Ableton Forum

he he - I stumbled across it looking for something else

it was a bewildering loss, and sadly I dont think it will come back, but I thought it was worth a bump!

it does work!
see my edited post above

garyboozy wrote:over 3 years for a bump! is that a record?
i thought this feature was already built in to live, but i just hadnt figured it out yet.

+1

[edit]

after re-reading this thread i saw the 'clip repeat' mentioned, so just tried this out:
create a midi clip assigned to a synth or whathaveyou. set the empty clip to 2 bars in length, with launch mode set to 'repeat'. hit record, play 2 bars, and it auto-loops at the end. joy!

is this not what you mean, forge?

no I meant for audio clips - Live 2 and 3 was before MIDI!!

it was cool for live looping

ahh, gotyer. man that sounds handy.
why would they remove such a sweet feature?

garyboozy wrote:ahh, gotyer. man that sounds handy.
why would they remove such a sweet feature?

well it seems it was accidental, but they just never thought it a priority to bring it back

This should definitely be a priority! Thanks for resurrecting this.

This exactly the kind of thing Ableton should focus on. This is first and foremost a Live performance tool. What's more live than realtime audio looping. I got Live at V4 and it has also blown my mind that I couldn't set an audio record length for a clip. I would have thought that would be the first priority of the program.

Try this:

- go to Session view
- arm a track for recording
- arm live for recording
- activate the Arrangment Loop
- set the Loop Length field to the desired clip length
- set Loop Start field of the Arrangement Loop to 1.1.1 (if you set it to any higher value the difference between 1.1.1 and the chosen value will be added to the total length of the clip

- click on the record button of an empty clip on the armed track

The clip will start recording at once until the length entered in the Arrangement Loop is reached. After that it will playback and keep looping. As far as I understood that is what you wanted, isn't it?

Still I would prefer to be able to set a length directly without this rather strange workaround. Especially because you cannot use Punch In with this, but you can use pre-count.

I do wonder though why you did not want to use arrangement view for recording clips at set length, cause there it always works with punch in/out and a given length. Any particular reason?

Timur wrote: I do wonder though why you did not want to use arrangement view for recording clips at set length, cause there it always works with punch in/out and a given length. Any particular reason?

well...because you cant properly use session and you are restricted to that loop in arrange...not really the same

hey i just busted out live 3


yeah bring it back!!

mike holiday wrote:hey i just busted out live 3


yeah bring it back!!

so it's def in Live 3 yeah? I couldnt remember if it was 2 or 3 - I just know it was during a beta that it suddenly went because I reported it as a bug only to be told they never even knew it was there and somehow broke it!!

well...because you cant properly use session and you are restricted to that loop in arrange...not really the same

What about the method I just explained? It's used in Session, you can use it with single Clip recordin and with Scene start recording (if you enable that option in preferences), you can do any usual action in Session and it does exactly what you were asking for. At least as far as I understood.

Just make sure that you arm Live's recording button an the transport controls, then it will do one loop of recording only. If you don't arm the transport record it will not record a single loop but unlimited until you stop recording manually. I guess it's not planed by Ableton that way, but it works.

Did it work for you?

Timur wrote:you can use it with single Clip recordin and with Scene start recording (if you enable that option in preferences)

What option in preferences do you refer to?

The method you have described _sort of_ works.

-it does control the length of the session clip you recorded.

-when the transport loops, the session clip you recorded is not actually playing. the corresponding one in the arrangement is playing.

-since you've armed the global record button, you may have recorded a bunch of other things which you didn't want to necessarily record

longjohns wrote:-when the transport loops, the session clip you recorded is not actually playing. the corresponding one in the arrangement is playing.

I just compared Live 6 to Live 7 and for Live 6 it seems as if you are right. But for Live 7 the recorded clip is playing! You can change any settings, warp around, change speed, whatever, it will playback at once. Even better, while in Live 6 you'll hear a short pause when the recording turn to playback in Live 7 it will playback fluently.

-since you've armed the global record button, you may have recorded a bunch of other things which you didn't want to necessarily record

Yes, it will record all tracks to arrangement (though with the chosen length only) even those which are not armed for recording. But I'd expect you to work on a Session and not an Arrangement anyway, else you wouldn't need this feature (you can record clips in arrangement at any pre-defined length anyway).

And you can also use this workaround to do it without destroying your existing arrangement! Just Copy your newly created clip via ctrl-c (Editing -> Copy) and then undo all recordings to the arrangement and Paste the clip to whatever place you want it to be. Actually undo will sometimes be enough, because it will undo arrangement recording first and undo the clip recording later. Unfortunately the order of undoing these things seems to vary/change with every try, so better stick to the copy/paste method.

This being said it would surely be nice and better if no workaround that comes with several clicks/key-combinations would be needed, but it's nice that there is a workable possibility in Live 7. So count me plus 1 for implementing this missing feature!