Ableton Forum

Hello there..

I am currently constructing a big set for live performance with my duo but I'm unable to find a solution to the approach I'd like to take (which I thought would be a common method). I'm basically trying to achieve the equivalent of a Hendrix-style jam section in the middle of Purple Haze or whatever.. it must be possible!

I have all songs in their standard form as one long scene, broken down into bass, drums, midi, automation, etc per track. Underneath each of these I have the song sections broken up into into many scenes in order to improvise with them via Launchpad/midi controller.

What I would like to do (but cannot work out how) is to resume from the point where I left the standard song structure clips to improvise.

Does anybody know a way to do this?

I thought this might be the basic principal of using both session and arrangement and clicking 'back to arrangement' but obviously the time-line will keep going unless I loop a section, but I'm playing live synth parts over the main structure and can't really stop to do this. Also, using 'follow actions' to play back the standard structure isn't an option because it pauses momentarily each time and I have too many clips to load into RAM. 'Legato mode' is sort of almost doing what I want but because the broken-down clips are all different lengths this doesn't work.

I'd be so grateful if someone has an answer!
Thanks so much!!
Mike

Instead of having the song as one long scene you could break it down into separate scenes for 'Intro - verse-chorus-outro-(etc)' and play them in sequence automatically or manually until you want to improvise. Its easy to duplicate and/or reorder scenes if this makes it easier to keep the structure. Then add variant scenes and/or clips below them which you can fire whenever you want. Return to the continuation scene either by re-firing it manually or by using follow actions. The delay between clips follow actions is down to the quantisation setting you choose and probably not connected to the power of your computer. This is the 'normal' way of doing things in Live, so far as there is one, for example this is how the launchpad demos are structured.

It reads like this is what you have done and the only thing you need to do is adjust the quantisation settings for your follow actions.

Generally the arrangement view is for a static reproducible recording of a 'performance' and the session view is where you have the flexibility to fire different parts or variations of your songs parts while performing.

Ah, apologies! You're right, I think I had the clip's quantize settings on something weird, which explains the brief pause..

Thanks so much, this makes total sense now to use follow actions to create the basic structure, and I've checked and there is there no way to temporally disable follow actions so I guess I have another set of scenes for the 'improvisation parts'? Agh, there's gonna be a lot of scenes and clips!

Thanks again for your help! You're very kind..