I've been using ableton live for live-looping since the release of Live 8.
While using the software I've had many ideas for making it better and adding many new features too. One of the things I was hoping to see was actually the session view automation that was introduced in Live 9. However I had imagined the feature differently and seeing how it was finally implemented made me quite disappointed. I would like to propose a way to make this feature a lot better. Hopefully you'll hear me out.. (I already posted this on the ableton beta community, but it doesn't seem to exist no more)
----
First I want to mention some of the shortcomings in the current way of automation recording in session view:
(all of these would be fixed on their own by changing the way of implementation the way I'm going to describe below)
1) Automation recording doesn't start and stop synced to the clips. In my opinion it should work the same way the audio clips work. - Recording would start at the next first beat of the loop (beginning of next bar), and end on one too.
2) When recording automation to loops/clips, people are most probably using some kind of a controller and want the very last tweak to be recorded as well. When doing so, the last few nanoseconds of controller movement will very probably happen AFTER turning the session record off. However, this is enough for live to interpret that you actually want to tweak the control manually instead of playing back the automation.
So the automation stops, and you will have to re-enable it. This does not sound smooth as the automation suddenly and unintentionally just stops.
3) You might also want to add some kind of a smart algorithm to handle the automation cutting a bit more smoothly. Especially with pan, and volume level automation. Now big jumps are likely to happen.
4) We are limited to record automation shorter, or as long as the audio clips. When live looping or simply using short clips, this prevents us from recording long, slowly progressing automation in session view. This is very limiting.
5) And last but not least: How about turning session record on WITHOUT triggering new clips!?
There are many situations when we need to have multiple tracks record-armed simultaneously. That doesn't mean we want to record automation to all of them (even to ones without audio clips on them!)
The easy solution to all of these problems and then some:
I think the overall automation recording feature could have been (and still can be) implemented a bit differently to allow a more musical approach to recording automation. I mean, we already have a perfect clip view (session view) for recording and looping audio. Why not use the same approach for automation looping as well?
(Actually - before trying out live 9 beta, and now live 9 suite - I kinda assumed this would have been the way it was implemented.)
In detail...
We could have a button to switch to "automation clip mode" /automation view, and have all the clips used for recording / playing audio change to a new set of clips for recording and playing back automation. (just for example, have semi-transparent, color coded automation clips, or clip borders appear on top of the audio clips to still see what's happening beneath in audio clips too)
We could then easily record, overdub, stop and play automation of individual tracks, or multiple tracks exactly the way we want. Also return channels could have their own automation clips! We would not be tied to the length of the audio clips either. Instead we could record long and slow automation to even short clips when we need to! (besides, the APC40 and the new push controller are perfect controllers to handle this kind of functionality as well.)
Recording of automation should start and stop after pushing a clip rec button, on the beginning of the next bar (first beat) and stop / start looping the same way too. (Exactly the way it works with triggering audio clips now.) This way the automation transitions would be smooth too (fix for problem 3), as it would be easy to aim to the first beat by listening to the music. So no real need for transition-smoothing algorithms this way.
I think we should have three different behavior modes for recording automation in session view (user-defined from ableton settings):
1) The automation recorded to one clip would be linked to an audio clip already existing at the same slot (the way it's currently implemented - automation is linked to an audio clip - or recorded to an empty clip)
Even in this mode, we should be able to record automation longer than the audio clip itself - the audio and automation clips would be linked only by grid position!
2) The automation recorded to a clip would be linked to the track where the clip exists. We could record - to one track - as many different automation clips as we have clip rows in our project. Instead of linking the automation to a specific audio clip, we could simply record track and effect automation to a clip, and even when playing back another audio clip on same track, the automation would still play the way we recorded it (and want it to play).
3) OMNI automation rec mode. - Meaning that all automation of all tracks could be recorded to a single clip. (and overdubbed, stopped and played back) We would have X x Y number (X being the number of tracks, and Y the number of clip rows) of clips available for recording automation of all tracks. While it might be hard to keep up with what automation was recorded to which clips, this mode might still be very useful for some setups, and make it possible to create very interesting results.
In this mode, send return channel automation, and master channel automation could be recorded to any automation clip too.
And again, all of this could be easily controlled from APC20/40/ push controllers.. etc.
The midi clips could even be midi-mappable SEPARATELY from the audio clips. This - combined with the mode 3 omni-rec behavior would allow us, for example, to use even a simple midi controller to record and overdub all automation to a single automation-clip. (or multiple, but you get the point) This would be a very handy and powerful feature in many situations.
To me it seems kinda silly, that the automation recording was released incomplete like this. Hopefully you'll see the benefits in the kind of approach I described and develop the automation recording feature further - to be more suitable for live situations.
If I'm not being clear enough, just ask, as english is not my first language.
I'm more than willing to help to get live 9 working as well as it should!
(I'm not a programmer, but I've got a lot of practical ideas about how these things should work, and how they could be implemented. About other stuff too, but this is the most important for now, so probably best not to make this post any longer..
All the best, and please let me know what you think!