Ableton Forum

Comping can be a great compositional tool.

I needed to write a short but complex five-voice close harmony for a certain line in my song. I wanted to hear exactly how it would sound in my voice, but I knew there would be tons of experimenting and rewriting, and it would be a lot of work to re-record five parts every time I made a change.

So I just sang the line once to each note in the scale (i.e., staying on B all the way, then C sharp, D etc.) and put each version into its own take lane. Then I copied that stack of takes into each of the five vocal tracks, and used the pencil tool to "sequence" the five tracks until I found five parts that sounded good together. Worked great!

^^ Cool technique! An extension of the 10CC “I’m Not in Love” oohs backing vocals where they recorded single notes to multitrack tape and rode the console faders to change chords

I didn't know about those 10CC backing oohs! Just looked it up, that was a fascinating read. Thanks!

Based on a question in the forum I think some don't know about the momentary function of the B-key (Draw Mode).

When you briefly press the B key, you turn Draw Mode on or off. This is well-known.
However, when you press and hold the B key you temporarily change the Draw Mode, until you let go of the key


For the momentary function you don't have to go to the midi editor because the momentary function works globally, but it's the easiest place to try and see how this works.
First disable Draw Mode.
Go to a midi clip and press and hold down the B key. Now you can draw notes since Draw mode is active. When you let go of the B key Draw Mode returns to its disabled state.
The opposite is also true by the way; disabling drawing while holding the B key down. I guess less useful in the midi editor but it might be useful in other places.

Time signatures in scenes that follow a nonstandard time signature scene, will shift to that nonstandard time (rather than back to the original global time signature) IF the signature in the following scene is NOT expressly overwritten. IE. overwrite any 4/4 scenes that follow a 5/4 scene from "4/4" to "4/4" (even though that is not a change.) After you do that, the time signature in that scene should appear as bold and the timing will revert to 4/4 rather than staying in 5/4.

With projects crashing Live upon opening.

Turns out that when computer restart is not helping and a project won't open, changing the name of the vst folder, restarting live, opening the project pluginless (if it works that way) and saving it under a different name does the trick even without further restarting Live.
Thus, change the name of the vst folder to the original one, rescan folder and reopen the new project file.

A very specific case, the more obscure, and the steps saved a lot of hassle.

User "samsta" discovered how one can use Max For Live with MidiPreHear presets to preview MIDI from Live's Browser with more flexibility:

https://github.com/samsta/min.midiout

viewtopic.php?p=1801199#p1801199

baseinstinct wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:20 pm

With projects crashing Live upon opening.

Turns out that when computer restart is not helping and a project won't open, changing the name of the vst folder, restarting live, opening the project pluginless (if it works that way) and saving it under a different name does the trick even without further restarting Live.
Thus, change the name of the vst folder to the original one, rescan folder and reopen the new project file.

A very specific case, the more obscure, and the steps saved a lot of hassle.

so cool.
thank you very much!

One more then

If you see live will now close, in some cases, ignore it (i.e. do not click okay) and wait and get to the main window - the project is playable (!!)

Ableton Live has a vocoder vst. When you copy midi clips from arrangement view, paste them into session view, then copy them again from session view this time and paste them back into arrangement view, the clips become one clip.

Exie wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:36 pm

Then both dummy device and useful devices are grouped with dummy racks, a macro takes units from the first mapped control in chain, which is dummy device:


Mapping ranges can be tuned inside inner dummy racks but not inside outer rack, to not lose macro units.

Discovered by jur here, this seems to be a bug but also a great feature, hope it will never be fixed.

This is huge and, thankfully, still works in Live 11! Thanks so much for sharing.
A helpful addition: if there's not a native device that does what you want, you can also make a Max for Live device with some live.dial objects that don't control anything but have the exact range and units that you want! The only downside is that it unfortunately doesn't work with enum dials. Every other data type works fine, though.

Save your racks. Save patches. Save .wav/.mp3/ whatever. The idea is to save the most relevant stuff to your future self. Don’t be off-put by the very wide zone of creative potential. Limit yourself and you’ll be able to focus on more acute parts of your production process instead of getting carried away by the possibilities Ableton Live creates for users. Big up.

most obscure?

midi tracks convert midi "note off" messages to "note on velocity 0" messages

jbaylies wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 18, 2023 6:49 am

most obscure?
midi tracks convert midi "note off" messages to "note on velocity 0" messages

Can you name any instrument or software in the world that uses note-off messages ?

chapelier fou wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:11 pm

jbaylies wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 18, 2023 6:49 am

most obscure?
midi tracks convert midi "note off" messages to "note on velocity 0" messages

Can you name any instrument or software in the world that uses note-off messages ?

note length + velocity ?