Ableton Forum

I'm trying really hard to like Live, but I keep falling back to a mental state as if I had to cut down a tree with a herring. Here's another very easy task that seems to be impossible.

This time I tried to set up two MIDI remote commands: one that instantly launches the previous scene and another one that instantly launches the next scene. The quantize of all clips is set to None (to make sure they get launched instantly). The "select next scene on launch" preference is not a valid option in this case, because it makes it impossible to trigger the previous scene.

I tried two MIDI clips (looped back through MIDI Yoke) that had two commands each: a "move selection up/down" and a "launch selected scene" command. This didn't work either, because the execution order of the two commands was wrong: it launched the current scene first and then moved the selection up or down. This means that the playback will get messed up when changing the direction (i.e. a Next command is followed by a Previous or vice versa).

The launch scene note must be placed at the beginning of the clip (otherwise the playback wouldn't start instantly) and the move up/down note should be executed before that. I tried to switch off the grid and put the "launch scene" note slightly after the "Move selection up/down" note, but that didn't work either, because the launch command still got executed before the other one. If I moved the two notes further apart and placed the "launch scene" note even later, the execution order became correct, but then the playback didn't start immediately.

Is there any way to send a single command that would instantly launch the next/previous scene without any hiccups?

Thanks.

it's an interesting problem,

but i can't help but think you'd be better off by resigning to the fact that you would set up two controls, and think at least a few milliseconds in advance...

so that you would select previous or next, followed by the actual launch

?

That's basically what I emulated when I created the MIDI clip with two notes (one for moving selection up/down and another one for launching the scene) and nudged the "scene launch" note to the right by a few millisecs.

As I said, it didn't work, because it still executed the launch command first. I had to move that note further to the right to get the right execution order, but then it was too late and there was an audible hiccup in the continuous playback.

i'm just saying... why emulate it, when instead you can choose previous/next manually... just a teeeensy bit before you hit "launch"