Ableton Forum

Well, first things first, I've been browsing around these forums for the past month or so but this is my first post. As an Ableton user this forum offers a wealth of information that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else. I don't personally know anyone else using it, so it's nice to have a place where I can pose questions to knowledgable people. I'm sure you'll be seeing more of me as I continue to dive deeper into the world of Ableton over the coming months/years.

Anyway, I understand that it's important not to litter these boards with every little newbie question that I have, so I try my best to figure things out on my own either by reading the manual or browsing through internet sources. With that said, I do have two questions that have been bothering me for some time that I can't seem to find answers to.

First: I am having a problem with specific midi clips not producing any sound. They will work fine while Ableton is open, but once I close out and then re-open my set a certain clip won't play. I've had two clips in two different sets that had this problem. Both of them were strings (cube quartet and concert strings I believe), and both of them had pretty similar effects layered onto them (auto filters going into phasers). The notes are still there, the clip is still there, when I hit play the "play" button turns green like it should, they just don't produce any sound. Every time I open these sets I have to re-click the strings and add the same effects on. It will work while the set it open, work when it is exported into a wav. file, but not work when I re-open my set. Does anyone know what is up with this?

Second: If I am planning on doing a live set is there any way to transfer all the clips from all of my songs into one song. Basically I want to be able to have one fluid set and not have to have silence while I open up my next song file. Do I have to somehow save each individual clip onto my computer and then open them one by one into a new song, or is there an easier way?

Thanks, and I hope these aren't questions that have been asked 1000s of times.

for your second question, you can make a "mega-set" with all your songs in it, and program the BPM changes in the name field of the scenes.

Peace

Thanks for the input

jmoth, do you have an interface?
i remember when i was waiting for my nio from ebay,i tried to use live with my comps rubbish soundcard and had the exact same problem with samples being fine the first time but never responding in subsequent sessions. if you do have one then im stumped :S
hope this helps

Well i'm currently not using anything other than my computer. In a week i'm going to be purchasing a midi keyboard and probably around a month or so from now i'm going to purchase an APC 40.

But, what exactly do you mean by interface and what does it do that would help my problem?

you need an audio interface to properly translate midi data into audio, 99% of computer sound cards do a pretty shitty job of this which is why you're having problems, you wont get the most out of live til you get one, i have the novation nio which does the job grand and isnt that expensive

Would the APC 40 do the same thing?

No

I don't think that is the issue as the OP says the midi clip already has the notes in.

I have noticed that occaisionally some instrument racks simply don't output audio. Unfortunately I am generally in too much of a hurry and simply swap out the rack to another instrument rack without noting which ones aren't working.

However, I have noted that the same racks always suffer the same problem even if you delete them and re-populate them to your track.

The midi input dotted vertical line to the left of the rack in the detail view is popping up and down showing it is receiving the midi from the clip but no audio comes out the right hand side with the level meter in the rack completley still.

i call bug on this and suggest you simply try a different instrument rack instead of the two you mention.

The other way round it is to ensure you record the audio output into a new audio track and clip while it is working, then you can delete the midi track anyway and just run the clip as audio.

Jmoth wrote:Second: If I am planning on doing a live set is there any way to transfer all the clips from all of my songs into one song. Basically I want to be able to have one fluid set and not have to have silence while I open up my next song file. Do I have to somehow save each individual clip onto my computer and then open them one by one into a new song, or is there an easier way?

You can drag individual clips, tracks or whole songs from the browser into a set. Also, if you've saved the song with midi tracks frozen, you can drag the clips as audio files directly into the new set.