Organizing Scenes (Master) in Session View

[miket007]

Hi,

I am new to Ableton (Live 10) and using it for backing tracks for live band performances. I primarily use it in Session view and my question has to do with managing a number of songs which are listed as "scenes" in the Master track. I have several songs and find it challenging to locate them by sight. I had hoped the track would have a search or sort feature. I am curious what others have done to help with this situation.

[Pitch Black]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

What I do (and I think many live acts work this way) is assign a MIDI control to each Scene. In my case I use a bunch of MIDI notes from my controller keyboard, one assigned to each Scene. If you enable “Select on Launch” in preferences > record/warp/launch, Live will scroll instantly to that Scene / Song as it’s triggered.

[Greenapples2019]

Hi, and welcome. We've been using Ableton for backing tracks with our band for about three years, and we just put the scenes in the order we're going to play. Then we start at the top and just trigger the next scene with a designated button on our MIDI controller; Live starts the scene and moves down to the next scene, ready for us to launch it. As Pitch Black said you can assign each scene to a different MIDI note just in case you need to leap to a different song, but generally we just work through in sequence.

So before each gig we drag and drop the scenes into the right order. You can do this within session view easily or, once you've got your project set up how you want it as a template, you can create a .als file for each song and save to a folder in the browser. Then when you want to create a new set you just drag the .als files from the browser to your template, takes about half a guitar solo to put a gig together.

Happy to clarify anything, and good luck!

[miket007]

Greenapples and Pitch Black, thanks for responding....nothing like posting for help and having someone contribute....super appreciative. I have been able to nail organizing and launching scenes/songs in a live performance setting. Your responses made me realize that I did not explain my situation well enough...likely it wont matter as I don't believe what I am looking for exists. I am building a library of ready made songs/BT's that are used for rehearsal and eventually live performances. In the mean time scrolling through 75 or more songs to find one or two for rehearsal is a pain. I may just have to live with it for the time being....just thought there was a trick, add-on, plug-in that would allow me to sort a large list of songs/scenes in the master track. Maybe my approach is wrong.

BTW, in terms of launching BT's, I will likely use a midi pedal...I have tested the start/stop,next feature and also discovered how to have Ableton change my drum pad sounds for each BT...so for live performances where you have a known set list, that is going to work well i think.

[Greenapples2019]

You're welcome, thanks for clarifying your use-case. It may be something like a Streamdeck could be useful, where you can set up the MIDI as Pitch Black suggested, and the StreamDeck could be the way to access each song quickly.

Or the idea of .als files may be worth exploring. All the songs would then appear alphabetically in the browser and you can just drag them in when you need them, takes a few seconds.

If you have Suite, then there may be a Max for Live device that solves your issue, but I'm not sure how a search function would work in M4L.

Good luck! And please do post if you find a solution.

[miket007]

Yup sure will. By the way I will be posting a couple other topics for guidance...hopefully you both will have some ideas for those as well.

[DunedinDragon]

I've been doing this type of thing for the last couple of years. My situations is slightly different in that I have a simple session template with each scene in that template triggered by a different keystroke (a,b,c,d, etc) which I send from my MIDI controller. Each scene consists of an audio file with its own individual instruments based on the needs of the song, a MIDI out track for automating on stage operations such as lights or changes in my Helix presets or effects automated in sync with the song, and a STOP track that sends a signal to Ableton to stop playing once the track is finished. Once I start the song all I have to worry about is playing and singing. Everything else is automated. In total I have about 70 songs in my library.

I have each of our songs in their own project folder by the name of the song followed by the BPM it plays at. In that folder will be the backing track audio file, the MIDI OUT file and the STOP file which I drag and drop each into my session template in the order they'll be played as scenes and set the appropriate bpm. To start the song I just send the appropriate keystroke via my MIDI controller and everything works automatically. I simply change banks on my MIDI controller to move from song to song. The setup is very easy and quick and I can setup a whole show of songs within about 30 minutes.