Vitamin L: 100+ shortcuts to speed up your workflow (a lot).

tonearm · Post by **tonearm** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 6:22 pm

I've been working on this for the past several months, and it's finally ready for general release. I am making it available for free; hopefully it'll be useful to some of you. Right now, the only supported OS is Windows XP.

Upd: here's a brief overview of how to use this and what it does.
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Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements.

Here's a list of shortcuts in v. 1.0: pdf or html

Here are some features:

* a set of ergonomically placed “smart” single-key shortcuts
* context-sensitive mouse wheel assignment
* easy keyboard access to many clip properties and envelopes
* quick modes for adjusting clip gain, pitch and BPM from the timeline/session
* keyboard timeline navigation, play-from-mouse-cursor, etc.
* a quick and simple solution to recording and combining multiple takes
* power-zoom: mouse-wheel zoom, accelerated zoom, vertical zoom, zoom presets
* precision editing (nudge, move/copy to an adjacent track and more)
* automation tools, including working with lanes and editing the tempo envelope
* sample-audio-to-midi-track function and shortcut

Vitamin L page: http://tonearm.net/musictools/vitaminl.html

I suggest you read through the included readme file before using it.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 7:48 pm

Wow, nice work, bro! Looking forward to testing this out ASAP.\

FYI to everyone else, Tonearm = Ilia, who did all of the wonderful AutoHotKey scripting on which I've depended for almost two years now. Great stuff!

Meef Chaloin · Post by **Meef Chaloin** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 8:01 pm

looks impressive indeed, gonna have a play with this - thanks!

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 8:43 pm

siiick.

so where's the mac version

ilia · Post by **ilia** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:57 am

nebulae wrote:FYI to everyone else, Tonearm = Ilia, who did all of the wonderful AutoHotKey scripting on which I've depended for almost two years now. Great stuff!

Neb's right -- I've made another forum alias so I can better separate/respond to questions about this. I should mention that Vitamin L goes way way beyond those early scripts I've done-- the prototype was about 4000 lines of code... I've now put up some quick documentation online --

http://tonearm.net/musictools/vitaminl_ ... nline.html

I hope some of you find this useful; I personally cannot even work in Live anymore without this thing.

tw1nstates · Post by **tw1nstates** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:17 pm

Please please please make a mac version.

Someone.

And, why the hell don't ableton incorporate this into live.

They should bring you onto the team. Or buy this from you.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 2:30 pm

ilia wrote:
nebulae wrote:FYI to everyone else, Tonearm = Ilia, who did all of the wonderful AutoHotKey scripting on which I've depended for almost two years now. Great stuff!
Neb's right -- I've made another forum alias so I can better separate/respond to questions about this. I should mention that Vitamin L goes way way beyond those early scripts I've done-- the prototype was about 4000 lines of code... I've now put up some quick documentation online --

http://tonearm.net/musictools/vitaminl_ ... nline.html

I hope some of you find this useful; I personally cannot even work in Live anymore without this thing.

This is absolutely brilliant, my friend. And you're right, these add-on functionalities are just ESSENTIAL. Very very very nicely done. Can't thank you enough.

Just being able to zoom in the arrange AND in the clip views with the scrollwheel is worth it.

I'm donating some money via Paypal for your effort. Thanks again.

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 2:41 pm

For you guys asking for a mac version, us mac users can just assign shortcuts ourselves through the os. Why not use that?

Nod · Post by **Nod** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 5:24 pm

Looks fantastic - great job Ilia - been using your Mousewheel script for a while and that alone was a real help

I'm having a few probs with VitaminL - however I think it's more related to my setup, a very stripped down XP, than anything with your code. Do the XP Accessibility functions need to be enabled in order to utilise Quick Keys?

The mousewheel scroll seems to function as well as before, along with the Sticky Click functions, but many of the single stroke commands, such as switching skins and clip parameter access with X,C & V don't seem to work - F5/6 will open the preferences window but not switch skins whilst C 'appears' to highlight something in the clip view but the mousewheel doesn't change any values. Holding down Shift+Caps Lock also does nothing on my setup.

Just thought I'd ask as others, running similar 'stripped' Windows installations, might encounter similar problems....

attackmode · Post by **attackmode** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 6:28 pm

Thank you very much. This is really great.

Trying this out right now and I will come back with some written and monetary feedback.

First thing that I noticed: The 'show/hide browser' and 'show/hide return tracks' keys feel swapped. I would prefer them to be exchanged, so that the left key operates the browser and the right key the return tracks.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:23 pm

I too am experiencing some bugs and strangeness, so I'll report back with specifics. Is this forum the preferred method for such feedback, or would you prefer an email?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 9:19 pm

Let me give some MAD PROPS to Ilia for his music:
http://www.myspace.com/tonearminst (check out the performance video midway down the page) and
http://www.myspace.com/itonearm

Nice work, dude!

mr.e hurtz · Post by **mr.e hurtz** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:33 am

It's amazing that you did this, and made some great music. Props for the efforts. I'll donate as soon as I can afford to.

nathannn · Post by **nathannn** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:49 am

this is very nice, and your music is great also..
i did experience some bugs though. when in the session view if the mixer is not fully expanded, and you try to click the bottom arrow in live, nothing happens. also vertical scrolling seems to not work correctly..

tonearm · Post by **tonearm** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:28 pm

Thanks for the feedback, guys (and for taking the time to listen to the music!). Let's keep the discussion of bugs/features to this thread for now, and I'll try to respond on a regular basis. I've tested Vitamin L extensively on my system and a couple of people had it in use before release, but different setups may end up causing different issues.

Nod wrote:I'm having a few probs with VitaminL - however I think it's more related to my setup, a very stripped down XP, than anything with your code. Do the XP Accessibility functions need to be enabled in order to utilise Quick Keys?.

What does your stripped down XP look like? If you are not using the XP theme (ie. it's a "classic" win 98 look), then that's the likely culprit. If you are able to switch to the XP theme, let me know if that changes things. Also, does F4 work for you?

attackmode wrote:First thing that I noticed: The 'show/hide browser' and 'show/hide return tracks' keys feel swapped. I would prefer them to be exchanged, so that the left key operates the browser and the right key the return tracks.

You are right, I've thought about swapping them, but somehow got attached to ] being the browser key in the arrange. Perhaps I'll change that in the next revision.

nebulae wrote:I too am experiencing some bugs and strangeness, so I'll report back with specifics.

Fire away! The more details, the better. And your donation is much appreciated, as being between jobs is what allowed me to focus on this!

nathannn wrote:when in the session view if the mixer is not fully expanded, and you try to click the bottom arrow in live, nothing happens. also vertical scrolling seems to not work correctly..

I am not exactly sure what you mean. Are you saying that Vitamin L somehow interferes with Live's behavior when you are working in session? And doesn't seem correct about vertical scrolling?

For people asking about a mac version -- sadly, I don't even have access to a mac these days, so a port is not likely. You could probably achieve a part of what this does with careful scripting and key mapping... or maybe bootcamp into XP.