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Moving song parts in arrangement

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2026 8:05 am
by MPons
Hi, I’m wondering how people deals with this: let’s say you are working with a complex song in the arrangement, with lots of tracks, clips, locators, signature changes, groups, tempo automation, etc… What do you do when you decide to change the structure of the song, adding for instance eight bars in the middle of it, or deleting one of your choruses, etc.? I deal with this situation quite often, and I have to manually split the tracks and drag them wherever I want. This is a little annoying already when you have lots of tracks. But, once I’ve done that, I have to manually move the time signature changes, tempo automation and, specially, all the locators I use for structure (one by one, and I use a lot of them).
First, is there a way to select all the locators and drag them? Shift+click or cmd+click doesn’t work for me. But even if there is a way, I still would have to move time signature changes, etc…
I would love to have some kind of functionality that allows me to insert a number of empty bars in the middle of the song and leave everything else as it was, moving all locators, etc, accordingly.
Does anyone know of a better way to deal with this situation?

Re: Moving song parts in arrangement

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2026 4:48 pm
by brianwdowling
This might help:

To insert time in Ableton Live, highlight a section in the Arrangement View and press Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (Windows). This command moves all clips and automation to the right of the selection, inserting blank space equal to the highlighted duration. To delete time, select an area and use Shift+Cmd+Del (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+Del (Windows).

Re: Moving song parts in arrangement

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2026 6:16 pm
by MPons
brianwdowling wrote:
Sat Feb 07, 2026 4:48 pm
This might help:
This really helped! It’s exactly what I was looking for. I feel a little stupid now, I could have learned this years ago…
Many thanks for your help.

Re: Moving song parts in arrangement

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2026 6:23 pm
by Cypeace
Just to add, you can also cut time (ctrl+shift+x), copy time (ctrl+shift+c), paste time (ctrl+shift+v) and duplicate time (ctrl+shift+d)

-you can work out mac equivalent

Re: Moving song parts in arrangement

Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2026 7:58 am
by MPons
Cypeace wrote:
Sat Feb 07, 2026 6:23 pm
Just to add, you can also cut time (ctrl+shift+x), copy time (ctrl+shift+c), paste time (ctrl+shift+v) and duplicate time (ctrl+shift+d)

-you can work out mac equivalent
Many thanks!