the a-z of ableton live - martin delaney

8/18/2019 The a-Z of Ableton Live - Martin Delaney

1/27

The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney


2/27

A is for ABLETON

C’mon, how could we not kick this off by talking

about the name? We posted way back about

the confusion surrounding this - how to

pronounce it, how to spell it. The most

important rule is don’t confuse the company

name with the software name! 'Ableton Live', or

just ‘Live', is the software, ‘Ableton' is the

company that makes it! Don’t call the software

‘Ableton’, as in “Okay let’s launch this Abletonproject". Wrong wrong wrong. Especially now

that Ableton have another product - Push (tell you a secret tho, everybody calls the software Ableton

once in a while. It just slips out!). Ableton begins with an A, and follows it with a B. This makes it a perfect

choice of name for people who choose their software by browsing alphabetical lists; Reason hasn’t got a

hope in hell. It’s a similar tactic used by mini cab companies and window cleaners in printed business

directories. AABB Cabs….ABCAB window cleaners. Possible spin-off business ideas for the future,

guys? Just in case the software thing doesn’t work out?



3/27

B is for BACK TO ARRANGEMENT BUTTON

Otherwise known as the music software

incarnation of pure evil. The BTA button lets

you tell Live to override the clips that are

currently playing in the Session View, and

revert back to playing what’s in the

Arrangement View timeline. Quite simple, and

a very important control when you have clips in

both views. As of Live 9, and Push, this

changed a bit. During the beta phase, the BTAbutton moved around the screen a bit, before

settling in the scrub area at the top right of the Arrangement View tracks. Live 9 also introduced separate

BTA buttons for each track, so you can conveniently combine Session and Arrangement playback, which

is a great feature. Confusingly for newbies, these buttons disappear when not needed, which is not a

good way to go; same as I’m not sold on the way the buttons on Push only light up when 'needed’…I

wanna see the labels the rest of the time as well.



4/27

C is for CLIP

You can keep all the fancy features that have

been added to Live over the years; audio to

MIDI? Phooey! it’s still about what it has been

since day 1 - clips and warping! Clips are the

Lego, the building blocks from which Live is

made. We can create and drag them around in

the Arrangement View, but clips - and Live itself

- really come to life in Session View, when you

start exploring all the different ways you cantrigger them. It’s all about launch modes and

quantization. With the right hardware MIDI controller, launching perfectly synced loops and immaculately

timed one-shots has never been more like playing an instrument. When you first start out with Live, this

is the most amazing thing. One of the best things about teaching Live is that I get to live that moment of

discover over and again with the new students. A room full of kids firing off loops set to Gate or Repeat,

with quantization of 1/16th…nothing like it. Hell, you can even use the computer keyboard to launch ‘em!

And just teasing about the Audio to MIDI…I love that!



5/27

D is for DEVICES

Live’s compatible with Audio Unit and VST

plug-ins, the little bits of software that provide

extra instruments and effects, but before you

add anything, it includes a great selection of

plug-ins - or devices, as Ableton call them - to

get you started. Open your Browser and you’ll

see them organised as Instruments, Audio

Effects, and MIDI Effects. Which ones you’ll

see depends on the version of Live you’reusing; Live Intro currently includes a total of 29

devices, Live Standard has 40, and Live 9 Suite has 49 - every Live device available - as well as a whole

bunch of Max for Live devices, which have their own category in the Browser. Spend some time getting

to know these devices before adding more; you’ll definitely need more plug-ins along the way, but focus

on learning how to use the native ones first! As of Live 9 the Instrument devices have audio previews so

you can hear an example sound before you load the factory presets; very helpful. Just click once on the

preset name in the Browser to hear the preview, and use the arrow keys on your computer keyboard tobuzz around the devices and presets like a champ.



6/27

E is for ENVELOPES

When you move one of Live’s controls during

recording, those moves are recorded as

automation. You’ll see evidence of this in two

ways - red dots on the controls that have

automation attached to them, and red lines and

dots in either the clip envelope view, or in the

Arrangement View tracks. Yes, we can work

with automation at clip and track level. New in

Live 9 was the ability to record clip envelopes,instead of having to draw the pesky things in -

this works quite well with Push. In an experimental mood with clips, a fun thing to do with envelopes is to

click and drag to select a section, then copy and paste that section across the clip or track - or go nuts

and paste it into a totally different parameter, just to hear what it does. One more useful envelope thing -

when you Commit a Groove into a Live clip, it converts the velocity from the groove into an envelope that

you can tweak further - this works with audio and MIDI clips. Top points for flexibility! Work those

envelopes hard; they’re a great way to add organic quality to what otherwise can be just a bunch ofloops going on and off!



7/27

F is for FOLLOW ACTION

We heart follow actions! You’ll find the controls

in the Session View’s Launch box. A follow

action is a way to affect clip launch behaviour

after the current clip’s finished playing. Select a

clip, then enter a time value in bars, beats, and

sixteenths - this is the time that passes before

the follow action occurs. Then enter one or two

follow actions - these events such as Stop, and

Play Again. Finally, enter either one or tworandomisation values - the higher the value,

the more likely the follow action will occur. You can select multiple clips in the same track and apply

follow actions to all of them. Follow actions play through until they reach an empty clip slot. How to use

them? So many ways…for stopping particular clips in scenes that continue playing; for randomised clip

playback during your live show; for writing a melody automatically (put a different note in each clip and it

will play a tune); for creating weird phrases with speech samples; for a jamming buddy with drum beats

while you practice guitar. Best of all is that if you’re in record mode, the follow actions are recorded -FANTASTIC!



8/27

G is for GUITAR

Yeah - GUITAR! Live is still very underrated as

a tool for guitar players; you can use it as a

host for software amps and cabs, as a

sophisticated effects processor, a looping

device, a multitrack recorder, and a jamming

buddy (especially with follow actions). These

days your entire guitar rig can be a little laptop

and interface like the Apogee Jam - see our

earlier post about that. The main thing thatstops Live achieving full instant guitar rig status

is that the onboard Amp and Cabinet devices are HORRIBLE; it’s embarrassing. They’re the worst guitar

amps in any major DAW software (very good for mashing up drums and vocals, though). Also, there

really should be a guitar tuner device in there. So you have to shop around for other guitar modelling

solutions, which is a shame and a bit of a deterrent. To be honest, if I want to record guitars, I use the

Logic amps, or hardware modelling solutions like Fender’s Mustang and Avid’s Eleven Rack. Yow - the

letter ‘G’ has turned into a bit of a downer! Well, let’s be more positive and remember all the otherreasons I mentioned that makes Live rock for guitarists. If you haven’t plugged into it yet, don’t wait any

longer.



9/27

H is for HOT SWAP

In case you haven’t realised, that little button

with the ‘rotating’ arrows you see all over Live -

on devices, on sample slots, all over the place -

that’s the Hot Swap button, and it’s one of the

best time-saving tools in Live - that and Live 9’s

updated search function; start using both of

these and you’ll be buzzing around the

Browser like a champ. Let’s say you’re using

Auto Filter - click the Hot Swap button andyou’re taken straight to the Auto Filter presets

in the Browser. Now use your computer keyboard’s arrow keys to browse up and down the list, and enter

to load a preset. This doesn’t end the swap action, so you can continue to go through the list, loading

and auditioning effect presets directly from your keyboard; this is a very fast way to get around, but if you

want to go even faster - which you probably do - type ‘q’ to punch in and out of Hot Swap instead of

using the button. That’s my recommended method, but we couldn’t call this ‘Q is for HOT SWAP’,

though, that would be wrong! Hot Swap works with presets you’ve created in third-party plug-ins as well,and it’s awesome for sample swapping inside drum racks!



10/27

I is for INFO VIEW

Live has an Info View, at the bottom left of the

screen; type ‘?’ to open it, or use the little

triangular button that’s down there - I’ve never

used that button until today, when I wrote this -

‘?’ is much faster! As you mouse around Live’s

interface, Info View shows you the most-

needed facts and tips about what you’re

looking at. It’s very useful - this and the Context

Menu are the first and fastest ways to get aheads-up in Live. Talking of the Context Menu,

when you right-click on certain items inside Live, like clips, track headers, and scenes, you get an menu

item for ‘Edit Info Text’. Choose that, then you can type yourself some handy reminders about your set.

This pairs well with our tip about renaming empty clips for on-screen messages.

You can be more

creative and amuse yourself by putting ASCII art in there. I first did this in 2008 for a Ministry of Sound

gig - I was projecting my Session View screen, so I kept the Info View open, and anybody who was really

paying attention would’ve seen ASCII images, and dumb comments about the music and the gig. I don’tthink it made much different to the audience, but I got a kick out of putting it up there!



11/27

J is for JAMMING

The stereotype of the computer-based

musician used to be a grouchy hermit seeing

out his days in a dark studio somewhere…

actually, it’s still like that for Pro Tools users! ;-)

Us Live users are a more sociable crew - and

more of us use laptops than desktop

computers, more of us are working together,

putting our systems next to each other, for jams

in our homes, studios, and in the clubs (by theway, I had a celebrity client who banned me

from using the word ‘jam’ because it had musicianly connotations!). We’re usually syncing with MIDI,

sending or receiving it through our hardware interfaces, or over wifi. I’ve had ELEVEN iMacs synced

over wifi - it’s quite a power trip when you tap your spacebar and they all start running. If MIDI sync

doesn’t do the trick, we have Tap Tempo and Nudge to get us in the ball park. If you’re doing a big-room

tour, you’re better off using a hardware sync box, like Roland’s new SBX-1. It’s really fun to work out your

strategies for jamming - how to route audio? Maybe one of you takes the audio output from the other andremixes it on the fly; maybe one handles beats and the other melodies - this is a good division of labour,

especially if you're not both clued in about jamming with harmonic material; it avoids a lot of pitfalls. My

top jamming tip? Listen to the other players!



12/27

K is for KEYBOARD

Keyboards. You can’t escape them. Whether

you can play ‘properly’ or not (I can’t), a

keyboard is still the single most useful tool in

music creation, whether it’s a MIDI keyboard, a

graphic representation of one on an iPad

screen, or Live’s own Computer MIDI Keyboard

(which if I remember correctly used to be

officially called the Pseudo MIDI Keyboard).

The ‘piano-style’ keyboard is such a great all-rounder - you can play chords and melodies,

sure, but it’s also great for programming beats, with the velocity sensitivity of the keys being put to good

use; I’d say using an average MIDI keyboard is better for programming drums than using average drum

pads. And of course as a controller, they’re fantastic - most MIDI keyboards have an assortment of

knobs, faders, and pads, and we Live users can employ the keys to launch clips and scenes, as well as

to play notes. See our movie about Blondie’s Matt using a keyboard just like that. There are MIDI

keyboards for every budget, and in every size…and when you want to go really small, Live’s built-inkeyboard is so useful for travelling laptop users - type shift-cmd-k to toggle it on and off, use the z and x

keys to transpose up and down in octaves, and c and v to change velocity values.



13/27

L is for LAUNCH MODE

When you’re viewing the contents of a clip, you

can also view different panels containing

controls relevant to that clip. One of these is

the Launch box. If you can’t see it, click the

small L icon at the bottom left of the screen. It’s

important to understand what these launch

modes do, and to use different settings for

different clips in your set. It’ll feel more alive

when you’re jamming. Trigger is a good defaultsetting; Toggle is ideal when you’re using a

hardware controller to launch clips; Gate gives you a more keyboard-like behaviour, sustaining the clip

only while you hold it down, and Repeat takes you into more stuttery, glitch-type action. Duplicate the

clip, reverse the copy, then use the Repeat mode to get a fun messed-up sound as you switch between

them. As well as choosing Launch Modes, we can set quantization values for each clip, which helps get

the best out of the different Launch Modes, and turning on Legato makes your clips play back from the

current playhead position instead of the beginning. If you want a very cool instrument vibe with pads or akeyboard, assign some velocity sensitivity to the clips as well. All of these launch activities are recorded

into the Arrangement View, which is cool!



14/27

M is for MAX FOR LIVE

Max For Live…Max 4 Live…M4L…however

you like to call it, it’s a spinoff from Cycling 74’s

Max MSP, and is included in Live 9 Suite, as

well as being available separately; it lets you

create your own Ableton Live devices, be they

instruments, like the excellent CatStretch from

Max for Cats, or audio effects like the Dub

Machines devices which won our Max For Live

Award last week. They’re also great solutionsfor interacting with hardware instruments and

controllers, like Ableton’s ‘8 CCs’ device for Push. The downsides are that you need M4L installed to use

the devices, and if you want to build your own, be prepared for a steep learning curve. The only M4L

device I’ve ever built is one that randomly loads different cat pictures, so what do I know? There are

some more helpful devices out there, but also a lot of stuff where people waste their time showing off

instead of doing something more constructive - M4L is a great way to put off doing music for a bit longer

- time to get a life, maybe? It’s also a fine excuse for Ableton to offload development onto users - “well,Live doesn’t have that feature, but you could always make a Max For Live patch!”



15/27

N is for NOTE

In Ableton Live, a note is an indicator of pitch

and time, but it’s also a trigger. The note range

spans C-2 to G8 (middle C is C3). You can

draw in notes, record them from external

hardware, or capture them from other tracks

inside your set. Entering notes in Live is

deceptively basic, and the ignorant person will

tell you “Live sucks at MIDI programming”, but

they are dead wrong because Live has themost fantastic MIDI Effect Devices, and that’s

where a few simple, even aimless, MIDI notes, can come to life in a musical, and dynamic way. As I said

though, a note is also a trigger. You could say it ‘triggers’ the sound of a software instrument, true

enough, but what I mean is that we can go into MIDI Map Mode and use notes from our MIDI keyboards,

from our drum pads, from our fricking phones even, to trigger clips and scenes. That’s why even a basic,

humble, MIDI keyboard makes such a great controller for Live. One minute you’re using it to play

melodies or work out beats, the next, it’s launching scenes or doing cool stuff with firing clips. Maybe youshould go back and see ‘L is for LAUNCH MODE’ after reading this one :-) note edit mini-tip: hold down

‘alt’ (PC) or ‘cmd’ (OSX) when dragging a note’s end, to change length without it snapping to grid.



16/27

O is for OVERVIEW

Near the top of the Live screen, below the

control bar, is the Overview. If you can’t see it,

choose it in the View Menu, or type alt-cmd-o.

Once you start adding content to your

Arrangement View you’ll see a small

representation of it in the Overview. This is

helpful when you're jamming in the Session

View while there’s also material in the

Arrangement View; it helps keep track of whereyou’re up to on the timeline. When in

Arrangement View, you can click and drag inside the Overview’s ‘zooming hot spot’ (the black rectangle)

to navigate around the timeline. The Overview expands vertically as you add more tracks - if you have

hundreds of tracks in a set, it’ll be hogging a lot of screen space! I always turn it off in Session View to

reduce visual clutter; even when I’m working with content in both Views at once, I don’t think it gives me

enough information to be worthwhile. It’d be awesome if we could drag the Overview downwards to

expand it, and start showing more detail about the clips in the timeline…kind of like getting both Views atonce. In Arrangement View of course, it’s invaluable as a fast way to get around!



17/27

P is for PUSH

Ableton have indulged in hardware

partnerships before, but Push is the first

‘proper’ Ableton-branded controller (though still

built by Akai). Push gives you drum pads, a

keyboard (kind of), and a level of controller

functionality. Is Push an instrument? No. It’s a

controller. It’s great for drum programming. If

you’d surveyed Live users and asked if they

wanted something like Maschine for Live, theanswer would’ve been “Hell yeah!”. So you got

it. I used to say that the ultimate Live controller would be a Launchpad with a Remote Zero SL, and that’s

kind of what Push is, although the integration with the software - which no outside company could have

achieved - makes it capable of doing far more. Push is bulky; I’ve noticed that my friends who are Push

users are keeping them in the studio and not taking them out for live shows. Push is seen as a bit of a

no-brainer for the Live newb. For more experienced users, with their established working methods, it’s

not so obvious. You can’t please everybody; try before you buy, is what I say. There’s a lot of talk aboutusing it without looking at the computer but I don’t know why people get so hung up on that. You’re using

software - get used to it!



18/27

Q is for QUANTIZATION

I like to talk about how Live treats MIDI and

audio in the same way, and here’s another

great example of that – quantization. That’s

what it’s called when software automatically

corrects the timing of recorded MIDI notes. It

can either do it in real-time as the notes are

played in, or afterwards, applied to selected

regions. Every DAW has quantization, but Live

does it faster and easier. But there’s

audioquantization as well: use cmd-u inside an audio

clip and you can fix the timing of the audio just as easily as if it was MIDI! Shift-cmd-u takes

you into

Quantize Settings so you can adjust the note values involved; you can choose whether to correct note

start, end, or both, and set an Amount value (as a percentage), to blend in some of the original timing if

you want to. This is a fantastic time-saver – it’s a great way to start on any task where you’re correcting

timing – use quantization to fix the entire clip automatically, then go in and manually adjust or delete any

warp markers that haven’t gone in the right place. It’s also a fantastic tool if you’re working with ambient/ found sounds and you want to quickly lock them to some kind of rhythm – it works with anything!



19/27

R is for RECORDING

We can record audio or MIDI into either of

Live’s Views. Let’s start with the Session View;

arm the track or tracks you want to record into,

then click the Session Record button to begin

recording. Shift-click if you want to wait until

you launch a clip before commencing

recording. This will record into all of your armed

tracks at the same time, and from audio and

MIDI inputs at the same time across theirrespective tracks. With Session recording, you

can be recording on several tracks, and take one out of record and start cutting it into loops and playing

it back while recording continues on the others. As of Live 9, Session recording can also capture control

and mixer movements as clip envelopes. If you enable ‘Start Recording on Scene Launch’ in

Preferences, you can launch a scene and begin recording in all armed tracks at the same time, which is

nice! Also in Preferences you can enable ‘Record Session automation in All Tracks’, and record

envelopes into tracks which aren’t even armed. This can be quite confusing! You can record just aseasily in Arrangement View, again across multiple MIDI and audio tracks. Which view you record into

depends on the project. Anything ‘short’, I record into Session View; anything longer, like guitar tracks or

full vocal takes, I record into Arrangement View.



20/27

S is for SCENE

In Session View we can only launch one clip

per track at a time, but as many as we like

across separate tracks. There are times when

you want to launch several clips in a row at

once, and instead of clicking and mousing

furiously across the screen before the next bar

starts, do it with one click by launching a

scene; that’s what those launch buttons in the

master track are for. One click fires every clip inthat horizontal row. This is great when you

need a bunch of things to happen at once, like changing between song sections. If you want a clip to

‘ignore’ a scene change, remove the stop button from the clip below it, using cmd-e. Then when you

launch the scene containing the empty slot, the first clip keeps playing. This gets you more fluid and

organic scene changes. Use cmd-r to rename scenes, and the context menu to colour-code them. If you

name your scene with a BPM value, your project BPM changes when you launch it. If you name your

scene with a time signature, your project time signature changes when you launch that scene.AWESOME. Name a scene with both BPM and time signature, like this: ‘124 bpm 5/4’, and both values

will change on scene launch. If you have a bunch of clips playing on different rows and you want to

quickly collect them together into one scene – use shift-cmd-i; the Capture and Insert Scene command.



21/27

T is for TEMPO

Tempo is the speed a piece of music is played

at; in our world, we’re talking about BPM -

beats per minute. A few BPM up or down can

make a crucial difference to how your audience

perceive your music, especially in dance

music, where it can move you into a whole

different genre. In Live we interact with tempo

in different ways. First, there’s the project

Tempo - which we set in the Control Bar at the

top of the screen. A project’s BPM doesn’t have

to be fixed, because we can automate it in Session View using Scene names (see last time), and in

Arrangement View using track automation. And if we use tap tempo, like from a live drummer with a MIDI

pad, everything in your Live project follows the real musician instead of everybody having to follow the

computer - awesome for live band setups! Live has a separate Tap tempo assignment button near the

top left - you can assign this to any MIDI source, or even your computer keyboard. If Live isn’t running

and you tap one bar, it’ll start playing at the rate of your taps. You can keep tapping to ‘top it up’ as yougo along. It’s one bar as I said, so if your time signature is 4/4, that’s four taps, if it’s 5/4, that’s five taps,

and so on. The Tempo Nudge buttons are very useful for lining up Live’s tempo with another source.

Awareness of how to use tempo organically can make your loop-based productions much more dynamic!



22/27

U is for UTILITY

Live’s Utility effect device can be found with the

other audio effects in your Library.

It’s not one

of the most glamorous plug-ins around, but it’s

damn useful for problem solving and imaging

effects. You can use Utility to mute a track, filter

out DC offset and low-level noise, control track

gain, stereo width, pan, and phase. It’s very

useful for sampling, field recording, and voice

recording – if you want to extract

one channel

from

a stereo sample, or if you want to

clean

up and maybe re-balance

the sound a bit, Utility will get the job done. I’ve used Utility in conjunction with

Waves’ Center plug-in to manage stereo imaging when I was working on a project last year, refreshing

some old stereo mixes I had, where I couldn’t access the original stems. Because like every other Live

device, Utility is

MIDI mappable, you can use it as an effect as well as a tool – try automating the Width

and Pan control on a synth track, it can be quite disorienting…I mean that as a good thing. I also like it

as a gain control – for some projects, I have one in every track; sometimes you want to keep your trackfaders flat, and this is a great way to pre-mix your track volumes, alongside the clip gain control.

Because Utility has that Mute switch, you could MIDI map a bunch of them and assign them to a second

hardware controller if for some reason you needed two ways to ‘mix’ your tracks. Just an idea…



23/27

V is for VIDEO

Yes, you can use video in Live! It has

limitations, but it trades those off against some

very cool things. You can drag any QuickTime

compatible movie straight into Live; how it

behaves depends on what View you're in. In

Arrangement, the movie clip looks and

behaves like an audio clip (they load into audio

tracks). You'll see some little 'frame' lines along

the clip edges. Live will open a video window

which shows the movie content; toggle this at

any time with shift-cmd-v. If your computer’s connected to a second display or a projector, drag the video

window across. Put a bunch of videos in the timeline on one or more tracks and you have a music video

ready to go. If there's audio in the movie clip, you can add audio effect devices to it. Turn on warping for

the clip and you can timestretch the video - this is very useful for fitting video loops to your beats! You

can't play video out of Session View, but it has another trick up its sleeve; drop a movie clip into Session,

and the video is dumped, but the clip audio is retained - this is the fastest way to get an audio samplefrom a movie into Live! If you want real integration with video for live performance, the best way to go is

to pair Live with a VJ application like Arkaos VJ. I've used this combo for many live shows, sending MIDI

notes and CCs from Live to launch movies and control visual effects in sync with your music.



24/27

W is for WARPING

Like it or not, sports fans, Ableton Live is about

two things and two things only – the Session

View and Warping. Everything else is optional.

I’m not beefing

– Live is a fantastic

achievement and has revolutionised music

creation; other DAWs have their versions of

time stretching, but I’d take Live’s warping over

Logic’s flex time (for example) any day of the

week. Warping’s a big subject, but here are a

couple of quick pointers. Make sure you

choose the right warp mode for your audio clips, otherwise the cumulative effect across a mix can be

disastrous – but don’t be afraid if the ‘right’ warp mode is not the one that you expected; judge it case by

case. We use Live to straighten out song timings so we can lock them together; your best tools for this

are in the Context Menu – ‘Warp From Here’ and so on. Try them all, and don’t be surprised, with less

‘straight’ material, if you have to re-apply

these at points throughout a song, to keep everything on track.

Sometimes audio quantisation is a good way to get a quick fix on straightening out a song, or part of asong. For some purposes you might only want to warp the start and end of a song, and quantization can

be good for that. Live 9.2 has improved the sound of warping with Complex and Complex Pro modes, as

well as Auto-Warp and downbeat detection; good to see these core features getting continued tweaks.



25/27

X is for X-Y CONTROL

X-Y controls are a great way to use one action

to control two effect parameters at the same

time. Load one of Live’s audio effect devices,

such as Auto Filte, to see what I mean; that

black box where you drag the little yellow circle

around - those are X-Y coordinates at work. X

is the horizontal movement (axis), and Y is the

vertical movement (axis). This is one of Live’s

visual trademarks - the X-Y grid with the little

ring. Even with a mouse or trackpad, this is a

good way to interact with effects, but if you use a hardware controller like a joystick or a touch surface, it

really comes alive. Controllers with joysticks or other X-Y controls include Elektron’s Analog Keys,

Kenton’s Killamix, Novation’s SL Mk II (with a touch pad as well as joystick, for double the fun), and

Korg’s Kaoss Pad, and Taktile keyboards. For touch surfaces, that’s mostly going to be iOS devices, with

apps such as Lemur and MIDI Touch. You can a game controller - I still like the Wiimote, especially that

little joystick on the Nunchuk accessory. You can customise Live’s X-Y behaviours from the MIDIMapping Browser - limit the range of the parameter changes, or invert their ranges, and of course you

can assign more than one device to the same joystick for more complex moves. One thing a mouse is

good for though, is to click around inside the black box for value jumps - that can be a useful effect.



26/27

Y is for YOU THE USER

It’s all about the user. If you’ve got

something in

mind, if there’s a statement you want to make,

Live will help you get there. If you’re merely

curious at this point, and not really sure about

the whole music production

thing, Live will

show you that there’s nothing to be scared of -

it’s fun, and it can be very simple at the

beginner level. Don’t be put off by all the

complicated stuff you see online - that will be

there for you if and when you need it. Live is

about the users and the community - they interact online, they share information, they

jam together (in

ways that are impossible with other music software), they bring it back into the real world; Live was at the

forefront when the computer-based music scene began to move away from grumpy guys with Pro Tools

rigs trapped in a studio with tower PCs and CRT monitors deeper than they were wide - to a more

dynamic, flexible, and

mobile type of interaction. Socialising with other Live users is an important thing -

there’s still nothing like getting together and thrashing out some ideas in meat space! So often, you willbe talking to a Live user and then realise he has his entire live rig

with him - laptop, headphones, petite

soundcard, bijou MIDI controller. We are ready to throw down 24 hours a day. Like they say in the old

movies - “let’s do the show right here!”



27/27

Z is for ZOOM

There’s more than one way to use zooming in

Live. Let’s start with Zoom Display, under the

Look Feel tab in Preferences. You can set any

zoom value between 50% and 200%, it’s useful

– I use it a lot, especially on a laptop for live

shows – I can fill the screen with just what I

want to see. In fact I use it often enough that I

wish there was a key command for it. Consider

that a feature request, Ableton! We’ve got

zooming in the Arrangement View; use the ‘-‘

and ‘+’ keys on your keyboard to zoom in and out of the timeline. You can also click and drag up/down/

left/right in that little rectangle in the Overview – and double-click in there to quickly zoom out to see your

entire arrangement, or you can do the same thing when you mouse over the beat time ruler, when you

see the magnifying glass icon. I wish I could use the two-finger swipe to zoom in and out in Arrangement

View, I’m very used to it from Logic! Ah, maybe that’s feature request number two! You get similar zoom

options inside the Sample Display and Note Editor, with the same ‘hot spot’ rectangle at the bottom right,and the magnifying glass along the top. You’ll find other zoom controls around Live, like inside Simpler,

and the instrument rack zone editor!


the a-z of ableton live - martin delaney

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