Ableton Forum

So I have been using Ableton for a while now to make individual songs. I come from a more traditional background so I usually record straight into arrangement view since I didnt have experience with session view, and I tend to previsualize the layout of my song better that way. But my question is this...what is the most efficient way to transfer the different parts in arrangement view into clips in the session view? I need to get these pieces into the session view so I can combine all my songs into one session view and perform a set live with total control over all the clips, not just mixing whole exported tracks together.

Sorry if that is poorly articulated, hopefully someone can help/understand. Thanks

ctrl + c... tab....ctrl + v

when you have done that to the various tracks, you can copy/paste entire sessions into your mega-session

thats one way...i suppose you could start a fresh set, then drag them thru the browser from the various folders of the different set folders, but...meh

session view is meant to be exit only, just like a...nevermind

copy/paste the arrangement clips into blank session view, then select the whole clips in session view and drag it to your browser in some place you remember, with a name you remember

before that you may want to clean your session view a bit after pasting the arrangement because you'll get as clips as there are in the arrangement, and you may not want to have to trigger 60 scenes for a song 8 or 10 scenes may be the maximum IMO

you also make sure all your audio and midi tracks are at minimal number, try to have some songs using the same tracks and instruments for some parts (i.e. the same midi track with the same drum racks inside for all your song's drums parts). GROUP tracks is a cool tool.

do this for each of your tracks/songs

then make a new live set for live duties, with all the tracks and instruments and FXs you need, and drag these saved files (.als) one by one into your session view, each one's beginning just at the end of the last one

then you work on this new set, to have all tracks well balanced, etc.




all of this is really complex when you have plenty of songs using different plugins, intruments, nombers of tracks, because you need to have ALL that stuff available in ONE live set, optimised for live play. you gotta minimise your tracks numbers, use grouping a lot, and maybe resample lots of your synths plugins if you use lots of them becasuse you don't want to have 40+ plugins using your CPU when playing live...


I'm messy tonight sorry for that,

cheers

thank you...
that is about the only thing i could think to do, i was just hoping there would be some automated feature i was missing where you could magically play the arrangement and it would assign the separated clips into the session tracks...wishful thinking.
now i guess i will spend some time with copy and paste for a while, and maybe learn to start working in session from the get go.

and maybe learn to start working in session from the get go.

thats the best way of working IMO if you're aiming at playing live sets with live stuff and not just DJ or play your prerecorded tracks or pre-made arrangements

my way is this:

have a single live set BOTH for composition and live play

all our songs use this same template, and we create first in session view, each new song being composed under the last one. we use a launchpad, (8*8 pad matrix), so we configured the set with 8 main tracks (or tracks groups) for launching clips, and limiting to 8 scenes per song (sometimes difficult not to override). All the other tracks are for the hardware synths, audio busses to tweak the drums, bass, synths, samples differently with compression, etc.

so all our songs follow the same live template.

then we play live, play live, play live.... then we have some new ideas of good arrangements for this or that song, then, when we are sure about the arrangement, there are 1 more steps to achieve a finished song:

=> record the arrangement, while playing it in session view, then be obsessionnal and edit the hell out of this arrangement (everything we do live must be automated here). Then we export / bounce the tracks of this arrangement and go mix it somewhere else (I prefer harrison mixbus for this step, but all is also good to stay within live), to have a proper track to share with our DJ friends and make the whores on the internet (listen to our new track!!)


so you can see our way of working is antagonist to yours, we begin with raw material, live play, then we progressively work on the arrangements and mixdowns of tracks.

at the end, be aware that our way of working leads to a point where you have your live songs and produced songs that differ from a bit to sometimes huge gap, especially if we enrich the sound in the mixdown process, and also because all is automated for production, whereas nothing is automated in our live set (but we got 4 hands and lots of pots and pads to tweak)


cheers mate and good luck

interesting. i think i will give that technique a trial from now on.

check the Tom Cosm videos about going from a finished song in arrangement back to session.

He basically rerecords a complete arrangement to 6 bus-tracks, then slices these to 8 or 16 bar-chunks which he drags over to session view. Then he uses follow actions to have session view play scene after scene, but has the possibility to retrigger parts whenever he wants.

where could i find this tom cosm video?