dual monitor support (arrange on one side, session on the other etc), give or take a feature or two.

But in terms of the live environment, there are many enhancements that can be made and probably need to be made because there will be serious competition for Liver sooner rather than later, certainly the 128 parameter limit and # of assignable macros are recurring themes, more hardware support for these exotic controllers with easier ways to access them without extra third party intervention needed would be appreciated and as someone who is unlikely to use these enhancements myself, I still appreciate the Live community and their needs, which are totally valid.

thing is, I'm not one of those types either - I actually want it in the studio, but I want a real-time production environment - like I said I do want and use those features, I would just rather be waiting for those in Live 8 than these other things

[forge]

For each track set the Main Racks Chain Ruler to your MIDI keyboard say from C-2 to C2. Then create a chain in the main rack for each MIDI note. Here you would have 48 chains, C-2 to C2 has 48 notes. Map the macros or the main rack to the all macros of the children racks. So now when you turn macro 1 on the main rack macro 1 on all of the child racks will turn.


1. Map the Main/Parent racks macros to the 8 knobs on your controller. Now whenever you hit a note it will always bring up/select that Racks macros. All other chains macros will twist but since they are not selected via chain audio doesnt pass through them...

To use this on more tracks

1. Set up your MIDI controllers banks to output the same CCs and Notes but a different channel for all of them so:

bank/Preset 1 will send out on chan 1,
bank/Preset 2 will send out on chan 2,
bank/Preset 3 will send out on chan 3, ......


3. For each track set the parent/Main Racks chain selector and Main Macros to respond to a different channel. So, by switching banks on your MIDI controller you can now access any Macro you want

MIKE - I've just given this some more thought - I dont think I quite followed before - you are a genius!

archived in the tips/tricks sticky: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 908#669908

cant believe I didnt think of that, now that you've said it it seems obvious

and now that we have inline rack mixers it will feel like they are on tracks - with the one terrible exception that they cant all play at once!

I guess you could put a copy of the rack on every track and use the ALT+down trick to select the device - Angstrom's jsut cooked up a script in Glove PIE for doing that but mac users could probably find something like Bomes for that

thanks!

[timbreland]

doesnt work here

[edit: ok found it - you have to press it 3 times - didnt know it did that]

even still - you have to look at your monitor and navigate around the screen

I'd rather have a button I knew would take me straight to each device

So if you have to press 3 times what is the purpose of the second press?

Starting from the top:

1st press brings you to the clip view

2nd press ???

3rd press brings you to devices

[forge]

doesnt work here

[edit: ok found it - you have to press it 3 times - didnt know it did that]

even still - you have to look at your monitor and navigate around the screen

I'd rather have a button I knew would take me straight to each device

So if you have to press 3 times what is the purpose of the second press?

Starting from the top:

1st press brings you to the clip view

2nd press ???

3rd press brings you to devices

I dont know!

[Timur]

Hehe, I wonder that the old cracks (Forge ) didn't know about the ALT-cursor thing. For some kind of reason I stumbled on that one quite soon when looking for ways to navigate around in Live. You need to be more explorative, grandpas! Though on the other hand, it leads you into some dark and smudgy corners and one-way-streets in Live that you might not want to see.

[forge]

Hehe, I wonder that the old cracks (Forge ) didn't know about the ALT-cursor thing. For some kind of reason I stumbled on that one quite soon when looking for ways to navigate around in Live. You need to be more explorative, grandpas! Though on the other hand, it leads you into some dark and smudgy corners and one-way-streets in Live that you might not want to see.

it's still a long way from ideal