Ableton Forum

*sigh* what if you want 3 different tempos. Oops. I go back to my suggestion.

erm?

You can use as many tempos as you need in both session and arrange. For session: just rename the name of the master clip launch button as NNNbpm and you can name each one a different bpm. Triggering this master clip will launch all clips in that horizontal row and switch to the bpm set in its title.
In Arrange just automate as you would any other parameter in the Master Track. You can set tempo ranges when the Tempo automation line is selected.

re.mark wrote:erm?

You can use as many tempos as you need in both session and arrange. For session: just rename the name of the master clip launch button as NNNbpm and you can name each one a different bpm. Triggering this master clip will launch all clips in that horizontal row and switch to the bpm set in its title.
In Arrange just automate as you would any other parameter in the Master Track. You can set tempo ranges when the Tempo automation line is selected.

Yeah but I think you missed what the complaint is. It isn't just tempo - it's all automation that has this characteristic. There's no way, except for time signature, to just say "for this automation point, set its value to x". Instead, you have to drag it around and the increments it selects is based on the scale -- the horizontal size of the lane. So you might want a value of 165 (for WHATEVER parameter) and you get 164.56, then 165.39... and you have to just mess around until you maybe get it right - or maybe it is impossible. Sometimes I have to expand the height of the lane to nearly the whole screen to get it to be able to land on the number I want - and sometimes it simply never does. This sucks and is wrong. Programs going back to the early 80's had event list editing at least, for this kind of detail. Ableton doesn't. The "change the limits and set the current value to that" thing is time consuming and works only for tempo.

Ableton needs a simple and general solution to this, and teh dum thing is that they already have it. The way that one enters time sig changes is simple - click on the spot in the timeline where you want it, and enter the numbers. They can do the same thing for all automation lanes: click on the point (or right click) and a little data entry box pops up. Enter the value, done.

Hope that helps clarify the situation.

Cosm's solution....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNnbLdSsZ_s

That is Excellent!

if you tried the other way, you'll find it works for points and is very easy

it only works for points, though, not line segments.

Well... and only for tempo too. We still need a general solution for all automation points.