Ableton Forum

This is one of those nagging things that's like having a small stone inside your shoe. You know, first you ignore it, then it gets more and more irritating ever so slowly and then you pass the critical mass of annoyance and go absolutely mad.

Say what?

Follow (not follow actions). Is there any f***ing way to make the Follow switch stay on when you edit MIDI notes in a clip??? I'm trying to edit a long drum take here and it drives me absolutely crazy that Follow turns itself of as soon as I click a note in the clip. Argh!

once I had the same rock in my shoe for several days

for some reason I take pride in this

(if I didn't, it would become overwhelmingly depressing)

since that time I have got my shit together. now a rock will not stand a chance in my shoe for more than 3 hours at a time.

It's been given a bug number, but I'm dubious about its chances of being fixed. It's worked in that enraging way since Live got midi.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... lit=Follow

garyboozy wrote:It's been given a bug number, but I'm dubious about its chances of being fixed. It's worked in that enraging way since Live got midi.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... lit=Follow

So it seems longjohns' three hour limit won't apply here, huh...?

I think I'm gonna start a campaign!

EDIT: it seems the abes think the bug you linked to is fixed, it's been moved to the 'done' section of the beta forum.

Anyway, I do want it to stick when I playback. Of what use would Follow be unless I'm playing back a track/clip???
Sure, I don't always want to have Follow on, in fact, most of the time I don't. But I fail to see why it should turn itself off ever, if I've turned it on.
I guess I don't quite follow you here, muahahahaha...

Hi,

I'll answer here and not in the beta bugs section, as there is no bug here. Maybe the behaviour is not ideal, but at least it seems to work as intended. I'm not sure, also, why I did give a but number to the other thread (was a 1st of April, may be..), at least, it was not the right bug number, sorry about the confusion.

Anyway: why does follow turn off when you make a selection, or change the zoom level? Because Live assumes you are going to need to see what you select / the location you zoom in/out. Would it not turn Follow OFF, you'd select something to edit it, and would lose the sight of it.

Again, there may be better way of thinking about that, but that's how Follow has been implemented a long time ago. I'm happy to receive constructive suggestions, given the above problem.

Regards,
Amaury

Amaury wrote:Anyway: why does follow turn off when you make a selection, or change the zoom level? Because Live assumes you are going to need to see what you select / the location you zoom in/out. Would it not turn Follow OFF, you'd select something to edit it, and would lose the sight of it.

thanks amaury,

as i said in the now-not-a-bug report, i can see why 'follow' switches off when you zoom, or attempt to move a note when the clip/track is playing. that makes perfect sense; trying to edit a note on a scrolling page is pretty difficult, obviously.

what is annoying is that 'follow' is switched off when you select a note when nothing is playing. for me at least, that's the problem.

basically, 'follow' should stay on if you stop playback before editing notes.

Amaury wrote:Hi,

I'll answer here and not in the beta bugs section, as there is no bug here. Maybe the behaviour is not ideal, but at least it seems to work as intended. I'm not sure, also, why I did give a but number to the other thread (was a 1st of April, may be..), at least, it was not the right bug number, sorry about the confusion.

Anyway: why does follow turn off when you make a selection, or change the zoom level? Because Live assumes you are going to need to see what you select / the location you zoom in/out. Would it not turn Follow OFF, you'd select something to edit it, and would lose the sight of it.

Again, there may be better way of thinking about that, but that's how Follow has been implemented a long time ago. I'm happy to receive constructive suggestions, given the above problem.

Regards,
Amaury

Hi Amaury,

Thanks for clearing up that bug/no bug confusion.

Well, I suppose there are situations when someone would want the existing behaviour, but in the cases you describe, I don't feel any need for Follow at all, I just scroll and zoom to the part I wanna edit and edit it. But I wouldn't mind having both options of course, as a preference setting or maybe as an Option-Click thingy.

This is when I reach for Follow:
* I have a recording that's played by hand. It needs some tightening, but I want to preserve its naturally loose timing
* I find that I need a zoom level that prevents me from seeing the entire recording at once
* Since I'm trying to preserve the natural groove, I need to hear my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.
* Since what exactly is making the groove happen may not be too obvious if I see only a bar or two, I also need to see my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.

So how do I think it should work? Very simple. If I turn Follow on, it should stay on until I manually turn it off. Period.
As I recall it, that's how it used to work in Cubase. Not that I think Cubase's workflow is a standard Live should measure up to, quite the opposite! But sometimes them Steinberg people did get a thing or two right...

I just tried it in Garageband and it seems to use a slightly different logic: if you edit a note, Follow stops but if you pause after that and then resume playback, Follow is back. I guess that's what garyboozy is asking for? Makes sense. Implement that change and also make it lockable as an option and I'll be a happy camper again.

If I was only allowed to change three things in Live, this would be one of them.

/Jonas

The other two things I'd change:
* Fold for drum racks should fold to the current clip's recorded notes, and unfold to all notes mapped to pads. Unfolding to the piano editor could be optional or completely skipped.
* A way to save default parameter mappings for plug-ins (other than wrapping the plug-in in a rack, that's a really ugly workaround!)

garyboozy wrote:

Amaury wrote:Anyway: why does follow turn off when you make a selection, or change the zoom level? Because Live assumes you are going to need to see what you select / the location you zoom in/out. Would it not turn Follow OFF, you'd select something to edit it, and would lose the sight of it.

thanks amaury,

as i said in the now-not-a-bug report, i can see why 'follow' switches off when you zoom, or attempt to move a note when the clip/track is playing. that makes perfect sense; trying to edit a note on a scrolling page is pretty difficult, obviously.

what is annoying is that 'follow' is switched off when you select a note when nothing is playing. for me at least, that's the problem.

basically, 'follow' should stay on if you stop playback before editing notes.

Hi,

I see. Indeed, when the song is stopped, Follow shouldn't turn OFF when you edit something, that makes sense. I moved back the thread in the beta bugs forum. I just misread the whole thing yesterday. Fixed now.

Regards,
Amaury

slirak wrote: Thanks for clearing up that bug/no bug confusion.

Well, I suppose there are situations when someone would want the existing behaviour, but in the cases you describe, I don't feel any need for Follow at all, I just scroll and zoom to the part I wanna edit and edit it. But I wouldn't mind having both options of course, as a preference setting or maybe as an Option-Click thingy.

This is when I reach for Follow:
* I have a recording that's played by hand. It needs some tightening, but I want to preserve its naturally loose timing
* I find that I need a zoom level that prevents me from seeing the entire recording at once
* Since I'm trying to preserve the natural groove, I need to hear my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.
* Since what exactly is making the groove happen may not be too obvious if I see only a bar or two, I also need to see my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.

So how do I think it should work? Very simple. If I turn Follow on, it should stay on until I manually turn it off. Period.
As I recall it, that's how it used to work in Cubase. Not that I think Cubase's workflow is a standard Live should measure up to, quite the opposite! But sometimes them Steinberg people did get a thing or two right...

I just tried it in Garageband and it seems to use a slightly different logic: if you edit a note, Follow stops but if you pause after that and then resume playback, Follow is back. I guess that's what garyboozy is asking for? Makes sense. Implement that change and also make it lockable as an option and I'll be a happy camper again.

If I was only allowed to change three things in Live, this would be one of them.

/Jonas

The other two things I'd change:
* Fold for drum racks should fold to the current clip's recorded notes, and unfold to all notes mapped to pads. Unfolding to the piano editor could be optional or completely skipped.
* A way to save default parameter mappings for plug-ins (other than wrapping the plug-in in a rack, that's a really ugly workaround!)

Hi,

So, what you wish for is a "pause follow" right? Meaning that when starting editing something while the set is playing, follow is stopped, but it is resumed after you stop and restart the transport? Is that right?

Regards,
Amaury

Amaury wrote:

slirak wrote: Thanks for clearing up that bug/no bug confusion.

Well, I suppose there are situations when someone would want the existing behaviour, but in the cases you describe, I don't feel any need for Follow at all, I just scroll and zoom to the part I wanna edit and edit it. But I wouldn't mind having both options of course, as a preference setting or maybe as an Option-Click thingy.

This is when I reach for Follow:
* I have a recording that's played by hand. It needs some tightening, but I want to preserve its naturally loose timing
* I find that I need a zoom level that prevents me from seeing the entire recording at once
* Since I'm trying to preserve the natural groove, I need to hear my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.
* Since what exactly is making the groove happen may not be too obvious if I see only a bar or two, I also need to see my edits in realtime, in the context of the surrounding few bars.

So how do I think it should work? Very simple. If I turn Follow on, it should stay on until I manually turn it off. Period.
As I recall it, that's how it used to work in Cubase. Not that I think Cubase's workflow is a standard Live should measure up to, quite the opposite! But sometimes them Steinberg people did get a thing or two right...

I just tried it in Garageband and it seems to use a slightly different logic: if you edit a note, Follow stops but if you pause after that and then resume playback, Follow is back. I guess that's what garyboozy is asking for? Makes sense. Implement that change and also make it lockable as an option and I'll be a happy camper again.

If I was only allowed to change three things in Live, this would be one of them.

/Jonas

The other two things I'd change:
* Fold for drum racks should fold to the current clip's recorded notes, and unfold to all notes mapped to pads. Unfolding to the piano editor could be optional or completely skipped.
* A way to save default parameter mappings for plug-ins (other than wrapping the plug-in in a rack, that's a really ugly workaround!)

Hi,

So, what you wish for is a "pause follow" right? Meaning that when starting editing something while the set is playing, follow is stopped, but it is resumed after you stop and restart the transport? Is that right?

Regards,
Amaury

Hi Amaury,

I think the current Follow implementation is bad in the same way garyboozy says - you shouldn't have to re-enable Follow when you resume playback after editing. (It seems you regard this as a bug now?)

But I also think you should be able to lock Follow, so that it won't turn itself off under any circumstances. To quote myself: "If I turn Follow on, it should stay on until I manually turn it off." That's it. I want to be able to edit in realtime during playback, with Follow on all the time.

I actually believe this is the default Follow behaviour in several other DAW's. I know for a fact it is in at least some Cubase versions - they have an extra button called something like "Suspend while editing" next to the Follow on button, that turns Follow into what you call "pause follow". But if you don't press that button, Follow will stay on until you explicitly turn it off, no matter how much you move stuff around in the editor.

One of the things that I really love about Live is that you can do basically everything in realtime. Maybe that's why the current Follow behaviour bugs me so much: it does what Live rarely does otherwise - it interrupts my flow.

Regards
/Jonas

I just noticed another annoyance with the current Follow behaviour: if you're in Arrangement view and have Follow enabled on a track and you click another clip on the very same track, Follow turns off. Talk about breaking the flow...

Amaury, would you consider this a bug so I should report it as such or is it rather a change request?

/Jonas

bump

this old workflow killer still isnt fixed in 8.0.8

another bump
can't bump the original bug report thread now as it can't be viewed anymore.
i'm unauthorised to view it, apparently.

anyway, TL;TR version...

garyboozy wrote:basically, 'follow' should stay on if you stop playback before editing notes.

Amaury wrote:I see. Indeed, when the song is stopped, Follow shouldn't turn OFF when you edit something, that makes sense.

it was then tagged with a bug number. almost 2 years ago.

Can we get an update on this?
Follow needs to have the option to just STAY ON.


Thanks

it doesnt need any change as this is not a bug
year ago i had the same idea burning my head

i've managed to make a patch in Pure data with some CC sending value 127 every 20ms
then i've mapped this CC in Live so it gives me what you need Follow is always ON

and you know what, you won't be able to edit a single note with such behaviour.