Ableton Live - 9.0 Reference Manual

Ableton Reference Manual Version 9

for Windows and Mac OS

Reference Manual by Dennis DeSantis, Ian Gallagher, Kevin Haywood, Rose Knudsen, Gerhard Behles, Jakob Rang, Robert Henke, Torsten Slama.

Schönhauser Allee 6-7 | 10119 Berlin, Germany

Contact Support: www.ableton.com/support/contact

This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. The content of this manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by Ableton. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this manual is accurate. Ableton assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this book.

Except as permitted by such license, no part of this publication may be reproduced, edited, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Ableton.

Ableton, the Ableton Logo, the Live logo are trademarks of Ableton AG. Apple, GarageBand, Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS and QuickTime are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the U.S. and other countries. Finder is a trademark of Apple Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. SONiVOX is the brand name trademark of Sonic Network, Inc. VST and ASIO are trademarks and software of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. ReWire, Recycle and REX2 are trademarks of Propellerhead Software AB. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Content provided by:

SONiVOX — www.sonivoxrocks.com Chocolate Audio — www.chocolateaudio.com Puremagnetik — www.puremagnetik.com Cycling ‘74 — www.cycling74.com SonArte — www.sonarte.ca e-instruments — www.e-instruments.com Zero-G — w ww.zero-g.co.uk Physical Modeling technology provided by: Applied Acoustics Systems — www.applied-acoustics.com

Chapter 1

Welcome to Live

1.1 The Ableton Team Says: Thank You

Live is the result of musicians wanting a better way to create, produce and perform music using a computer. A great deal of effort has been put into making Live easy and fun to use, yet at the same time capable of helping you create music with unlimited depth and sophistication. This effort continues even as you read these lines... in fact, a new, improved Live version might already be available for download! Please check on our website now1, or choose the Check for Updates command from the Help menu.

3 Welcome to Live

We hope you enjoy using Live and that it enhances your creative process.

Your Ableton Team.

1.2 What’s New in Live 9?

1.2.1 Session View Automation

•Automation can now be recorded, drawn, and edited in Session View clips (page 258). Automation envelopes appear in a clip’s Device and Control Choosers, alongside modulation envelopes. Automation in Session clips becomes timeline automation when recording from the Session to the Arrangement, and vice versa when bringing Arrangement clips back to the Session.

1 http://www.ableton.com/downloads

1.2.2 Envelope Editing Improvements

•Envelope breakpoints are now created by single-clicking on the envelope. When hovering over the envelope, a pseudo-breakpoint appears to show where the breakpoint will be placed after clicking. Hovering near the envelope or holding the [Shift] modiﬁer while clicking on an envelope segment (a portion of the envelope between breakpoints) now selects the entire segment.

•Clip Envelopes in Linked mode will now respond to changes in the clip’s Warp Markers

(page 278).

1.2.3 Envelope Curves

It is now possible to create convex and concave curves in all breakpoint envelopes in both the Arrangement timeline and in clips. Curves are created and adjusted by holding the [ALT](PC) / [ALT](Mac) modiﬁer while dragging an envelope segment. Double-clicking while holding [ALT] (PC) / [ALT](Mac) returns the segment to a straight line.

4 Welcome to Live

1.2.4 MIDI Editing Improvements

•A new set of transform tools (page 115) allows for fast manipulation of a MIDI clip’s contents. Transpose, reverse, invert, or apply legato in a single click.

•MIDI notes can now be moved and resized freely without a modiﬁer, even while off the grid is active. It is also possible to adjust note lengths while in Draw Mode (page 263).

•MIDI Note Stretch (page 146) markers are now available whenever notes are selected in a MIDI clip.

1.2.5 Improved Keyboard Workﬂow

• [B] toggles Draw Mode. Holding [B] while editing with the mouse toggles Draw Mode temporarily. Additionally, MIDI notes can now be resized while in Draw Mode.

•The currently selected tracks, devices, notes or clips can be activated or deactivated with the [0] key.

•The [Enter] key now toggles between time and note selection in MIDI clips. If the loop

brace is selected, pressing [Enter] will switch the selection to the time within the loop brace.

•[Q] toggles Hot-Swap mode (page 40).

•[D] toggles the Hot-Swap selection between a Drum Rack and its last selected pad.

1.2.6 Redesigned Browser

•Live’s new browser (page 33) features a two-pane view that shows all of Live’s devices and Packs clearly separated.

•A search ﬁeld in the browser ﬁlters results as you type. You can navigate between the search ﬁeld and the ﬁltered entries using your computer keyboard’s arrow keys.

•The browser’s Preview Tab now previews Live’s instrument presets, by playing a short example sound when presets are selected.

5 Welcome to Live

1.2.7 Convert Harmony, Melody, or Drums to MIDI

Three new commands (page 152) allow you to extract the musical information from audio clips and place it into MIDI clips on new tracks:

•Convert Harmony to MIDI extracts the notes from polyphonic audio and is designed for reimagining samples or loops.

•Convert Melody to MIDI extracts the notes from monophonic audio.

•Convert Drums to MIDI extracts the rhythms from unpitched, percussive audio. The new MIDI track will contain a Drum Rack with the kick, snare, and hihat notes from the original audio playing the appropriate instruments.

1.2.8 Consolidate Time to New Scene

The Consolidate Time to New Scene command consolidates the material within the selected time range in the Arrangement View to one new clip per track. The new clips are placed into a new Session View scene below the previously selected scene.

1.2.9 Default Presets for MIDI and Audio Tracks

Newly-created MIDI and Audio tracks can now come with devices already loaded (page

224).

1.2.10 Device Improvements

•The Glue Compressor (page 325) is a new analog-modeled compressor based on the classic bus compressor from a famous ‘80s mixing console.

•EQ Eight (page 310) now has improved ﬁlters, a detachable display that shows the frequency spectrum of the output signal and allows multiple ﬁlter dots to be adjusted simultaneously, optional “Adaptive Q” and Audition modes, and a number of other improvements.

•Compressor (page 299) now has an Auto Release mode, which automatically adjusts the release time based on the incoming audio. A Dry/Wet control allows for easy parallel compression. The Ratio can be set below 1:1, for upward expansion. The shape of the envelope follower can be switched between linear and logarithmic. Finally, a new display shows input and output levels, making it easier to adjust parameters.

6 Welcome to Live

•Live’s Gate effect (page 323) now responds more accurately. There is also a new Re- turn control (also known as “hysteresis”) to help reduce “chatter” when the level changes quickly near the threshold, as well as a sidechain EQ. Finally, a new display shows input and output levels, making it easier to adjust parameters.

•The Multiband Dynamics device (page 336) now has a sidechain circuit, allowing it to be triggered based on the level of another signal.

1.2.11 Ableton Push

•Support for Ableton Push (page 489), an instrument for song creation that provides hands-on control of melody and harmony, beats, sounds, and song structure.

Chapter 2

First Steps

2.1 Learn About Live

Live comes with a set of interactive lessons to take you step by step through the key features of the program. The lessons are organized in a table of contents, which can be opened directly in the program via the Help menu. We highly recommend following the lessons. Many users have told us that the lessons helped them become familiar with the program very quickly.

7 First Steps

We also recommend that you read the Live Concepts chapter (page 15), which encapsulates everything that Live is and can do, and is therefore a worthwhile read for both beginners and experienced users. The remaining chapters of this manual serve as in-depth reference for the material introduced in Live Concepts.

2.1.1 Using the Info View and Index

Live’s Info View tells you the name and function of whatever you place the mouse over. For certain items, you can create your own text and it will appear in this window.

The Info View and its Show/Hide Button.

If you require more information on a speciﬁc user interface element or topic, please consult this reference manual. The index, found at the end of the manual, contains the names of all user interface elements and will lead you to the relevant section.

8 First Steps

2.2 Setting up Preferences

Live’s Preferences window is where you can ﬁnd various settings that determine how Live looks, behaves and interfaces with the outside world. This window is accessed from the Preferences command, which in Windows is available in the Options menu and in OS X is available in the Live menu. Preferences can also be accessed with the [CTRL][,](PC)/[CMD][,](Mac) shortcut.

Live’s Preferences are distributed over several tabs:

•In the Look/Feel tab, you can modify various settings, including the language used for text display and the color scheme, or “skin,“ for the Live user interface. This is also where you can adjust the size of objects displayed on the screen: the Zoom Display slider allows you to zoom Live’s screen to any percentage between 50% and 200% of the standard interface size.

•The Audio Preferences are used to set up Live’s audio connections with the outside world via an audio interface. Please take the time to follow the program’s built-in “Setting up Audio I/O“ lesson, which will walk you through all the steps required to set up and optimize

the settings for any given system. To access the lesson, use the Help View command from the Help menu.

•The MIDI/Sync Preferences are used to help Live recognize MIDI devices for three separate and distinct purposes:

―Playing MIDI notes. To learn how to route an external device into Live for MIDI input,

or how to send MIDI to an external device, please see the Routing and I/O chapter

(page 174).

―Controlling parts of the interface remotely. This subject is covered in detail in the

MIDI and Key Remote Control chapter (page 477).

―Syncing the program with an external sequencer or drum machine, either as a master

or a slave. Please see the Synchronizing via MIDI chapter (page 561) for details. (Note: Sync is not available in Live Lite.)

•The File/Folder Preferences pertain to Live’s ﬁle management (page 33) and the loca- tion of plug-in devices (page 226).

9 First Steps

•The Library Preferences allow you to specify a default location for various types of installed ﬁles, including Packs and your User Library, as well as whether or not samples and other ﬁles are self-contained when saving Sets (page 63).

•The Record/Warp/Launch Preferences allow customizing the default state for new Live Sets (page 51) and their components (page 97), as well as selecting options for new recordings (page 205).

•The CPU Preferences include options for managing the processing load (page 567), including multicore/multiprocessor support.

•The Licenses/Maintenance Preferences are used to manage licensing and installation of the Live platform (page 11).

2.3 The Main Live Screen

Most of your work in Live happens in the main Live screen. This screen consists of a number of views, and each view manages a speciﬁc aspect of your Live Set, which is the type of document

that you create and work on in Live. Since screen space is usually limited, the Live views can’t all be displayed at the same time.

Each one of the selector buttons at the screen borders calls up a speciﬁc view; clicking this one, for instance, opens and closes Live’s browser:

The Browser Selector.

You can run Live in Full Screen Mode by selecting the Full Screen command from the View menu. To leave Full Screen Mode, click the button that appears in the lower right corner of the screen. Full Screen Mode can also be toggled by pressing [F11] (Note: On Mac OS X, this key is assigned by default to Exposé, and will not toggle Full Screen Mode unless Exposé has been deactivated or assigned to a different key in OS X’s System Preferences.)

10 First Steps

If Live’s browser is open, you can adjust the main window’s horizontal split by dragging.

Adjusting the Main Window Split.

Chapter 3

Authorizing Live

Live is protected against illegal use by a copy protection scheme. This scheme has been designed to meet the highest security standards while avoiding hassles for our customers. If you ﬁnd this procedure to be an inconvenience, please understand that the copy protection secures your investment: It allows Ableton to provide you with support and to continue developing Live.

Please be aware that the standard Live license grants you the right to use Live on only one computer at a time. You can, however, authorize Live more than once under the legal and technical conditions described later (page 11).

11 Authorizing Live

The ﬁrst time you run Live, you will be prompted to complete the authorization process. The software will walk you through the steps.

If the computer that you wish to authorize is connected to the internet, you can authorize immediately by pressing the appropriate button in the dialog box. If you do not have an internet connection, press the “No internet on this computer“ button and follow the instructions.

3.1 Copy Protection FAQs

3.1.1 Can I Use Live or Other Ableton Products Without a Serial Number?

If you do not (yet) own Live or its add-on products, you can still try them out, but saving and exporting will be disabled.

If trying Live or another product raises your interest in purchasing it, please visit the Ableton webshop2. This site contains information about Ableton’s distributor and dealer network. It also offers you the opportunity to buy Ableton products online.

3.1.2 What if I Change My Computer’s Components?

If you change your computer components for some reason, Live may indeed ask you to authorize the software another time. Live does not need to be reauthorized when computer peripherals are replaced (audio or MIDI hardware, printers, modems). But you may need to authorize again if the motherboard, processor or network card is replaced. On some computers, reformatting a hard drive will require a new authorization.

3.1.3 Can I Authorize Live More than Once?

The standard Live license allows you to use Live on only one computer at a time. However, the Ableton server will provide you with two authorizations in good faith that you will use Live on only one machine at a time.

12 Authorizing Live

You can therefore run Live on both a studio desktop computer and a tour laptop, but not at the same time.

Should the Ableton server reject your demand for another authorization, please contact Ableton’s technical support3.

To use Live on more than one computer at a time, you may require a secondary license or a site license. Ableton offers these licenses at special rates.

3.1.4 Can I Play my Set from a Computer That Is Not Authorized?

Even if Live is not authorized, you can still load and perform a Live Set with no time limitation. You cannot, however, save or export your work. When you go on tour, consider taking along your Live program CD and a CD with the last state of your Live Set(s). In case of an emergency, you can install and run Live on any computer available and play your backup Live Set(s).

2 http://www.ableton.com/shop 3 http://www.ableton.com/support

3.1.5 What Do I Do About Problems or Questions Regarding Copy Protection?

Please visit Ableton’s technical support page.

13 Authorizing Live

14 Authorizing Live

Chapter 4

Live Concepts

This chapter introduces the essential concepts of Live. We advise you to read this chapter early in your Live career, as a solid understanding of the program’s basic principles will help you fully exploit Live’s potential for your music-making.

4.1 The Browser

Live’s browser (page 33) is the place where you interact with your library of musical assets: the core library of sounds that are installed with the program, any additional sounds you’ve installed via Ableton Packs, presets and samples you’ve saved, your Ableton and third-party devices, and any folders that you’ve added manually.

15 Live Concepts

Live’s Browser.

4.2 Live Sets

The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set (page 51). Live Sets reside in a Live Project — a folder that collects related materials — and can be opened either through the File menu’s Open command or via Live’s browser.

A Live Set in the Browser.

16 Live Concepts

4.3 Arrangement and Session

The basic musical building blocks of Live are called clips. A clip is a piece of musical material: a melody, a drum pattern, a bassline or a complete song. Live allows you to record and alter clips, and to create larger musical structures from them: songs, scores, remixes, DJ sets or stage shows.

A Live Set consists of two environments that can hold clips: The Arrangement is a layout of clips along a musical timeline; the Session is a real-time-oriented “launching base” for clips. Every Session clip has its own play button that allows launching the clip at any time and in any order. Each clip’s behavior upon launch can be precisely speciﬁed through a number of settings (page

161).

Clips in the Session View (Left) and in the Arrangement View (Right).

The Arrangement is accessed via the Arrangement View (page 69) and the Session via the Session View (page 87); you can toggle between the two views using the computer’s Tab key

or their respective selectors. Because the two views have distinct applications, they each hold individual collections of clips. However, it is important to understand that ﬂipping the views simply changes the appearance of the Live Set and does not switch modes, alter what you hear or change what is stored.

The Arrangement and Session View Selectors.

The Arrangement View and the Session View interact in useful ways. One can, for instance, improvise with Session clips and record a log of the improvisation (page 94) into the Arrange- ment for further reﬁnement. This works because Arrangement and Session are connected via tracks.

17 Live Concepts

4.4 Tracks

Tracks host clips and also manage the ﬂow of signals, as well as the creation of new clips through recording, sound synthesis, effects processing and mixing.

A Track in the Arrangement View.

The Session and Arrangement share the same set of tracks. In the Session View, the tracks are laid out in columns, while in the Arrangement View they are stacked vertically, with time moving from left to right. A simple rule governs the cohabitation of clips in a track:

A track can only play one clip at a time.

Therefore, one usually puts clips that should play alternatively in the same Session View column, and spreads out clips that should play together across tracks in rows, or what we call scenes

(page 89).

A Scene in the Session View.

At any one time, a track can be playing either a Session clip or an Arrangement clip, but never both. So, who wins? When a Session clip is launched, the respective track stops whatever it is doing to play that clip. In particular, if the track was playing an Arrangement clip, it will stop it in favor of the Session clip — even as the other tracks continue to play what is in the Arrangement. The track will not resume Arrangement playback until explicitly told to do so.

18 Live Concepts

This is what the Back to Arrangement button is for, which is found in the Master Track in the Session View and at the top-right of the scrub area in the Arrangement View. This button lights up to indicate that one or more tracks are currently not playing the Arrangement, but are playing a clip from the Session instead.

The Back to Arrangement Button in the Session View.

The Back to Arrangement Button in the Arrangement View.

We can click this button to make all tracks go back to playing the Arrangement. Each track in the Arrangement View also has its own Back to Arrangement button, allowing you to resume Arrangement playback of only certain tracks.

19 Live Concepts

A Single Track’s Back to Arrangement Button.

We can also capture the current state into the Arrangement by activating the Arrangement Record button. Disengaging Record Mode or stopping Live using the Stop button leaves us with an

altered Arrangement.

4.5 Audio and MIDI

Clips represent recorded signals. Live deals with two types of signals: audio and MIDI. In the digital world, an audio signal is a series of numbers that approximates a continuous signal as generated by a microphone or delivered to a loudspeaker. A MIDI signal is a sequence of commands, such as “now play a C4 at mezzo piano.“ MIDI is a symbolic representation of musical material, one that is closer to a written score than to an audio recording. MIDI signals are generated by input devices such as MIDI or USB keyboards4.

It takes an instrument (page 217) to convert MIDI signals into audio signals that can actually be heard. Some instruments, such as Live’s Simpler (page 452), are for chromatic playing of one sound via the keyboard. Other instruments, such as Live’s Impulse (page 403), have a dif- ferent percussion sound assigned to each keyboard key.

Audio signals are recorded and played back using audio tracks, and MIDI signals are recorded and played back using MIDI tracks. The two track types have their own corresponding clip types. Audio clips cannot live on MIDI tracks and vice versa.

20 Live Concepts

Information about inserting, reordering and deleting audio and MIDI tracks is found here (page

195).

4.6 Audio Clips and Samples

An audio clip contains a reference to a sample (also known as a “sound ﬁle“ or “audio ﬁle“) or a compressed sample (such as an MP3 ﬁle). The clip tells Live where on the computer’s drives to ﬁnd the sample, what part of the sample to play and how to play it.

When a sample is dragged in from Live’s built-in browser, Live automatically creates a clip to play that sample. Prior to dragging in a sample, one can audition or preview it directly in the browser; the switch in the browser with the headphone icon activates previewing.

4 For an introduction to MIDI and digital audio, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio.

Samples Are Dragged in from Live’s Browser.

Live offers many options for playing samples in exciting new ways, allowing you to create an abundance of new sounds without actually changing the original sample — all the changes are computed in real time, while the sample is played. The respective settings are made in the Clip View (page 97), which appears on screen when a clip is double-clicked.

21 Live Concepts

An Audio Clip’s Properties as Displayed in the Clip View.

Many powerful manipulations arise from Live’s warping capabilities (page 119). Warping means changing the speed of sample playback independently from the pitch so as to match the song tempo. The tempo can be adjusted on the ﬂy in the Control Bar’s Tempo ﬁeld.

The Control Bar’s Tempo Field.

The most elementary use of this technique, and one that usually requires no manual setup, is synchronizing sample loops to the chosen tempo. Live’s Auto-Warp algorithm actually makes it easy to line up any sample with the song tempo, such as a recording of a drunken jazz band’s

performance. It is also possible to radically change the sonic signature of a sound using extreme warp settings.

4.7 MIDI Clips and MIDI Files

A MIDI clip contains musical material in the form of MIDI notes and controller envelopes. When MIDI is imported from a MIDI ﬁle (page 49), the data gets incorporated into the Live Set, and the original ﬁle is not referenced thereafter. In Live’s browser, a MIDI ﬁle appears with a special icon, and with the .mid ﬁle extension.

22 Live Concepts

MIDI Files Are Dragged in from Live’s Browsers.

As you’d expect, a MIDI clip’s contents can be accessed and edited (page 133) via the Clip View, for instance to change a melody or “paint“ a drum pattern.

A MIDI Clip’s Properties as Displayed in the Clip View.

4.8 Devices and the Mixer

A track can have not only clips but also a chain of devices (page 217) for processing signals. Double-clicking a track’s title bar brings up the Device View, which shows the track’s device chain.

The Device View Displaying a MIDI Track’s Device Chain.

23 Live Concepts

Live’s built-in audio effects (page 287), MIDI effects (page 363) and instruments (page

375) are available from the browser and can be added to tracks by dragging them from there

into the Device View, or into a Session or Arrangement track.

Live’s Built-in Devices Are Available from the Browser.

You can also use plug-in devices (page 226) in Live. VST and Audio Units (Mac OS X only) Plug-ins are available from the browser’s Plug-Ins label.

Plug-In Devices Are Available from the Browser’s Plug-Ins Label.

Consider an audio clip playing in an audio track. The audio signal from the clip reaches the leftmost device in the chain. This device processes (changes) the signal and feeds the result into the next device, and so on. The number of devices per track is theoretically unlimited. In practice, the computer’s processor speed imposes a limit on the number of devices you can use at the same time, a topic that deserves separate discussion (page 567). Note that the signal connections between audio devices are always stereo, but the software’s inputs and outputs can be conﬁgured to be mono in the Audio Preferences.

24 Live Concepts

When the signal has passed through the device chain, it ends up in Live’s mixer (page 191). As the Session and Arrangement share the same set of tracks, they also share the mixer. The mixer can be shown in both views for convenience. To optimize the screen layout, the individual mixer sections can be shown or hidden using the View menu’s entries.

The Live Mixer in the Arrangement View (Left) and Session View (Right).

The mixer has controls for volume, pan position and sends, which adjust the contribution each track makes to the input of any return tracks. Return tracks only host effects, and not clips. Via their sends, all tracks can feed a part of their signal into a return track and share its effects.

The mixer also includes a crossfader (page 199), which can create smooth transitions between clips playing on different tracks. Live’s crossfader works like a typical DJ mixer crossfader, except that it allows crossfading not only two but any number of tracks — including the returns.

Live’s Crossfader.

Devices that receive and deliver audio signals are called audio effects. Audio effects are the only type of device that ﬁt in an audio track or a return track. However, two more types of devices are available for use in MIDI tracks: MIDI effects and instruments.

25 Live Concepts

Consider a MIDI track playing a clip. The MIDI signal from the clip is fed into the track’s device chain. There, it is ﬁrst processed by any number of MIDI effects. A MIDI effect receives and delivers MIDI signals. One example is the Scale effect, which maps the incoming notes onto a user-deﬁned musical scale. The last MIDI effect in the chain is followed by an instrument. Instruments, for instance Live’s Simpler and Impulse, receive MIDI and deliver audio. Following the instrument, there can be any number of audio effects — as in an audio track.

A MIDI Effect, an Instrument and an Audio Effect in a MIDI Track.

If a MIDI track has no instrument (and no audio effects), then the track’s output is a plain MIDI signal, which has to be sent somewhere else to be converted into audio. In this case, the track’s mix and Send controls disappear from the mixer.

The Mixer for a MIDI Track without an Instrument.

4.9 Presets and Racks

Every Live device can store and retrieve particular sets of parameter values as presets (page

222). As presets are stored independently from Live Sets, new presets become part of your

user library that any project can draw from.

26 Live Concepts

Live’s Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks (page 237) allow saving combinations of devices and their settings as a single preset. This feature allows for the creation of powerful multi-device creations and effectively adds all the capabilities of Live’s MIDI and audio effects to the built-in instruments.

4.10 Routing

As we have seen, all tracks deliver signals, either audio or MIDI. Where do these signals go? This is set up in the mixer’s In/Out section, which offers, for every track, choosers to select a signal source and destination. The In/Out section, accessible through the View menu’s In/Out option, is Live’s “patchbay.“ Its routing options (page 171) enable valuable creative and tech- nical methods such as resampling, submixing, layering of synths, complex effects setups and more.

Track Routing Is Set up Using the In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Left) or Session View (Right).

Signals from the tracks can be sent to the outside world via the computer’s audio and MIDI interfaces, to other programs that are connected to Live via ReWire (page 564) or to other tracks or devices within Live. Tracks can also be combined into a Group Track (page 196) which serves as a submixer for the selected tracks.

Likewise, a track can be set up to receive an input signal to be played through the track’s devices. Again, tracks can receive their input from the outside, from a ReWire program or from another track or device in Live. The Monitor controls regulate the conditions under which the input signal is heard through the track.

27 Live Concepts

It is also possible to route signals to external hardware devices from within a track’s device chain, by using the External Audio Effect (page 316) and External Instrument (page 401) devices. (Note: these devices are not available in the Lite or Intro Editions.)

4.11 Recording New Clips

Audio tracks and MIDI tracks can record their input signal and thereby create new clips (page

205). Recording is enabled on a track by pressing its Arm button. With multiple tracks se-

lected, pressing any of their Arm buttons will arm all of them. You can also hold down the [CTRL] (PC)/[CMD] (Mac) modiﬁer when clicking the Arm buttons to arm several tracks at once. If the Exclusive Arm option is enabled in the Record Preferences, inserting an instrument into a new or empty MIDI track will automatically arm the track. When the Control Bar’s Arrangement Record button is on, every armed track records its input signal into the Arrangement. Every take yields a new clip per track.

Track Arm Buttons, as They Appear in the Session View.

It is also possible to record into Session View slots on the ﬂy (page 208). This technique is very useful for the jamming musician, as Session recording does not require stopping the music. Clicking the Session Record button records a new clip in the selected Session scene in all armed tracks.

The Control Bar’s Session Record Button.

28 Live Concepts

Clicking the Session Record button again deﬁnes the end of the recording and launches the new clips. As these actions are subject to real-time launch quantization, the resulting clips can be automatically cut to the beat.

The Control Bar’s Quantization Chooser.

Session recording in conjunction with overdubbing and Record Quantization is the method of choice for creating drum patterns, which are built up by successively adding notes to the pattern while it plays in a loop. It only takes a MIDI keyboard (or the computer keyboard) and a MIDI track with Live’s Impulse percussion instrument to do this (page 403).

4.12 Automation Envelopes

Often, when working with Live’s mixer and effects, you will want the controls’ movements to become part of the Set. The movement of a control across the Arrangement timeline or Session clip is called automation (page 257); a control whose value changes over time is automated.

Automation is represented by breakpoint envelopes, which can be drawn, edited and recorded in real-time.

The Automated Pan Control and its Envelope.

Practically all mixer and effect controls in Live can be automated, even the song tempo. Recording automation is straightforward: all changes of a control that occur while the Control Bar’s Automation Arm and Arrangement Record buttons are on become automation in the Arrangement View. Automation is recorded to Session View clips if controls are adjusted while recording with the Automation Arm button enabled.

Changing an automated control’s value while not recording is similar to launching a Session clip while the Arrangement is playing: It deactivates the control’s automation (in favor of the new control setting). The control will stop tracking its automation and rest with the new value until the Re-Enable Automation button is pressed or a Session clip that contains automation is launched.

29 Live Concepts

4.13 Clip Envelopes

Envelopes can be found in both tracks and clips. Clip envelopes (page 267) are used to au- tomate or modulate device and mixer controls. Audio clips have, in addition, clip envelopes to inﬂuence the clip’s pitch, volume and more; these can be used to change the melody and rhythm of recorded audio. MIDI clips have additional clip envelopes to represent MIDI controller data. Clip envelopes can be unlinked from the clip to give them independent loop settings, so that larger movements (like fade-outs) or smaller gestures (like an arpeggio) can be superimposed onto the clip’s material.

An Envelope for Clip Transposition.

4.14 MIDI and Key Remote

To liberate the musician from the mouse, most of Live’s controls can be “remote-controlled“ via an external MIDI controller. Remote mappings are established in MIDI Map Mode (page

482), which is engaged by pressing the MIDI switch in the Control Bar.

30 Live Concepts

In this mode, you can click on any mixer or effect control, and then assign it to a controller simply by sending the desired MIDI message (for example, by turning a knob on your MIDI control box). Your assignments take effect immediately after you leave MIDI Map Mode. Session clips can be mapped to a MIDI key or even a keyboard range for chromatic playing.

MIDI keys and controllers that have been mapped to Live’s controls are not available for recording via MIDI tracks. These messages are ﬁltered out before the incoming MIDI is passed on to the MIDI tracks.

The Key/MIDI Map Controls.

Session clips, switches, buttons and radio buttons can be mapped to computer keyboard keys as well. This happens in Key Map Mode (page 487), which works just like MIDI Map Mode.

Live offers, in addition to this general purpose mapping technique, dedicated support for Ableton Push (page 489), the Akai APC40 (page 529), Akai APC20 (page 541) and Novation Launchpad (page 549), which allows for mouse-free operation of the program.

4.15 Saving and Exporting

Saving a Live Set saves everything it contains, including all clips, their positions and settings, and settings for devices and controls. An audio clip can, however, lose the reference to its corresponding sample if it is moved or deleted from disk. The links between samples and their clips can be preserved with a special command, Collect and Save (page 62), which makes a copy of each sample and stores it in a project folder along with the Live Set.

A separate Save button in the Clip View saves a set of default clip settings (page 111) along with the sample, so that each time the sample is dragged into the program, it will automatically appear with these settings. This is especially useful if you have made warp settings for a clip and want to use it in multiple Live Sets.

31 Live Concepts

Exporting audio from Live can be done from both the Session and Arrangement Views. Live will export the audio coming through on the Master output as an audio ﬁle of your speciﬁcations via Export Audio/Video (page 43).

Live can also export individual MIDI clips as MIDI ﬁles (page 49).

Exporting and saving material for later use in Live can be done very conveniently with the Live Clip format (page 50). Session View clips can be dragged back out of a Live Set to the browser, and thereby exported to the disk as Live Clips.

A Live Clip in the Browser.

Live Clips are a very powerful way of storing ideas, as they save not only the clip’s Clip View settings, but also the corresponding track’s instruments and effects chain. Live Clips in the browser can be previewed and added to any open Live Set just like sample ﬁles. In the Live Set, they restore the original clip’s creative options.

Using Live Clips, you can build your own personalized library of:

•MIDI sequences with matching instruments and effects, e.g., a MIDI drum pattern with the associated Impulse and effects settings;

•Different regions or loops (page 104) referencing the same source ﬁle;

•Variations of a sample loop created by applying Warp Markers (page 119), clip enve- lopes (page 267) and effects (page 217);

•Ideas that may not ﬁt your current project but could be useful in the future.

32 Live Concepts

Chapter 5

Managing Files and Sets

Various types of ﬁles are used in making music with Live, from those containing MIDI (page

49) and audio (page 41), to more program-speciﬁc ﬁles such as Live Clips (page 50)

and Live Sets (page 51). This chapter will explain everything you need to know about work- ing with each of these ﬁle types in Live. However, we should ﬁrst take a look at Live’s browser, through which most ﬁles arrive in the program.

5.1 Working with the Browser

33 Managing Files and Sets

Live’s browser is the place where you interact with your library of musical assets: the core library of sounds that are installed with the program, any additional sounds you’ve installed via Ableton Packs, presets and samples you’ve saved, your Ableton and third-party devices, and any folder on your hard drive that contains samples, tracks, etc.

34 Managing Files and Sets

The Browser.

The browser display is divided into left and right sections, called the sidebar and the content pane respectively. To resize the sections, drag the divider line horizontally.

5.1.1 Understanding the Browser’s Hierarchy

Working in the browser involves choosing one of the labels from the Categories or Places sections in the sidebar, and then selecting from the items that appear in the content pane.

The Categories labels show all items of a given type, regardless of where they are in your library. Use this section to explore and discover all of the instruments and sounds you have installed. The Categories section is organized as follows:

•Sounds — all of your Instrument Racks (page 237) and instrument presets, organized by the type of sound they make (rather than by their devices.)

•Drums — all of your drum presets. This includes full drum kits, which are available as Drum Racks, as well as single drum hits, which are delivered as Instrument Racks.

•Instruments — all of your Instrument Racks, as well as “raw” Live instruments and their presets, organized by device (rather than by the type of sound.)

•Audio Effects — all of your Audio Effect Racks, as well as “raw” Live audio effects devices and presets.

•MIDI Effects — all of your MIDI Effect Racks, as well as “raw” Live MIDI effects devices and presets.

•Max for Live — all of your Max for Live (page 471) devices and presets, as well as any Racks that are built with those devices, organized into Audio Effect, Instrument and MIDI Effect folders.

•Plug-Ins — your third-party VST and/or Audio Units plug-ins (page 226).

•Clips — all of your Live Clips.

•Samples — all of your raw audio samples.

35 Managing Files and Sets

•All results — this section appears after you’ve typed something into the search ﬁeld. It shows search results for every section of the browser in a single list.

The Places labels show the contents of folders on your hard drives. Use this section when you want to access a particular place, such as a folder you’ve added or an add-on Pack. The actual contents of the Places section will vary depending on how you’ve conﬁgured your library, but will contain at least the following:

•Packs — all Packs that come pre-installed with Live, as well as any that you’ve installed yourself. Each Pack appears as a folder in the content pane, which can be unfolded to reveal that Pack’s contents. Presets, samples, and Live Clips installed by Packs will also appear in the appropriate Categories labels.

•User Library — the User Library is the default location for items you save yourself, including default presets, grooves, your personalized Racks and device presets, your own samples, Live Clips, etc. Files that you save to your User Library will also be available in the appropriate Categories labels.

•Current Project — all of the ﬁles that are contained in the currently active Project (page

55). If you’re working on a Live Set that you haven’t yet saved, the current Project refers

to a temporary location.

•any folders from any of your hard drives that you’ve added to Live’s Browser.

Moving through the ﬁles in Live’s browser can be done with either the mouse or the computer keyboard:

•Scroll up and down in the Browser with the up and down arrow keys, the mousewheel, or by clicking and dragging while holding the [CTRL][ALT](PC) / [CMD][ALT](Mac) modiﬁer.

•Close and open folders, or move between the sidebar and content pane with the left and right arrow keys.

By default, any previously open folders will close when you open a new one, but you can override this behavior by holding [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) while opening new folders.

5.1.2 User Folders

Live’s browser allows you to work with your creative tools regardless of where they are installed on your computer. This allows you to, for example, store large sample collections on one or more external drives, and still use the browser to access their contents - there is no need to keep them in a single centralized location.

36 Managing Files and Sets

In order to work with your own folders in Live, you must ﬁrst add them to the browser, either by dropping them directly into Live from the Explorer (Windows)/Finder (Mac) or by pressing the Add Folder button in the browser’s sidebar.

After adding a user folder, Live will scan it, which “teaches” the browser about its contents. Following this, it will appear in the Places section of the sidebar.

Note: adding a user folder does not actually move the folder to a new location, but simply makes it available in Live’s browser. If you reorganize your drives using Explorer (Windows)/ Finder (Mac), Live may not be able to ﬁnd user folders if they’ve been moved. For example, if a user folder is contained on an external hard drive, and Live is opened without the drive attached, the user folder will still appear in the browser but will be greyed out. You can attempt to ﬁnd it by using the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu’s Locate Folder command, or tell Live to “forget” this folder via the Remove from Sidebar command. You can also use this command to remove folders that aren’t missing, but which you simply don’t want to work with anymore.

5.1.3 Searching for Files

Live’s browser is equipped with a search ﬁeld that ﬁlters the contents of the selected sidebar label as you type. To search across all locations, press [CTRL][F](PC) / [CMD][F](Mac).

The Browser’s Search Field.

The results will include ﬁles that match all search terms, as opposed to any. For example, if you search for “acoustic bass,“ the search will yield all acoustic bass sounds — not all acoustic sounds and all bass sounds.

For mouse-free searching, we suggest the following sequence of shortcuts:

37 Managing Files and Sets

1. [CTRL][F](PC) / [CMD][F](Mac) to place a cursor in the search ﬁeld;

2. Type your search terms;

3. Down arrow key to jump to the search results;

4. Up and down arrow keys to scroll the search results;

5. [ESC] to clear the search ﬁeld, showing all of the contents of the selected sidebar label.

Previewing Files

Live allows you to preview samples, clips, and instrument presets in the browser before they are imported into the program. To enable previewing, activate the Preview switch next to the Preview Tab at the bottom of the browser.

The Preview Switch.

38 Managing Files and Sets

Hint: You can preview ﬁles even when the Preview switch is not activated by pressing [Shift][Enter] or the right arrow key.

Click on a ﬁle (or use the up and down arrow keys) to select it. Click in the Tab’s scrub area to make playback jump to that point. (Note that it is not possible to scrub clips that have been saved with Warp turned off.)

You can select Live Clips in the browser to load them into the Preview Tab, but they will not play automatically. You can click on the tab or press the right arrow key to preview them.

You can also preview Live’s instrument presets in the Preview Tab. When selected, you’ll hear a short audio example of the preset, so you can get an idea of how it sounds before loading it.

With the Raw button enabled, ﬁles will preview at their original tempo and will not loop. With Raw disabled, Live will try to preview ﬁles in sync with the current Set, so that you can better judge which samples will work for you. Please note that scrubbing is not possible when Raw is enabled.

The previewing volume can be adjusted using the mixer’s Preview Volume knob.

The Preview Volume Knob.

If your audio hardware offers multiple audio outs, you can privately audition, or cue, ﬁles via headphones connected to a separate pair of outs — while the music continues to play. To learn how to set up Live for cueing, please refer to the relevant section (page 202) of the Mixing chapter.

Adding Clips from the Browser

There are several ways to add clips to a Live Set:

39 Managing Files and Sets

•Files can be dragged and dropped from the browser into tracks in the Session or Arrangement View. Dragging and dropping material from the browser into the space to the right of Session View tracks or below Arrangement View tracks will create a new track and place the new clip(s) there.

Dropping a Clip to Create a New Track.

•In the Session View, double-clicking or pressing [Enter] on a ﬁle in the browser will automatically create a new track to the right of the other tracks and load it with the clip.

•Files can be dropped directly into Live from the Explorer (Windows)/Finder (Mac).

Hot-Swap Mode

In addition to the drag-and-drop method of loading ﬁles from the browser, Live offers a HotSwap Mode to reduce your mouse travel. Hot-Swap Mode can be toggled on and off with

the [Q] key, and establishes a temporary link between the browser and, for example, a virtual instrument. While in Hot-Swap Mode, you can step through samples or presets to audition them “in place,“ that is, within the instrument. Hot-swapping for presets is covered in the Live Device Presets section (page 222). Let’s go through an example of hot-swapping samples:

Live’s built-in Impulse instrument features eight sample-player slots that can be ﬁlled by dropping samples into them. Alternatively, we can click the Hot-Swap button that appears as we move the mouse over a slot.

The Hot-Swap Button in an Impulse Slot.

40 Managing Files and Sets

Clicking the Hot-Swap button or pressing the [Q] key engages Hot-Swap Mode:

The Browser in Hot-Swap Mode.

While in Hot-Swap Mode, pressing the up or down arrow key moves to the next ﬁle in the content pane and loads it into the Impulse slot (presumably while Impulse is playing incoming MIDI notes). The link between the browser and the instrument will be broken if a different view is selected, or if the [Q] key or the Hot-Swap button is pressed again. Hot-swapping can also be

cancelled with a press of the [ESC] key or by pressing the close button in the Hot-Swap bar at the top of the browser.

When Hot-Swap Mode is re-entered, the browser will show the location of the currently loaded sound and pre-select it.

5.2 Sample Files

A sample is a ﬁle that contains audio data. Live can play both uncompressed ﬁle formats (WAV, AIF and Sound Designer II for Mac) and compressed ﬁle formats (MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC and FLAC). (Please note that not all of these ﬁle formats can be played in the Lite Edition.)

A note on using Variable Bit Rate (VBR) ﬁles: Please install QuickTime for decoding purposes if you do not already have it on your system. It can be downloaded from the Apple website5.

As Live plays the samples directly from disk, you can work with a large number of (large) samples without running into RAM memory limitations. Please note, however, that you may run into disk throughput problems if your disk is nearly full, and/or (on Windows systems) highly fragmented. Hard drive rotation speed can also affect disk performance. Refer to the section on managing the disk load (page 571) for more information.

41 Managing Files and Sets

Live can combine uncompressed mono or stereo samples of any length, sample rate or bit depth without prior conversion. To play a compressed sample, Live decodes the sample and writes the result to a temporary, uncompressed sample ﬁle. This usually happens quickly enough that you will be able to play the sample right away, without waiting for the decoding process to ﬁnish.

Note: When adding a long sample to a project, Live might tell you that it cannot play the sample before it has been analyzed. Please see the section on analysis (page 42) for an explana- tion.

5.2.1 The Decoding Cache

To save computational resources, Live keeps the decoded sample ﬁles of compressed samples in the cache. Maintenance of the cache is normally not required, as Live automatically deletes older ﬁles to make room for those that are new. You can, however, impose limits on the cache size using the File/Folder Preferences’ Decoding Cache section. The cache will not grow larger

5 http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download

than the Maximum Cache Size setting, and it will always leave the Minimum Free Space on the hard disk. Pressing the nearby Cleanup button will delete all ﬁles not being used by the current Live Set.

Preferences for the Decoding Cache.

42 Managing Files and Sets

5.2.2 Analysis Files (.asd)

An analysis ﬁle is a little ﬁle that Live creates when a sample ﬁle is brought into the program for the ﬁrst time. The analysis ﬁle contains data gathered by Live to help optimize the stretching quality, speed up the waveform display and automatically detect the tempo of long samples

(page 125).

When adding a long sample to a project, Live might tell you that it cannot play the sample before it has been analyzed. This will not happen if the sample has already been analyzed (i.e., Live ﬁnds an analysis ﬁle for this sample), or if the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences’ AutoWarp Long Samples preference (page 119) has been deactivated.

An analysis ﬁle can also store default clip settings for the sample:

Clicking the Clip View’s Save button (page 111) will store the current clip’s settings with the sample’s analysis ﬁle. The next time the sample is dragged into Live, it will appear with all its clip settings intact. This is particularly useful for retaining Warp Marker settings with the sample. Storing default clip settings with the analysis ﬁle is different from saving the clip as a Live Clip.

While analysis ﬁles are a handy way to store default information about a particular sample’s settings, keep in mind that you can use different settings for each clip within a Live Set — even if

those clips refer to the same sample on disk. But if you drag a new version of the sample into a Live Set, Live will use the settings stored in the analysis ﬁle for the newly created clip.

The analysis ﬁle’s name is the same as that of the associated sample, with an added “.asd“ extension. Live puts this analysis ﬁle in the same folder as the sample.

Samples that have an .asd ﬁle are displayed like this in the browser.

Samples without an .asd ﬁle look like this.

The analysis ﬁles themselves do not appear in Live’s browser.

Note that you can suppress the creation of .asd ﬁles by turning off the Create Analysis Files option in the File/Folder Preferences. All data (except for the default clip settings) can be recreated by Live if the .asd ﬁle is missing, however this will take some time for longer samples.

5.2.3 Exporting Audio and Video

43 Managing Files and Sets

The File menu’s Export Audio/Video command allows you to export Live’s audio output as new samples. The resulting ﬁles can be used to burn an audio CD for listening purposes or a data CD, which could serve as a backup of your work or be used with other digital audio applications. If your set includes video, you can also use the Export Audio/Video command to export this to a new video ﬁle, which will be created in the same directory as the rendered audio ﬁles. (Note: video export is not available in the Lite and Intro Editions.) You can also upload your exported audio ﬁles directly to your SoundCloud account.

Which Signal Will Be Rendered?

The Rendered Track Chooser.

The Export dialog’s Rendered Track chooser offers several options for which audio signal to render:

•Master — the post-fader signal at Live’s Master output. If you are monitoring the Master output, you can be sure that the rendered ﬁle will contain exactly what you hear.

•All tracks — the post-fader signal at the output of each individual track, including return tracks and MIDI tracks with instruments. Live will create a separate sample for each track. All samples will have the same length, making it easy to align them in other multitrack programs.

•Individual tracks — the post-fader signal at the output of the selected track.

When Export Audio/Video is invoked while the Arrangement View is up, Live will render the selected time range.

If you would like to render the current Arrangement loop, choose the Select Loop command from the Edit menu prior to choosing Export Audio/Video. If you choose Export Audio/Video while the Session View is up, Live will ask you to specify the length of the sample to be rendered. The Export Audio/Video dialog will come up with a bars-beats-sixteenths ﬁeld where you can type in the desired length. Live will capture audio starting at the current play start position for whichever duration you have speciﬁed. Thus, the rendered audio is what you would hear if you pressed the space bar.

44 Managing Files and Sets

Remember — a rendered audio ﬁle contains only what you heard prior to rendering. So, for example, if you’re playing back some combination of Session View clips and Arrangement material, then that is what will be captured in your rendered ﬁle — regardless of which view is active when you render.

Audio Rendering Options

45 Managing Files and Sets

Audio Rendering Options.

The Export dialog offers several audio rendering options:

•Normalize — If this is activated, the sample resulting from the render process will be normalized (i.e., the ﬁle will be ampliﬁed so that the highest peak attains the maximum available headroom).

•Render as Loop — If this is activated, Live will create a sample that can be used as a loop. For example, suppose your Live Set uses a delay effect. If Render as Loop is on, Live will go through the rendering process twice: The ﬁrst pass will not actually write samples to disk, but add the speciﬁed delay effect. As the second pass starts writing audio to disk, it will include the delay “tail“ resulting from the ﬁrst pass.

•Convert to Mono — If this is activated, Live will create a mono ﬁle instead of a stereo ﬁle.

•File Type, Bit Depth, Sample Rate — These options specify the type of sample to be created.

•Dither Options — If you are rendering at a bit depth lower than 32-bit, choose one of the dither modes. Dithering adds a small amount of noise to rendered audio, but minimizes artifacts when reducing the bit depth. By default, Triangular is selected, which is the “safest“ mode to use if there is any possibility of doing additional processing on your ﬁle. Rectangular mode introduces an even smaller amount of dither noise, but at the expense of additional quantization error. The three Pow-r modes offer successively higher amounts of dithering, but with the noise pushed above the audible range. Note that dithering is a procedure that should only be applied once to any given audio ﬁle. If you plan to do further processing on your rendered ﬁle, it’s best to render to 32-bit to avoid the need for dithering at this stage. In particular, the Pow-r modes should never be used for any material that will be sent on to a further mastering stage — these are for ﬁnal output only. (Please note that the Pow-r modes are not available in the Intro and Lite Editions.)

•Create Analysis File — If this is activated, Live will create an .asd ﬁle that contains analysis information about the rendered sample. If you intend to use the new sample in Live, check this option.

46 Managing Files and Sets

•Upload Audio to SoundCloud — If activated, a helper application will launch that will allow you to upload your exported audio ﬁle to SoundCloud.

Real-Time Rendering

Normally, rendering happens as an ofﬂine process. But if your set contains an External Audio Effect (page 316) or External Instrument (page 401) that routes to a hardware effects device or synthesizer, the rendering process is a bit different. In this case, rendering the master output happens in real time. If you render individual tracks, all tracks that don’t route to an external device anywhere in their signal paths will be rendered ofﬂine. Then, any tracks that do access these devices will be rendered in real time. Live will automatically trace each track’s signal ﬂow and detect if real-time rendering is necessary. You’ll then be presented with several options when you start to render:

Waiting for External Devices to Become Silent.

•Skip — By default, Live will wait for ten seconds before starting a real-time render. This should allow any sound from external devices to fade out, but if you need more time (for example, if you’re waiting for a long reverb tail), you can increase the wait time by typing a new number in the number box. On the other hand, if you’re sure that your external devices aren’t making any sound, you can speed the process along by pressing “Skip,“ which will start the render immediately.

After the render has begun, the dialog changes to show a recording progress bar:

47 Managing Files and Sets

Real-Time Rendering in Progress.

•Auto-Restart on drop-outs — Rendering in real-time requires somewhat more CPU power than non-real-time rendering, and in some cases drop-outs (small gaps or glitches in the audio) can occur. Live detects when drop-outs happen, and rendering will start again from the beginning if the Auto-Restart option is enabled.

•Restart — manually restarts the rendering process.

•Cancel — stops the rendering process and deletes the partially rendered ﬁle.

The number of rendering attempts (if there has been more than one) will also be listed in the dialog box. If you ﬁnd that dropouts and restarts keep happening, you should close other running

applications to allow more processing power for rendering. Please see the chapter on computer audio resources (page 567) for more tips on improving performance.

Rendering Video

Video Rendering Options.

48 Managing Files and Sets

(Note: video rendering is not available in the Intro and Lite Editions.)

In addition to settings for audio rendering, the Export dialog provides additional options for rendering video:

•Create Video File — If this is activated, a video ﬁle will be created in the same directory as your rendered audio. Note that this option is only enabled if you have video clips in the Arrangement View. Also, it is not possible to only render a video ﬁle — enabling video rendering will always produce a video in addition to rendered audio.

•Video Encoder — This chooser allows you to select the encoder to use for the video rendering. The choices you have here depend on the encoders you have installed.

•Edit Video Encoder Settings — This button opens the settings window for the selected encoder. Note that the settings options will vary depending on the encoder you have chosen. Certain encoders have no user-conﬁgurable options. In this case, the Edit button will be disabled.

Once you’ve made your selections and clicked OK to begin the rendering process, audio rendering will begin. After the audio rendering is complete, the video will be rendered. Note that,

depending on the encoder used, video rendering may occur in more than one pass. Live will display a progress bar that will indicate the status of the process.

Unless you’ve speciﬁed a special window size or aspect ratio in the encoder settings, the rendered video ﬁle will play back exactly as it appeared during real time playback in Live. The video ﬁle will also contain the rendered audio.

For more information about working with video in Live, see the chapter on video (page 279).

5.3 MIDI Files

A MIDI ﬁle contains commands that prompt MIDI compatible synthesizers or instruments, such as Live’s Simpler, to create speciﬁc musical output. MIDI ﬁles are exported by hardware and software MIDI sequencers. Importing MIDI ﬁles into Live works differently than with samples: MIDI ﬁle data is incorporated into the Live Set, and the resulting MIDI clips lose all reference to the original ﬁle. MIDI ﬁles appear with a special icon in the browser.

49 Managing Files and Sets

A MIDI File in the Browser.

5.3.1 Exporting MIDI Files

Live MIDI clips can be exported as Standard MIDI ﬁles. To export a MIDI clip, use the File menu’s Export MIDI Clip command. This command will open a ﬁle-save dialog, allowing you to choose the location for your new MIDI ﬁle.

Exporting a MIDI ﬁle is different from saving the clip as a Live Clip.

5.4 Live Clips

Individual audio or MIDI clips can be exported to disk in the Live Clip format for easy retrieval and reuse in any project. Audio clips only contain references to samples on disk (rather than the audio data itself), so they are very small, which makes it easy to develop and maintain your own collection.

To save a clip from the open Live Set to disk, simply drag it to the Places section of the browser and drop it into the Current Project or any user folder. For audio clips, Live will manage the copying of the clip’s sample into this new location based on the selection in the Collect Files on Export chooser (page 63). You can then type in a new name for the clip or conﬁrm the one suggested by Live with [Enter].

50 Managing Files and Sets

A Live Clip in the Browser.

Live Clips are a great way of storing your ideas for later use or development, as they save not only the original clip, including all its clip and envelope settings, but also the original track’s devices. In order to recreate a Live Clip’s device chain, either drag it into a track containing no clips or devices, or drag it into the space in the Session or Arrangement View containing no tracks. Note that Live Clips that are imported into tracks already containing devices or clips will appear with their clip settings but not their devices. You could, for instance, drop a bassline Live Clip on an existing track that drives a bass instrument, rather than creating a new track.

Clips belonging to any Live Sets already on disk are also Live Clips. Please see the section on merging Sets (page 51) for more on this topic.

Note that storing default clip settings with a sample’s analysis ﬁle is different from saving a Live Clip. The default clip in the .asd ﬁle annotates the sample with sensible default values (warp, gain and pitch settings) so that it will play in a deﬁned way when it is added to a Set. Live Clips, on the other hand, are stored on disk as separate musical ideas. For example, you could create

a number of variations from the same audio clip by using different warp, pitch, envelope and effect settings, and store them all as separate Live Clips. In the browser, you could then independently sort and preview these clips, even though they are all referring to the same source sample.

5.5 Live Sets

The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set. Think of this as a single “song.“ Sets must be saved inside projects, so that Live can keep track of and manage all of the various components of the Live Set: Live Clips, device presets, any samples used, etc.

5.5.1 Creating, Opening and Saving Sets

Use the File menu’s New Live Set command to create new Live Sets, and the Open Live Set or Open Recent Set command to open existing ones. In the browser, you can double-click or press [Enter] on a Live Set to open it.

51 Managing Files and Sets

The File menu’s Save Live Set command saves the current Live Set exactly as it is, including all clips and settings.

You can use the Save Live Set As command to save the current Live Set under a different name and/or in a different directory location, or the Save a Copy command to create a copy of the current Live Set with a new name and/or new directory location.

5.5.2 Merging Sets

Live makes it easy to merge Sets, which can come in handy when combining work from different versions or pieces. To add all tracks (except the return tracks) from one Live Set into another, drag the Set from the browser into the current Set, and drop it onto any track title bar or into the drop area next to or below the tracks. The tracks from the dropped Set will be completely reconstructed, including their clips in the Session and Arrangement View, their devices, and their automation.

Session View Drop Area for Importing Live Sets.

Arrangement View Drop Area for Importing Live Sets.

52 Managing Files and Sets

If you prefer to import individual tracks from a Set, you can unfold the Live Set in the browser just as if it were a folder.

Unfolding a Set to Reveal its Contents.

You can now drag the individual tracks and drop them as described at the beginning of this section. Any grooves (page 155) that were saved with your Set are also available as a folder within the unfolded Set.

In addition to unfolding Sets, you can further unfold the tracks within the Sets to access the individual Session View clips that were used on the track:

Revealing the Session View Clips Contained in a Set.

You can browse, preview and import Session View clips from the Set as if they had been stored as individual Live Clips. This means that any Live Set can serve as a pool of sounds for any other, suggesting creative reuse and crossover.

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5.5.3 Exporting Session Clips as New Sets

You can export a selection of Session View clips as a new Live Set by dragging them to the browser. To export a Set, ﬁrst click and drag, or use the [Shift] or [CTRL](PC) / [ALT](Mac) modiﬁers, to select more than one Session View clip. Then, simply drag and drop the clips into the Current Project or any user folder, where you can either conﬁrm Live’s suggested name or type in one of your own.

5.5.4 Template Sets

Use the File/Folder Preferences’ Save Current Set as Default button to save the current Live Set as the default template. Live will use these settings as the initialized, default state for new Live Sets. You can use this to pre-conﬁgure:

•Your multichannel input/output setup.

•Preset devices, like EQs and Compressors, in every track.

•Computer key mappings (page 487).

•MIDI mappings (page 477).

The template Live Set, “Template.als,“ is located in Live’s Preferences folder and can be copied or deleted from there. The easiest way to locate this folder is to search your disk for “Template. al s .“

In addition to the template Set that loads by default, the Live Library contains a folder called “Templates.“ This is a collection of Sets with pre-conﬁgured tracks and routing conﬁgurations for a variety of common recording scenarios.

5.5.5 Viewing and Changing a Live Set’s File References

To view a list of the ﬁles referenced by the current Live Set, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, click the Manage Set button, and then click the View Files button. Live will display one line for each ﬁle used by the Live Set. To list all clips or instruments in the Live Set where the ﬁle is actually used, click the triangle to expand the line. Here is what you can do:

54 Managing Files and Sets

•Replace a ﬁle — Dragging a ﬁle from the browser and dropping it on an entry in the list makes the Live Set reference the new ﬁle instead of the old one. For samples used in audio clips, Live retains the clip properties; the Warp Markers are kept if the new sample has the same or a greater length as the old sample and discarded otherwise. Please note that replacing a sample will change all clips in your set that reference this sample.

Every Entry in the File Reference List is a Drop Target for Files.

•Hot-swap ﬁles — Using the Hot-Swap button at the left-hand side of each entry, you can quickly browse through alternatives for the ﬁle that is currently being referenced. This is like dragging ﬁles here, only quicker.

The File Reference List’s Hot-Swap Button.

•Edit a referenced sample — using an external application (which can be chosen in the Preferences’ File/Folder tab). Clicking the Edit button will open the referenced sample in the external application. The sample will remain ofﬂine as long as the Edit switch is engaged. For samples used in audio clips, the current set of Warp Markers is retained only if the sample length remains the same as before. Note that the Edit button is only available for samples, not for other types of ﬁles such as Max for Live devices (page 471).

The File Reference List’s Edit Switch.

55 Managing Files and Sets

•View a ﬁle’s location — The Location column states if a ﬁle is missing (page 59), or if it resides in your User Library, a Project or somewhere else (“external“). When unfolded, the entry shows the speciﬁc places in the Set where the ﬁle is used.

The File Reference List’s Location Column.

5.6 Live Projects

A Live Project is a folder containing Live-related ﬁles that belong together. Consider, for example, work on a piece of music: You start out with an empty Live Set; you record audio and thereby create new sample ﬁles; you drag in samples from collections; you save different versions of the Live Set along the way so that you can go back and compare. Perhaps you also save Live Clips or device presets that “belong“ to this particular musical piece. The project folder for this

Live Project will maintain all the ﬁles related to this piece of music — and Live’s File Manager will provide the tools you need to manage them (page 59).

5.6.1 Projects and Live Sets

When you save a Live Set under a new name or in a new folder location, Live will create a new project folder and store the Live Set there — unless you are saving the Live Set into an existing Live Project. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this process:

We have recorded some audio into a new Live Set. We now save the Live Set under the name “Tango“ on the Desktop. The Desktop is available in the browser because we have previously added it as a user folder. Here is the result as displayed by the Live browser:

56 Managing Files and Sets

A Live Set and its Recordings in a Live Project Folder.

The project folder (“Tango Project“) contains the Live Set (“Tango.als“) and a Samples folder, which in turn contains a Recorded folder with two samples in it. Note that the current Project is also indicated in the title bar of Live’s application window.

Next, we record another track into our Project. We save the modiﬁed version of the Live Set under a new name so that we do not lose the previous version. Accepting the Save As command’s default suggestion, we store the new version of the song in the Tango Project folder.

A Second Version of the Live Set Has Been Added to the Project.

The Tango Project now contains two Live Sets, and its Samples/Recorded folder contains the samples used by both of them.

And now for something completely different: We choose the File menu’s New Live Set command and record a samba tune. As this has nothing to do with our tango dabblings, we decide to save it outside the Tango Project folder, say on the Desktop. Live creates a new project folder named Samba Project next to Tango Project.

57 Managing Files and Sets

A New Project Was Added Next to Tango Project.

So far we have seen how to create Live Projects and save versions of Live Sets into them. How do we open a Project? Simply by opening any of its contained Live Sets. Double-clicking “Tango with Piano.als“ opens that Set and the associated Project — as displayed in Live’s title bar.

Let’s suppose that, in the course of our work on “Tango with Piano.als,“ we get sidetracked: The piece evolves towards something entirely different, and we feel that it should live in a Project of its own. So, we “Save As...“ under a new name and in some location outside the current Project, say the Desktop:

A New Project Was Added by Saving a Live Set Outside its Original Project.

58 Managing Files and Sets

Note that the new project folder has no Samples folder (yet). “Electro with Piano.als“ is still referencing the piano sample from the original Tango Project. There is nothing wrong with this except for when the Tango Project is moved away or deleted; then “Tango with Piano.als“ will be missing samples. You can prevent this by collecting external ﬁles (page 62). Even after the fact, Live’s tools for searching missing ﬁles (page 59) can help solve this problem.

There is actually no need to keep a Project’s Live Set exactly one level below the Project itself. Within a project folder, you can create any number of sub-folders and move ﬁles around to organize them as desired, although you many need to use the File Manager to “teach“ the Project about the changes you’ve made (page 66).

In general, Live will do what it can to prevent situations such as orphaned (Project-less) Live Sets, which have the potential of confusing both the user and Live’s ﬁle management tools. It cannot, however, control situations in which Sets or ﬁles are moved out of order and become disorganized via the Explorer (Windows)/Finder (Mac).

A note for users of older Live versions: Live does not allow overwriting Live Sets that were created by older major versions to prevent compatibility problems. Instead, you will be requested to “Save As...“. Doing this will insure that the newly saved Live Sets reside in project folders.

5.6.2 Projects and Presets

By default, new instrument and effect presets are stored in your current Project. At times however, it may make more sense to save a preset to another folder or to your User Library, so that you can access them from other Projects. You can drag a preset between folders after saving it

(page 223), or simply drag the title bar of the device over a folder in the sidebar, wait for the

content pane to open, and then drop it into the content pane, adding it to the folder.

When saving presets that contain samples to a new location, Live may copy the samples depending on the settings in the Collect Files on Export chooser in the Library Preferences. You can then type in a new name for the device or conﬁrm the one suggested by Live with [Enter].

5.6.3 Managing Files in a Project

Live’s File Manager offers several convenient tools for managing Projects. Once you’ve opened a Live Set that is part of the Project you wish to manage, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, and then click the Manage Project button. The File Manager will present you with an overview of the Project’s contents and tools for:

59 Managing Files and Sets

•locating ﬁles that the Project is missing;

•collecting external ﬁles into the Project (page 62);

•listing unused ﬁles in the Project (page 64);

•packing a Project in Pack format (page 65);

5.7 Locating Missing Files

If you load a Live Set, Live Clip or preset that references ﬁles which are missing from their referenced locations, Live’s Status Bar (located at the bottom of the main screen) will display a warning message. Clips and instrument sample slots that reference missing samples will appear marked “Ofﬂine,“ and Live will play silence instead of the missing samples.

Live’s File Manager offers tools for repairing these missing links. Click on the Status Bar message to access these. (This is actually a shortcut for choosing the Manage Files command from the File menu, clicking the Manage Set button, and then clicking the Locate button found in the Missing

Files section.) The File Manager will present you with a list of the missing ﬁles and associated controls.

The File Manager’s List of Missing Files.

5.7.1 Manual Repair

To manually ﬁx a broken ﬁle reference, locate the missing ﬁle in the browser, drag it over to the File Manager and drop it on the respective line in the list of missing ﬁles. Note that Live will not care if the ﬁle you offer is really the ﬁle that was missing.

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5.7.2 Automatic Repair

Live offers a convenient automatic search function for repairing ﬁle references. To send Live on a search, click the Automatic Search section’s Go button. To reveal detailed options for guiding the automatic search function, click the neighboring triangular-shaped button.

Automatic Repair Options in the File Manager.

•Search Folder — includes a user-deﬁned folder, as well as any sub-folders, in the search. To select the folder, click the associated Set Folder button.

61 Managing Files and Sets

•Search Project — includes this Set’s project folder in the search.

•Search Library — includes the Live Library in the search.

For each missing ﬁle, the automatic search function may ﬁnd any number of candidates. Let’s consider the following cases:

•No candidate found — you can choose another folder and try again, or locate the sample manually.

•One candidate found — Live accepts the candidate and considers the problem solved.

•Several candidates found — Live requires your assistance: Click the Hot-Swap button (i.e., the leftmost item in every line of the list of missing ﬁles) to have the browser present the candidates in Hot-Swap Mode. You can now double-click the candidates in the browser to load them, as the music plays if you like.

5.8 Collecting External Files

To prevent a Live Set from containing broken ﬁle references, Live provides the option of collecting (i.e., copying) them into the Set’s project folder. This is accomplished via the File Manager:

•Choose the Manage Files command from the File menu

•Click the Manage Set button

•Unfold the triangular-shaped fold button in the External Files section.

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Options for Collecting External Files.

Separated by location (other Projects, the User Library, installed by factory Packs, and elsewhere — sample collections from external drives, for example), the File Manager provides:

•A ﬁle count and the associated disk space used;

•A Show button that will list the ﬁles in the browser;

•A Yes/No toggle for engaging or disengaging collection.

Note: Make sure to conﬁrm your choices by clicking the File Manager’s Collect and Save button!

The File Manager’s Collect and Save Button.

The File menu’s Collect All and Save command is a shortcut that collects and saves all external ﬁles referenced by the current Set, including those from Live’s Core Library or other installed Packs. Note that this can cause a lot of copying, especially if your Live Set uses large multisample collections!

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5.8.1 Collect Files on Export

When you save Live Clips, device presets or tracks by dragging them into the Browser, Live manages the copying of associated ﬁles based on the selection made in the Collect Files on Export chooser in the Library Preferences. This chooser provides the following options:

•Always, the default setting, will copy ﬁles into the same folder as the clip, preset, or track without notiﬁcation.

•When Ask is selected, Live provides a dialog box with options for copying ﬁles.

•Never means that ﬁles will not be copied when saving.

5.9 Aggregated Locating and Collecting

Instead of having to deal with problems while you are in a creative mode, you might prefer putting aside some dedicated housekeeping time to solve all the problems in one go. Using Live’s

File Manager, you can ﬁnd missing ﬁles and collect external ﬁles not only for the current Live Set but also for:

•The User Library — choose the Manage Files command from the File menu; then click the Manage User Library button.

•The current Live Project — choose the Manage Files command from the File menu; then click the Manage Project button.

•Any Live Project — [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) on a Project in the browser’s content pane, and choose the Manage Project option.

•All Projects found in a speciﬁc folder (and its sub-folders) — [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click] (Mac) on a folder in the browser, and choose the Manage Projects command.

•Any selection of Live Sets, Live Clips, Live Presets — [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) on the respective items in the browser, and choose the Manage Files command.

Remember to click the Collect and Save button at the bottom of the File Manager when you are ﬁnished. Otherwise your changes will be discarded.

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5.10 Finding Unused Files

Live’s File Manager can ﬁnd the unused ﬁles in a Project for you. You can then review them and decide to delete them individually or collectively. When searching for “unused“ ﬁles, Live will inspect each ﬁle in a Project folder, checking if it is referenced by any of the Live Sets, Live Clips or device presets in the Project. If not, the ﬁle is regarded as unused — even if other Projects or programs still use it.

To ﬁnd the unused ﬁles for the currently open Project, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, click the Manage Project button, and then click on the triangular-shaped fold button next to “Unused Files“ to access a summary and the Show button. Clicking the Show button makes the browser list the unused ﬁles; there, you can preview samples (page 37) and delete them if you like.

Note you can also ﬁnd the unused ﬁles from the Library: choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, then click the Manage Library button, and then see the Unused Files section.

Last but not least, you can ﬁnd the unused ﬁles for all Projects found in a speciﬁc folder (and its sub-folders): [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) on a folder in the browser and choose the Manage Projects command, then see the Unused Files section. Live inspects each Project individually and labels a ﬁle unused even if another Projects in the same folder does use that ﬁle. To

prevent losses, you may want to ﬁrst collect the ﬁles into their respective Projects and then purge the Projects of unused ﬁles.

5.11 Packing Projects into Packs

Live’s File Manager provides the option of packing a Live Project in Pack format for convenient archiving and transfer. To do this, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, click the Manage Project button, and then click on the triangular-shaped fold button next to “Packing.“ Click the Create Pack button to bring up a ﬁle-select dialog where you can specify the name and location of a new Pack ﬁle. Creating a new Pack from a Project does not affect the Project. If you want the Project deleted, you can delete it using the browser.

65 Managing Files and Sets

Live employs lossless compression techniques to minimize the ﬁle size of Packs. Depending on the audio materials in a Project, this saves up to 50 percent in ﬁle size.

To unpack a Pack (i.e., to restore the original Live Project), double-click the Pack ﬁle (.alp), drag it into the Live main window, or locate it via the File menu’s Install Pack command. Live will then install the Pack to its default location and it will appear in the Packs label in the browser.

5.12 File Management FAQs

5.12.1 How Do I Create a Project?

A Project is automatically created whenever you save a Live Set, except when you save it into a preexisting Project.

5.12.2 How Can I Save Presets Into My Current Project?

You can save presets directly to the current project by dragging from the device’s title bar and dropping into the Current Project label in the browser. You can then use the File Management tools, collect any referenced samples, etc.

5.12.3 Can I Work On Multiple Versions of a Set?

If you’d like to work on different versions of the same Live Set, save them into the same Project. This will usually be the Project that was created when you saved the ﬁrst version of the Live Set. If a Project contains multiple Live Sets it will only collect one copy of any samples used by the various versions, which can save disk space and help with organization.

5.12.4 Where Should I Save My Live Sets?

You can save Live Sets anywhere you want, but saving to pre-existing Project folders can cause problems, and should be reserved for special cases. You should only save a Live Set to an existing Project if it is somehow related to the Project — for example, an alternate version of a song that’s already in the Project.

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5.12.5 Can I Use My Own Folder Structure Within a Project Folder?

You can organize your ﬁles any way you want within a Project, but you’ll need to use the File Manager to relink the ﬁles that you’ve moved around:

1. In Live’s Browser or via your operating system, reorganize the ﬁles and folders within your Project folder.

2. Navigate to the Project folder in the Browser and choose Manage Project via the [rightclick](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu.

3. If you’ve changed the original location of any samples used in the Project, the Missing Samples section of the File Manager will indicate this. Click the Locate button to search for the samples.

4. Since you know that your samples are all in the Project folder, unfold Automatic Search.

Then enable the Search Project and Fully Rescan Folders options. Finally, click Go to initiate the search.

5. When searching is complete, click Collect and Save at the bottom of the File Manager to update the Project.

5.12.6 How Do I Export A Project to the Library and Maintain My Own Folder Structure?

If you export a Project to the Library, Live will look in the Library to see if the folder names there match those in your Project, and will create any missing folders as necessary. For example, if your Project folder contains samples in “Samples/My Samples,“ Live will look in the Library for a “Samples“ folder (which it will ﬁnd, because it’s part of the standard Library) and then for a “My Samples“ sub-folder (which it will not ﬁnd, but will then create).

67 Managing Files and Sets

68 Managing Files and Sets

Chapter 6

Arrangement View

The Arrangement View displays the Arrangement, which contains music laid out along a song timeline, like a multitrack tape.

69 Arrangement View

A Piece of Music in the Arrangement View.

The Arrangement View is a powerful editing tool that easily lets you combine and arrange MIDI, loops, sound effects, video and complete pieces of music.

6.1 Navigation

Live offers several fast methods for zooming and scrolling the Arrangement display:

70 Arrangement View

4 5

Navigating the Arrangement View.

1. To smoothly change the zoom level, click and drag vertically in the beat-time ruler at the top of the Arrangement View (you can also drag horizontally to scroll the display).

2. To zoom in and out around the current selection, use the computer keyboard’s + and keys. To “pan“ the display, click and drag while holding the [CTRL][ALT](PC) / [CMD][ALT] (Mac) modiﬁer. Double-clicking in the beat-time ruler also zooms to the current selection. If nothing is selected, double-clicking the beat-time ruler zooms out to show the entire Arrangement.

3. The Arrangement Overview is like a “bird’s-eye view“ of your music. It always shows the complete piece, from start to end. The black rectangular outline represents the part of the Arrangement that is currently displayed in the Arrangement display below. To scroll the display, click within the outline and drag left or right; to zoom out and in, drag up and down.

4. To change the displayed part of the Arrangement, drag the outline’s left and right edges.

5. To see a speciﬁc part of the Arrangement in more detail, click on it in the Overview and drag downwards to zoom in around that part. Note that you can also drag horizontally to scroll the display. Using this method, you can zoom and scroll to focus around any part of the Arrangement with just one mouse motion.

6. To have the Arrangement display follow the song position and scroll automatically, turn on the Follow switch, or use the Follow command from the Options menu.

6.2 Transport

There are a number of ways to control Live’s transport with the computer keyboard and mouse:

1. You can start Arrangement playback by clicking the Control Bar’s Play button, and stop playback by clicking the Stop button. Arrangement playback can also be toggled on and off by pressing the keyboard’s space bar.

The Play and Stop Buttons in the Control Bar.

2. You can set the Arrangement playback position by clicking anywhere along the Arrangement to place the ﬂashing insert marker. You can return the Arrangement play position to

1.1.1 by double-clicking the Stop button or by pressing the Home key (PC) / Function + left arrow key (Mac).

71 Arrangement View

Arrangement Playback Begins from the Insert Marker.

To continue playback from the position where it last stopped, rather than from the insert marker, hold down the [Shift] modiﬁer while pressing the space bar.

3. When Permanent Scrub Areas is enabled in Live’s Look/Feel Preferences, clicking in the scrub area above the tracks will make playback jump to that point. The size of these jumps is quantized according to the Control Bar’s Quantization menu setting. While the mouse is held down over the scrub area, a portion of the Arrangement the size of the chosen quantization setting will be repeatedly played. With small quantization settings, or a setting of “None,“ this allows you to scrub through the music.

When the Permanent Scrub Areas preference is off, you can still scrub by [Shift]-clicking

anywhere in the scrub area or in the beat time ruler.

Scrubbing Arrangement Playback.

4. The song position can be adjusted numerically using the Control Bar’s Arrangement Position ﬁelds.

Setting the Play Position in the Arrangement Position Fields.

72 Arrangement View

The Arrangement Position ﬁelds show the song position in bars-beats-sixteenths. To change the values:

•Click and drag up or down in any of these ﬁelds.

•Click and type a number, then hit [Enter].

•Click and decrement or increment the value with the up and down arrow keys .

5. Arrangement playback can be started at a particular point in one of your clips using the scrub area in the Clip View (page 97).

6. Several Arrangement playback positions can be set using launchable locators (page

73).

Note that any computer keyboard key or MIDI message can be mapped to the transport controls, as described in the respective chapter (page 477).

6.3 Launching the Arrangement with Locators

Using Locators to Launch Play in the Arrangement.

Locators can be set at any point in the Arrangement. This can be done in real time during playback or recording with the Set Locator button, and will be quantized according to the global quantization value set in the Control Bar. Clicking the Set Locator button when the Arrangement is not playing will create a locator at the insert marker or selection start. You can also create a locator using the context menu in the scrub area above the tracks or via the Create menu. Note that the position of a new locator is quantized according to the Control Bar’s Quantization menu setting.

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The Locator Controls.

You can recall (jump to) locators by clicking on them, or with the Previous and Next Locator buttons on either side of the Set button. Locators can also be recalled using MIDI/key mapping

(page 477). Note that locator recall is subject to quantization. Double-clicking a locator will

select it and start Arrangement playback from that point.

After jumping to the ﬁrst or last locator in the Arrangement, the Previous and Next Locator buttons will jump to the Arrangement start or end, respectively.

Locators can be moved by clicking and dragging, or with the arrow keys on your computer keyboard.

To name a locator, select it by clicking its triangular marker, and choose the Rename Edit menu command (or use the [CTRL][R](PC) / [CMD][R](Mac) shortcut). You can also enter your own info text (page 7) for a locator via the Edit Info Text command in the Edit menu or in the locator’s [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu. Locators can be removed with your computer’s [Backspae] or [Delete] key , the Create menu, or the Delete Locator button.

Note that the locator [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu offers a quick way of looping playback (page 76) between two locators with its Loop To Next Locator command.

The locator [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu’s Set Song Start Time Here command can be used to overrule the default “play starts at selection“ rule: when this command is checked, play starts at the locator.

6.4 Time Signature Changes

74 Arrangement View

Time Signature Changes.

Live’s time signature can be changed at any point in the Arrangement by using time signature markers. These can be added at the insert marker position via the Create menu, or anywhere below the beat-time ruler using the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu. Time signature markers appear just below the beat time ruler, but this marker area is hidden if a set contains no meter changes, freeing up additional space at the top of the Arrangement.

In many ways, time signature markers look and function like locators; they can be moved with the mouse or with your computer keyboard’s arrow keys, and their value can be changed using the Edit menu’s Edit Value command (or with the [CTRL][R](PC) / [CMD][R](Mac) shortcut). They can be also be deleted using the [Backspace] or [Delete] key, or via delete commands in the Edit and Create menus.

The time signature marker [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu offers a number of features, including a Delete All Time Signature Changes command and options to loop or select the area up to the next time signature marker.

Any time signature with a one- or two-digit numerator and a denominator of 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 can be used as a time signature marker value. The numbers must be separated by a delimiter such as a slash, comma, period, or any number of spaces. These marker values can also be set by adjusting the time signature ﬁelds in the Control Bar, either by typing in values or dragging the numerator and denominator sliders. This will change the time signature marker value at the current play location, and works either with the transport stopped or during playback. When the Arrangement contains time signature changes, the time signature editor displays an automation LED in the upper left corner.

The Time Signature Editor Can Change Time Signature Marker Values, and Shows an Automation LED.

Time signature markers are not quantized; they may be placed anywhere in the timeline, and their positioning is only constrained by the editing grid (page 82). This means that it is pos- sible to place meter changes in “impossible“ places — such as before the end of the previous measure. This creates a fragmentary bar, which is represented in the scrub area by a crosshatched region. Live is happy to leave these incomplete measures as they are, but if you’d like your Set to conform to the rules of music theory, you can use the two [right-click](PC) / [CTRLclick](Mac) context menu options to “correct“ incomplete bars.

75 Arrangement View

A Fragmentary Bar and its Resolution Options.

Delete Fragmentary Bar Time deletes the duration of the fragmentary bar from the Arrangement, thereby moving any audio or MIDI on either side of the deleted area closer together in the timeline. The next time signature marker will now fall on a “legal“ barline.

Complete Fragmentary Bar inserts time at the beginning of the fragmentary bar, so that it becomes complete. The next time signature marker will now fall on a “legal“ barline.

Please note that these resolution options affect all tracks — deleting and inserting time changes the length of the entire Arrangement.

If you import a MIDI ﬁle (page 49) into the Arrangement, you’ll be given an option to import any time signature information that was saved with the ﬁle. If you choose to do this, Live will automatically create time signature markers in the correct places. This makes it very easy to work with complex music created in other sequencer or notation software.

6.5 The Arrangement Loop

The Control Bar’s Loop Switch.

For Live to repeatedly play a section of the Arrangement, activate the Arrangement loop by clicking on the Control Bar’s Loop switch.

76 Arrangement View

The Loop Start Fields (Left) and the Loop Length Fields (Right).

You can set loop length numerically using the Control Bar ﬁelds: The left-hand set of ﬁelds determines the loop start position, while the right-hand set determines loop length.

The Edit menu’s Loop Selection command accomplishes all of the above at once: It turns the Arrangement loop on and sets the Arrangement loop brace to whatever timespan is selected in the Arrangement.

The Arrangement’s Loop Brace.

The loop brace can be selected with the mouse and manipulated with commands from the computer keyboard:

• the right and left arrow keys nudge the loop brace to the left/right by the current grid setting (page 82).

• the up and down arrow keys shift the loop brace left/right in steps the size of its length.

•The [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) modiﬁer used with the arrow left and right keys shortens or lengthens the loop by the current grid setting.

•The [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) modiﬁer with the arrow up and down keys doubles or halves the loop length.

You can also drag the Arrangement’s loop brace: Dragging the left and right ends sets the loop start and end points; dragging between the ends moves the loop without changing its length.

The loop’s [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu’s Set Song Start Time Here command can be used to overrule the default “play starts at selection“ rule: when this command is checked, play starts at the loop start.

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6.6 Moving and Resizing Clips

A piece of audio or MIDI is represented in the Arrangement View by a clip sitting at some song position in one of Live’s tracks.

Moving a Clip.

Dragging a clip moves it to another song position or track.

Changing a Clip’s Length.

Dragging a clip’s left or right edge changes the clip’s length.

Clips snap to the editing grid, as well as various objects in the Arrangement including the edges of other clips, locators and time signature changes.

6.7 Audio Clip Fades and Crossfades

The beginning and end of audio clips in the Arrangement View have adjustable volume fades. Additionally, adjacent clips on the same audio track can be crossfaded.

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To access the fades for an audio track’s clips:

1. “Unfold“ the track by clicking the button next to the track name.

2. Select “Fades“ in the Fades/Device chooser.

3. Click and drag the fade handle to change the length of the fade.

4. Click and drag the slope handle to change the shape of the fade’s curve.

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Fades in the Arrangement View.

You can also set the length of a fade by selecting a range of time within the clip (page 80) that includes the clip’s beginning or end and executing the Create Fade command in the clip’s [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu.

Adjacent audio clips can be crossfaded. Creating and editing crossfades is similar to creating and editing start and end fades:

•click and drag a fade handle over the opposite clip’s edge to create a crossfade

•click and drag the slope handle to adjust the shape of the crossfade’s curve

•select a range of time that includes the boundary between the adjacent clips and execute the Create Crossfade command from the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu.

Crossfaded Clips.

Selecting a fade handle and pressing the [Delete] key deletes the fade, unless the Create Fades on Clip Edges option is enabled in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences. In this case, pressing

[Delete] returns the fade handle to a default length of 4 ms. With this option enabled, new clips in the Arrangement View will have these short “declicking“ fades by default.

Automatically Create Short Fades At Clip Edges.

Another result of enabling the Create Fades on Clip Edges option is that adjacent audio clips will get automatic 4 ms crossfades. These can then be edited just like manually-created crossfades.

There are some limits to the length of fades and crossfades:

•Fades cannot cross a clip’s loop boundaries.

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•A clip’s start and end fades cannot overlap each other.

When a fade handle is selected, a dotted red line will appear on the relevant clip to indicate the limit for that fade handle. This is especially helpful when editing crossfades, because one clip’s loop boundary may be “hidden“ under the other clip.

Note that fades are a property of clips rather than the tracks that contain them, and are independent of automation envelopes (page 257).

6.8 Selecting Clips and Time

With the exception of moving and resizing clips, Arrangement editing in Live is selection-based: You select something using the mouse, then execute a menu command (e.g., Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate) on the selection. This editing method lends itself to an efﬁcient division of labor between the two hands: One hand operates the mouse or trackpad, while the other hand issues the keyboard shortcuts for the menu commands. The menu eventually is only used as a reference for looking up the keyboard shortcuts.

Here is how selection works:

•Clicking a clip selects the clip.

•Clicking into the Arrangement background selects a point in time, represented by a ﬂashing insert marker. The insert marker can then be moved in time with the left and right arrow keys, or between tracks via the up and down arrow keys. Holding [CTRL](PC) / [ALT](Mac) while pressing the left and right arrow keys snaps the insert marker to locators and the edges of clips in the selected track or tracks.

•Clicking and dragging selects a timespan.

•To access the time within a clip for editing, “unfold“ its track by clicking the button next to the track name.

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Adjusting an Unfolded Track’s Height.

Clicking and dragging in the waveform display below the clip’s horizontal strip allows you to select time within the clip. Notice that you can adjust the height of the unfolded track by dragging the split line below the Unfold Track button. Note that you can actually unfold all of your tracks at once by holding down the [ALT](PC) / [ALT](Mac) modiﬁer when clicking the button.

•Clicking on the loop brace is a shortcut for executing the Edit menu’s Select Loop command, which selects all material included within the loop.

•Holding [Shift] while clicking extends an existing selection in the same track or across tracks. You can also hold [Shift] and use the arrow keys to manipulate the selection.

Clicking the Loop Brace to Select the Loop for Editing.

6.9 Using the Editing Grid

To ease editing, the cursor will snap to grid lines that represent the meter subdivisions of the song tempo. The grid can be set to be either zoom-adaptive or ﬁxed.

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You can set the width of both zoom-adaptive and ﬁxed grid lines using the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu available in either the Arrangement View track area or the Clip View display.

The following shortcuts to Options menu commands allow quickly working with the grid:

•Use [CTRL][1](PC) / [CMD][1](Mac) to narrow the grid, doubling the density of the grid lines (e.g., from eighth notes to sixteenth notes).

•Use [CTRL][2](PC) / [CMD][2](Mac) to widen the grid, halving the density of the grid lines (e.g., from eighth notes to quarter notes).

•Use [CTRL][3](PC) / [CMD][3](Mac) to toggle triplets mode; this would, for instance, change the grid from eighth notes to eighth note triplets.

•Use [CTRL][4](PC) / [CMD][4](Mac) to turn grid snapping on or off. When the grid is off, the cursor does not snap to meter subdivisions.

•Use [CTRL][5](PC) / [CMD][5](Mac) to toggle ﬁxed and adaptive grid modes.

The current spacing between adjacent grid lines is displayed in the lower right corner of the Arrangement View or Clip View.

You can hold down the [ALT](PC) / [CMD](Mac) modiﬁer while performing an action to bypass grid snapping. If the grid is already disabled, this modiﬁer will temporarily enable it.

6.10 Using the ...Time Commands

Whereas the standard commands like Cut, Copy and Paste only affect the current selection, their “... Time“ counterparts act upon all tracks by inserting and deleting time. Any time signature markers within the selected region will also be affected.

•Cut Time cuts a selection of time from the Arrangement, thereby moving any audio or MIDI on either side of the cut area closer together in the timeline. This command reduces the length of your Arrangement by whatever amount of time you have cut. Note that the Cut Time command affects all tracks, not only the selected ones.

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A Gap Between Clips Has Been Cut by First Selecting It, Then Executing the Cut Time Command.

•Paste Time places copied time into the Arrangement, thereby increasing its overall duration by the length of time you have copied.

•Duplicate Time places a copy of the selected timespan into the Arrangement, thereby in- creasing its overall duration by the length of the selection.

•Delete Time deletes a selection of time from the Arrangement, thereby moving any audio or MIDI on either side of the deleted area closer together in the timeline. This command reduces the length of your Arrangement by the amount of time you have deleted. Note that the Delete Time command affects all tracks, not only the selected ones.

•Insert Silence inserts as much empty time as is currently selected into the Arrangement, before the selection.

6.11 Splitting Clips

The Split command can divide a clip or isolate part of it.

To split a clip in two halves, do the following:

1. Unfold the track;

2. In the waveform or MIDI display, click at the position where you want the clip to be split;

3. Execute the Split command.

To isolate a part of a clip, do the following:

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1. Unfold the track;

2. In the waveform or MIDI display, drag a selection over the part of the clip you want to isolate;

3. Execute the Split command to divide the original clip into three pieces.

The Result of Splitting a Clip.

6.12 Consolidating Clips

The Consolidate command replaces the material in the Arrangement View selection with one new clip per track. This is very useful for creating structure.

Consolidating Several Clips Into a New Clip.

Suppose you have, by editing or improvising, come up with a layout of clips that sound good in Arrangement Loop mode. Selecting that part of the Arrangement, for instance by using the Edit menu’s Select Loop command, and then executing the Consolidate command creates a new clip that can be treated as a loop. You can now, for instance, drag the clip edges to create more repetitions. You might also want to drag the new loop via the Session View selector into a Session View slot for real-time arrangement purposes.

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When operating on audio clips, Consolidate actually creates a new sample for every track in the selection. The new samples are essentially recordings of the time-warping engine’s audio output, prior to processing in the track’s effects chain and mixer. Hence, the new sample incorporates the effects of in-clip attenuation, time-warping and pitch shifting, and of the respective clip envelopes (page 267); however, it does not incorporate the effects. To create a new sam- ple from the post-effects signal, please use the Export Audio/Video command (page 43).

The new samples can be found in the current Set’s Project folder, under Samples/Processed/ Consolidate. Until the Set is saved, they remain at the location speciﬁed by the Temporary Folder (page 214).

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Chapter 7

Session View

In Live’s Arrangement View (page 69), as in all traditional sequencing programs, everything happens along a ﬁxed song timeline. For a number of applications, this is a limiting paradigm:

•When playing live, or when DJing, the order of pieces, the length of each piece and the order of parts within each piece is generally not known in advance.

•In the theatre, sound has to react to what happens on stage.

•When working along with a piece of music or a ﬁlm score, it can be more efﬁcient and inspirational to start with an improvisation, which is later reﬁned into the ﬁnal product.

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This is exactly what Live’s unique Session View is for.

7.1 Session View Clips

The Controls for a Session View Clip.

1. Each clip in the Session View has a triangular button at the left edge. Click the button with the mouse to “launch“ clip playback at any time, or pre-select a clip by clicking on its name, and launch it using the computer’s [Shift] key. You can then move on to the neighboring clips using the arrow keys. Please refer the manual section on clip launch settings

(page 161) for details on how to customize this behavior.

2. Click on a square Clip Stop button to stop a running clip, either in one of the track’s slots, or in the Track Status ﬁeld below the Session grid.

Clips can be controlled remotely with the computer keyboard or a MIDI controller (page 477). They can even be mapped to MIDI note ranges so that they play chromatically.

Clips can be played at any time and in any order. The layout of clips does not predetermine their order; the Session grid offers random access to the clips it contains.

Notice that, even if you stop playback for a Session View clip, the Play button in the Control Bar will remain highlighted, and the Arrangement Position ﬁelds will continue running. These ﬁelds keep a continuous ﬂow of musical time going, so that you can always know your position in song time during a live performance or while recording into the Arrangement (page 94), regard- less of what your individual Session clips are doing.

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You can always return the Arrangement Position ﬁelds to 1.1.1 and stop playback for the entire Live Set by pressing the Control Bar’s Stop button twice.

The Arrangement Position Fields and the Stop Button.

Slots in Group Tracks (page 196) show a shaded area to indicate that at least one of the contained tracks contains a clip in that scene. The color of the shading is the color of the leftmost clip in the group. These group slots also contain launch buttons which will launch all of the respective clips. Group slots which have no corresponding clips contain stop buttons. Clicking in any group slot selects all of the clips it refers to.

Group Slots and Group Launch Buttons.

7.2 Tracks and Scenes

Each vertical column, or track, can play only one clip at a time. It therefore makes sense to put a set of clips that are supposed to be played alternatively in the same columns: parts of a song, variations of a drum loop, etc.

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Resized Session View Tracks.

For convenient access to more clips at once, you can resize Session View tracks by clicking and dragging at the edges of their title bars. Tracks can be narrowed this way so that only Clip Launch buttons and essential track controls are visible.

A Scene in the Session View.

The horizontal rows are called scenes. The Scene Launch buttons are located in the rightmost column, which represents the Master track (page 198). To launch every clip in a row simulta- neously, click on the associated Scene Launch button. This can be very useful in organizing the live performance of a song with multiple parts.

The scene below a launched scene will automatically be selected as the next to be launched unless the Select Next Scene on Launch option in the Launch Preferences is set to “Off.“ This allows you to trigger scenes from top to bottom without having to select them ﬁrst. Computer keys or a MIDI controller can be used to launch scenes and scroll between them (page 485).

Scenes can be renamed using the Rename command in the Edit menu or the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu. One can quickly rename several scenes by executing the Rename command and using the computer’s Tab key to move from one scene to the next. You can also enter your own info text for a scene via the Edit Info Text command in the Edit menu or in the scene’s [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu. The context menu also contains a color palette where you can choose a custom scene color.

Scenes can be reordered by drag-and-drop. Multiple adjacent or nonadjacent scenes can be selected at once by [Shift]-clicking or [CTRL]-clicking, respectively. If you drag a selection of nonadjacent scenes, they will be collapsed together when dropped. To move nonadjacent scenes without collapsing, use [CTRL] + the up or down arrow keys instead of the mouse.

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Scene names can be both descriptive and functional; if Live detects a viable tempo and/or time signature as part of a scene name, the project will automatically adjust to these parameters when the scene is launched. To assign a tempo to a scene, select the scene and rename it with a viable tempo (e.g., “96 BPM“). Any tempo can be used, as long as it is within the range allowed by Live’s Tempo control (20-999 BPM). To assign a time signature to a scene, rename the scene with a meter in the form of “x/y“ (e.g., “4/4“). Any time signature can be used, provided it has a numerator between 1 and 99 and a denominator with a beat value of 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16.

Tempo and time signature changes can coexist within a single scene name, and can appear in any position as long as they are separated from each other by at least one character. For example, “2/4+108 BPM“, “72 BPM;7/8“ and “60 BPM Chorus 3/4“ are all scene names that will cause simultaneous meter and tempo changes.

These Scenes Will Change the Tempo and Time Signature.

Scenes with tempo and/or time signature changes in their names will have a colored Scene Launch button.

7.3 The Track Status Fields

You can tell a track’s status by looking at the Track Status ﬁeld just above the active track’s mixer controls:

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A Track Playing a Looping Session Clip...

The pie-chart icon in a clip track represents a looping Session clip (page 104). The number to the right of the circle is the loop length in beats, and the number at the left represents how many times the loop has been played since its launch. A pie-chart without numbers appears in the Track Status ﬁeld for a Group Track if at least one clip in a contained track is currently playing.

... A One-shot Session Clip...

The progress-bar icon represents a one-shot (non-looping) Session clip. The value displays the remaining play time in minutes:seconds.

... Monitoring the Input...

A microphone icon appears in an audio track that is set to monitor its input (page 172). A key- board icon appears in a MIDI track under these same circumstances.

... Playing the Arrangement.

If the track is playing clips from the Arrangement, a miniature display representing the Arrangement clips being played appears.

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7.4 Setting Up the Session View Grid

Clips arrive in the Session View by being imported from the browser or through recording (page

205).

Dropping Multiple Clips Into the Session View.

If you are dragging multiple clips into the Session View, Live defaults to arrange them vertically, in one track. Hold down [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) prior to dropping them so as to lay the clips out in one scene.

Clips can be moved around the Session grid by drag-and-drop. To move several clips at once, select them by using the [Shift] or [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) modiﬁer before dragging. You can also click into an empty slot and “rubber-band“ select from there.

7.4.1 Select on Launch

By default, clicking a Session View clip’s Launch button also selects the clip, since you will typically want the Clip View to show the newly launched clip. However, some power-users don’t want the current focus (e.g., a return track’s devices) to disappear just because a clip has been launched, especially when starting a clip in order to try it with the return track device settings. Turn off the Select on Launch option from the Launch Preferences if you prefer the view to remain as is when you launch clips or scenes.

7.4.2 Removing Clip Stop Buttons

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Slots Without Clip Stop Buttons.

You can add and remove Clip Stop buttons from the grid using the Edit menu’s Add/Remove Stop Button command. This is useful for pre-conﬁguring the scene launch behavior: If, for instance, you don’t want scene 3 to affect track 4, remove the scene 3/track 4 Stop button.

7.4.3 Editing Scenes

In addition to the standard Edit menu commands such as cut, copy, paste and duplicate, there are two useful commands in the Create menu that apply speciﬁcally to scenes:

•Insert Scene inserts an empty scene below the current selection.

•Capture and Insert Scene inserts a new scene below the current selection, places copies of

the clips that are currently running in the new scene and launches the new scene immediately with no audible interruption. This command is very helpful when developing materials in the Session View. You can capture an interesting moment as a new scene and move on, changing clip properties and trying clip combinations. (Note: the number of scenes is limited in the Intro and Lite Editions.)

7.5 Recording Sessions into the Arrangement

Your Session View playing can be recorded into the Arrangement, allowing for an improvisational approach to composing songs and scores.

The Control Bar’s Arrangement Record Button.

94 Session View

When the Arrangement Record button is on, Live logs all of your actions into the Arrangement:

•the clips launched;

•changes of those clips’ properties (page 97);

•changes of the mixer and the devices’ controls, also known as automation (page 257);

•tempos and time signature changes, if they are included in the names of launched scenes.

To ﬁnish recording, press the Arrangement Record button again, or stop playback.

The Arrangement Selector.

To view the results of your recording, bring up the Arrangement View. As you can see, Live has copied the clips you launched during recording into the Arrangement, in the appropriate tracks

and the correct song positions. Notice that your recording has not created new audio data, only clips.

The Session clips and the Arrangement clips in one track are mutually exclusive: Only one can play at a time. When a Session clip is launched, Live stops playing back that track’s Arrangement in favor of the Session clip. Clicking a Clip Stop button causes the Arrangement playback to stop, which produces silence.

Arrangement playback does not resume until you explicitly tell Live to resume by clicking the Back to Arrangement button, which appears in the Arrangement View and lights up to remind you that what you hear differs from the Arrangement.

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The Back to Arrangement Button in the Session View.

The Back to Arrangement Button in the Arrangement View.

To disable all Arrangement clips simultaneously, click on the Stop All Clips button in the Master Track Status ﬁeld. The clips in the Arrangement and in the Session View exist independently from one another, which makes it easy to improvise into the Arrangement over and over again until it’s right.

The Stop All Clips Button.

Furthermore, you can move clips not only within the Session grid, but also from the Session View to the Arrangement and vice versa by using Copy and Paste, or by dragging clips over the or

selectors.

When pasting material from the Arrangement into the Session View, Live attempts to preserve the temporal structure of the clips by laying them out in a matching top-to-bottom order. Moving through the scenes from the top down, you can reconstruct the original arrangement. This is useful for taking a composed piece of music back to the improvisational stage.

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Another way to move material from the Arrangement to the Session is with the Arrangement View’s Consolidate Time to New Scene command, which is available from the Create menu or in the [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menu of an Arrangement selection. This command consolidates the material within the selected time range to one new clip per track. The new clips are placed into a new Session View scene below the previously selected scene. Note that, as with the Arrangement’s Consolidate command (page 84), this command creates a new sample for every audio track in the selection that contained at least one clip.

Chapter 8

Clip View

The Clip View is where clip properties can be set and adjusted.

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The Clip View.

The Clip View is opened by clicking on the Clip Overview or double-clicking a clip in the Session or Arrangement View.

Clicking the Clip Overview Opens the Clip View.

In the Session View, clicking on a Track Status Field opens the Clip View for editing the clip that is currently running in the track.

Clicking a Session View Track Status Field Opens the Clip View.

The properties of more than one clip can be edited collectively in the Clip View as a multi-selection. To create a multi-selection, click and drag from an empty clip slot to highlight the clips, or select one clip and use the [CTRL](PC) / [CMD](Mac) or [Shift] modiﬁers to add to your selection. The properties available in the Clip View for a multi-selection depend on the contents of the clips; generally only properties which the clips have in common are shown.

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Creating a Clip Multi-Selection.

Controls such as sliders and knobs behave slightly differently when they are part of a multiselection. If the clips in a multi-selection have differing values for any particular knob or slider parameter (clip transposition, for example), the range of these values will be displayed and can be adjusted with the control. Dragging the knob or slider to its absolute maximum or minimum value will make the clips’ settings thereafter identical, adjustable as a single value.

MIDI clips and audio clips in Live have different sets of properties and, consequently, do not share the same set of Clip View controls. The two types of clips do have the following in common:

•The Clip box contains basic clip settings.

•The Envelopes box and the Envelope Editor manage the clip’s envelopes, which are used to automate or modulate the effects, mixer, and clip or MIDI controls. Clip envelopes and their associated Clip View components are covered in detail in a separate manual chapter

(page 267).

•The Launch box controls clip launch behavior and, as such, only appears for Session View

clips. Setting Session View clip launch properties is covered in detail in a separate manual chapter (page 161).

Audio clips have these additional Clip View controls:

•The Sample Display toggles with the Envelope Editor on the right-hand side of the Clip View, and controls Live’s sample-warping capabilities and clip playback settings (page

104).

•The Sample box contains settings pertaining to how the clip plays its sample and displays it in the Sample Display.

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The Clip View for an Audio Clip.

MIDI clips have these additional Clip View controls:

•The MIDI Editor toggles with the Envelope Editor on the right-hand side of the Clip View, and allows editing and creating MIDI notes and velocities (page 133).

•The Notes box contains settings pertaining to how Live plays a MIDI clip, as well as a collection of tools for transforming the notes within the clip.

The Clip View for a MIDI Clip.

To make best use of the screen real estate, you can show or hide the Launch, Envelopes, and Sample or MIDI boxes using the Clip View Box selector in the Clips box. You can also toggle between the Sample Display/MIDI Editor and the Envelope Editor by clicking in the title bars of the Sample/Notes box and the Envelopes box, respectively.

The Clip View Box Selector Shows and Hides Various Clip View Components.

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8.1 The Clip Box

The Clip Box.

8.1.1 Clip Activator Switch

Using this switch, you can deactivate a clip so that it does not play when launched in the Session View or during Arrangement playback. Clips can also be activated/deactivated directly from the Session or Arrangement View with their [right-click](PC) / [CTRL-click](Mac) context menus.