Clip question

mortenperriard · Post by **mortenperriard** » Wed May 23, 2007 5:29 pm

I have programmed 4 drumloop clips, and 4 bassloop clips, that are mostly identical but with a few variations. I made them in Session View, and now I want to compose a 'song' out of these clips, so I copy/paste them to Arrangement View.

Each clip is copied many times over, and arranged into a 5 minute song.

Now, the problem is that, suppose I want to make a small change to one of the loops, I need to manually copy that change to all instances of the same clip in the arrangement... Seems like, I'm missing something here - surely that cant be the way it works!!??

cheers, Morten

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu May 24, 2007 1:30 am

That IS the way it works, if you have copied/pasted/duplicated the clips in arrangement in order to create the length you need.

(by the way I'm assuming these are MIDI clips)

However, if you instead just drag over a single clip, and enable "loop" on it and DRAG the edges to cover the time span you need, then any changes to that clip will propogate throughout the entire region of the arrangement clip.

You can tell the difference visually by the fact that a looped clip will only have partial vertical lines at the loop points, as opposed to complete vertical lines at the intersection of two separate clips.

In other words, by dragging the edges of a MIDI clip you are telling it to "play this single clip X number of times" and therefore by changing the contents of that clip it will reflect those changes each time Live is asked to play it.

Hope that made sense.

mortenperriard · Post by **mortenperriard** » Thu May 24, 2007 6:57 am

Thanks. The thing is, I want to alternate between my 4 drumloop variations (midi clips), to make the song more interesting, and not just loop the same clip throughout the song.

My first drumloop is the basic beat, and the three others are almost the same, but with slight variations. (e.g. extra snare or claps)

The order of playing the clips could be: 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, etc... I can set this up in the arrangement view, no problem.

The real problem, as I see it, is that it is a real pain in the ass to go back and edit my drumloop, as I would need to manually copy/paste the changes to all the copied clips.

cheers, Morten

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu May 24, 2007 3:01 pm

I see. Here are some other threads so you can add your voice/thoughts...

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=339352

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ight=ghost

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1969ba7393

mortenperriard · Post by **mortenperriard** » Thu May 24, 2007 5:52 pm

Ok, so it is not just me...

Funny... I bought Live 6, expecting it would be miles ahead of FruityLoops, but what a disappointment. At least for what I want to do, which is compose electronic music.

Sure it has some nice features for performing on stage, and jamming in Session View, and getting inspiration... But Arrangement View is just useless the way it works, if you ask me.

Oh well... I guess I should have tried the demo before buying.

cheers, Morten

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Fri May 25, 2007 1:49 am

I hear you.

If you can tolerate breaking things out into more total tracks, that could open up some options for you.

Workarounds.

mortenperriard · Post by **mortenperriard** » Fri May 25, 2007 6:37 am

Yes, there are some workarounds..

I could create one super drumloop, and repeat that for the whole song, and with automation turn up/down the volumen of certain parts, to get the breaks and fills I wanted... Or, I could seperate the individual drums (kick, snare, claps, hithat, etc) into seperate tracks, and create a clip for each, like you suggest.

For the bassline however, I would not want to copy the VST instrument to several tracks. If I did, and I wanted to go back and tweak one of the instrument knobs, I would need to copy that change to all instances of the bass VST. Again, a lot of copy/paste just to keep things in sync.

There are probably more workarounds like these, I just dont want to go that direction... The workflow should be fast and intuitive, and most importantly to me, the representation of a song should be without any redundancy - i.e. copies of the same thing, that should have been references instead.

cheers, Morten

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Fri May 25, 2007 2:24 pm

strangely enough if these were audio clips they would be more like references...

but then you'd have to go through more of a process to update a clip because you'd have to render/resample it, and replace the clip's sample file.