Ableton Forum

An official hello to the Ableton community, I've been lurking for about a week now and searching back through the archives and have gathered quite a bit of useful information. Thanks to the excellent FCB1010 instructions I found and other live looping info I now have a semi-functional setup. However, I've run into a wall and would like to see if you all can help me go further.

My current setup uses a Trigger Finger and an FCB1010 for remote triggering purposes. The functionality I wanted for now with these would be:

- FCB pedals 1-8: Begin recording into track 1-8 at start of next measure. Hitting the pedal again would stop recording at the start of next measure and immediately begin playback of the loop.
- Trigger finger pads 1-8: Toggle clip playback of track 1-8 at the start of next measure.
- Trigger finger pads 9-16: Toggle pre-recorded drum clip playback of track 9-16 at the start of next measure.

I would like to extend this functionality to multiple scenes as well, but we'll keep the requirements simple until I am able to produce the above. Currently to attempt to get this to work I am using a basic MIDI map (no Bome's/Yoke/Mackie/etc.) with the FCB sending MIDI notes assigned to the arm buttons of the tracks and the Trigger Finger sending notes assigned to the first clip launch of each track. This kinda works but has the following problems:

1. Recording a new loop is a two-step process: pedal to arm, trigger to start. I need this to happen all within the pedal.
2. Stopping the record with the pedal doesn't latch to the measure properly, and stopping it with the trigger doesn't automatically start playing it.
3. I know I'm going to need to stop using the clip launch once I expand into multiple scenes.

I've avoided 3rd party utilities so far because next week I will be switching from PC to Mac when the MacBook Pro arrives (woot), but I have a feeling that there may be no other choice. Any ideas?

-bumparoo-

I've made some progress by combing every last inch of these forums. The tip to have all of the tracks armed all of the time helped a LOT with live looping with the FCB. Now to loop a track, I just hit pedal 1-8, start playing, then hit again to stop and I have the perfect length loop in the corresponding track. The only trouble is now scene switching starts recording everything... but I'll figure that one out later.

My problem now is getting it to start playing automatically. It seems that even if I used one of the macro methods (3rd party tool, MIDI routing) that the clip will default to stopped after it is finished recording. I've heard that Mackie Control can overcome this problem, but it looks like that is only capable of moving left and right between tracks, instead of having one button per track like I currently have my pedals set up. I'm rather shocked that there isn't some easy way that I'm missing, especially considering disarming the track immediately begins playing (though useless for me because of the quantization factor).

Anyone have any ideas?

yeah, you're overthinking it. there may be a setting in preferences which effects this, so have a look in there, but i don't see it right now. i see there is a setting for "start recording on scene launch" so try that for your other problem

what is your global quantization?


here's what happens over here: if i activate a clip slot, it will start recording at the next quantize point. i hit the clip slot AGAIN, while recording, and the next time the quantize rolls around, it starts playing back the recording without missing a beat.

start playing, then hit again to stop

so if this is what's happening to you, then it must be some setting in preferences, because for me, hitting again does not stop. it cues the clip to playback as soon as the quantize point rolls around.

Doobie Dan wrote:-bumparoo-
The only trouble is now scene switching starts recording everything... but I'll figure that one out later.


Anyone have any ideas?

Someone posted an awkward solution for this a time ago:

You can prepare a set where you remove all record buttons (ctrl e) but one in each scene.

So if you start scene one the only clip recorded will be in track one. When you hit the next scene, only a clip in track two will be recorded, the clip in track one continues playing. And so on.