Ableton Forum

I'm hoping that someone out there has a few minutes to help the new folks on this forum. I'm a longtime guitarist who recently started using Garageband. That ended up being a kind of gateway drug to Ableton Live (also bought an MBox2 with ProTools.)

I'm really new to this whole racket and don't know what I'm doing. But I like a lot of the stuff I made in Garageband. I both want to import it into Live, and also to create the same supersimple workflow that Garageband had. Direct from thought to song, without a bunch of extranous knob-tweaking in between. Am I naive that I can do this?

What are the best ways to learn all about Live and DAWs? Basics of MIDI and computer music? How to input MIDI? Terminology? (for instance, and to demonstrate just how new I am, I don't really know what sends and returns are....) I found Tweaheadz pages, which are pretty helpful. I'm looking for deadly simple explanations, as opposed to mind-obliteratingly complex ones.

Thanks in advance.

just read lots is probably the best way
http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm
and the live manual.

Work flow is something that took me quite a long time to get in Live. There's just so many ways of working that it can seem daunting at first but just play about & see what works for you. Ive never tried garageband but im sure you'll never look back once you start digging in to live.

Deadly simple?

Did you use the loops in Garageband?

If so, you can use those loops in a similar fashion with Live. Locate them in Live's browser and drag them into tracks in Arrangement view. If you need the loop to be longer, grab the end of it and strecth it out.