Couple of Newbie q's from a Pro-tools engineer

KingFish · Post by **KingFish** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:04 pm

Hello. 1st Thing I did was RTFM... then I played in the software.

it's "Live Digidesign Edition 2.1" that came with one of my Pro-Tools rigs.

I've been looking for a loop based editing pre-production tool for Mac, that could take the place of Acid, on a PC so I could remain on 1 platfom, and rewire the pre-pro into PT.

Looks like "Live" could be the one.

Couple of quick questions, that I didn't find in the Manual, or from my Playing around.

1. consolodating edits ???

Within a 1 bar section of audio, if i've split, deleted, and inserted several edits, so that my 1 bar audio loop, contains several selectable regions. the only way i have found to consolodate it, to a Perfect "1 region" bar, is to solo it, Bounce it to disk, and re-import it to the track.

Is there a consolodation feature that I missed in the manual somewhere ?

2. Key assignments - this is kind of a neat feature, however... i want to Re-assign the Zoom keys, from + and - to R and T or Command [ and command ] as they are in Pro-Tools, is there a way to do this ?

2.b. Nudge keys - is there such a thing ? nudging audio back and forth on the timeline, by a few samples, or distance specified by a menu somewhere ?

3. Cursor Behavior. I am so used to selecting a region (highlighted area) and hitting my spacebar to play that selected area.

with ableton, to play a specific region, i have to drag the "Loop flag's" in the top bar, to the beginning and end of the phrase i wanrt to play, and I have to drag the playback Cursor flag, to the beginning of where i want to start playback.

I feel like I'm constantly stopping my work, to go to the top bar, and chase the playback cursor around, to to what i want it to do.

For me, it doesn't work very intuatively with the edit window, or am I missing something ?? can i change this behavior ?

That's all for now, in my 1st hour with Live.... I'm sure there will be more questions to follow

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:49 pm

The first advice i would give is to download Live 4.1
You will find it an improvement over version 2,1

To answer your questions:

1- There are different approaches to this now. Consolidate, rendering or real-time re-sampling.

2- Live does not allow you to customize keyboard shortcuts. And there is no nudge.

3- i am confused by that question. But i take in account that you are confused on how Live works.

Your questions will be different after trying Live 4,1
Live 4 is great. but you will have another manual to read

Cheers

KingFish · Post by **KingFish** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:05 pm

in question 3, I should have specified "PLAYBACK cursor behavior"

My ownership of 2.1 is showing "up to date" in the software update depertment, it came as part of a software bundle, so version 4.0 would be a purchase for me, which I haven't decided if I'll use this app for production, or stick with my current work habbits, looking for another loop based production environment, that can Rewire on a Mac.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:00 am

KingFish wrote:in question 3, I should have specified "PLAYBACK cursor behavior"

My ownership of 2.1 is showing "up to date" in the software update depertment, it came as part of a software bundle, so version 4.0 would be a purchase for me, which I haven't decided if I'll use this app for production, or stick with my current work habbits, looking for another loop based production environment, that can Rewire on a Mac.

Yes, you would need to purchase an upgrade. But don't let that stop you from trying Live 4 as a demo. Because if you are lookingto change your habbits, you need to see it all before judging.

Cheers

supster · Post by **supster** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:41 am

Live 4:

Consolidate edits in Arrange view using CTRL-J ( or mac equivelant)

No there are no user custom keymappings yet ... bummer, major oversight that we hope will be fixed very soon ....

To play any region in Arrange view, hold CTRL key (or mac whatever) and click at the top of the screen. The playback marker will play from where you click

--

Live is missing some of the features it needs to be a full production environment. Some of us are finding the other advantages it has to be making up for that enough that we are using it as one anyway in the meantime

The thing is - sounds like you will be using PT for your major arranging jobs anyway and using Live as a rewired loop app. So you dont need the features your asking for anyway?

KingFish · Post by **KingFish** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:37 am

I posted a thread on the D.U.C asking anyone if they knew of any apps, like Ableton for Mac.

For "MY work habbits".... it's just not "doing it" for "ME" please don't take offence, I'm sure there are many folks that have an impressive fluidity to their work flow... I am just not one of them.

I've worked in Pro-Tools since Session8, and I'm a stubborn old dog.

part of my problem with the playback cursor operations, that I posted on the DUC... was as follows *paste*

2. a long time Pro-tools user... I find the Playback Cursor really un-intuative.

when highlighting a region in the edit window, I'd like to Hit may spacebar, and playback the region i have selected, that I'm working on.

With Ableton, when you want the playback cursor to play, from a location on the timeline, you need to go to the top of the edit window, above the session, and place the "Playback Cursor Flag" where you want it. Further, if you want to play a specific region length, you need to go above the edit window, drag the "Loop Start Flag" to the beginning of the region, the "loop end Flag" to the end of the region, then drag the "Playback Cursor Flag" to the same location as your "Loop Start Flag"

YUCK, my work flow constantly grinds to a halt, as I'm manually setting up 3 palyback parameters above the edit window, to audiotion the Bar I just worked on.

Again, it would just make way more sense fro playback to play the timeline across whatever region you currently have selected in the edit window.

Nice to know the CTRL Click shortcut you pointed out, but still, for me does not improve the above described situation, i still have to leave the track I'm working on, go to the top of the screen to make "Cursor Playback arrangements" and return to the track I'm working on every time I make an edit.

sounds like you will be using PT for your major arranging jobs anyway and using Live as a rewired loop app. So you dont need the features your asking for anyway?

Actually, it's the opposite of that.

Most of the arranging, picking tempo, structure, building a considerable amount of Pre-Pro, would take place in Acid, or Ableton.

There is more "Fine Tune editing" in this environment, programming key changes fro the musical loops, and rythmic structure for the drum / percussion loops, breakdowns, drop bars, in this environment.

Once laid out in that environment, Beds, and live playing tracks are recorded into Pro-Tools, pretty much as Big ol' straight forward wav files.

The whole "Key Change (ie..) at bar 31 in ableton, seems as though I have To highlight each musical loop at Bar 31 and manualy shift it up or down accordingly.

There seems to be No Global specification for timeline key changes, with the abillity for certain tracks (Drum loops and percussion) to ignore.

Is this still the same in vers 4 ?

This would be another fairly large dent in my workflow.

Again folks.. i HATE it when people come into the D.U.C "Bashing" Pro-tools, this is not what I'm doing here. Ableton seems really cool, I'm just shopping for an application the meets my personal work flow requirementes.

I'm aware that nothing will be perfect, there will always be sacrafices, but I need to work with applications with a better percentage of things in place that seem to work, with the way I work, and less things that I seem to fight with.

It's Soundforge v.s. wavelab, Cubase v.s Pro-Tools LE, Mac v.s PC.... it's all good, it all gets the job done, and many people are proficient in all those environments.

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:40 pm

select loop-region:

select region and press ctrl L or apple L

page 305 in the manual. There are mor shortcuts to be found, also for nudge etc. It's all there.

But you are right, it takes some time to change shortcut hobbits

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 7:27 pm

use "option-spacebar" on any track in the arrange view and live starts at that point

KingFish · Post by **KingFish** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:07 pm

You know what guy's....

That's pretty much addressed all of my inquiry's, There was No "Page 300" on my manual that came with 2.1

However, even with learning some new shortcuts, now that you've pointed out more efficient ways to control the playback cursor, and in version 4 you can consolodate, and Nudge... I'm going to D/L vers 4 demo, and give it a spin, I'll also D/L the User Manual posted on this site, which I'm sure will contain all of the info i am looking for, and be considerably more thorough, then the pdf that came with 2.1

The only thing really left for me to research is "Global Project Timeline Keychanges"

dCross · Post by **dCross** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:47 pm

KingFish wrote:I'm going to D/L vers 4 demo, and give it a spin, I'll also D/L the User Manual posted on this site, which I'm sure will contain all of the info i am looking for, and be considerably more thorough, then the pdf that came with 2.1

4 is light years ahead of 2 - hopefully you'll find it to your liking

KingFish · Post by **KingFish** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:54 pm

it's slowly winning me over.

gsbe · Post by **gsbe** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 8:02 am

it seems like you are mostly using the arranger view because you are used to it from protools. take a good look at the session view for a few reasons:

1 - you will find it much more of a creative process to take pieces from here and there in all of your song's clips, not just the areas you have recorded. being able to use all the elements of your song will create continuity

2 - create the general flow of the song and record an arrangement. NOW go to the arrangement view and start editing more like protools style

3 - the artists you work with will LOVE you because they can take their tracks to the gig! with a laptop, live, and a usb controller they can trigger looping events in their songs that automatically stay in time and can be manipulated on the fly for unique improvisations over existing song structures. this will all be possible without a lot of manipulation BECAUSE you intiailly created the parts of the song in the session view.

acidpimp · Post by **acidpimp** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 9:27 am

i'm used to soundforge editing style, and it took me some time to get used to live's, and it's lack of tools, but now I'm totally into it.

live is revolutionary in every way.

"acid" is the best piece of audio software Best Buy and Target carry.