Ableton Forum

Hi. New user here.

I've been using Live 8 for about a week now, and it's great for improvisational music-making. I especially enjoy the way I can do all kinds of stuff in the session view, without having to look at a timeline of a "song" or a "project", and the music keeps playing all the time. I can do polyrhythmic parts that just keep looping each in their own time signature. Add and remove VST plugins without audio output breaking up?! Whoah.

But I have a question for all you more experienced Live users: how do you manage your "notation"? I mean, do you write down somewhere the chord progressions and other relevant musical information that you have in your set? Paper and pencil? Or do you just memorize it? Or do you refrain from having to play on top of stuff that you don't remember and haven't written down? So far the best method I've found is to type the chord sequences in the clip names of, say, the bass track, but that's far from ideal. Other needs for some kind of notation could be for example doubling melody lines, or playing the bass instrument's notes so that it matches the kick drum pattern.

Ultimately, it would be best if Live showed me the MIDI notes in the clips using some kind of musical notation. Currently it isn't possible to even look at the MIDI notes of a clip, while recording another, right?

in various parts of the GUI you can right click to enter in text that will appear in Live's help menu when you hover the mouse over it, like the track name field in session view.

this shows how to hack lyrics into Live
http://www.wiretotheear.com/2008/11/06/ ... sons-area/

Yeah, I thought about using the notes feature, but I couldn't find a way to keep it visible in a practical way.

The lessons text trick looks interesting, thanks.

If there was a common clipboard format for inter-application copy&paste of MIDI data, I could for example use Sibelius as a musical scrapbook... but it still wouldn't be exactly quick and easy. Plain text files are still often the best way in this day and age.

thats why i always ask for a score editor.

i think most ableton users just avoid chord changes. if you make music without any chord- and keychanges, you don´t have to remember it.

how does a score editor helps to anounce chord/key changes? you would have to stick with the track you have your score in and cant properly operate the rest of the program than...

you might name the chords in the clip or scene names or use midi messages to trigger scripts that show them in an extra window..
on apple midi pipe is able to do such things... but i think bomes can do something like that aswell or other midi converters?

I set up a MIDI track that has the chords played very simply, one chord per change, and send it to something like an electric piano (which can be turned off). If I can't remember a change I look at that track in the piano roll. If you turn on Fold for the piano roll, then the chords are easy to read (from the note names).

-Luddy

I copy midi files from Live and open them in Cubase which has proper notation scoring, or would use Sibelius/Finale/Notion or some other dedicated scoring package.

I get what Saxer is saying, but I really don't believe implementing scoring is a high priority for many Live users, although I could be wrong ...

Tone's advice (and the text hack) is great though for lyrics and marker type quotations, i.e. 'middle eight' or 'transpose to D major' etc. I bet a lot of users could find that useful.

The Lessons hack seems to allow all sorts formatting, including TIFF images.


A real score view would of course be nice, but I'd be quite happy with an editable "Lessons" view with a possibility to copy/paste graphics (without having to save to a file) from other programs.

Maybe if we could write musically placed (sort of like text MIDI events with time position) chord names, lyrics and other instructions as just plain text below the bar/time ruler of clips, and Live would display these instructions in some sort of karaoke style so you could see what's coming? IMO that would be quite excellent, and not require implementing an actual notation view. The MIDI standard already has Lyric/Display Meta Events: http://www.midi.org/techspecs/rp26.php.

If what Saxer says is really true - that Live users stick to monotonous chord/harmony structures, because of the notation and remembering issue - then a feature like supporting the editing and display of Lyric/Display Meta Events could change entire musical genres...

I wasn't able to make this hack work. That's Live 8 you're doing it with? Maybe I'm naming something incorrectly?

-Luddy

Yes, newest version of Live 8 on Mac. I think the guide page is quite clear on the naming. If your set is called "My Set" and the project folder is "My Set Project", create a folder "My Set Lessons" inside the "My Set Project" folder and create a text file called "LessonsEN.txt" inside "My Set Lessons".

yki wrote:Yes, newest version of Live 8 on Mac. I think the guide page is quite clear on the naming. If your set is called "My Set" and the project folder is "My Set Project", create a folder "My Set Lessons" inside the "My Set Project" folder and create a text file called "LessonsEN.txt" inside "My Set Lessons".

Right, that's what I understood. I've double-checked the spelling of the all the folders and files; I have "Theme Song Project/Theme Song Lessons/LessonsEN.txt". Then I open the Live Set and go to Help View, but I see nothing but the built-in and add-on lessons...

-Luddy

what's wrong with just memorizing it?

4.33 wrote:what's wrong with just memorizing it?

I think the reasons for wanting to write and read notes for things instead of "just" memorizing everything are too numerous to list. Btw, saying "just" doesn't make it any easier. You know, "just earn a billion dollars and move to Tahiti".

if you are a session musician then yes
but for your own tunes - you'd know them inside out forever

4.33 wrote:if you are a session musician then yes
but for your own tunes - you'd know them inside out forever

You maybe remember, I don't. I play by improvising and it's difficult to remember how _exactly_ something goes, no matter who wrote it. I improvise a harmony and ten seconds later I don't know what I just played. I guess it depends on what kind of music you make. The great thing about Ableton is, you can just go with the flow and stress the player as little as possible, so seeing the chords without memorizing would fit well into that picture. For rhythm parts there are lots of randoming functions, but for harmonies you can't let the computer make up stuff for you because you'd need to see it a little bit in advance as some kind of notation.