Ableton Forum

Years ago, I think I got a demo version of Live 2. I've been a long time SONAR user but have bogged down a lot in terms of recorded output. I write songs and tunes on the guitar but for the most part they have not fully made it to recordings. I tried figuring out Live a couple times and failed. Then a couple things happened.

a) I found a YouTube video where the guy FINALLY clearly explained how stuff gets from Session to Arrangement view. I had previously watched a lot of videos about Live that were a total waste of time.
b) I took an online class in Live through Kadenze and that too explained things more clearly.

So now I'm switching to Live and have made quite a bit of progress, but also have some "first impressions" I'd like to share with you and some questions.

- It's important to keep track of your sounds, and in this case I mean the guitar preamp settings for each track and arrangement. I'm using an Avid Eleven Rack. I came up with some guitar sounds that seemed OK when I was tracking them, but the jump in sound and feel between the two sections is not currently good.

- I also found a need to solo tracks and audition them switching from one part to the next to see how well different bits fit together.

- The way you build up parts in Live so easily means you start focusing on the arrangement and the various possibilities there, because it's so fluid and flexible. When I was working in SONAR, changing an arrangement was a lot of copy/paste and so the arrangement typically didn't change too much.

- I laid down a two bar funk pattern with some synths, both doing hand played lines and sequenced/arpeggiated stuff from my Arturia Keystation. Then electric bass, finally a guitar solo over the whole thing. Most everything is 2 or 4 or 8, up to 32 beats, but the guitar solo is 400.

===> I'm actually gradually getting to the point here ===>>
Q1: What's the best way to take a longer bit and make clips of the different sections? Do you just copy the clip and then change the looping points? I guess it seems obvious but I wasn't sure.

Q2: Is there a way to delete an internal section of an audio clip? E.g. in this guitar solo, it's just over a repeating 2-bar vamp, so it can be edited on a 2-bar boundary without causing problems. But I can't see any way to do that. I deleted some sections in arrangement view but I'm wondering how you edit the audio sample in Session view?

Q3: In this particular tune I'm working on, some parts like the drums would just be a short loop and go through the entire tune. And then the guitar solo might be 4 or 5 separate clips that get played at different times. I wind up with more guitar clips than drum clips. How do people generally manage this with scenes, etc.? Do you wind up with scenes farther apart on the right hand selector when you do this? Again, it seems obvious but I wanted to make sure. I'm using Intro now which has just 8 slots for scenes. If I have 4 different guitar solo clips for scene 1, then it reduces the number of different scenes I can do, is that correct?

Finally, (for now) what is up with the hot-dog shaped buttons in dialogs? Who's the marketing genius that yadda yadda, y'know?

Thanks,

DL

Q1: If it is a sample I may simply drop it into a Simpler and use its Slice mode, or use right-click option "Slice to" to slice it to a Drum Rack. The shortcut for splitting Clips is Ctrl(Cmd)+E.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/live- ... yback-mode
https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/conve ... midi-track
https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/live- ... w-commands

Q2: You can't do that in Live, dues to Live's non-destructive workflow. I would just draw a Clip Envelope for Clip Gain to zero the gain in the part.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/clip- ... -envelopes

Q3: Yeah, that's why the 8 Scenes limit is the worst limit in Intro, much worse than the 16 Tracks limit. You can put 4 Clips in a single Scene, each in a Track, but then you can't use the Scenes (since all 4 will trigger). You can try using a MIDI Track with a Drum Rack to trigger samples instead of Scenes. You can set the Simplers in each pad to "1-Shot" mode, then it will play the entire sample. There is also ClyphX, it allows triggering specific Clips or using a Clip like a Scene trigger.

http://forum.nativekontrol.com/thread/9 ... phx-live-9
https://isotonikstudios.com/product/clyphx-pro/

The "hot-dog shaped buttons" are probably a remain of Live's older design, which used to look much "rounder" than the current one.

pottering wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:34 pm

Q2: You can't do that in Live, dues to Live's non-destructive workflow. I would just draw a Clip Envelope for Clip Gain to zero the gain in the part.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/clip- ... -envelopes

What I really had in mind (esp for short chord sequences) is a way to e.g. delete 2 bars of where I messed up in the middle of a lot more stuff that was actually OK, and not leave a hole there. I have Sound Forge installed and am going to try to set that up as an external editor. Then the only difficulty is showing/snapping to measures at the right tempo, etc. and not getting glitches at the edit points. More of a Sound Forge issue.

Also, I read that if you do that, and the resulting edited clip is shorter than the original, all warp markers will get erased.

So I'm wondering whether there's a way to "print" the effect of warp markers to a clip which subsequently has warp disabled so that you can edit/trim that part externally without worrying about losing the warp edits you did. Ok, printing warp markers is sort of a one way deal, but that's OK. Generally if I am going to move things around with warping, I get it to where I want it and it stays there.

Thanks also for your responses to the other points.

DL

ShelLuser wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2019 12:33 am

Don't treat Live as if it were another DAW. That sounds easy enough but try to think about all the stuff you do within your setup due to force of habit. I think it could surprise you.

Live already surprises me and I don't know why it took so long for me to grasp these basic concepts. I think if someone had shown me and I could ask "but wait how did THAT get there" it would have been a lot easier.

I'm not sure how much of what I'm doing is guided by habits acquired using SONAR, since I wanted that to do things differently as well. My big goal with a lot of stuff is to record something without a metronome, and then get the tempo to follow THAT rather than using warp markers at transients to force it in line with project tempo. As much as I might sometimes want the timing of something I played to get forced to a strict tempo, I'd as often like what I played to be the reference for all the other things in a track. There's one tune I'd like to record that has some quite intentional tempo changes in different parts.

At the moment, I've come up with some short patterns that I just let run and play the guitar over it for practice. I enjoy listening to it but I think most other people would like to hear less of it.

But for the most part, I think of compositions in the typical rock/folk/jazz band way, which is:
a) There are different sections of the song
b) When these sections repeat there is often some variation
c) The sections are assembled together in an arrangement which becomes the song

One thing I find happening, I may have already mentioned it, is that if I record 2 sections on 2 different days, they don't flow together too well, either rhythmically or sonically if I am not careful to use the exact same guitar settings. This is OK as I can still build up the arrangement using the scratch tracks, and then redo the guitar or bass parts which are out of whack. But I think the real answer is to keep track of the guitar patches and pickup settings so that it's more sonically consistent to begin with.

Another challenge I have is just the way I absorb information... I find it really hard to get anything out of reading the manual. It's not just Ableton, it's everything. If I can watch a video that explains what I'm after, then I'm generally good to go. But finding the right stuff in a video can be quite a challenge.

pottering wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:34 pm

Q3: Yeah, that's why the 8 Scenes limit is the worst limit in Intro, much worse than the 16 Tracks limit. You can put 4 Clips in a single Scene, each in a Track, but then you can't use the Scenes (since all 4 will trigger). You can try using a MIDI Track with a Drum Rack to trigger samples instead of Scenes. You can set the Simplers in each pad to "1-Shot" mode, then it will play the entire sample. There is also ClyphX, it allows triggering specific Clips or using a Clip like a Scene trigger.

http://forum.nativekontrol.com/thread/9 ... phx-live-9
https://isotonikstudios.com/product/clyphx-pro/

I get what you're saying but WOW I do not think I could remember everything in order to pull that off. Sounds like "8 bar solo section #1 is on C" and "section #2 is on D", etc. Those things would trigger as soon as you pressed a key, right? Now I'm getting used to doing transitions on one or two bar boundaries.

I'm upgrading to Suite along with getting the Push 2, so hopefully it won't be as big of a deal. Again maybe it's my aging brain but I really try to stay away from things where I have to remember what/where everything is. I think it's why I got the Push 2 instead of a Novation whatever.

I will look into Simpler, I have not tried that yet. I'm not all that interested in beat slicing, but maybe it's good for more than that.

Thanks,

DL

Digital Larry wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2019 6:55 am

What I really had in mind (esp for short chord sequences) is a way to e.g. delete 2 bars of where I messed up in the middle of a lot more stuff that was actually OK, and not leave a hole there. I have Sound Forge installed and am going to try to set that up as an external editor. Then the only difficulty is showing/snapping to measures at the right tempo, etc. and not getting glitches at the edit points. More of a Sound Forge issue.

For solo's, i would record them in arrangement view, cut the offending pieces out and delete (ctrl-e, delete). Or if you want to overdub you can set a loop and punch in over that loop to correct your mistakes.
Then select the whole solo and consolidate (ctrl-j).
You can then drag it over to session view if you want (or rightclick -> consolidate to a new scene).

You can play several different clips in session view, one after the other with 'follow actions' and noodle your solo in arrangement.

Digital Larry wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2019 6:55 am

So I'm wondering whether there's a way to "print" the effect of warp markers to a clip which subsequently has warp disabled so that you can edit/trim that part externally without worrying about losing the warp edits you did. Ok, printing warp markers is sort of a one way deal, but that's OK. Generally if I am going to move things around with warping, I get it to where I want it and it stays there.

You can do it in arrangement (consolidate). No way to do it in session view I think.

zsazsa wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2019 11:50 am

For solo's, i would record them in arrangement view, cut the offending pieces out and delete (ctrl-e, delete). Or if you want to overdub you can set a loop and punch in over that loop to correct your mistakes.
Then select the whole solo and consolidate (ctrl-j).
You can then drag it over to session view if you want (or rightclick -> consolidate to a new scene).

You can play several different clips in session view, one after the other with 'follow actions' and noodle your solo in arrangement.
....
You can do it in arrangement (consolidate). No way to do it in session view I think.

Thank you so much. I kinda thought so but thanks for saving me a lot of time figuring it out.