Live Intro for Windows and Mac OS Created by Bernd Roggendorf, Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke, Awi, Reiner Rudolph, Stefan Haller, Stefan Franke, Frank Hoffmann, Andreas Zapf, Ralf Suckow, Gregor Klinke, Matthias Mayrock, Friedemann Schautz, Ingo Koehne, Jakob Rang, Pablo Sara, Nicholas Allen, Henrik Lafrenz, Jan Buchholz, Kevin Haywood, Dominik Wilms, Christian Kleine, Amaury Groc, Daniel Büttner, Alex Koch, Henrik Hahn, Simon Frontzek, Torsten Wendland, Torsten Slama, Eduard Müller, Jeremy Bernstein, Bernar
1 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...
2 Chapter 2 First Steps Note: This manual has been adapted for Live Intro. Speci cally, this means that features which are not available in Live Intro have not been included. To learn more about the differences between Live Intro and the full version of Live, please see the feature comparison chart or download the full Ableton Reference Manual from the Ableton website1 . The full-version reference manual also contains information about all of Ableton's add-on instruments.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 3 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. We also recommend that you read the Live Concepts chapter, which encapsulates everything that Live is and can do, and is therefore a worthwhile read for both beginners and experienced users.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 2.2 4 Setting up Preferences Live's Preferences window is where you can nd 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 , (PC) / is available in the Live menu. Preferences can also be accessed with the Ctrl , (Mac) shortcut.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 5 The User Account/Licenses Preferences are used to manage licensing and installation of the Live platform, and add-on components like the Operator instrument. The Library Preferences allow you to specify the location of Live's Library, repair the Library and manage currently installed Live Packs. 2.3 The Main Live Screen Most of your work in Live happens in the main Live screen.
CHAPTER 2. FIRST STEPS 6 If one of the browser views is open, you can adjust the main window's horizontal split by dragging. Adjusting the Main Window Split.
7 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 nd 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.
CHAPTER 3. AUTHORIZING LIVE 3.1 3.1.1 8 Copy Protection FAQs 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 webshop1 . This site contains information about Ableton's distributor and dealer network. It also offers you the opportunity to buy Ableton products online.
CHAPTER 3. AUTHORIZING LIVE 9 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).
10 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 Live Sets The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 11 Selecting the Library bookmark in Live's File Browser will take you to the Live Library of creative tools. Depending on what content you have installed, there may be a number of demo Sets here, and double-clicking a Live Set's name in the Browser will open that Live Set. 4.2 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.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 12 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 into the Arrangement for further re nement. This works because Arrangement and Session are connected via tracks. 4.3 Tracks Tracks host clips and also manage the ow of signals, as well as the creation of new clips through recording, sound synthesis, effects processing and mixing. A Track in the Arrangement View.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 13 The exclusivity of clips in a track also implies that, at any one time, a track will either play 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.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 14 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. Information about inserting, reordering and deleting audio and MIDI tracks is found here. 4.5 Audio Clips and Samples An audio clip contains a reference to a sample (also known as a sound le or audio le ) or a compressed sample (such as an MP3 le).
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 15 An Audio Clip's Properties as Displayed in the Clip View. Many powerful manipulations arise from Live's warping capabilities. 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 y in the Control Bar's Tempo eld. 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.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 16 MIDI Files Are Dragged in from Live's File Browsers. As you'd expect, a MIDI clip's contents can be accessed and edited 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. 4.7 Devices and the Mixer A track can have not only clips but also a chain of devices for processing signals. Doubleclicking a track's title bar brings up the Track View, which shows the track's device chain.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 17 The Track View Displaying a MIDI Track's Device Chain. Live's built-in audio effects, MIDI effects and instruments are available from the Device Browser and can be added to tracks by dragging them from there into the Track View, or into a Session or Arrangement track. Live's Built-in Devices Are Available from the Device Browser. You can also use plug-in devices in Live.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 18 available from the Plug-In Device Browser. Plug-In Devices Are Available from the Plug-In Device Browser. 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.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 19 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, which can create smooth transitions between clips playing on different tracks.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 20 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. 4.8 Presets and Racks Every Live device can store and retrieve particular sets of parameter values as presets.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 4.9 21 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 enable valuable creative and technical methods such as resampling, submixing, layering of synths, complex effects setups and more.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 22 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 y. This technique is very useful for the jamming musician, as Session recording does not require stopping the music. When a track is armed, its Session slots exhibit Clip Record buttons, and clicking one of these commences recording.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 23 The Automated Pan Control and its Envelope. Practically all mixer and effect controls in Live can be automated, even the song tempo. Creating automation is straightforward: All changes of a control that occur while the Control Bar's Record switch is on become automation.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 24 An Envelope for Clip Transposition. 4.13 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, which is engaged by pressing the MIDI switch in the Control Bar.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 4.14 25 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, which makes a copy of each sample and stores it in a project folder along with the Live Set.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 26 MIDI sequences with matching instruments and effects, e.g., a MIDI drum pattern with the associated Impulse and effects settings; Different regions or loops referencing the same source le; Variations of a sample loop created by applying Warp Markers, clip envelopes and effects; Ideas that may not t your current project but could be useful in the future. 4.15 The Library The Live Library acts as a repository of sounds that are available to all projects.
CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS 27 can enjoy the Essential Instrument Collection 2 LE, a multi-gigabyte library of meticulously sampled and selected instruments.
28 Chapter 5 Managing Files and Sets Various types of les are used in making music with Live, from those containing MIDI and audio, to more program-speci c les such as Live Clips and Live Sets. This chapter will explain everything you need to know about working with each of these le types in Live. However, we should rst take a look at Live's File Browsers, through which most les arrive in the program. 5.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 29 The File Browser Selector Buttons. Each Browser can point to a different disk location, which Live will remember across sessions. The Browser display is divided into columns corresponding to Name , Date, Live Pack, etc., which you can show and hide using the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu options. Showing/Hiding Browser Columns. Columns can be reordered by drag and drop. To resize the columns, drag their divider lines horizontally. Resizing Browser Columns. 5.1.
30 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Library Is this Browser's Root. The Browser root can easily be changed: The topmost Browser item, called Parent Folder, will move the Browser root up one step up in the disk hierarchy when double-clicked. The File Browser's Parent Folder Item. You can also set the Browser root to any folder in the Browser via the (PC) / (Mac) context menu, by double-clicking the folder, or by selecting it and pressing Ctrl Return . A Folder in the Browser.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 31 File Browser's selector button will do the same. 5.1.2 Browser Bookmarks Using bookmarks, you can quickly save and recall frequently used folder locations in the Browser. Clicking in the Browser's title bar will open the Bookmark menu. The Bookmark Menu. The Bookmark menu lists a number of preset bookmarks such as Desktop and Library. Selecting the latter will bring you to the Live Library.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 32 Activating Browser Search Mode. After entering your search terms, begin the search by clicking the Go button or pressing Return on your computer keyboard. The Search Field and Go Button. Live will search the entire Browser root for your search terms. The results will include les 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 33 Automatic rescanning for new searches can be activated and deactivated in the File/Folder Preferences. While a search/rescan is going on, the adjacent search button is labeled Stop. Rescanning happens in the background, and you can keep making music while Live does its work, but you can also abort the search with this button if the disk traf c is bothering you. You can go back to the Browser's folder view at any time by closing the search eld.
34 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS The Rotating Ring Means That a Search is in Progress. For mouse-free searching, we suggest the following sequence of shortcuts: 1) Ctrl F (PC) / F (Mac) to open the search eld; 2) Type your search terms; 3) Return to Go ; 4) to jump to the search results; 5) and 6) to scroll the search results; Ctrl F (PC) / back to the folder view. 5.1.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 35 The Preview Switch. Hint: You can preview les even when the Preview switch is not activated by pressing Return or . Click on a sample le (or use and ) 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 also select Live Clips in the Browser to load them into the Preview Tab, but they will not play automatically.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 36 To learn how to set up Live for cueing, please refer to the relevant section of the Mixing chapter. 5.1.5 Adding Clips from the Browser There are several ways to add clips to a Live Set: Files can be dragged and dropped from the File Browsers into tracks in the Session or Arrangement View.
37 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Rename les and folders using the Edit menu's Rename command or the R (Mac) shortcut. Cancel renaming with the Esc (PC) / key. Create folders by opening the context menu with selecting the Create Folder command. (PC) / Ctrl Ctrl R (Mac), and then Delete les and folders using the Edit menu's Delete command or your computer's or Delete key.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 38 The Hot-Swap Browser. While in Hot-Swap Mode, pressing the Return key loads that le into the Impulse slot (presumably while Impulse is playing incoming MIDI notes); pressing , then Return loads the next sample, and so on. Instead of using the keys, we can also click on the le's HotSwap icon to load it. The link between the Browser and the instrument will be broken if a different view is selected, or if the Hot-Swap button is pressed again.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.2 39 Sample Files A sample is a le that contains audio data. Live can play both uncompressed le formats (WAV, AIF and Sound Designer II for Mac) and compressed le formats (MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC and FLAC). A note on using Variable Bit Rate (VBR) les: Please install QuickTime for decoding purposes if you do not already have it on your system. It can be downloaded from the Apple website1 .
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 40 Preferences for the Decoding and Web Cache. 5.2.2 Analysis Files (.asd) An analysis le is a little le that Live creates when a sample le is brought into the program for the rst time. The analysis le contains data gathered by Live to help optimize the stretching quality, speed up the waveform display and automatically detect the tempo of long samples.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 41 The analysis le's name is the same as that of the associated sample, with an added .asd extension. Live puts this analysis le in the same folder as the sample. Samples that have an .asd le are displayed like this in the Browser. Samples without an .asd le look like this. The analysis les themselves do not appear in Live's Browsers. Note that you can suppress the creation of .asd les by turning off the Create Analysis Files option in the File/Folder Preferences.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 42 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 le 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.
43 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS Audio Rendering Options 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 le will be ampli ed 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 44 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 le. Rectangular mode introduces an even smaller amount of dither noise, but at the expense of additional quantization error.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 45 individual components of Live Sets. 5.3.1 Exporting MIDI Files Live MIDI clips can be exported as Standard MIDI les. To export a MIDI clip, use the File menu's Export Selected MIDI Clip command. This command will open a le-save dialog, allowing you to choose the location for your new MIDI le. Exporting a MIDI le is different from saving the clip as a Live Clip. 5.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 46 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 47 You can use the Save 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 48 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 that were saved with your Set are also available as a folder within the unfolded Set. Of the three tracks contained in the Set shown in the following gure, two contain Session View clips. These can be accessed by unfolding the tracks: Revealing the Session View Clips Contained in a Set.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.5.3 49 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 File Browser. To export a Set, rst click and drag, or use the or Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi ers, to select more than one Session View clip. Then, simply drag the clips to a folder in the File Browser, where you can either con rm Live's suggested name or type in one of your own. 5.5.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 50 Replace a le Dragging a le from the File Browser and dropping it on an entry in the list makes the Live Set reference the new le 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 51 The File Reference List's Location Column. 5.6 Live Projects A Live Project is a folder containing Live-related les 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 les; 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.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 52 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 modi ed version of the Live Set under a new name so that we do not lose the previous version.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 53 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. 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. Doubleclicking Tango with Piano.als opens that Set and the associated Project as displayed in Live's title bar.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 54 A New Project Was Added by Saving a Live Set Outside its Original Project. 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 les.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.6.2 55 Projects and Presets By default, new instrument and effect presets are stored in the Live Library, making them available to any project. At times however, it may make more sense to save a preset with the current Project. You might, for example, want to keep a number of alternative master EQ settings for a given piece. These EQ presets are speci c to the piece and of little use to other Projects.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 56 locating les that the Project is missing; collecting external les into the Project; listing unused les in the Project; packing a Project in Live Pack format; exporting the Project's contents to the Library. 5.7 The Live Library The Live Library acts as a repository of commonly used les, such as samples, clips and Live Device Presets, that are available to all Live Projects.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 57 A list of the currently installed Factory Live Packs is available from the Preferences' Library tab. Here you can select Live Packs from the list and click the Uninstall button to remove them. Multiple Live Packs can be selected and uninstalled at once. By default, the Live 8 Library contains the following sub-folders: Ableton Project Info contains les that Live uses to identify the Library and keep track of what Live Packs have been installed.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.7.1 58 Changing the Library Location, Upgrading an Old Library The Library can reside in the hard drive location of your choice. In the Preferences' Library tab, you will nd the Change Location button. The Change Location button. Clicking the Change Location button will allow you to create a new Library by pointing to an empty folder or creating a new one.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 59 To the right of the Change Location button is the Repair Library button. If you have modi ed your Library outside of Live, within another version of Live or on a different computer, or if you are missing some of the Ableton content, you can use this function to update the factory content and refresh the Library's metadata. Note that this may take some time. 5.7.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 60 The File Manager's List of Missing Files. 5.8.1 Manual Repair To manually x a broken le reference, locate the missing le in the File Browser, drag it over to the File Manager and drop it on the respective line in the list of missing les. Note that Live will not care if the le you offer is really the le that was missing. 5.8.2 Automatic Repair Live offers a convenient automatic search function for repairing le references.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 61 Automatic Repair Options in the File Manager. Search Folder includes a user-de ned folder, as well as any sub-folders, in the search. To select the folder, click the associated Set Folder button. Search Project includes this Set's project folder in the search. Search Library includes the Live Library in the search. For each missing le, the automatic search function may nd any number of candidates.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.9 62 Collecting External Files To prevent a Live Set from containing broken le 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. Options for Collecting External Files.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 63 A le count and the associated disk space used; A Show button that will list the les in the File Browser; A Yes/No toggle for engaging or disengaging collection. Note: Make sure to con rm 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 les referenced by the current Set, including those from the Library.
64 CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS The Library choose the Manage Files command from the File menu; then click the Manage Library button. The current Live Project choose the Manage Files command from the File menu; then click the Manage Project button. Any Live Project (PC) / Ctrl choose the Manage Project option.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 65 Manage Projects command, then see the Unused Files section. Live inspects each Project individually and labels a le unused even if another Projects in the same folder does use that le. To prevent losses, you may want to rst collect the les into their respective Projects and then purge the Projects of unused les. 5.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.13.2 66 How Can I Save Presets Into My Current Project? As long as you're working in a Project (meaning that you've saved your current Live Set), every device in the Device Browser will show a Current Project sub-folder. You can copy presets from other Browser locations to the current project by Ctrl (PC) / Alt (Mac)dragging them. You can also save presets directly to the current project by dragging from the device's title bar and dropping into the Current Project.
CHAPTER 5. MANAGING FILES AND SETS 5.13.6 67 Can I Use My Own Folder Structure Within a Project Folder? You can organize your les any way you want within a Project, but you'll need to use the File Manager to relink the les that you've moved around: 1) In Live's Browser or via your operating system, reorganize the les and folders within your Project folder. 2) Navigate to the Project folder in the Browser and choose Manage Project via the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu.
68 Chapter 6 Arrangement View The Arrangement View displays the Arrangement, which contains music laid out along a song timeline, like a multitrack tape. 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 and complete pieces of music.
69 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.1 Navigation Live offers several fast methods for zooming and scrolling the Arrangement display: 6 1 2 3 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 + Alt and - keys.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 70 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.
71 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 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 clicking anywhere in the scrub area or in the beat time ruler. - Scrubbing Arrangement Playback. 4.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.3 72 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.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 73 R (PC) / R (Mac) shortcut). You can also enter menu command (or use the Ctrl your own info text for a locator via the Edit Info Text command in the Edit menu or in the locator's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. Locators can be removed with your computer's or Delete key, the Create menu, or the Delete Locator button. Note that the locator (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu offers a quick way of looping playback between two locators with its Loop To Next Locator command.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 74 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 elds in the Control Bar, either by typing in values or dragging the numerator and denominator sliders.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 75 changes the length of the entire Arrangement. If you import a MIDI le into the Arrangement, you'll be given an option to import any time signature information that was saved with the le. 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.
76 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW and shift the loop brace left/right in steps the size of its length. The Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er used with the arrow left and right keys shortens or lengthens the loop by the current grid setting. The Ctrl (PC) / halves the loop length.
77 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 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. 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.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 78 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.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 6.8 79 Selecting Clips and Time With the exception of moving and resizing clips, Arrangement editing in Live is selectionbased: 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 ef cient 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.
80 CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW Holding while clicking extends an existing selection in the same track or across tracks. You can also hold 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 xed.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 81 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) / (Mac) modi er while performing an action to bypass grid snapping. If the grid is already disabled, this modi er 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 ...
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 82 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: 1. Unfold the track; 2.
CHAPTER 6. ARRANGEMENT VIEW 83 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.
84 Chapter 7 Session View In Live's Arrangement View, as in all traditional sequencing programs, everything happens along a xed 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.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.1 85 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 Return key. You can then move on to the neighboring clips using the arrow keys. Please refer the manual section on clip launch settings for details on how to customize this behavior. 2.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 86 The Arrangement Position Fields and the Stop Button. 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. 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.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 87 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 rst. Computer keys or a MIDI controller can be used to launch scenes and scroll between them. Scenes can be renamed using the Rename command in the Edit menu or the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 88 Launch button. 7.3 The Track Status Fields You can tell a track's status by looking at the Track Status eld just above the active track's mixer controls: A Track Playing a Looping Session Clip... The pie-chart icon in a clip track represents a looping Session clip. 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 One-shot Session Clip...
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.4 89 Setting Up the Session View Grid Clips arrive in the Session View by being imported from the File Browsers or through recording. 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) / (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.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 7.4.2 90 Removing Clip Stop Buttons 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-con guring 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.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 91 The Control Bar's Record Button. When the Record button is on, Live logs all of your actions into the Arrangement: the clips launched; changes of those clips' properties; changes of the mixer and the devices' controls, also known as automation; tempos and time signature changes, if they are included in the names of launched scenes. To nish recording, press the Record button again, or stop playback. The Arrangement Selector.
CHAPTER 7. SESSION VIEW 92 The Stop All Clips Button. To disable all Arrangement clips simultaneously, click on the Stop All Clips button in the Master Track Status eld. 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.
93 Chapter 8 Clip View The Clip View is where clip properties can be set and adjusted. 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.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 94 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 multiselection.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 95 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 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. The Launch box controls clip launch behavior and, as such, only appears for Session View clips.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 96 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.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.1 97 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 (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context directly from the Session or Arrangement View with their menus. 8.1.2 Clip Name and Color The Clip Name eld allows naming the clip.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.1.3 98 Clip Signature Using the Clip Signature elds, you can specify the time signature of a MIDI or audio clip. This setting is relevant only for display; it does not affect playback. Please note that Clip Signature is completely separate from the project's time signature, and can be set independently for each clip. This makes it easy to create complex polymetric textures by simultaneously triggering clips with different meters and/or loop lengths. 8.1.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.1.5 99 Clip Offset and Nudging To jump within a playing clip in increments the size of the global quantization period, you can use the Nudge buttons in the Clip box. Using the Nudge Buttons to Jump Through a Clip. These buttons can also be mapped to keys or MIDI controllers. In MIDI Map Mode, a scrub control will appear between the Nudge buttons and can be assigned to a rotary encoder wheel for continuous scrubbing. The Scrub Control in MIDI Map Mode.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2 8.2.1 100 The Sample Box Warp Controls The Sample Box Warp Controls. When the Warp switch is off, Live plays the sample at its original, normal tempo, irrespective of the current Live Set tempo. This is useful for samples that have no inherent rhythmic structure: percussion hits, atmospheres, sound effects, spoken word and the like. Turn the Warp switch on to play rhythmically structured samples (such as sample loops, music recordings, complete music pieces, etc.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.2 101 Sample Loop/Region and Display Zooming and Scrolling The Clip Zoom/Scroll Area. Zooming and scrolling in the Sample Display work much like they do in the Arrangement View. When Warp is disabled, zooming and scrolling can be done anywhere in the Sample Display. When Warp is enabled, however, scrolling only happens in the beat-time ruler and the bottom half of the waveform.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 102 To have the Sample Display follow the play position and scroll automatically, turn on the Follow switch, or use the Follow command from the Options menu. The Follow Switch. Playing and Scrubbing Clips The section of the sample that plays when a clip is launched is set with the clip's region and loop controls. An unlooped clip will play from its start marker to its end marker or until it is stopped. The Clip Start and End Markers.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 103 You can also adjust the clip start and end numerically using the respective value elds to the left of the Sample Display. For warped clips, these elds display values as bars-beatssixteenths; for unwarped clips, the display is in minutes-seconds-milliseconds. Notice that you can use the Set buttons here to place the markers during playback. Setting markers this way is quantized according to global quantization.
104 CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW cannot be looped. You can click and drag to change the position and length of the loop brace in the Sample Display, or you can type exact values into the Loop Length and Position elds to the left of the display. The Clip Loop Controls. The loop brace can be selected with the mouse and its position changed with commands from the computer keyboard: and nudge the loop brace to the left/right by the current grid setting.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 105 Setting the Clip to Run Into a Loop. The Loop Length and Position elds are equipped with Set buttons, which can be used to create loops spontaneously during playback: Playing the clip and then clicking the Set Loop Position button moves the beginning of loop to the current playback position (rounded to the global quantization setting) and engages the loop. Then, clicking the Set Loop Length button moves the end of the loop to the current playback position.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.3 106 Clip Pitch and Gain The Clip Pitch and Gain Controls. The Transpose control shifts the clip pitch in semitones. The Detune eld ne-tunes the clip in cents (100 cents = one semitone). The Clip Gain slider, calibrated in dB, changes the clip gain. 8.2.4 Destructive Sample Editing The Launch Sample Editor Button. The Edit button opens the sample in an external sample editing application, which you can specify in the File/Folder Preferences.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.5 107 Saving Default Clip Settings with the Sample The Save Default Clip Button. The Save Default Clip button saves the current clip's settings with the sample. With multiple clips selected, this button will save them all simultaneously. Once saved, Live will restore the current clip settings whenever you drop the sample into a Live Set. This is especially useful with regards to the Warp Markers, which have to be set correctly for Live to play long les in sync.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 108 this reason, we have provided a Legacy Hi-Q Mode option, which is enabled by default in the Options menu whenever you load an old Set that has Hi-Q enabled for any clips. Simply disable this option if you wish to use the new mode. 8.2.7 Clip Start and End Fades The Clip Fade Switch. The Clip Fade switch, when enabled, applies a short fade to the clip start and end to avoid clicks at the clip edges. The length of the fade is signal-dependent and ranges from 0-4 milliseconds.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.2.8 109 Clip RAM Mode The RAM Mode Switch. If the RAM Mode switch is on, Live is loading the audio referenced by the clip into the computer's memory rather than reading it from disk in real time. RAM Mode can help with these problems: Your computer's hard disk is too slow to deliver audio for as many tracks as desired in real time. For more information on disk-related problems, please refer to Managing the Disk Load .
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 110 Processed/Reverse. Until the Set is saved, new samples remain at the location speci ed by the Temporary Folder. There are a few rules for the reversing process. First, any Warp Markers will remain xed to their positions in the sample. This means that a Warp Marker on the downbeat of the second bar of a clip will end up on the downbeat of the second-to-last bar after reversal. Clip loop/region settings are similarly ipped.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 111 be retained. The Warp Markers will be retained only if the new sample has the exact same length as the old sample. The Sample Display's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu includes the Manage Sample File command. This opens the File Manager for the current Set with the sample referenced by the clip selected. From there, you can replace and destructively edit the sample, in such a way that all clips and instruments referencing the sample will be affected.
CHAPTER 8. CLIP VIEW 8.3.2 112 Bank and Program Change Live can send MIDI bank/program change messages to external devices and plug-ins that support MIDI program change messages. According to the settings in these controls, launching a clip also sends its bank/program change message. If you are using Live to send MIDI to your synth, this means that each MIDI clip in your Live Set can play a different sound on your synth.
113 Chapter 9 Tempo Control and Warping Unlike music stored on tape or in a traditional digital audio workstation, the music in Live remains elastic at all times. Live is capable of time-warping samples while streaming them from disk so as to synchronize them to the current Live Set's tempo. This happens without affecting the pitch, which can be changed independently. Mixing and matching audio from different origins is therefore extremely easy. 9.1 9.1.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 114 in hundredths of a BPM allows for enough precision to adjust to live performers or other unsynchronized sources. You can have an external sequencer (or drum machine) play along with Live or have Live play along with the sequencer. The respective settings are made in the MIDI/Sync Preferences, and the EXT switch next to the tempo control is activated to have Live follow an external MIDI clock source. Please refer to the section on synchronization for details. 9.1.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 115 Although Live can be easily synchronized to external MIDI devices, you may nd yourself in situations in which you need to adjust to sources that aren't locked to one tempo, such as live musicians or turntables. As long as your Set's tempo is basically the same as that of the unsynchronized material, you can use the Nudge buttons to temporarily speed up or slow down Live's playback to match what you hear.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 116 Preferences. If the Auto-Warp Long Samples preference is on, Live assumes that long samples contain music that should be played in sync with the Live Set's tempo. If you would rather have Live default to playing long samples as they are, disengage this preference. 9.2.1 Tempo Master/Slave All warped clips in the Arrangement View have one further option: They can be de ned as tempo masters by toggling their Master/Slave switches.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 117 Warp Markers can also be deleted by double-clicking them, or by pressing the computer keyboard's or Delete key after selecting them. Double-Clicking In the Sample Creates a Warp Marker. When working with your sample, you can have Live scroll the Sample Display to follow playback. Use the Control Bar's Follow switch to activate this feature.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 118 Transient Markers. As you mouse over transients, temporary pseudo Warp Markers appear. These have the same shape as regular Warp Markers, but they're grey. Double-clicking or dragging a pseudo Warp Marker creates an actual Warp Marker or, if there are no Warp Markers later in the clip, changes the tempo for the clip segment. Holding the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er while creating a Warp Marker on a transient also creates Warp Markers at the adjacent transients.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 9.2.3 119 Using Warp Markers In the following sections, we will look at a couple of applications for time-warping samples. Warping is, of course, an optional property of clips. Syncing Straight Loops When you import a sample that represents a well-cut musical loop of 1,2,4 or 8 bars in length, Live usually makes the correct assumptions to play the loop in sync with the chosen tempo. It creates two Warp Markers, one at the sample's beginning and one at the end.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 120 you can eliminate silence after the actual loop end by placing a Warp Marker at the sample's right edge. Setting the Warp Markers for a Poorly Cut Loop. Syncing Odd-Length Loops If you import a sample that contains a seven-bar loop, Live initially assumes the loop is eight bars long (or four, depending on its length) and plays it out of sync. For correct playback, the marker at the end of the sample needs to be at the beginning of bar eight, not bar nine.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 121 If a single event in a percussion loop comes late, just pin a Warp Marker to it and drag the marker to the correct beat position. You may want to pin the adjacent events as well, to avoid affecting neighboring regions in the sample. Using Warp Markers to Manipulate the Groove.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 122 Auto-Warp's Results in the Clip View. As long as Auto-Warp made the correct set of informed guesses, the clip will be ready to play in perfect sync with the Live Set's tempo. However, if Auto-Warp does not quite do what you want, you can control its results. The remainder of this section will focus on various ways of guiding Live's auto-warping. Remember that the metronome in the Control Bar will probably come in handy as you warp longer pieces.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 123 Using the Context Menu to Direct Auto-Warp. Directing Auto-Warp is also relatively simple when you have imported a perfectly cut loop. You can tell Auto-Warp to work accordingly using the Warp As ...-Bar Loop command. Live will propose a loop length that makes the most sense given the current Live Set's tempo. Decreasing the Live Set's tempo can, for instance, lead Live to assume the loop is 8 bars at 90 BPM instead of 16 bars at 180 BPM.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 124 The four Warp From Here commands provide various ways of resetting Warp Markers to the right of the selected grid marker or Warp Marker, leaving Warp Markers to the left untouched. These commands are also available from the start marker. Warp From Here runs the Auto-Warp algorithm on the material to the right of the selected marker. Warp From Here (Start At ...) directs Auto-Warp to use the current Live Set's tempo as a starting point for tempo tracking.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 9.2.4 125 Quantizing Audio In the previous section, you learned how to adjust the timing of events in audio les by manually dragging Warp Markers along the timeline. But it is also possible to automatically snap the entire sample to the grid at once by using the Quantize command. To do this, click in the background of the sample editor and choose the Quantize command from the Edit U (PC) / U (Mac) hotkey.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 126 The warp modes are different varieties of granular resynthesis techniques. Granular resynthesis achieves time compression and expansion by repeating and skipping over parts of the sample (the grains ). The warp modes differ in the selection of grains, as well as in the details of overlapping and crossfading between grains. Let's investigate which warp modes work best for different types of signals and how to adjust the warping controls for clean stretching.
CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING 127 The Transient Envelope slider applies a volume fade to each segment of audio. At 100, there is no fade. At 0, each segment decays very quickly. Long envelope times can help to smooth clicks at the end of segments, while short times can be used to apply rhythmic gating effects. 9.3.2 Tones Mode Tones Mode serves well for stretching material with a more or less clear pitch structure, such as vocals, monophonic instruments and basslines.
128 Chapter 10 Editing MIDI Notes and Velocities A MIDI clip in Live contains notes and controller data for playing a MIDI instrument. This instrument can be a virtual instrument in a MIDI track's device chain or an external synth fed via the track's output routing. The MIDI clip provides the device with a musical score to play, specifying note pitch, length, position and dynamics (referred to as velocity in the MIDI lexicon). MIDI is composed and edited in Live's MIDI Editor. 10.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 10.2 129 The MIDI Editor To bring up the MIDI Editor, double-click a MIDI clip to open the Clip View. You can use the Clip View Box selector to make sure the Notes box is showing, then click in the title bar of the Notes box to bring up the MIDI Editor on the right-hand side of the screen. The MIDI Editor. The MIDI Editor is divided into two editing windows: the upper Note Editor and the lower Velocity Editor.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 130 Previewing MIDI Notes. Provided your MIDI track's device chain contains an instrument, activating the Preview switch in the MIDI Editor allows you to hear notes as you select and move them. If the MIDI track is armed, activating Preview also allows you to step record new notes into the clip. Note velocity is adjusted in the Velocity Editor, by clicking and dragging on the associated markers.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 131 The MIDI Editor has both vertical and horizontal navigation. Along the horizontal axis lies a time ruler, which shows note position along a musical timeline. The vertical axis contains the note ruler, displaying octaves C0 C10, and a representation of a piano keyboard (the piano roll). Note that if the Preview switch at the top of the piano roll is activated, you can listen to the results of your piano roll playing. 2 1 3 5 6 MIDI Editor Navigation.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 132 It always shows the complete contents of the selected MIDI clip. The black rectangular outline represents the part of the clip that is currently displayed in the Editor above. To scroll, click within the outline and drag left or right; to zoom in and out, drag up and down. 6. Change the length of what is shown in the Editor by dragging the left or right edges of the outline in the Clip Overview. 7.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 10.4 Editing MIDI 10.4.1 Non-Destructive Editing 133 You can always return your MIDI clip to its previous state by using the Edit menu's Undo command. Furthermore, if the MIDI clip being edited originated in a MIDI le on your hard drive, none of your editing will alter the original MIDI le, as Live incorporates its contents into your Live Set when importing. 10.4.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 134 Use the Loop/Region Markers to Select a Speci c Region of the Clip to Play. 10.4.3 Grid Snapping Most functions in the MIDI Editor are subject to grid snapping. You can hold down the Alt (PC) / (Mac) modi er while performing an action to bypass grid snapping. Note movements will also snap to an offset, which is based on the original placement of the note relative to the grid.
135 CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES Clicking and dragging in the background selects a timespan. To select all of the notes that begin during the timespan, press Return . After placing the insert marker, you can manipulate it using your computer keyboard. Press or to move the insert marker to the left or right, according to the grid settings. Ctrl (PC) / Alt (Mac) or moves the insert marker to the next note boundary.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 136 Selecting a note (or notes) makes it subject to commands from the Edit menu, such as Copy and Paste. Notes in the clipboard will be pasted starting at the location of the insert marker. You can also use the Ctrl (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er to click and drag copies of notes to a new location.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 137 Cut Time cuts a selection of time from the MIDI clip, thereby moving any notes on either side of the cut area closer together in the timeline. A Gap Between MIDI Notes Has Been Cut by First Selecting It, Then Executing the Cut Time Command. Paste Time places copied time into the MIDI clip, along with any notes that were in the copied time. Duplicate Time places a copy of the selected timespan into the clip, along with any contained notes.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 138 Quantizing MIDI Notes. Using the options presented here, you can select either the current grid size or a speci c meter value for quantization and set either the note start or end (or both) to be quantized. Quantizing the note end will stretch the note so that it ends at the chosen meter subdivision.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 139 As in the Note Editor, you can select multiple velocity markers to change by clicking with the modi er held down. Tip: To set a group of notes so that they all have the same velocity, select their markers in the Velocity Editor, drag them up or down to either maximum or minimum velocity, and then adjust velocity to the desired value. As we saw earlier, Draw Mode allows drawing identical velocities for all notes within a grid tile.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 140 movement, Live will remember the change and use your new velocity on any notes that you draw afterward. Note-Off Velocity By default, the Velocity Editor allows you to adjust note-on velocities. But you can toggle the editor to show note-off velocities via options in the editor's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. The Velocity Editor Showing Note-Off Velocities.
CHAPTER 10. EDITING MIDI NOTES AND VELOCITIES 141 When multiple notes are selected in the Note Editor, the Stretch Notes command becomes available from the context menu, if you invoke it with (PC) / Ctrl (Mac). Note Stretch markers will then appear in the Note Editor, allowing notes to be scaled proportionally in time. The markers are a pair of downward-pointing indicators that snap to the beginning of the rst and last notes in the selection.
142 Chapter 11 Using Grooves The timing and feel of each clip in your Set can be modi ed through the use of grooves. Live's Library includes a large selection of grooves, which appear as .agr les in the Browser. Please note that Live Intro accommodates up to four grooves per Set. Groove Files in the Browser. The easiest way to work with Library grooves is to drag and drop them from the Browser directly onto clips in your Set.
CHAPTER 11. USING GROOVES 143 groove le to the clip. If you want to quickly try out a variety of grooves, you can enable the Hot-Swap button above a clip's Clip Groove chooser and then step through the grooves in the Browser while the clip plays. The Hot-Swap Groove Button. Grooves can be applied to both audio and MIDI clips. In audio clips, grooves work by adjusting the clip's warping behavior, and thus only works on clips with Warp enabled. 11.
CHAPTER 11. USING GROOVES 144 The Groove Pool. 11.1.1 Adjusting Groove Parameters Grooves in the Groove Pool appear in a list, and offer a variety of parameters that can be modi ed in real time to adjust the behavior of any clips that are using them. You can also save and hot-swap grooves via the buttons next to the Groove's name. The Groove Pool's controls work as follows: Base The Base chooser determines the timing resolution against which the notes in the groove will be measured.
CHAPTER 11. USING GROOVES 145 to every voice in your clip, so notes that originally occurred together will now be randomly offset both from the grid and from each other. Velocity adjusts how much the velocity of the notes in clips will be affected by the velocity information stored in the groove le. Note that this slider goes from -100 to +100. At negative values, the effect of the groove's velocity will be reversed; loud notes will play quietly and vice versa.
CHAPTER 11. USING GROOVES 146 or Groove Pool into a MIDI track. This will create a new MIDI clip, which you can then edit, as you would with any other MIDI clip. You can then convert the edited clip back into a groove, via the process below. 11.2.1 Extracting Grooves The timing and volume information from any audio or MIDI clip can be extracted to create a new groove. You can do this by dragging the clip to the Groove Pool or via the Extract Groove command in the clip's (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu.
CHAPTER 11. USING GROOVES 11.3.2 147 Creating Texture With Randomization You can use a groove's Random parameter to create realistic doublings. This can be particularly useful when creating string textures from single voices. To do this, rst duplicate the track containing the clip that you want to thicken. Then apply a groove to one of the clips and turn up its Random parameter.
148 Chapter 12 Launching Clips The Live Session View is set apart by the fact that it gives you, the musician, a spontaneous environment that encourages performance and improvisation. An important part of how you take advantage of the Session View lies within how you con gure your various Session View clips. This chapter explains the group of settings used to de ne how each Session View clip behaves when triggered, or launched. 12.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 149 Use the Clip View Box Selector to Bring up the Launch Box. Note that you can edit the launch settings of more than one clip at the same time by rst selecting the clips and then opening the Clip View. 12.2 Launch Modes The Clip Launch Mode Chooser. The Launch Mode chooser offers a number of options for how clips behave with respect to mouse clicks, computer keyboard actions or MIDI notes: Trigger: down starts the clip; up is ignored.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 12.3 150 Clip Launch Quantization The Clip Quantization Chooser. The Clip Quantization chooser lets you adjust an onset timing correction for clip triggering. To disable clip quantization, choose None. To use the Control Bar's Global Quantization setting, choose Global. Global quantization 6 (PC) / 6 (Mac), 7 , 8 , 9 and 0 can be quickly changed using the Ctrl shortcuts.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 151 The Velocity Amount control allows you to adjust the effect of MIDI note velocity on the clip's volume: If set to zero, there is no in uence; at 100 percent, the softest notes play the clip silently. For more on playing clips via MIDI, see the respective section. 12.5 Legato Mode The Legato Mode Switch. Suppose you have gathered, in one track, a number of looping clips, and you now want to toggle among them without losing the sync.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 152 same group after the clip plays. A group is de ned by clips arranged in successive slots of the same track. Tracks can have an unlimited number of groups, separated by empty slots. 1 2 The Follow Action Controls. 3 1. The Follow Action Time control de nes when the Follow Action takes place in bars-beats-sixteenths from the point in the clip where play starts. The default for this setting is one bar. 2.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 153 Play First Clip launches the rst (top) clip in a group. Play Last Clip launches the last (bottom) clip in a group. Play Any Clip plays any clip in the group. Play Other Clip is similar to Play Any Clip, but as long as the current clip is not alone in the group, no clip will play consecutively. There is also the possibility to have no Follow Action by selecting No Action, or leaving the chooser blank.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 154 2 3 Creating a Group With the Two Clips. 3. Set up Follow Actions for the rst clip. You will want to make Follow Action Time equal to the clip's length. Set the Follow Action A chooser to Play Next Clip, with a Chance setting of 1, leaving Follow Action B alone. Now this clip is set up to advance to the looping clip after it plays. 4. Activate the Loop switch for the second clip.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 155 The default setting for Follow Action is actually a 1:0 chance that Nothing happens after the Follow Action Time, which means that there is effectively no Follow Action. But now, imagine a group consisting of one single clip. Follow Action A is set to Play Clip Again, with a Chance of 8. Follow Action B is set to None, with a Chance of 1. The clip uses a long sample, and Follow Time is set to one bar.
CHAPTER 12. LAUNCHING CLIPS 12.6.5 156 Mixing up Melodies and Beats You can let Follow Actions perform unpredictable remixes and solos for you: Use a clip containing a beat or melody, and copy it so that there are several instances of it forming a group. Alternatively, you can use several different beats or melodies that you want to mix together. The start and end for each clip can be set differently, as can clip envelopes and other clip settings.
157 Chapter 13 Routing and I/O In the context of Live, routing is the setup of the tracks' signal sources and destinations (i.e., their inputs and outputs). Most routing happens in the mixer's track In/Out section, which offers, for every track, choosers to select a signal source and destination. The mixer's In/Out section is Live's patchbay. The In/Out section can be independently shown or hidden from the Session and Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 158 For every track that can play clips, the In/Out section has the same layout: The upper chooser pair ( Audio/MIDI From ) selects the track's input. Audio tracks have an audio input, and MIDI tracks have a MIDI input. Return tracks receive their input from the respective sends. The Monitor radio button selects the monitor mode: the conditions under which the track's input is heard through the track. The lower chooser pair ( Audio/MIDI To ) selects the track's output.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 159 Audio and MIDI Track Arm Buttons. To permanently monitor the track's input, regardless of whether the track is armed or clips are playing, choose In. This setting effectively turns the track into what is called an Aux on some systems: the track is not used for recording but for bringing in a signal from elsewhere (for instance, a ReWire slave program). With this setting, output from the clips is suppressed.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 160 reached via the Input and Output Channel choosers' Con gure... option. Note that the Audio Preferences also provide access to the Channel Con guration dialogs, which determine which inputs and outputs are used, and whether they are available to Live as mono or stereo pairs. Essentially, the Channel Con guration dialog tells Live what it needs to know about how the computer is connected to the other audio components in your studio.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 13.3.1 161 The MIDI Ports List in the Preferences The MIDI Ports List in the Preferences. You can con gure which MIDI ports are made available to Live using the MIDI Ports section of the MIDI/Sync Preferences. All available input and output ports are listed here. For Live's tracks to receive/send MIDI from/to a speci c MIDI port, the corresponding switch in the Track column must be set to On.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 162 As it happens, when the computer keyboard is set to send notes between C3 and C4, the keys are mapped to MIDI notes such that the center row of the keyboard (ASDF...) addresses the Impulse percussion sampler's sample slots. This means that you can play and record drum patterns right off the computer keyboard. Note that when the computer MIDI keyboard is activated, it will steal keys that may have otherwise been assigned to remote-control elements of the Live interface.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 163 source has been enabled in the MIDI Ports List in the Preferences; 2. MIDI messages that are used for remote-controlling Live's user-interface elements; 3. MIDI messages coming from and going to Live's MIDI tracks. MIDI messages that are mapped to remote-control Live's user-interface elements are eaten up by the remote control assignment and will not be passed on to the MIDI tracks.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 164 3. Select Reason from the MIDI track's Output Type chooser. 4. The Output Channel chooser presents you with a list of the instruments that you currently have in your Reason rack; select the instrument you want to address. 5. Select Reason from the audio track's Input Type chooser. 6. From the audio track's Input Channel chooser, select the audio channel that corresponds to the instrument to which you are sending MIDI. 7. Set the audio track's Monitor radio button to In. 8.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 165 Temporary Folder. 13.6 Internal Routings Live's mixer allows for inter-track routings. These routings, albeit potentially confusing, enable many valuable creative and technical options. Via the mixer, inter-track routing can work two ways: 1. Track A is set up to send its output signal to Track B. This is possible because every track that can receive an output signal of the appropriate type from Track A shows up in its Output Type chooser. 2.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 166 Approach 2, on the other hand, leaves Track A unaffected except for Track B tapping its output. We can easily add more tracks like Track B that all tap Track A's output. Instrument layering is a good example of such a one-to-many routing setup. 13.6.1 Internal Routing Points Signals travel from Live's tracks into their respective device chains and then into the track mixer, where they might become panned or have their levels altered by the tracks' faders.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 167 Routing Points in Racks Tap Points for Every Chain in a Track. If a track has one or more Instrument or Effect Racks in its device chain, internal routing points (Pre FX, Post FX and Post Mixer) will also be available for every chain within the Rack. If a track contains one or more Drum Racks, internal routing points will be available for any of the Rack's return chains.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 13.6.2 168 Making Use of Internal Routing This section presents several internal routing examples in more detail. Post-Effects Recording Let's say that you are feeding a guitar into Live, building up a song track by track, overlaying take onto take. It is certainly powerful to have a separate effects chain per track for applying different effects to different takes after the fact.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 169 Recording MIDI as Audio When working with MIDI and complex software instruments, it is sometimes more useful to record the resulting audio than the incoming MIDI. A single MIDI note can prompt, for example, Native Instruments' Absynth to produce something that sounds more like a piece of music than a single tone. This output lends itself more to representation as an audio waveform than a single note in a MIDI clip, particularly when comparing the editing options.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 170 Creating Submixes Submixing the Individual Drums of a Drum Kit. Suppose we have the individual drums of a drum kit coming in on separate tracks for multitrack recording. In the mix, we can easily change the volumes of the individual drums, but adjusting the volume of the entire drum kit against the rest of the music is less convenient. Therefore, we add a new audio track to submix the drums.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 171 Several MIDI Tracks Playing the Same Instrument Consider a MIDI track containing a virtual instrument a Simpler playing a pad sound, for example. We have already recorded MIDI clips into this track when we realize that we would like to add an independent, parallel take for the same instrument. So we add another MIDI track.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 172 The Instrument Has Been Isolated in a Dedicated Track. We might be bothered by the fact that muting the pad track (by turning off its Activator switch) also mutes the other MIDI track. To be precise, the other track keeps playing, but its MIDI is played by an instrument that is out of the mix. This can be easily remedied by cutting the clips from the pad track and pasting them into a third track that can be independently muted (and that can hold its own MIDI effects).
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 173 Using Impulse's Individual Outs to Separately Process Sample Slots. We simply create an audio track and select from its Input Type chooser the track with the Impulse. The Input Channel chooser now offers, in addition to Pre FX, Post FX and Post Mixer, Impulse's eight individual outputs, labeled according to the sample used in each slot.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 174 Tracks Feeding MIDI to and Tapping Audio From the Parts of a Multi-Timbral Instrument. Sending MIDI from the mixer to a multi-timbral instrument is a variation of a case described above. One MIDI track hosts the multi-timbral instrument, and additional MIDI tracks are used to feed its individual parts. Each additional MIDI track has its Output Type chooser pointed to the track that contains the instrument, and its Output Channel chooser referencing the target MIDI channel.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 175 Routing a Speech Signal Into a Vocoder's Sidechain Input. Some vocoder plug-ins include a built-in synthesizer to generate the carrier signal. In this case, the only difference from the above procedure is that the vocoder instrument is dragged into a MIDI track. Feeding the side-chain audio input works as described above.
CHAPTER 13. ROUTING AND I/O 176 Using an Auxiliary MIDI Track to Layer Instruments. Perhaps you wonder why this works, given that the string track's output is audio and not MIDI. When routing MIDI in from another track, we are tapping the MIDI at the latest possible stage, which is after any MIDI Effects, and just before the instrument.
177 Chapter 14 Mixing 14.1 The Live Mixer Live includes a mixer section that is accessible from two views: The Arrangement View Mixer. In the Arrangement View, the mixer appears as a horizontal strip to the right of the track button next to area. To display all mixer controls for a track, unfold the track using the its name, and adjust its height accordingly.
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 178 The Session View Mixer. The Session View is a standard vertical mixer layout. You'll likely nd the Session View mixer more intuitive than the Arrangement mixer, which comes in handy when you work with automation. Note that the Tab key toggles between the Arrangement and Session Views. The View menu options listed below show or hide mixer components.
179 CHAPTER 14. MIXING Let's look at the mixer controls: 5 6 4 3 1 2 4 5 6 1 2 3 The Mixer Controls. 1. The Meter shows the track's RMS (average) and peak output level. While monitoring, however, it shows the input level. 2. The Volume control adjusts the track's output level. With multiple tracks selected, adjusting the volume of one of them will adjust the others as well. 3. The Pan control positions the track's output in the stereo eld.
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 14.1.1 180 Session Mixer Features The Session Mixer's Possibilities. The Mixer section of the Session Mixer has several additional features that are not visible by default. The mixer is resizable, and dragging upwards on the top of the mixer will extend the height of the track meters, adding tick marks, a numeric volume eld and resettable peak level indicators. Increasing a track's width in this state will add a decibel scale alongside the meter's tick marks.
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 14.2 181 Audio and MIDI Tracks Audio and MIDI tracks in Live are for hosting and playing clips, as explained earlier. You can add up to 64 audio and unlimited MIDI tracks to your Live Set's mixer using the appropriate Create menu commands. Tracks can also be created by double-clicking or pressing Return on les in the Browser to load them, or by dragging objects from the Browser into the space to the right of Session View tracks or below Arrangement View tracks.
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 182 particular knob or slider parameter (volume, for example), this difference will be maintained as you adjust the parameter. If you drag a track's title bar to the Browser it will be saved as a new Set. If a track contains audio clips, Live will manage the copying of the referenced sampled into this new location based on the selection in the Collect Files on Export chooser. You can then type in a name for the newly created Set or con rm the one suggested by Live with Return .
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 183 A clip track's Send control regulates how much of the track's output feeds the associated return track's input. What's more, even the return track's own output can be routed to its input, allowing you to create feedback. Because runaway feedback can boost the level dramatically and unexpectedly, the Send controls in Return tracks are disabled by default. To enable them, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on a Return track's Send knob and select Enable Send or Enable All Sends.
184 CHAPTER 14. MIXING curve, menu. (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on the crossfader, then select an entry from the context Choose from Seven Crossfader Curves. The chart below details the power level and response of each crossfader curve. A+B Power Level Crossfader Response Transition Dipped Intermediate Constant Power Slow Fade Slow Cut Fast Cut The crossfader can be mapped to any continuous MIDI controller (absolute or incremental).
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 185 A key mapped to any one of the three assignable crossfader positions (left, center or right) will toggle the crossfader's absolute left and right positions. Mapping to two of the three elds allows for a snapping back behavior when one of the assigned keys is held down and the other is pressed and released. Crossfade Assign Buttons. Each track has two Crossfade Assign buttons, A and B.
186 CHAPTER 14. MIXING 14.5 Soloing and Cueing By default, soloing a track simply mutes all other tracks (except in some cases where tracks are feeding other tracks). The signal from the soloed tracks is heard through their respective outputs, with the pan setting of each track preserved. Soloing a clip track leaves any return tracks audible, provided that the Solo in Place option is enabled in the Solo button's context menu ( (PC) / Ctrl (Mac)).
187 CHAPTER 14. MIXING for cueing. This has to be set to an output other than that selected for the Master. If the desired outputs don't show up in these choosers, please check the Audio Preferences. 3. Activate cueing by setting the Solo/Cue Mode switch to Cue. 4. The tracks' Solo switches are now replaced by Cue switches with headphone icons. When a track's Cue switch is pressed, that track's output signal will be heard through the output selected in the Cue Out chooser.
CHAPTER 14. MIXING 188 automatic by default. Unusually high Track Delay settings or reported latencies from plugins may cause noticeable sluggishness in the software. If you are having latency-related dif culties while recording and playing back instruments, you may want to try turning off device delay compensation, however this is not normally recommended. You may also nd that adjusting the individual track delays is useful in these cases.
189 Chapter 15 Recording New Clips This chapter is about recording new clips from audio and MIDI input signals. Note that this is a different kind of recording than the capturing of Session clips into the Arrangement. For successful audio recording, please make sure the audio preferences are set up properly. For more on this, please see the built-in program lesson on setting up Audio Preferences.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 190 The Track In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Left) and Session View (Right). Audio tracks default to recording a stereo signal from the external input pair 1/2. MIDI tracks default to recording all MIDI that is coming in through the active external input devices. The computer keyboard is, by default, activated as a pseudo-MIDI input device, allowing you to record MIDI even if no MIDI controller hardware is currently available.
191 CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS If you are using a natively supported control surface, arming a MIDI track will automatically lock this control surface to the instrument in the track. Clicking one track's Arm button unarms all other tracks unless the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er is held. If multiple tracks are selected, clicking one of their Arm buttons will arm the other tracks as well. Arming a track selects the track so you can readily access its devices in the Track View. 15.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 192 1. Recording commences when the Control Bar's Record button is activated and the Play button is pressed. 2. Recording creates new clips in all tracks that have their Arm button on. 3. When the Overdub switch is on, the new clips contain a mix of the signal already in the track and the new input signal. The Overdub option only applies to MIDI tracks. 4. To prevent recording prior to a punch-in point, activate the Punch-In switch.
193 CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 4 3 2 1 Recording a New Clip Into the Session View. 1. Set the Global Quantization chooser to any value other than None to obtain correctly cut clips. 2. Activate the Arm button for the tracks onto which you want to record. Clip Record buttons will appear in the empty slots of the armed tracks. 3. Click on any of the Clip Record buttons to commence recording. A new clip will appear in the slot with a red Clip Launch button that shows it is currently recording.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 15.3.3 194 Overdub Recording MIDI Patterns Live makes pattern-oriented recording of drums and the like quite easy. Using Live's Impulse instrument and the following technique, you can successively build up drum patterns while listening to the result. Or, using an instrument such as Simpler, which allows for chromatic playing, you can build up melodies or harmonies, note by note. 1. Set the Global Quantization chooser to one bar. 2.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 15.3.4 195 MIDI Step Recording The MIDI Editor allows you to record notes with the transport stopped by holding down keys on your controller or computer MIDI keyboard and advancing the insert marker according to the grid settings. This process, known as step recording, allows you to enter notes at your own pace, without needing to listen to a metronome or guide track. 2 1 3 Step Recording in the MIDI Editor. 1.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 15.4 196 Recording in Sync Live keeps the audio and MIDI you have recorded in sync, even when you later decide on a different song tempo. In fact, Live allows you to change the tempo at any time before, after and even during recording. You could, for instance, cheat a bit by turning down the tempo to record a technically dif cult part, and pull it up again afterwards. It is important to record in sync to make sure everything will later play in sync. The Metronome Switch.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 15.5 197 Recording Quantized MIDI Notes If you will be recording MIDI, you have the option of automatically quantizing MIDI notes while recording. The Record Quantization chooser in the Edit menu allows selecting the meter subdivisions with which your recorded notes will align. When recording into Session slots or into the Arrangement, record quantization is an independent step in Live's Undo history.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 15.7 198 Setting up File Types The following Preferences from the Record/Warp/Launch tab are relevant to the sample les that are created by recording: The sample le type you would like Live to create can be chosen from the File Type chooser in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences. The bit depth of the sample le you will create by recording can be chosen from the Bit Depth chooser in the Record/Warp/Launch Preferences.
CHAPTER 15. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 199 The Scene Up/Down Buttons. One key is used to jump to the next scene... A Track Launch Button. ... and another key to start and end recording in the respective track. You can also map the step recording navigators. The Step Recording Arrows. This allows you to, for example, use MIDI foot pedals to move the clip's insert marker, thereby keeping both hands free for playing a keyboard.
200 Chapter 16 Working with Instruments and Effects Every track in Live can host a number of devices. These devices can be of three different sorts: MIDI effects act upon MIDI signals and can only be placed in MIDI tracks. Audio effects act upon audio signals and can be placed in audio tracks. They can also be placed in MIDI tracks as long as they are downstream from an instrument. Instruments are devices that reside in MIDI tracks, receive MIDI and output audio.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 201 Devices in the Track View. To save space in the Track View, a device can be collapsed by double-clicking on its title bar (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. or by choosing Fold from its Devices Can Be Folded. To learn about a particular device and how to operate it, consult the Live Audio Effect Reference, Live MIDI Effect Reference or the Live Instrument Reference.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 16.1 202 Using the Live Devices The Live Device Browser. Click on the Device Browser selector to access the palette of Live's built-in devices. You will notice that MIDI effects, audio effects and instruments each have their own folders in the Browser. The easiest way to place a device in a track is to double-click on it in the Browser, which creates a new track to hold the device.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 203 MIDI and Audio Track Arm Buttons This is how you would play live instruments through effects on a track, for example, or use a MIDI keyboard's input to play a track's instrument. Note that you can easily move from this setup into recording new clips for further use in Live. If you have alternative monitoring preferences, please see the Monitoring section to learn how to make these settings.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 204 A MIDI Track's Device Chain Can Contain All Three Device Types. To remove a device from the chain, click on its title bar and press your computer's or Delete key, or select Delete from the Edit menu. To change the order of devices, drag a device by its title bar and drop it next to any of the other devices in the Track View. Devices can be moved to other tracks entirely by dragging them from the Track View into the Session or Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 205 Devices in Live's tracks have input and output level meters. These meters are helpful in nding problematic devices in the device chain: Low or absent signals will be revealed by the level meters, and relevant device settings can then be adjusted, or the device can be turned off or removed. The Level Meters Between Devices in a Chain. Note that no clipping can occur between devices because there is practically unlimited headroom.
206 CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS Presets in the Device Browser. You can browse and load presets quickly with the computer keyboard: Scroll up and down using the and Close and open device folders using the Press Return keys. and keys. to load a device or preset. The Hot-Swap Presets Button. Clicking a device's Hot-Swap Presets button will temporarily link the Browser to a device, calling up its presets in the Device Browser.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 207 Saving Presets You can create and save any number of your own presets in the Device Browser. The Save Preset Button. Click the Save Preset button to save a device's current settings (including any custom info text) as a new preset. You will be redirected to the Browser, where you can press Return to use Live's suggested name, or you can type one of your own.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 208 To save the current settings of a device as a default preset, open the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu on the device's header and select Save as Default Preset. This works for all of Live's instruments, MIDI effects and audio effects (including the various types of Racks). If you have already saved a default preset for a particular device, Live will ask you before overwriting it.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 209 The Plug-In Device Browser. Audio Units and VST Plug-ins are browsed and imported using the Plug-In Device Browser, which is accessed via its selector. Plug-in instruments can be differentiated from plug-in effects in the Browser, as they appear with a keyboard icon. The Browser's search functionality is only available for Audio Units Plug-ins, as is loading presets directly from Track View devices via the Hot-Swap button.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 210 You can also rescan if you believe that your plug-in database has somehow become corrupted. Holding down the Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er while pressing Rescan will delete your plug-in database altogether and run a clean scan of your plug-ins. 16.2.1 Plug-Ins in the Track View A VST Plug-In in the Track View. Once a plug-in is dragged from the Browser into a track, it will show up in the Track View.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 211 Showing Plug-In Panels in Separate Windows The Plug-In Edit Button. The Plug-In Edit button opens a oating window that shows the original VST or Audio Units Plug-in panel. Changing parameters on the oating window has the same effect as changing them in the Live panel, and vice versa.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 212 Plug-In Con gure Mode The Con gure Button. Con gure Mode allows you to customize Live's panel to show only the plug-in parameters that you need to access. To do this: Enter Con gure Mode by pressing the Con gure button in the device's header. Click on a parameter in the plug-in edit window to add it to Live's panel. (For some plug-ins, it may be necessary to actually change the parameter's value.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 213 in the panel's X-Y eld. These entries are removed when you adjust another parameter. To make the entry permanent (thus adding it to Live's panel), either edit the parameter's automation or clip envelope, select another parameter in the automation or clip envelope choosers or select the temporary parameter in one of the X-Y eld's choosers.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 16.2.2 214 Plug-In Performance Options The CPU Preferences contain a Plug-In Buffer Size setting for balancing plug-in latency and performance. Here you can set the number of samples processed at any one time by the plug-in. Higher settings may result in a noticeable performance increase but will also result in higher latencies.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 215 2. Once you have selected a VST Custom Folder and Live has scanned it, the path will be displayed. Note that, on Windows, Live may have found a path in the registry without the need for browsing. 3. Make sure that the Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder option is set to On, so that your selected folder is an active source for VST Plug-ins in Live.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 216 System folder on Mac OS X) selected in Live's File/Folder Preferences. The alias can point to a different partition or hard drive on your computer. Live will scan the set VST Plug-in folder as well as any alias folders contained therein. Some VST Plug-ins contain errors or are incompatible with Live. During the scanning process, these may cause the program to crash.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 217 VST programs and banks can be imported from les. Clicking a VST's Load Program or Bank button brings up a standard le-open dialog for locating the desired le. The VST Load Program or Bank Button (Left) and Save Program or Bank Button (Right). Windows only: Please select from the File Type menu whether you want to locate VST Device Program les or VST Device Bank les.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 218 on the Use Audio Units option activates Audio Units Plug-ins so that they appear in Live's Plug-In Device Browser. Note that you can always turn this option off later if you decide not to use Audio Units. Activating Audio Units Plug-Ins. Audio Units Plug-ins sometimes have a feature that allows choosing between different modes for the device. You might be able to choose, for example, between different levels of quality in the rendering of a reverb.
CHAPTER 16. WORKING WITH INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS 219 Device delay compensation is on by default and does not normally have to be adjusted in any way. However, Live Sets that were created with Live 4 or earlier will open without device delay compensation. To manually turn latency compensation on (or off), use the Delay Compensation option in the Options menu. Unusually high individual track delays or reported latencies from plug-ins may cause noticeable sluggishness in the software.
220 Chapter 17 Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks A Rack is a exible tool for working with effects, plug-ins and instruments in a track's device chain. Racks can be used to build complex signal processors, dynamic performance instruments, stacked synthesizers and more. Yet they also streamline your device chain by bringing together your most essential controls.
CHAPTER 17. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 17.1 An Overview of Racks 17.1.1 Signal Flow and Parallel Device Chains 221 Inside An Audio Effect Rack (As It Appears in the Full Version of Live). In any of Live's tracks, devices are connected serially in a device chain, passing their signals from one device to the next, left to right. By default, the Track View displays only a single chain, but there is actually no limit to the number of chains contained within a track.
CHAPTER 17. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 17.1.2 222 Macro Controls The Macro Controls. One unique property of Racks are their Macro Controls. The Macro Controls are a bank of eight knobs, each capable of addressing any number of parameters from any devices in a Rack.
CHAPTER 17. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 17.2.1 223 Pad View Pad View (As It Appears in the Full Version of Live). The Pad View is unique to Drum Racks and offers an easy way to map and manipulate samples and devices. Each pad represents one of the 128 available MIDI notes. The pad overview to the right shifts the set of visible pads up or down in octave increments, either by dragging the view selector to a new area or by using your computer keyboard's and keys.
CHAPTER 17. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 224 Pad View excels as a performance interface, particularly when triggered by a hardware control surface with pads. If your pad controller is one of Ableton's natively supported control surfaces, simply select it as a control surface in the MIDI/Sync tab of Live's Preferences. From then on, as long as you have a Drum Rack on a track that's receiving MIDI, your pad controller will trigger the pads that are visible on your screen.
225 Chapter 18 Automation and Editing Envelopes Often, when working with Live's mixer and devices, you will want the controls' movements to become part of the music. The movement of a control across the song timeline is called automation; a control whose value changes in the course of this timeline is automated. Practically all mixer and device controls in Live can be automated, including the song tempo. 18.
CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 226 Volume, Pan and the Track Activator Switch Have Been Automated. 18.2 Deleting Automation To delete automation data, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on an automated control to open its context menu and select Delete Automation. The automation LED disappears, and the control's value stays constant across the entire song. You can also delete automation by editing breakpoint envelopes. 18.
227 CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 2. You can click on it to reactivate all automation and thereby return to the automation state as it is written on tape. 18.4 Drawing and Editing Automation In the Arrangement View, automation curves can be viewed and edited as breakpoint envelopes. 3 5 8 1 4 6 2 Automation Envelopes in the Arrangement View. 7 1. To show a track's envelopes, unfold the track by clicking the to the track name. button next 2.
CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 228 an overview of which devices actually have automation by showing an LED next to their labels. You can make things clearer still by selecting Show Automated Parameters Only from the bottom of the chooser. 5. The Automation Control chooser selects a control from the device chosen in the Fades/Device chooser. The labels of automated controls have an LED. Once an envelope has been selected on the track, several new buttons appear: 6.
CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 229 Drawing an Envelope. Drawing creates steps as wide as the visible grid, which you can modify using a number of handy shortcuts. For freehand drawing, you can hide the grid using the Snap to Grid 4 (PC) / 4 (Mac) shortcut. To temporarily enable Options menu entry or the Ctrl freehand drawing while the grid is shown, hold down Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) while drawing. 18.4.
230 CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES them. Holding down the to a ner resolution. Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er while dragging switches Click and drag a line segment between two breakpoints to move it vertically, without affecting the breakpoint's horizontal position. If the line segment is in the current selection, the envelope is moved vertically across the selected timespan.
CHAPTER 18. AUTOMATION AND EDITING ENVELOPES 231 To copy, cut, delete or duplicate automation from a track, independent of the associated clip, make sure the parameter you want to work with is in its own lane. Any edit commands applied to an envelope selection within a single lane will only apply to this envelope. The clip itself will be unaffected. You can also work with envelopes in multiple lanes simultaneously.
232 Chapter 19 Clip Envelopes Every clip in Live can have its own clip envelopes. The aspects of a clip that are in uenced by clip envelopes change depending upon clip type and setup; clip envelopes can do anything from representing MIDI controller data to modulating device parameters. In this chapter, we will rst look at how all clip envelopes are drawn and edited, and then get into the details of their various applications. 19.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 233 To work with clip envelopes, bring up the Clip View's Envelopes box by activating the rightmost Clip View Box selector panel. The Envelopes box contains two choosers for selecting an envelope to view and edit. The Clip View's Envelopes Box. The top menu is the Device chooser, which selects a general category of controls with which to work.
234 CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 1. Enclose the desired selection in the loop brace, and click the brace so that it is selected. This will execute the Edit menu's Select Loop command, which selects all material in the loop. 2. Copy the envelope with Ctrl C (PC) / C (Mac). 3. Shift the loop brace to the right by one loop length with 4. Paste the envelope with Ctrl V (PC) / V . (Mac).
235 CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 19.2.2 Changing Pitch and Tuning per Note Drop a sample loop from the Browser into Live and play it. Click on the Transpose quickchooser button. You can now alter the pitch transposition of individual notes in the sample as you listen to it. The fast way to do this is by enabling Draw Mode and drawing steps along the grid. Deactivate Draw Mode to edit breakpoints and line segments. This is useful for smoothing the coarse steps by horizontally displacing breakpoints.
236 CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES (Mac) modi er while drawing or moving breakpoints to obtain a ner resolution. To scroll the display, hold down the dragging. Ctrl Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er while Pitch is modulated in an additive way. The output of the transposition envelope is simply added to the Transpose control's value. The result of the modulation is clipped to stay in the available range (-48..48 semitones in this case). 19.2.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 237 Try sample offset modulation with a one-bar drum loop: Make sure Beats Mode is chosen; in the Envelopes box, choose Clip from the Device chooser and Sample Offset from the Clip Envelope Control chooser. The Envelope Editor appears with a vertical grid overlay. In envelope Draw Mode, set steps to non-zero values to hear the loop scrambled. What is going on? Imagine the audio is read out by a tape head, the position of which is modulated by the envelope.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 19.2.5 238 Using Clips as Templates As you are making creative use of clip envelopes, the clips containing them develop a life of their own, independent of the original sample. You might wonder at a point: What does this clip sound like with a different sample? This is easy to nd out by selecting the clip so that it is displayed in the Clip View and dragging the desired sample from one of the File Browsers, or the Session or Arrangement View, onto the Clip View.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 239 Modulating the Mixer Volume. The Little Dot Below the Volume Slider Thumb Represents the Modulated Volume Setting. As you raise and lower the Volume slider, you can observe the dot following your movement in a relative fashion. Modulating the track's Send controls is just as easy. Again, the modulation is a relative percentage: The clip envelope cannot open the send further than the Send knob, but it can reduce the actual send value to minus in nite dB. 19.3.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 19.4 240 MIDI Controller Clip Envelopes Whether you are working with a new MIDI clip that was recorded directly into Live, or one from your les, Live allows you to edit and create MIDI controller data for the clip in the form of clip envelopes. Choose MIDI Ctrl from a MIDI clip's Device chooser and use the Clip Envelope Control chooser below it to select a speci c MIDI controller.
241 CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES will present in the rest of this chapter. 19.5.1 Programming a Fade-Out for a Live Set Let us start with a straightforward example. Suppose you are setting up a Live Set and wish to program a fade-out over eight bars to occur when a speci c clip is launched but all you have is a one-bar loop. 2 1 4 3 1. Choose the Clip Volume envelope, and unlink it from the sample.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 242 Now, as you play the clip, you can hear the one-bar loop fading out over eight bars. Please note: toggling Linked Mode changes the envelope data. Toggling back and forth effectively deletes the envelope data. To return to the previous state, please use the Edit menu's Undo command. 19.5.2 Creating Long Loops from Short Loops Let us take this a step further.
CHAPTER 19. CLIP ENVELOPES 243 To keep this complexity under control, it is important to have a common point of reference. The start marker identi es the point where sample or envelope playback depart from when the clip starts. Note that the start/end markers and loop brace are subject to quantization by the zoomadaptive grid, as is envelope drawing. 19.5.3 Imposing Rhythm Patterns onto Samples So far, we have been talking about imposing long envelopes onto small loops.
244 Chapter 20 Live Audio Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in audio effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live. 20.1 Auto Filter The Auto Filter Effect. The Auto Filter effect provides classic analog lter emulation. It can be modulated by an envelope follower and/or an LFO to create moving lter effects. The envelope follower can track either the ltered signal or an external sidechain source.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 245 There are four different lter types: lowpass, highpass, bandpass and notch. For each type, the X-Y controller adjusts frequency (to adjust, click and drag on the X-axis) and Q (also called resonance; to adjust, click and drag on the Y-axis). You can also click on the Freq and Q numeric displays and type in exact values. Low Q values create a broad lter curve, while higher values introduce a narrow, resonant peak to the sound.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 246 periodic fashion. The respective Amount control sets how much the LFO affects the lter. This can be used in conjunction with or instead of the envelope follower. The Rate control speci es the LFO speed. It can be set in terms of hertz, or synced to the song tempo, allowing for controlled rhythmic ltering.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 247 Auto Pan offers LFO-driven manipulation of amplitude and panning for creating automatic panning, tremolo and amplitude modulation, and beat-synchronized chopping effects. Auto Pan's LFOs modulate the amplitude of the left and right stereo channels with sine, triangle, sawtooth down or random waveforms. The Shape control pushes the waveform to its upper and lower limits, hardening its shape.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 248 The Interval control de nes how often Beat Repeat captures new material and begins repeating it. Interval is synced to and set in terms of the song tempo, with values ranging from 1/32 to 4 Bars. The Offset control shifts the point de ned by Interval forward in time. If Interval is set to 1 Bar, for example, and Offset to 8/16 , material will be captured for repetition once per bar on the third beat (i.e.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 249 Beat Repeat includes a combined lowpass and highpass lter for de ning the passed frequency range of the device. You can turn the lter on and off, and set the center frequency and width of the passed frequency band, using the respective controls.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 250 To set both delay lines to Delay 1's delay time, turn on the link button ( = ). This is especially useful if you want to change both delays with a single gesture. The Modulation X-Y controller can impart motion to the sounds. To change the modulation rate for the delay times, click and drag along the horizontal axis. To change the amount of modulation, click and drag along the vertical axis.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 251 A compressor reduces gain for signals above a user-settable threshold. Compression reduces the levels of peaks, opening up more headroom and allowing the overall signal level to be turned up. This gives the signal a higher average level, resulting in a sound that is subjectively louder and punchier than an uncompressed signal.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 252 maximizing tool in the master channel. Less is often more here. Because compression reduces the volume of loud signals and opens up headroom, you can use the Output slider so that the peaks once again hit the maximum available headroom. The Output meter shows the output signal's level. Enabling the Makeup button below the Output slider automatically compensates the output level if the threshold and ratio settings change.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 253 cise, and so works well for limiting tasks where you need to ensure that there are absolutely no signals over the set threshold. RMS is closer to how people actually perceive loudness and is usually considered more musical. Opto mode, because of its non-linear release time is often considered smooth and natural sounding. Opto compressors are commonly used on vocals, bass and electric guitar.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 254 are the same signal. But by using sidechaining, it is possible to compress a signal based on the level of another signal or a speci c frequency component. To access the Sidechain parameters, unfold the Compressor window by toggling the button in its title bar. The sidechain parameters are divided into two sections. On the left are the external controls.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 255 Mixing a Voiceover Sidechaining is commonly used for so-called ducking effects. For example, imagine that you have one track containing a voiceover and another track containing background music. Since you want the voiceover to always be the loudest source in the mix, the background music must get out of the way every time the narrator is speaking.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.6 256 Dynamic Tube The Dynamic Tube Effect. The Dynamic Tube effect infuses sounds with the peculiarities of tube saturation. An integrated envelope follower generates dynamic tonal variations related to the level of the input signal. Three tube models, A, B and C, provide a range of distortion characteristics known from real ampli er tubes.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 257 to volume changes in the input signal. Together, they shape the dynamic nature of the distortions. Note that if Envelope is set to zero, they will have no effect. Cut or boost the device's nal signal level with the Output dial. Aliasing can be reduced by enabling Hi-Quality mode, which can be accessed via the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu. This improves the sound quality, particularly with high frequency signals, but there is a slight increase in CPU usage.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 258 Low cut (cuts frequencies below the speci ed frequency); Low shelf (boosts or cuts frequencies lower than the speci ed frequency); Bell curve (boosts or cuts over a range of frequencies); Notch (sharply cuts frequencies within a narrow range); High shelf (boosts or cuts frequencies higher than the speci ed frequency); High cut (cuts frequencies above the speci ed frequency). Each lter band can be turned on or off independently.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.8 259 EQ Three The EQ Three Effect. If you have ever used a good DJ mixer you will know what this is: An EQ that allows you to adjust the level of low, mid and high frequencies independently. Each band can be adjusted from -in nite dB to +6 dB using the gain controls. This means that you can completely remove, for example, the bass drum or bassline of a track, while leaving the other frequencies untouched.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 260 controls are set to 0.00 dB. This is typical behavior for this kind of lter, and is part of EQ Three's unique sound. If you need a more linear behavior choose 24 dB Mode or use the EQ Eight. 20.9 Erosion The Erosion Effect. The Erosion effect degrades the input signal by modulating a short delay with ltered noise or a sine wave. This adds noisy artifacts or aliasing/downsampling-like distortions that sound very digital.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.10 261 Filter Delay The Filter Delay Effect. The Filter Delay provides three independent delay lines, each preceded by linked lowpass and highpass lters. This allows applying delay to only certain input signal frequencies, as determined by the lter settings. The feedback from each of the three delays is also routed back through the lters. Each of the three delays can be switched on and off independently.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 262 The Feedback parameter sets how much of the output signal returns to the delay line input. Very high values can lead to runaway feedback and produce a loud oscillation watch your ears and speakers if you decide to check out extreme feedback settings! Each delay channel has its own volume control, which can be turned up to +12 dB to compensate for drastic ltering at the input. The Dry control adjusts the unprocessed signal level.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 263 LFO speed is controlled with the Rate control, which can be set in terms of hertz. Rate can also be synced to the song tempo and set in meter subdivisions (e.g., sixteenth notes). The Phase control lends the sound stereo movement by setting the LFOs to run at the same frequency, but offsetting their waveforms relative to each other.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 264 The Threshold slider sets the gate's sensitivity. If the gate is open and passing signal (i.e., the signal exceeds the gate threshold), the green LED lights. The Attenuation slider, located beneath the Threshold fader, can attenuate signals below the threshold rather than just cutting them off. If set to -inf dB, a closed gate will mute the input signal. A setting of 0.00 dB means that even if the gate is closed, there is no effect on the signal.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 265 by inserting a Gate on the pad's track and choosing the drum loop's track as the sidechain input. 20.13 Grain Delay The Grain Delay Effect. The Grain Delay effect slices the input signal into tiny particles (called grains ) that are then individually delayed and can also have different pitches compared to the original signal source.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 266 parameter to the Y-axis, use the parameter row on the left side. The Feedback parameter sets how much of the output signal returns to the delay line input. Very high values can lead to runaway feedback and produce a loud oscillation watch your ears and speakers if you decide to check out extreme feedback settings! You can transpose the grain pitch with the Pitch parameter, which acts much like a crude pitch shifter.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 267 Phaser uses a series of all-pass lters to create a phase shift in the frequency spectrum of a sound. The Poles control creates notches in the frequency spectrum. The Feedback control can then be used to invert the waveform and convert these notches into peaks (or poles). Filter cutoff frequency is changed with the Frequency control, which can be adjusted in tandem with Feedback using the effect's X-Y controller.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.15 268 Ping Pong Delay The Ping Pong Delay Effect. The Ping Pong Delay effect uses a single tapped delay line to create a delay that jumps from the left to the right output. The delay is preceded by a lowpass and highpass lter that can be controlled with an X-Y controller. To de ne the lter bandwidth, click and drag on the vertical axis. To set the position of the frequency band, click and drag on the horizontal axis.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 269 The Dry/Wet control adjusts the balance between the processed and dry signals. Set it to 100 percent if using Ping Pong Delay in a return track. Changing the delay time while Ping Pong Delay is processing audio can cause abrupt changes in the sound of the delayed signal.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 270 If the downsample dial is set to 1 , every input sample passes to the output and the signal does not change. If set to 2 , only every second sample will be processed, so the result sounds a bit more digital. The higher the number, the lower the resulting sample rate, and the more deconstructed the sound. Downsampling is like applying a mosaic effect to an image: There's a loss of information and sharp edges occur between the blocks.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 271 them. The rst resonator de nes the root pitch and the four others are tuned relative to this pitch in musical intervals. The input signal passes rst through a lter, and then into the resonators. There are four input lter types to select from: lowpass, bandpass, highpass and notch. The input lter frequency can be adjusted with the Frequency parameter.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.18 272 Reverb The Reverb Effect. 20.18.1 Input Processing The input signal passes rst through high and low cut lters, whose X-Y controller allows changing the band's center frequency (X-axis) and bandwidth (Y-axis). Either lter may be switched off when not needed to save CPU power. Predelay controls the delay time, in milliseconds, before the onset of the rst early re ection. This delays the reverberation relative to the input signal.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 273 higher value can sometimes improve the source's intelligibility, while a lower value may give a smoother decay. Spin applies modulation to the early re ections. The X-Y control accesses the depth and frequency of these modulations. A larger depth tends to provide a less-colored (more spectrally neutral) late diffusion response. If the modulation frequency is too high, doppler frequency shifting of the source sound will occur, along with surreal panning effects.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 274 adding to the frozen reverberation; when off, the input signal will contribute to the diffused amplitude. Flat bypasses the high and low shelf lters when freeze is on. If Flat is off, the frozen reverberation will lose energy in the attenuated frequency bands, depending on the state of the high and low shelving lters.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 275 An X-Y grid helps to visualize Saturator's shaping curve. The shaper's input and output values are mapped to the X and Y axes, respectively. The curve de nes the transfer function, which is the extent to which output values uctuate in relation to input values. Because this is usually a nonlinear process, the incoming signal is reshaped to a greater or lesser degree depending upon its level at each moment in time.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 276 Activating the Color button enables two lters. The rst of these, controlled with the Base control, dictates how much the effect will be reduced or increased for very low frequencies. The second lter, essentially an equalizer, is used for controlling higher frequencies. It is shaped with the Freq (cutoff frequency), Width and Depth controls. The Output control attenuates the level at the device output.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 277 notes. For example, selecting 4 delays the signal by four 16th notes, which equals one beat (a quarter note) of delay. If the Sync switch is off, the delay time reverts to milliseconds. In this case, to edit the delay time, click and drag up or down in the Delay Time eld, or click in the eld and type in a value. The Feedback parameter de nes how much of each channel's output signal feeds back into the delay lines' inputs.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 20.21 278 Spectrum The Spectrum Device. Spectrum performs realtime frequency analysis of incoming audio signals. The results are represented in a graph, with dB along the vertical axis and frequency/pitch along the horizontal. The peak levels are retained on the graph until the song is restarted. Note that Spectrum is not an audio effect, but rather a measurement tool - it does not alter the incoming signal in any way.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 279 scaling, but switch the legending at the top of the display between Hertz and note names. Linear scaling is particularly useful for detailed analysis of high frequencies. As you move your mouse over Spectrum's display, a box appears that shows the amplitude, frequency and note name at the pointer's position. The Range/Auto button at the bottom left of Spectrum's interface toggles between manually and automatically adjusting the display's dynamic range.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 280 audible range. It will only have a sonic effect if a signal contains these frequencies and is processed after Utility with nonlinear effects such as compressors or waveshapers. The Gain control adjusts the level of the input signal +/- 35 dB. The Channel Mode chooser allows selective processing of the left and right channels of a sample. If, for example, Left is selected, the right channel is ignored and the left channel appears on both outputs.
CHAPTER 20. LIVE AUDIO EFFECT REFERENCE 281 needle and the recorded groove. The effect also features a crackle generator for adding noisy artifacts. The Tracing Model section adds even harmonic distortion to the input signal. Adjust the amount of distortion with the Drive knob, or click and drag vertically in the Tracing Model X-Y display. To adjust the distortion's frequency or color, drag horizontally in the X-Y display or double-click on the Freq eld and type in a value.
282 Chapter 21 Live MIDI Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in MIDI effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live. 21.1 Arpeggiator The Arpeggiator Effect. Live's Arpeggiator effect takes the individual MIDI notes from a held chord (or single note), and plays them as a rhythmical pattern.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 283 controlled by the device, which also provides a full complement of both classic and original arpeggiator features. Arpeggiators are a classic element in Eighties synth music. The name originates with the musical concept of the arpeggio, in which the notes comprising a chord are played as a series rather than in unison. Arpeggio is derived from the Italian word arpeggiare, which refers to playing notes on a harp. 21.1.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 284 Pinky Up and Pinky UpDown . Thumb Up and Thumb UpDown . Play Order places notes in the pattern according to the order in which they are played. This is therefore only recognizable when more than one chord or note has been played.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 285 can be added to the pattern simply by playing them. Notes can also be removed from the pattern in this scenario by playing them a second time, allowing the gradual buildup and rearrangement of the pattern over time. Tip: If you want the pattern to stop playing, momentarily deactivate Hold. The Offset parameter shifts the sequence of notes in the pattern by the number of places selected with the control.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 286 The dynamics of Arpeggiator are controlled using the velocity section. With Velocity set to On and Target set to 0, for example, the sequence will gradually fade out, eventually reaching 0 velocity. The Decay control sets the amount of time Arpeggiator takes to reach the Target velocity. With Retrigger activated, retriggering of the sequence will also retrigger the velocity slope.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 287 Note that no two notes of the same pitch can contribute to the chord, and that selecting the same shift value twice (e.g., +8 semitones on both Shift 2 and Shift 3) will result in the latter control appearing disabled, indicating that it is a duplicate and therefore not in use. Actually, there is no such thing as two notes with the same pitch playing at the same time within the entire Live universe. 21.3 Note Length The Note Length Effect.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 288 Decay Time This is the time needed for an incoming note's velocity to decay to zero. The decay begins immediately from the moment the device receives a MIDI Note On message. The value at the time of Note Off will become the velocity of the output MIDI note. Key Scale The pitch of incoming notes can be used to alter the length of the output notes. With positive values, notes below C3 will be made progressively longer, and notes above C3 will be made shorter.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 21.5 289 Random The Random Effect. Random adds an element of the unknown to the otherwise commonplace pitch parameter. The Chance control de nes the likelihood that an incoming note's pitch will be changed by a random value. You can think of it as being something like a dry/wet control for randomness.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 290 C3 once will trigger C3, and each successive C3 will trigger the next semitone higher until the device reaches C4, at which point it will start over at C3. But with Chance set to 100 percent, Choices set to 2 and Scale set to 2, incoming C3s will alternate between C3 and D3. This setting is perfect for simulating upbow and downbow alternation with stringed instruments, or alternating right- and left-hand drum samples.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 291 You could, for example, shift a melody written in C major to G major by setting Transpose to +7 st. Fold makes it more convenient to create scales by automatically folding back notes if their offset to the original note is greater than six semitones. For example, if Scale normally maps an incoming C3 to A3, enabling Fold will map C3 to A2 instead. The Range and Lowest controls work together to de ne the note range within which scale mapping will take effect.
CHAPTER 21. LIVE MIDI EFFECT REFERENCE 292 Out Low to 127, the slope of the line will be reversed, and softly played notes will actually produce the loudest output. What happens to incoming notes that are outside of the range set with the Range and Lowest controls? This depends on which Mode is selected. Clip Mode does just what it says: It clips incoming note velocities so that they stay within the range. Gate Mode removes incoming notes altogether if their velocities are outside of the range.
293 Chapter 22 Live Instrument Reference Live Intro comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in instruments. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using instruments in Live. The boxed version of Live Intro ships with the Essential Instrument Collection 2 LE Edition, a multi-gigabyte library of meticulously sampled and selected instruments ready for use in Simpler. Learn how to access the EIC sounds at the end of this chapter.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 22.1 294 Impulse The Impulse Instrument. Impulse is a drum sampler with complex modulation capabilities. The eight drum samples loaded into Impulse's sample slots can be time-stretched, ltered and processed by envelope, saturation, pan and volume components, nearly all of which are subject to random and velocity-based modulation. 22.1.1 Sample Slots Drag and drop samples into any of Impulse's sample slots from the Browser or the Session and Arrangement Views.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 295 automation, which are applied once a new note starts. If you want to achieve continuous changes as a note plays, you may want to use the Simpler. Slot 8's parameters also include a Link button, located in the lower left corner, which links slot 8 with slot 7. Linking the two slots allows slot 7's activation to stop slot 8's playback, and vice versa.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 22.1.4 296 Saturator and Envelope The Saturator gives the sample a fatter, rounder, more analog sound, and can be switched on and off as desired. The Drive control boosts the signal and adds distortion. Coincidentally, this makes most signals much louder, and should usually be compensated for by lowering the sample's volume control. Extreme Drive settings on low-pitched sounds will produce the typical, overdriven analog synth drum sounds.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 297 this signal to a separate track. Please see the Routing chapter to learn how to accomplish this for Impulse's overall signal or for Impulse's individual sample slots. 22.2 Simpler The Simpler Instrument. Simpler is an instrument that integrates the basic elements of a sampler with a set of classic synthesizer parameters. A Simpler voice plays a user-de ned sample section, which is in turn processed by envelope, lter, LFO, volume and pitch components. 22.2.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 22.2.2 298 Sample Controls Simpler plays a speci c region or loop of the sample, as determined by a group of sample controls. The Start and Length controls work together to specify where Simpler begins and ends its sweep of the sample. As the name implies, Start de nes where sample playback starts. The sample will play for the length de ned by the Length parameter.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 299 vertically to zoom, and drag horizontally to pan different areas of the sample into view. 22.2.4 Envelope Simpler contains three classic ADSR envelopes, as seen in most synthesizers, for shaping the dynamic response of the sample. Volume-, lter frequency-, and pitch modulation are all modi able by toggling their respective buttons in the envelope section.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 300 30 Hz, or sync to divisions of the Set's tempo. LFOs are applied individually to each voice, or played note, in Simpler. The Key parameter scales each LFO's Rate in proportion to the pitch of incoming notes. A high Key setting assigns higher notes a higher LFO rate. If Key is set to zero, all voices' LFOs have the same rate and may just differ in their phase.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 301 The Voices parameter sets the maximum number of voices that Simpler can play simultaneously. If more voices are needed than have been allocated by the Voices chooser, voice stealing will take place, in which the oldest voice(s) will be dropped in favor of those that are new. For example, if your Voices parameter is set to 8, and ten voices are all vying to be played, the two oldest voices will be dropped.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 302 SONiVOX, Chocolate Audio and Puremagnetik. Note The Essential Instrument Collection 2 LE Edition is not included with downloadable purchases. Download customers can choose, however, to purchase it later1 . 22.3.1 Essential Instrument Collection 2 Installation The Essential Instrument Collection 2 LE Edition (EIC) is installed separately from the main Live Intro installation.
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 22.3.
304 Chapter 23 Max for Live Max for Live, an add-on product co-developed with Cycling '74, allows users to extend and customize Live by creating instruments, audio effects, and MIDI devices. Max for Live can also be used to extend the functionality of hardware controllers and even modify clips and parameters within a Live Set. In addition to providing a comprehensive toolkit for building devices, Max for Live also comes with a collection of pre-made instruments, effects and tutorials.
CHAPTER 23. MAX FOR LIVE 305 on authorizing Live contains more information about this process, and in-depth instructions can be found at the Ableton website2 . If you've installed Max to somewhere other than the default location, you will rst need to point to it in Live's File/Folder Preferences: The Path to the Max Installation. Once authorization is complete and Live has found the Max application, Max for Live should be ready for use.
CHAPTER 23. MAX FOR LIVE 306 To avoid these issues, we recommend always storing Max devices and their presets in the same folder. Live's Library is the preferred location. A Max Device and its Presets in the Device Browser. 23.3 Editing Max for Live Devices Max devices (or patches ) are constructed of objects that send data to each other via virtual cables.
CHAPTER 23. MAX FOR LIVE 307 To load an empty Max device, drag a Max Instrument, Max MIDI Effect or Max Audio Effect from the Device Browser into your Set. What a Max device actually does depends on the objects that it contains, and the way in which they're connected together. The area where you work with Max objects is called the editor (or patcher ), and can be accessed by pressing the Edit button in the Max device's title bar. The Edit Button for a Max Device.
CHAPTER 23. MAX FOR LIVE 308 location. Note: unlike Live's native devices, Max devices are not saved inside Live Sets, but rather as separate les. 23.4 Max Dependencies As mentioned earlier, there are some special le management considerations when creating presets for Max devices. Additionally, Max devices themselves may depend on other les (such as samples, pictures, or even other Max patches) in order to work properly.
309 Chapter 24 MIDI and Key Remote Control To liberate the musician from the mouse, most of Live's controls can be remote-controlled with an external MIDI controller and the computer keyboard. This chapter describes the details of mapping to the following speci c types of controls in Live's user interface: 1. Session View slots Note that MIDI and computer key assignments are bound to the slots, not to the clips they contain. 2.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 24.1 310 MIDI Remote Control Live can be controlled remotely by external MIDI control surfaces, such as MIDI keyboards or controller boxes. Live also offers dedicated control via the Akai APC40, Akai APC20 and Novation Launchpad. Before we explain how remote control assignments are made and implemented, let's rst make the distinction between MIDI remote control and a separate use of MIDI in Live: as the input for our MIDI tracks.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL listed here, don't fret Surface Setup. 311 it can still be enabled manually in the next section, Manual Control Depending on the controller, Live may need to perform a preset dump to complete the setup. If this is the case, the Dump button to the right of your control surface's choosers in the Live Preferences will become enabled. Before pressing it, verify that your control surface is ready to receive preset dumps.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 312 Control Surfaces Can Follow Device Selection. In addition to following device selection, natively supported control surfaces can be locked to speci c devices, guaranteeing hands-on access no matter where the current focus is in your Live Set. To enable or disable locking, (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on a device's title bar, and then select your preferred controller from the Lock to... context menu.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 313 Note: Some control surfaces do not support locking to devices. This capability is indicated for individual controllers in the Control Surface Reference lesson. Select the Lessons option from the View menu to access Live's built-in lessons. 24.1.2 Manual Control Surface Setup If your MIDI control surface is not listed in the MIDI/Sync Preferences' Control Surface chooser, it can still be enabled for manual mapping in the MIDI Ports section of this tab.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 24.1.3 314 Takeover Mode MIDI Controller Takeover Mode. When MIDI controls that send absolute values (such as faders) are used in a bank-switching setup, where they address a different destination parameter with each controller bank, you will need to decide how Live should handle the sudden jumps in values that will occur when moving a control for the rst time after switching the bank.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 24.2 315 The Mapping Browser The Mapping Browser and Selector. All manual MIDI, computer keyboard and Macro Control mappings are managed by the Mapping Browser. The Mapping Browser is hidden until one of the three mapping modes is enabled. It will then display all mappings for the current mode. For each mapping, it lists the control element, the path to the mapped parameter, the parameter's name, and the mapping's Min and Max value ranges.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 316 Once your remote control setup has been de ned in the MIDI/Sync Preferences, giving MIDI controllers and notes remote control assignments is simple: 1. Enter MIDI Map Mode by pressing the MIDI switch in Live's upper right-hand corner. Notice that assignable elements of the interface become highlighted in blue, and that the Mapping Browser becomes available. If your Browser is Alt Alt B (PC) / B (Mac) will open it for you. closed, Ctrl 2.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 24.2.3 317 Mapping to Absolute MIDI Controllers Absolute MIDI controllers send messages to Live in the form of absolute values ranging from 0 to 127. These values lead to different results depending on the type of Live control to which they are assigned. A value message of 127, for example, might turn the Volume control on a Live track all the way up or play a Session View clip.
318 CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL Live to pan right, causing an abrupt jump in the track's panning. A pan knob sending relative messages would prevent this, since its incremental message to Live would simply say, Pan slightly to the left of your current position. There are four types of relative controllers: Signed Bit, Signed Bit 2, Bin Offset and Twos Complement. Convention (Mode) Relative (Signed Bit) Relative (Signed Bit 2) Relative (Bin Offset) Relative (2's Comp.
319 CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL Relative Session View Navigation Notice that you can make not only absolute mappings to individual slots and scenes, but also relative mappings to move the highlighted scene and operate on the highlighted clips. In both MIDI Map Mode and Key Map Mode, a strip of assignable controls appears below the Session grid: 4 3 1 2 The Relative Session Mapping Strip. 1. Assign these buttons to keys, notes or controllers to move the highlighted scene up and down. 2.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 320 it is important to remember that creating remote control mappings for any control in the Clip View interface could potentially affect any clip in the Live Set. For this reason, we recommend mapping Clip View controls to relative MIDI controllers to prevent undesirable jumps in parameter values. 24.2.5 Computer Keyboard Remote Control The Key Map Mode Switch. Creating control surface assignments for your computer keyboard is straightforward: 1.
CHAPTER 24. MIDI AND KEY REMOTE CONTROL 321 Please be sure not to confuse this remote control functionality with Live's ability to use the computer keyboard as a pseudo-MIDI keyboard that can generate MIDI notes from computer keystrokes for use with instruments.
322 Chapter 25 Using the APC40 The APC40 (Ableton Performance Controller) is a dedicated controller for Ableton Live, codesigned by Ableton and Akai Professional1 . This chapter will help you set up your APC40, and introduce its capabilities. 25.1 Setup Once the APC40 has been powered on and connected to your computer's USB port, you will need to select the APC40 in Live's Preferences. The APC40 is one of Live's natively supported control surfaces, so setup is quite easy: 1.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 323 Setting Up The APC40. 25.2 Clip Launch Matrix The APC40's matrix of buttons gives you physical access to the clips in your Session View. The matrix has 40 three-color buttons arranged in a ve-scene-deep-by-eight-track-wide grid. The color-coding system lets you know exactly what is happening in each clip, and directional controls let you move around inside your Session View.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 324 Session View Clip and Navigation Controls. Pressing a Clip Launch button triggers the clip in the corresponding clip slot in Live. If the track is armed to record, pressing the button records a new clip. The buttons in the matrix light up in different colors so you know what's going on: Amber: this slot contains a clip. Green: this clip is playing. Red: this clip is recording. Many aspects of the Live interface are replicated in the APC40.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 325 APC's button matrix are shown in Live with a red border. The directional arrows and Shift button increase the scope of the eight-by- ve grid: Pressing Up or Down moves you up or down one scene at a time. Hold the Shift button while hitting Up or Down to move ve scenes up or down. The Left and Right arrow keys move you left or right one track at a time. Hold the Shift button while hitting Left or Right to move eight tracks at a time. 25.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 25.4 326 Mixer Section The APC40 features eight tracks, each with its own fader, solo/pre-cue, activator and record arm buttons. A Master fader controls the master volume and a Cue Level knob controls cue volume, so you can pre-listen to a clip or the metronome without your audience hearing it. Mixer Controls. You can shift these eight tracks around the Session View using the directional controls. Press the right or left arrows to move incrementally, one track at a time.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 25.5 327 Device Control The APC40 features eight endless dials and four control buttons that map to your devices automatically for exibility and speed on stage or in the studio. Device Controls. The Track Selection buttons route the eight endless encoders to the rst device or Rack on that track, with LED rings to automatically show you the levels on the selected parameter. Four buttons below the dials give you additional control options.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 328 the Shift button, these eight buttons let you select eight banks of eight device parameter controls. For more information, see the Control Surface Reference Lesson. 25.6 Transport and Global Buttons Live's Play, Stop and Global Record buttons are all easily accessible, and four global buttons access Live's functions, cleaning up your screen view onstage and freeing you from the mouse in the studio: Transport and Global Controls.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 329 MIDI Overdub lets you overdub on a MIDI clip. Metronome turns the metronome on and off. 25.7 Track Control The Track Control section covers pan settings or send levels for whichever eight tracks are currently selected. It consists of eight endless dials with LED rings and four buttons: Pan, Send A, Send B and Send C. Track Controls.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 25.8 330 Tempo Control Tap Tempo and Nudge Left/Right buttons are essential for live performance, helping you to stay in sync with turntables, other musicians or a live band, and correct timing issues quickly. Tempo Control. As you hit the Tap Tempo button once every beat, the tempo of the Live Set will follow your tapping. You can also use tapping to count in: If you are working in a 4:4 signature, it takes four taps to start song playback at the tapped tempo.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 25.9 331 Crossfader The APC40's replaceable crossfader is an essential DJ control, and is also handy for controlling effect, volume and modulation curves. Crossfader. In Live, you can set any track as an A or B destination, and then crossfade between the A and B selections. Normal wear and tear can render a crossfader obsolete. The APC40's crossfader is fully replaceable from the bottom of the device, so you can extend the lifetime of this already durable unit.
CHAPTER 25. USING THE APC40 25.10 332 Customizing the APC40 Controls You can change the assignment of all of the knobs, faders and buttons on the APC40 by enabling the Remote switches in the MIDI/Sync Preferences, as described in the section on manual control surface setup. Setting Up The APC40 For Custom Assignments. Now, by entering Live's MIDI Map Mode, you can override the pre-assigned functions of all of the APC40's knobs, faders and buttons.
333 Chapter 26 Using the APC20 The APC20 (Ableton Performance Controller) is a dedicated controller for Ableton Live, codesigned by Ableton and Akai Professional1 . This chapter will help you set up your APC20, and introduce its capabilities. 26.1 Setup Once the APC20 has been powered on and connected to your computer's USB port, you will need to select the APC20 in Live's Preferences. The APC20 is one of Live's natively supported control surfaces, so setup is quite easy: 1.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 334 Setting Up The APC20. 26.2 Clip Launch Matrix The APC20's matrix of buttons gives you direct access to the clips in your Session View. The matrix has 40 three-color buttons arranged in a ve-scene-deep-by-eight-track-wide grid. The color-coding system lets you know exactly what is happening in each clip, and directional controls let you move around inside your Session View.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 335 Session View Clip and Navigation Controls. Pressing a Clip Launch button triggers the clip in the corresponding clip slot in Live. If the track is armed to record, pressing the button records a new clip. The buttons in the matrix light up in different colors so you know what's going on: Amber: this slot contains a clip. Green: this clip is playing. Red: this clip is recording. No color: this slot is empty.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 336 re ects what's happening on the controller. The clip slots currently being controlled by the APC's button matrix are shown in Live with a red border. The cursor controls allow you to navigate around the Session View: Pressing Up or Down moves you up or down one scene at a time. The Left and Right arrow keys move you left or right one track at a time. 26.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 337 Transport and Global Controls. 26.5 Mixer The Mixer section gives you control of your mix, as well as all soloing, pre-cueing, muting, pans, sends and more. The APC20 features eight tracks and a master fader, all of which can be expanded with the Session Overview. A Cue Level knob controls cue volume, so you can pre-listen to a clip or the metronome without your audience hearing it. You can shift these eight tracks around the Session View.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 338 Mixer Controls. The Vol, Pan, Send A, Send B, Send C, User 1, User 2 and User 3 buttons provide additional control possibilities, by re-assigning the eight faders to the selected function. Selecting Pan, for example, lets you use the eight faders to control track pan setting. To change the functionality of the faders, simply hold down the Shift button and select the parameter you want to control.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 26.6 339 Note Mode Pressing the Note Mode button changes the functionality of the clip launch matrix. When Note Mode is on (i.e., when the button is lit), the buttons on the grid send MIDI notes instead of controlling Live's Session View. Note Mode Button. 26.7 Combination Mode The real power of the APC20 comes through when you combine it with additional APC20s or the Akai Professional APC40.
CHAPTER 26. USING THE APC20 340 topmost controller selected in your preferences will control tracks 1-8, the second controller selected will control tracks 9-16, and so on. When an APC40 and an APC20 are connected at the same time, the APC20's buttons will default to Track Selection, and its faders will default to volume, allowing swift access to an expanding array of clips and tracks.
341 Chapter 27 Using the Launchpad The Launchpad is a dedicated controller for Ableton Live, co-designed by Ableton and Novation1 . Launchpad has 64 square-shaped pads and 16 round buttons, all of which are pre-con gured to integrate perfectly with Live. This chapter will help you set up your Launchpad, and introduce its capabilities. 27.1 Setup Once the Launchpad has been connected to one of your computer's USB ports, you will need to select the Launchpad in Live's Preferences.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 342 Setting Up The Launchpad. 27.2 Launchpad's Four Modes Launchpad's Mode Buttons. The row of buttons on the top of Launchpad includes four directional arrow buttons to navigate through the Session View, and four mode buttons which switch between Session mode, User mode 1, User mode 2 and Mixer mode. These modes are explained in more detail below. 27.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 343 Launchpad Session Mode Button. 27.3.1 Launching Clips Session Mode. When Launchpad is chosen as an active control surface, a ring appears on the Session View in Live to indicate which clips are currently controlled by the pad matrix. This ring is red if Launchpad is enabled in the rst of Live's six control surface choosers. Each chooser has a different colored ring, allowing you to assign multiple Launchpads at the same time.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 344 The Left and Right arrow keys move you left or right one track at a time. Hold the Session button while hitting Left or Right to move eight tracks at a time (bank shifting). Pressing a Clip Launch pad triggers the clip in the corresponding clip slot in Live. Hitting an empty clip slot in a track that is not armed will stop the clip playing in this track. If the track is armed to record, pressing the button records a new clip.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 345 The Launchpad's Session Overview lets you navigate through large Live Sets quickly without looking at your computer screen. Hold down the Session button and the matrix zooms out to reveal an overview of your Session View. In the Session Overview, each pad represents an eight-by-eight block of clips, giving you a matrix of 64 scenes by 64 tracks. Hit a pad to focus on that section of the Session View.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 27.4.1 346 Customizing the Launchpad Controls You can change the assignment of all of the Launchpad's controls by enabling the Remote switches in the MIDI/Sync Preferences, as described in the section on manual control surface setup. Setting Up The Launchpad For Custom Assignments. Now, by entering Live's MIDI Map Mode, you can override the pre-assigned functions of all of the Launchpad's controls.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 27.5 347 Mixer Mode Launchpad Mixer Buttons. Launchpad's Mixer mode gives you access to essential mixing controls in Live: volume, pan, sends, clip stop, track activation, solo and record/arm. The directional arrows to change the focus of the ring are still accessible in Mixer mode.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 27.5.1 348 Mixer Overview Launchpad Mixer Overview. This is the view displayed when pressing the Mixer button. It provides an overview of the main mixing controls in Live. The top four rows of pads indicate the status of track volume and track pan, as well as sends A and B, for each track: if the parameter is at its default value, the pad is dimmed if the parameter is NOT at its default value, the pad is fully lit.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 349 pads in the arm row will arm this track The bottom four buttons on the right provide additional control for each track: the stop button will stop all clips currently playing the trk on button will mute all tracks (all pads turn off) the solo button will un-solo all soloed tracks the arm button will un-arm all armed tracks 27.5.2 The Volume Page Launchpad Volume Page. Press the vol button to enter the Volume page.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 27.5.3 350 The Pan Page Launchpad Pan Page. Press the pan button to enter the Pan page. In the Pan page, all eight pads of a column turn into a track panorama knob for the selected track, with left at the bottom and right at the top. The pads have the following values, from bottom to top: 50L, 30L, 15L, center, center, 15R, 30R, 50R. The pan control is centered when the two pads in the middle are fully lit.
CHAPTER 27. USING THE LAUNCHPAD 27.5.4 351 The Send Pages Launchpad Send Page. Press the snd A or snd B button to enter a Send page. In the two Send pages (for Send A and Send B), all eight pads of a column turn into a send knob for the selected track. The pads have the following values in dB, from bottom to top: -inf, -48, -24, -18, -12, -6, 0, +6. All pads below (and including) the selected value light up in full brightness to indicate the knob position.
352 Chapter 28 Synchronization and ReWire 28.1 Synchronizing via MIDI The MIDI protocol de nes two ways to synchronize sequencers, both of which are supported by Live. Both protocols work with the notion of a sync master, which delivers a sync signal that is tracked by the sync slave(s). MIDI Clock. MIDI Clock works like a metronome ticking at a fast rate. The rate of the incoming ticks is tempo-dependent: Changing the tempo at the sync master (e.g.
CHAPTER 28. SYNCHRONIZATION AND REWIRE 353 are explained later in this chapter. With respect to MIDI Timecode, Live can only act as a MIDI sync slave, not a master. 28.1.1 Synchronizing External MIDI Devices to Live Live can send MIDI Clock messages to an external MIDI sequencer (or drum machine). After connecting the sequencer to Live and setting it up to receive MIDI sync, turn the device on as a sync destination in Live's MIDI/Sync Preferences. Choosing a MIDI Slave for Live.
CHAPTER 28. SYNCHRONIZATION AND REWIRE 354 The External Sync Switch. When Live is synced to an external MIDI device, it can accept song position pointers from this device, syncing it not only in terms of tempo but in terms of its position in the song. If the master jumps to a new position within the song, Live will do the same. However, if the Control Bar's Loop switch is activated, playback will be looped, and song position pointers will simply be wrapped into the length of the loop. 28.1.
CHAPTER 28. SYNCHRONIZATION AND REWIRE 355 pronounced percussive sounds. While listening to the output from both, adjust the Sync Delay control until both sounds are in perfect sync. Adjusting Sync Delay. 28.2 Connecting via ReWire Live supports the ReWire interface for connecting with another ReWire-compatible audio program running on the same computer.
CHAPTER 28. SYNCHRONIZATION AND REWIRE 28.2.1 356 Running Live in ReWire Master Mode The step-by-step procedure for sending MIDI to and receiving audio from a ReWire slave program is presented in the routing chapter. 28.2.2 Running Live in ReWire Slave Mode In ReWire slave mode, Live can both receive MIDI from, but also send audio to the master application.
CHAPTER 28. SYNCHRONIZATION AND REWIRE 28.2.3 357 More on ReWire You can nd tutorials on connecting Live to speci c ReWire master programs at the Ableton tutorial website1 . The Ableton FAQ website2 is the rst place to go if you encounter ReWire-related problems. If you cannot seem to nd an answer there, please contact the Ableton support team3 . 1 http://www.ableton.com/tutorials 2 http://www.ableton.com/faq 3 http://www.ableton.
358 Chapter 29 Computer Audio Resources and Strategies Real-time audio processing is a demanding task for general-purpose computers, which are usually designed to run spreadsheets and surf the Internet. An application like Live requires a powerful CPU and a fast hard disk. This section will provide some insight on these issues, and should help you avoid and solve problems with running audio on a computer. 29.
CHAPTER 29. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 359 Fortunately, Live supports multicore and multiprocessor systems, allowing the processing load from things like instruments, effects and I/O to be distributed among the available resources. Depending on the machine and the Live Set, the available processing power can be several times that of older systems. If you are working on a multicore or multiprocessor system, you will want to enable support for it in the CPU tab of Live's Preferences.
CHAPTER 29. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 29.1.2 360 CPU Load from Tracks and Devices Generally, every track and device being used in Live incurs some amount of CPU load. However, Live is smart and avoids wasting CPU cycles on tracks and devices that do not contribute anything useful. For example, dragging devices into a Live Set that is not running does not signi cantly increase the CPU load. The load increases only as you start playing clips or feed audio into the effects.
CHAPTER 29. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 361 Draw and edit mixer automation and mixer clip envelopes; Consolidate; Record Session View clip launches into the Arrangement View; Create, move and duplicate Session View scenes; Drag frozen MIDI clips into audio tracks. When performing edits on frozen tracks that contain time-based effects such as reverb, you should note that the audible result may be different once the track is again unfrozen, depending on the situation.
CHAPTER 29. COMPUTER AUDIO RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES 362 You can also decide to atten frozen tracks, which completely replaces the original clips and devices with their audible result. The Flatten command is available from the Edit menu. Besides providing an opportunity to conserve CPU resources on tracks containing a large number of devices, the Track Freeze command simpli es sharing projects between computers.
363 Chapter 30 Audio Fact Sheet Prior to the release of Live 7, much of Ableton's development effort was focused on carefully and objectively testing Live's fundamental audio performance. As a result of this testing, we have implemented a number of low-level improvements to the audio engine.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 364 we will never release an update unless it passes every test. 30.2 Neutral Operations Procedures in Live that will cause absolutely no change in audio quality are referred to as neutral operations. You can be sure that using these functions will never cause any signal degradation. Applying neutral operations to audio that was recorded into Live ensures that the audio will be unchanged from the point of analog-to-digital conversion.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 365 rendering to a le with the same bit depth as the original results in complete phase cancellation. rendering to a le with a higher bit depth than the original results in complete phase cancellation. rendering to a le with a lower bit depth than the original results in the smallest amount of distortion possible within a 32-bit system. 30.2.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 30.2.4 366 Summing at Single Mix Points Since version 7, Live uses double precision (64-bit) summing at all points where signals are mixed, including Clip and return track inputs, the Master track and Racks. Mixing in Live is thus a neutral operation for signals mixed at any single summing point.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 30.2.7 367 Freeze, Flatten When tracks are frozen, the audio les that are created are 32 bit, which ensures that they will not be lower quality than the audio heard prior to freezing. But there are some special cases involving Freeze that result in non-neutral behavior and should be noted: Frozen Arrangement View tracks can include audio material that extends beyond the end of the clip itself, such as reverb tails and delay repetitions.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 30.2.8 368 Bypassed Effects Bypassed effects in Live are removed from the signal ow. This is true for both Live's built-in effects devices and third-party VST and AU plug-ins. Consequently, audio at the output of a bypassed effect is identical to the audio at the input. Please note, however, that effects devices with parameters that inherently require delay (e.g.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 369 In all cases, output is rendered and compared with the output of an unsplit version of the same source. Phase cancellation testing of the two les con rms that they are identical. 30.3 Non-Neutral Operations Procedures in Live that will cause a change in audio quality are referred to as non-neutral operations. Users can be guaranteed that using these operations will cause at least some change to the signal.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 370 transposition in a given Set. The algorithm behind the Hi-Q switch was rewritten for Live 7, and now results in considerably lower distortion than in previous versions. 30.3.2 Volume Automation Automation of volume level results in a change in gain, which is necessarily a non-neutral operation. But certain implementations of automation envelopes can result in audible artifacts, particularly if the envelopes are not calculated at a fast enough rate.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 371 audio signals that are being processed by effects plug-ins, internal recording at 32 bits is recommended. Please note, however, that if the source audio is already at a lower bit depth, internal recording at that bit depth will also be neutral (assuming that no effects are used); internally recording an unprocessed 16 bit audio le at 32 bits will not increase the sound quality. 30.3.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 30.3.9 372 Grooves Under most conditions, playback of a warped clip that is at the same tempo as the Set is a neutral operation. However, if a groove is applied, playback will be non-neutral at any tempo. 30.4 Tips for Achieving Optimal Sound Quality in Live For users looking to achieve optimal audio quality in Live, we have provided a list of recommended practices and program settings.
CHAPTER 30. AUDIO FACT SHEET 30.5 373 Summary and Conclusions Ableton wrote this paper in order to help users understand exactly how audio is affected when performing various procedures in Live. Our focus has been on functions that have proven over the years to cause confusion or uncertainty, and the list of both neutral and non-neutral operations presented here is necessarily incomplete.
374 Chapter 31 MIDI Fact Sheet In conjunction with our work on the audio engine, Ableton has spent additional effort analyzing Live's MIDI timing and making improvements where necessary. We wrote this fact sheet to help users understand the problems involved in creating a reliable and accurate computer-based MIDI environment, and to explain Live's approach to solving these problems.
CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 375 environment would capture this incoming information with perfect timing accuracy in relation to the timeline of the song as accurately as an audio recording. 2) Playback refers to two related scenarios when dealing with DAWs. The rst involves sending MIDI note and controller information from the DAW to a hardware device such as a synthesizer.
CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 376 data into a plug-in's playback, for example. Jitter-free MIDI timing involves accurate conversion between different clocks within the system's components the MIDI interface, audio interface, and the DAW itself. The accuracy of this conversion depends on a variety of factors, including the operating system and driver architecture used. Jitter, much more so than latency, creates the feeling that MIDI timing is sloppy or loose. 31.
CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 377 For playback of hardware devices, Live also generates timestamps that it attempts to communicate to the MIDI interface drivers for scheduling of outgoing MIDI events. Windows MME drivers cannot process timestamps, however, and for devices that use these drivers, Live schedules outgoing events internally. Even during high system loads that cause audio dropouts, Live will continue to receive incoming MIDI events.
378 CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 31.5 Tests and Results Our procedure for testing the timing of incoming MIDI events is represented in the following diagram: Live MIDI Source MIDI Splitter MIDI Clip MIDI-to-Audio Converter Audio Clip The output of a MIDI Source (a keyboard or other DAW playing long sequences of random MIDI events) is fed to a zero-latency hardware MIDI Splitter. One portion of the splitter's output is recorded into a new MIDI clip in Live.
379 CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET At 44.1 kHz and 512 sample buffer, occasional events with +/- 6 ms occurred. In all cases, the majority of the jitter occurred at +/- 1 ms. Interface C: For most of the tests, the maximum jitter was +/- 5 ms. At 96 kHz and 512 sample buffer, there were a small number of events with between +/- 6 and 8 ms of jitter. At 44.1 kHz and 1024 sample buffer, there were a small number of events with jitter as high as +/- 10 ms.
CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 31.6 380 Tips for Achieving Optimal MIDI Performance In order to help users achieve optimal MIDI performance with Live, we have provided a list of recommended practices and program settings. Use the lowest possible buffer sizes available on your audio hardware, thereby keeping latency to a minimum. Audio buffer controls are found in the Audio tab of Live's Preferences, and vary depending on the type of hardware you're using.
CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET 31.7 381 Summary and Conclusions Ableton wrote this paper in order to help users understand a variety of related topics: the inherent problems in computer-based MIDI systems; our approach to solving these problems in Live; additional variables that we cannot account for. As mentioned before, the best way to solve MIDI timing issues in your studio is to use the highest-quality hardware components available.
382 Chapter 32 Live Keyboard Shortcuts 32.
383 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Windows Close Window/Dialog 32.2 Esc Macintosh Esc Accessing Menus and the rst letter of the Under Windows, you can access each menu by pressing Alt F for File, for instance). While a menu is open, you can use: menu ( Alt to navigate the menu items; to open the neighboring menu; Return 32.3 to choose a menu item. Adjusting Values Windows Decrement/Increment Finer Resolution for Dragging Return to Default Type in Value Go to Next Field (Bar.beat.
384 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.4 Browsing In addition to the shortcuts shown here, editing shortcuts can also be used in the Browser. Windows Scroll Down/Up Close/Open Folders Set Selected Folder as Browser Root Load Selected Item from Browser Macintosh Return Return or Double- Return Click Preview Selected File Activate Browser Search Mode Jump to Search Results or Double- Return Click Return Ctrl Return F F 32.
385 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.
386 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.7 Loop Brace and Start/End Markers The loop brace and start/end markers must rst be selected before any of the following commands will apply to them. Move Start Marker to Position Nudge Loop Left/Right Move Loop By Loop Length Halve/Double Loop Length Shorten/Lengthen Loop Select Material in Loop Windows Click Macintosh Click Ctrl Ctrl Click Loop Brace or Ctrl Click Loop Brace or L L 32.8 Session View Commands See also the editing commands.
387 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.9 Arrangement View Commands The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Split Clip at Selection Consolidate Selection into Clip Create Fade/Crossfade Loop Selection Insert Silence Pan Left/Right of Selection Unfold all Tracks Scroll Display to Follow Playback 32.
388 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.11 Commands for Breakpoint Envelopes The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Envelope Editor and Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Finer Resolution for Dragging Enable Dragging Over Breakpoints 32.
389 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.13 Zooming, Display and Selections Windows Zoom In Zoom Out Drag/Click to Append to a Selection Click to Add Adjacent Clips/Tracks/Scenes to Multi-Selection Click to Add Nonadjacent Clips/Tracks/Scenes to a Multi-Selection Follow (Auto-Scroll) Pan Left/Right of Selection 32.14 Macintosh + + - - Ctrl Ctrl F F Ctrl Alt Alt Clip View Sample Display The shortcuts for zooming and loop/region settings also work in the Sample Display.
390 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.15 Clip View MIDI Editor The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the MIDI Editor. Windows Quantize Quantize Settings... Scroll Editor Vertically Scroll Editor Horizontally Copy Note Change Velocity From Note Editor Add/Delete Note in Edit Mode Move Insert Marker to Beginning Move Insert Marker to End Scroll Display to Follow Playback Move Clip Region with Start Marker 32.
391 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.17 Global Quantization Windows Sixteenth-Note Quantization Eighth-Note Quantization Quarter-Note Quantization 1-Bar Quantization Quantization Off 32.18 Ctrl Macintosh 6 6 Ctrl 7 7 Ctrl 8 8 Ctrl 9 9 Ctrl 0 0 Working with Sets and the Program Windows New Live Set Open Live Set Close Live Set Save Live Set Save Live Set As...
392 CHAPTER 32. LIVE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS 32.19 Working with Plug-Ins and Devices Windows Show/Hide Plug-In Windows Open Second/Multiple Windows with Plug-In Edit Button Open Mac Keystroke Plug-In Window with Plug-In Edit Button Group/Ungroup Devices Activate/Deactivate All Devices in Group Click to Append Devices to a Selected Device Load Selected Device From Browser Ctrl Alt P P Ctrl Ctrl G Alt Device Activa- G tor Return Click 32.
393 Chapter 33 Live Intro vs.
394 CHAPTER 33. LIVE INTRO VS.
395 CHAPTER 33. LIVE INTRO VS.
396 Index A Ableton e-mail addresses sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 technical support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 web addresses FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 webshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Adaptive Grid options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Add/Remove Stop Button command . . . . 90 agr les . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
397 INDEX authorization . . . . . . . . . . see copy protection authorizing Live more than once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Auto Filter effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Auto Pan effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Auto-Hide Plug-In Windows preference 211 Auto-Open Plug-In Custom Editor preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Auto-Warp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Clip Quantization chooser . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 Clip Record button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 193 Clip Signature elds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Clip Stop button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 adding/removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Clip Update Rate preference . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Clip View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 and playing the Arrangement . . . . . . .
INDEX cueing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Cut Time command in the Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 in the MIDI Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 D 399 the Live instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 the Live MIDI effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 the Max Audio Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 the Max Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 the Max MIDI Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
400 INDEX with scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Edit switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 effect chains . . . . . . . . . . . . see Device Chains effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices EIC . . . . . see Essential Instrument Collection Envelope Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95, 232 envelopes . . . . . . . . .see automation, see clip envelopes Envelopes box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX 401 hot-swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices and device presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 and grooves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 K and Impulse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 and Simpler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Key Map Mode switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 Key/MIDI In Indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Look/Feel Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 loop brace in the Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 with clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Loop Selection command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Loop Start/Punch-In Position elds . . . . . . 75 Loop switch Clip View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103, 241, 242 Control Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 with MIDI clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 177 Mixer Section selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . see clip envelopes monitor mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 monitoring through Live . . . . . . . . . see Audio Preferences MP3 les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see samples Multicore/Multiprocessor Support . . . .
INDEX Previous Locator button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see CPU projects/project management . . . . . see Live Projects Punch-In/Out switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Q quantization command for audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 command for selected MIDI notes . 137 for clip launching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 for MIDI notes during recording . . . 197 Quantize menu command . . . . . . . . .
INDEX 405 and sidechain inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 and MIDI/key mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 between tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 for creating submixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193 with external synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . 162 scrubbing playback in the Arrangement View . . . . . . . . . . . 70 S in the Clip View . . . . . .
INDEX lter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Glide and Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .300 LFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Multisample Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .301 sample controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Sample View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Transpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
407 INDEX inserting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181 mixer controls in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 muting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 return tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 returns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Warp Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Warp switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 warping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 longer pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 manipulating grooves . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 multiple clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 odd-length loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 straight loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
