Ableton Forum

I'm trying to get the hang of live, it's a little confusing. I get the impression that the session view is for triggering samples, but I can't really see it's use in normal song arrangements. I'm used to working linearly, what would be the point of having these clips turning of and on at will unless I wanted to do something live?

You can record whatever you do in real time in Session to Arrangement. For me that saves lots of time working in arrangement, extending loops and moving pieces of the song around and trying to remember what goes where and what is what, which I personally hate.

press TAB

arrangment view!

Record your clip triggers to arrangement by hitting the global rec. button. I use this to create the first idea of my arrangement - very intuitive in my opinion. I'm not such a linear arranger, so this is best of both worlds for me.

check the manual for Follow Mode and play with it a bit. great way to lay out intro-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-outro type stuff.

sketch out the song that way, then move/copy/record/drag and drop it into arrange view to put in the details.

stick with it...breaking past the linear mindset is hard, but very rewarding once you've broken through that mental barrier.

If you're the type of person who is trying to record a song, and you have very specific ideas going into it about how that song will be arranged, you likely won't use Session view.

I basically use Ableton as a multi-track recording studio, where I can sample any instruments that I don't own a real version of. Before I start recording, I already have lyrics written. Often, I already have the chords and structure of the song down. So I just set to it in Arrangement view.

Some people, though, jam through ideas... they might start with a beat, and lay down a cool guitar riff over it using Session view. They can then start fooling around with various ideas and just keep plugging those ideas into sessions. Then its just a bunch of click, click, click to play around with the overall structure of the song. It's a really cool idea for writing songs on the fly.

Mine though, are already written by the time I load Ableton up, so Session is just not the right tool for me. Definitely worth playing around with, though, especially if you just let the song take off in whatever direction it wants to go...

Best of luck to you.

Davengeful wrote:If you're the type of person who is trying to record a song, and you have very specific ideas going into it about how that song will be arranged, you likely won't use Session view.

Au contraire...I use session well into the arrangement process. Two quick examples:

1. Play the song off Arrange, but record a bunch of really quick "dry" guitar loops in Session for perfect loop slicing on the fly; apply effects to those guitar parts and record them back into Arrange later.

2. Drag parts of clips recorded in Arrange into multiple clip slots in Session for cutting, triggering, retriggering, and other fun fun...again, record the performance back to Arrange.

I Find the two screens to be equally important all the way through the song production process. Granted later Arrange does become more important, but Session is always there. Plus it has a real mixer

think MPC track mutes <---> coming from that mindset session view was and is the only way for me to get started on the song

then edit on a linear tip (copy / paste / cut / duplicate / etc)

i have started writing completely in session now, takes a while to find a few work arounds but is worth it i think, then also makes it much easier to get a liveset together

thanks guys! i actually was kind of in the same boat as liquidlove with the session view. i know it'd be great for performing but for some reason i always stick with arrangement view when i'm working on new stuff. i haven't figured out the recording part yet, but i know you can drag stuff from the arrangement view to the session view by hitting tab while you're holding it down. thats all i got...

Besides live playing, I use session as my "lab". It is there I test out what sounds good. Basically, I use it for composing the barebones of a track.

The I move over to Arrange to finalize it.

theque wrote:i have started writing completely in session now, takes a while to find a few work arounds but is worth it i think, then also makes it much easier to get a liveset together

I do this too - each scene is a 8 or 16 bar part of the track... intro, breakdown etc etc - i hit record and play the track out "live" -= this gives me a rough arrangement, a skeleton if you like, to build on - i then go back through the arrangement and tweak cutoffs etc with OVR on to make it sound less loopy.

Everyday I wish I could record absolute automation direct to session clips without messy workarounds

this is my main reason for lots of:

session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/
/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/
/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/
/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange
/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/
/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange
/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/
/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange/session/arrange

I switch back and forth during recording.

I am very used to linear songwriting, so I often start in Arrange view and record some stuff in order.

But then its easy to do this: highlight a vertical column, 8 bars long or so, and hit the "Capture to session" command (i think that's thr right phraseology...).

That column is now a row of cells in the Session view. I do this for several colums (song sections) and then switch over to arrange view and start seeing how section A sounds... without the drums, with the bass from section B, how section C's melody sounds with B's chords, etc etc... Even the colors or the tracks are the same as they were in session view, so its pretty easy.

Its a lot easier than copying and pasting and muting and soloing (the old way, for me).

Then, its as easy as hitting the record button, activating clips in the session section as I like, and viola, all that button pressing is converted into new linear tracks over in the Session view. I lurve it!