| Author
|
Ableton Live Tips/Tricks Thread
|
Axis Mundi
Axis Mundi
Started Topics :
75
Posts :
1848
Posted : Jul 16, 2009 23:59:13
|
This thread idea was stolen from the Ableton Live website forums.
This is the place to post all those neat little discoveries you've made which the manual conveniently forgets to tell you about, or can be accomplished using gear-specific methods.
The tips and tricks here can apply to studio production or to live performance.
Here are a few of mine:
If you have an "endless encoder" style knob on your MIDI controller (example: The M-Audio Axiom series), assign a knob to the "scrub" tool located in the Clip section. When you play a clip in a live set, such as a lead, turn this knob left and right to adjust the play starter to start playing on earlier or later sections of the clip. The new play start point will commence according to your Global Quantize setting at the top.
If you have multiple MIDI channels in your Live Set, set to different channels, split your MIDI controller's keyboard per octave so that each octave plays on a different MIDI channel using your controller's antive software. This will allow you to play all Ableton MIDI channels you assign without having to manually change MIDI channels on your hardware or select the MIDI channel you want to play in Ableton with your mouse.
(For example, if you have Ableton MIDI channel 1 with Vanguard, channel 2 with Albino, and at least a 2-octave keyboard, the lower half will play from Vanguard and the upper half of the keyboard will play from Albino.) This is good for playing multi-octave chords with, say, one instrument dedicated to pads (the lower octave usually works nice) and the upper octave for playing arpeggios and leads on a separate dedicated instrument.
|
|
|
Kane
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
23
Posts :
1772
Posted : Jul 17, 2009 09:04
|
Posted this in another thread:
Quote:
|
There's probably a way to do it with Battery and other samplers, but I've never needed to, so I'll explain it with Impulse...
-Create a new MIDI track with Impulse and load your samples
-Create a new audio track
-Click the "IO" button to the right of the master channel to open track I/O settings.
-On the new audio track, in the drop-down menu under "Audio From," select the MIDI track with Impulse (if it is a new project, it will be "1-MIDI" by default)
-In the drop-down menu underneath that, select the sample that you want to control separately.
-On the audio track, under "Monitor," select "In" (should be "Auto" by default).
Then that individual sample will be sent to the audio track and will not play on the MIDI track. All other samples you load in impulse will play on the MIDI track, so if you want to control any of those individually you'll have to do the same thing for each sample. If you want to add effects or maybe automate something for that sample alone, you can do so on the audio track. The sample settings in Impulse and its master volume will also be sent to the audio track.
|
|
Not sure how many people know you can do this, but it definitely changed my workflow. 
 You believe in the users?
Yeah, sure. If I don't have a user, then who wrote me? |
|
|
|
Ascension
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
170
Posts :
3642
Posted : Jul 17, 2009 16:09
|
|
psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
Posts :
841
Posted : Jul 17, 2009 16:36
|
I think the advantage is now you still have each of your tracks seperate for processing the sounds individually and other advantage is that you only have one impulse loaded which is lighter on your CPU...
I'm sure there are more reasons too, but those are the main 2 I can think of.
~Airyck~
~Unoccupied Mind ~
Psyowa! |
|
|
|
Ascension
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
170
Posts :
3642
Posted : Jul 17, 2009 21:09
|
|
Kane
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
23
Posts :
1772
Posted : Jul 17, 2009 23:52
|
It makes mixing a little easier too, since you have individual meters for whatever samples you do it with.
And just putting the sample right in the audio track is fine and probably a lot easier if you're not interested in swing and you work exclusively in arrangement view, but neither apply to me..
You believe in the users?
Yeah, sure. If I don't have a user, then who wrote me? |
|
|
|
geekhorde
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
15
Posts :
207
Posted : Jul 18, 2009 16:06
|
One of the things I like to do, and this is ridiculously easy in version 8, is to group 2 or more synth MIDI tracks into a single group (bleeps, lead squelches, odd bloops, whatever). Then, I set an audio track to record from the group track. Record several variations. THEN, I make a second audio track, set to record the first audio track, and stack various effects on the first audio track. Record variations.
And there you go. In less than 5 minutes or so you have a suite of related sounds to play with. It's as easy as that.
One of my favorite effect chains to use is an autopan, followed by an autofilter (both with odd time signatures) followed by a frequency shifter or flanger or something, followed by a touch of pingpong delay and a touch of long reverb. Really adds some motion to a sound. |
|
|
|
Comatoze
Started Topics :
7
Posts :
35
Posted : Jul 31, 2009 08:24
|
^^ That's a good trick. Tom Cosm runs workshops on doing that
One thing that's really helped me speed up my workflow is reassigning hotkeys with Autohotkey
http://www.autohotkey.com/
A lot of the hotkeys you use all the time are three button presses like - CTRL SHIFT T, CTRL SHIFT F, CTRL SHIFT M, CTRL SHIFT B. Argh it gets really annoying, definitely worth reassigning these.
The other thing is you can use the middle mouse button to zoom (and pan by clicking). Much, much faster than using that spastic thing up the top (and yes i did use it for a long time, got fairly used to it but it's still far slower than the standard cad-style middle mouse pan and zoom).
Autohotkey is open-source and glitch free (at least on xp), and really easy to program just read the help file.
Here's my code if anyone's interested:
GroupAdd, Live, ahk_class Afx:00400000:0:00000000:01900015:00000000
GroupAdd, Live, ahk_class Afx:00400000:0:00000000:01900015:02BB05FD
GroupAdd, Live, ahk_class Afx:00400000:0:00000000:01900015:02FF0351
curMode := 1
return
#IfWinActive, ahk_group Live
{
; Numpad 0 to insert new midi clip
Numpad0::^+m
; Insert to insert new midi track
Insert::^+t
; CTRL + Middle button to view/hide browser
^MButton::^!b
; CTRL + F to find
^f::^+f
; Right square bracket to follow
]::^f
WheelDown::
{
send -
return
}
WheelUp::
{
send {NumPadAdd}
return
}
MButton::
{
send {LCtrl Down}
send {LAlt Down}
send {Click Down}
KeyWait MButton
send {LCtrl Up}
send {LAlt Up}
send {Click Up}
return
}
}
|
|
|
|
Comatoze
Started Topics :
7
Posts :
35
Posted : Jul 31, 2009 08:34
|
|
^^ Oh yea don't forget to use your other mouse buttons too if you have them (XButton1 and XButton2), you can even do key combinations like CTRL + THUMB BUTTON etc. |
|
|
|
|
