Ableton Forum

Hey guys, I'm currently demoing Live, and I'm loving it so far, but there's one thing I just can't seem to do. I apologize for what I'm sure is a total noob question, but I've poured over the manual and searched online and can't seem to find the answer.

I just want to set my session view scenes to either automatically loop or go to the next scene. I've figured out how to sort of do this with follow actions on the clips themselves, but it doesn't quite work right because once the follow actions kick in, the scenes don't change along with it, if that makes any sense. Basically, once I've gotten to a looped scene I want to hit enter to go to the next scene, but instead of going to the next scene after the looped one it goes back to the first or second scene. I guess what I'm saying is that I want to do what the follow actions are doing, but on the full scenes and not the clips.

I'm sure the answer is staring me right in the face, but I just can't anywhere to change the scene settings. Thanks.

There's a setting in Preferences for Select Next Scene On Launch. If you use that I think you can press Enter to start the next scene. Might help you.

Thanks for the reply, but that doesn't seem to do the trick. It still plays the wrong scene when I hit enter, I think because I'm using settings that are only affecting the individual clips, so even though the clips keep going it still thinks I'm on the first scene. Furthermore, the follow actions get all messed up if there's a spot that doesn't have a clip.

An example of what I'm trying to do is: I have a song with 8 scenes, and I want it to play through the first 3 scenes right in order, then start looping the 4th scene. When I'm ready to move on, I hit enter to launch into scene 5, then have it go automatically through scenes 5 and 6, then loop again on scene 7, hit enter to move on to scene 8, etc etc. There's gotta be a setting that's similar to the follow actions but for entire scenes but I'm not able to find it.

Follow actions are only available for clips not for scenes... but if you want to play scenes 5-8 (for example) over and over again why don't you consolidate these scenes into 1 longer scene?

Actually, you raise a good point about empty clip slots. Depending on the layout I'm using, they often break the flow when I'm trying to have automation. Even the scene option to automatically select/highlight the next scene (let's call it scene 2) when the current (scene 1) is played will not select the next scene's empty slots. This of course will break the flow if the scene aftter that (i.e., scene 3) has some clips you want to play...

My brute force solution is to just put dummy clips in all those offending slots (coloured all the same colour, preferably a bland gray or something that doesn't distract visually from clip slots with "real" stuff).

Ok, I think I got it. Thanks for the replies guys. It seems to me that life would be much easier if you had the option set the the whole scenes themselves to do the follow actions (loop, play next scene, etc) instead of having to do it on the clip level. This is the only part of the program I've found so far that isn't all that intuitive.

Cids, the reason why I don't want to consolidate all the scenes that I want to play in order is because I only want that to be the default setting. I'd like the option to loop or re-arrange the scenes as I see fit in a live setting, but if I decide to do nothing they'll automatically go to the next scene. If they're all consolidated, it seems I would be stuck playing them all in the same order no matter what, right?

MRULTRA wrote:Actually, you raise a good point about empty clip slots. Depending on the layout I'm using, they often break the flow when I'm trying to have automation. Even the scene option to automatically select/highlight the next scene (let's call it scene 2) when the current (scene 1) is played will not select the next scene's empty slots. This of course will break the flow if the scene aftter that (i.e., scene 3) has some clips you want to play...

My brute force solution is to just put dummy clips in all those offending slots (coloured all the same colour, preferably a bland gray or something that doesn't distract visually from clip slots with "real" stuff).

Ya you can sorta fake "follow scenes" by using the same follow action for all the clips, but when you come down to a scene that is missing a clip, you need to put an empty clip on there to get it to follow thru

You could use something like MidiYoke on a PC or IAC Driver on a Mac to achieve this by launching one midi clip that triggers all the scenes based on a midi note. All you'll have to do is map a midi note to the scene and time it right of course in the clip. Take a look at this video on youtube, it will help you out. Just think of midi clips being your invisible assistant on stage!

Normally you would just copy a clip into the slot below for as many times as it takes to keep all the scenes 'full' where you want the clip to keep playing.

You can avoid clips stopping at an empty cell by deleting the stop button.

If you want a predictable/repeatable song structure you would normally record it into the arrangement view - the session view is really where you can be creative with clips and scenes.

Tom Cosm has some good free sets you can download to get a feel for how they can be structured http://www.cosm.co.nz

It looks like it's possible to do what I want using MIDI Yoke, so thanks for the link. Must say it's a somewhat convoluted solution for what should be a simple idea though. The lack of ability to set the behaviour of scenes is a surprising to me, especially considering you can do it on clips, which actually seems somewhat useless to me.

If any development folk read this: that should be priority #1 feature to add on future versions.

BeatSlam wrote: An example of what I'm trying to do is: I have a song with 8 scenes, and I want it to play through the first 3 scenes right in order, then start looping the 4th scene. When I'm ready to move on, I hit enter to launch into scene 5, then have it go automatically through scenes 5 and 6, then loop again on scene 7, hit enter to move on to scene 8, etc etc. There's gotta be a setting that's similar to the follow actions but for entire scenes but I'm not able to find it.

That is exactly what I am trying to accomplish.

And like you, I was surprised to find no follow action for Scenes.

BeatSlam wrote:the reason why I don't want to consolidate all the scenes that I want to play in order is because I only want that to be the default setting. I'd like the option to loop or re-arrange the scenes as I see fit in a live setting,

Exactly.

vicz wrote:If you want a predictable/repeatable song structure you would normally record it into the arrangement view - the session view is really where you can be creative with clips and scenes.

Indeed.

But what about a third option: if you want to have a nominally predictable song structure that also allows rearrangement on the fly and allows you to be creative with clips and scenes?

a.k.a: The best of both worlds

Cheers,
bagginz