Ableton Forum

Hi Everyone,

I'm extremely new to Ableton and I'm trying to make it replace my MPC. I guess what I'm trying to do is uncommon or something because I can't seem to find instructions on how to do it. Basically I'm trying to hook up my MPD18 to the software and use that to trigger various sound effects. But here's the catch. I want to hit the pad once and have the whole sample play at full volume the whole way through. Not only that but I either want to be able to hit the pad again to make it stop or hit a different pad to make the sample stop. I've looked at videos on how to sample like an MPC but it's really just explaining how to make drum beats which is not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to trigger sound effects for soundscaping live.

Please help!

simple! turn on the midi learn button (top right corner) and assign your pads to the midi trigger in session view (the lil arrow) and the stop trigger (the square).

Cool. I was looking for that midi learn button everywhere. I'll try this when I get home and hopefully that solves everything.

So I think I've found the midi learn button. The volume fader works to change the master volume but I think I'm doing something wrong for setting up my sound effects. How exactly to you assign a sound effect to a pad?

read your manual brotha, it's all there

I just tried using Drum Racks and it works to one shot however when I do play a sample of say airraid sirens that go for a minute and a half it starts to fade out very quickly and only plays about 15 seconds of the sample. How do you make it play the entire sample at full volume?

Click on the sample in the drum rack, it will show the waveform in a Simpler. Then just mess with the release/decay settings.

Quite fundemental questions, brew up some coffee and sit down for an evening and do this:

ARDJ wrote:read your manual brotha, it's all there

It might be boring compared to making music, but it will help you a LOT and it will ensure you learn the software infinitely faster than asking these basic questions on the forum. That said, if you can't find the info in there, come ask and the forum will usually try to help.

Well the problem is with the simpler. I have put the decay and the release up to full but it still fades it out. The reason I'm asking these questions is because I'm on a time crunch to learn this stuff and don't have time to read the entire manual to find out how to do one thing in the software.

a simple way is this:

1. load your samples into the live grid (just create one audio track for each of your samples)
2. click the midimap button (or ctrl+m)
3. highlight the little play button on sample nr. 1 and press the pad you want to trigger it from (you highlight by simply clicking on it with your mouse)
4. highlight the next clip and press the pad you want to correspond with that, and do this with all your clips
5. click your mouse in an empty space on the grid and then ctrl+a which will select everything on the grid
6. under "launch" (bottom of your screen) select launchmode: toggle

Now you can start and stop the samples with your pads, you press to start it playing, and it will play trhough or untill you press the same pad again. However this does not work if you want to trigger loads of short samples after eachother (like if you wanna do a drum roll or something)

hope that works for you

Much love
Vegard