Ableton Forum

I'm having a consistent issue with my live sets and it's been bugging me for over a year now.

I love using the sustain pedal (or MIDI Ctrl -> 64 Hold Pedal in the clip envelope). I usually crank it up on certain clips because I haven't found a way to do it in the arrangement view envelopes yet. Anyhoo, I usually just put it up to 100% (or a value of 127) across the whole clip. Everything is fine up until I save the project and come back to it.

When I reopen the set, I'll start my track and it sounds like all the clips I put MIDI Ctrl - 64 Hold Pedal to 100% do not have any sustain on them at all! I.e., they're playing as if the damper/sustain pedal isn't being pushed down whatsoever, even though I definitely automated it myself before saving.

When I go down to the individual clip envelopes, the value of the MIDI Ctrl is still automated at a value of 127/100%. When I drag the value down a little bit (say to 120), play the track, then bring it back up to 127, the sustain comes back as it was before I saved and exited the program.

This is a really annoying issue and I am simply sick of it. Apologies for venting. Has anyone experienced something similar and found a fix?

You might have to make sure you draw a little automation squiggle at the start of those clips. As long as it is in the upper 50% it should work.

I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

Yep, what you need to do is simply create a change of value at the start. I always start at 0 then spike directly to 127 at the start of the clip. Only needs to be on the initial cpli start. After the sustain signal has it's initial value set the rest of the track can be fine.

Back in my old Tracker days we use to have an INIT pattern that was at the start of every track to set all the start values for everything which was often required since if you saved a track with a control at a value that would be the value at start until a new value came along and caused some frustrating nights I can tell you.

jestermgee wrote:Yep, what you need to do is simply create a change of value at the start. I always start at 0 then spike directly to 127 at the start of the clip. Only needs to be on the initial cpli start. After the sustain signal has it's initial value set the rest of the track can be fine.

Back in my old Tracker days we use to have an INIT pattern that was at the start of every track to set all the start values for everything which was often required since if you saved a track with a control at a value that would be the value at start until a new value came along and caused some frustrating nights I can tell you.

Wow, yeah, this sounds like it's still the case with Ableton... So it's almost as if you need to simulate the sustain pedal being pushed to make it actually happen at all. It seems to have worked, so thanks for the advice! Just weird though. It would be cool to be able to control this across a whole track instead of each clip.