rab wrote:Agreed. The ability to select a clip upon MIDI launch is an essential feature. It is present in Live3. I tried Live4, but they had removed that feature (without mentioning it anywhere, to boot!).
Fast forward to the Live5 beta. I was a beta tester, and was thrilled to see that it was back. But by the time I bought my copy of the final release, it had been removed again. They love to cite the fact that Live4 didn't have the feature as justification for removing it from Live5. But it was part of Live3, so I still consider it a regression over past versions.
I absolutely cannot play out in a live setting without this feature. When I'm recording a clip during a show, I MUST be able to delete the currently recording clip using my foot pedal (Behringer FCCB-1010) if I fudge a note, and have another shot on the next go-around. I have a pedal mapped to a MIDI note, and Bome's MIDI translator turns that into a delete keypress. If the clip isn't selected, though, I'm up a creek.
I have recently realized that it should be possible to achieve the same effect by mapping a MIDI message to the "undo" keyboard shortcut (again, using Bome's MIDI translator to turn a MIDI message into control-Z), but I haven't tried it yet.
Please, Ableton, get this critical behavior back into Live 5. If you could do it with Live3, you can do it with Live5.
AMEN! Finally someone feels my pain with 4 and 5. I've been steady giggin with 3 still as I do live looping as well (using fcb 1010 and bomes just as you are to delete flubbed clips). I had tried to work my set up in 4 a few times over the last year and had issues and kept giving up. I finally took some time to figure out what was pissing me off so much about 4, and realized that it has what I think is a bug.
When you initiate a recording of a session clip in Live 4.1.4 by using a mouse click to start the clip recording, it IS selected--if you hit delete after clicking to record it WILL delete the clip. BUT, if you initiate recording of a session clip in the same slot by using a MIDI command (note on/off, cc.) INSTEAD of the left mouse click, for some reason the clip is not selected, pressing delete will NOT work. Even more oddly, if you manually select the clip with the mouse, then delete it, then initiate recording again with a MIDI command, it IS selected, delete WILL work. Every time you change the tempo or the inputs on a track, the bug re-appears--the first time you try to record a clip using a MIDI command, it is not selected, using delete will not work. Manually select it with the mouse, delete it, and then clips in that slot will be selected when record is initiated with MIDI. Change tempo or input routings, back to the bug, and so on.
I call it a bug because I think it is absolutely absurd that using a mouse click to initiate session clip recording should be ANY different than using a midi command to do the EXACT same thing. Not only that, but it only happens the first time on a track (until you change input routings or tempo), not every time. These things spell BUG to me. Here's my lonely thread where I converse with myself about this issue:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=
Rab and anyone else--please join this thread and maybe even test the mouse click recording scenario to confirm that your system behaves like mine. If so, I think that is a strong case for the fact that this IS a bug, or at the very least a huge pain in the ass, and that if the solution is the re-instating of "select on launch", then bring that shizz back, stat. I'm hoping to get it diagnosed as a bug and fixed in 4, as the 5 preset and scrubbing scene have forced me not to buy it.
At the very least, Ableton needs to wake up and embrace the live-looping-with-instruments crowd--they don't even really advertise themselves as such, and yet it is the best looper around bar none. I'm not sure about where you live, but there are tons of guitarists in my area donig live looping with boss, line 6, and boomerang gear--it is a fairly big and growing market, this live looping, and Live is missing out on some serious dollars by not taking care of a few loose ends, like MIDI MAPPABLE DELETE, and if this is not a bug, SELECT ON LAUNCH. If people are going to use Ableton's product to do live looping, they MUST make it possible to delete clips that are in the process of being recorded. Up til 3, we could at least use bomes and ox/yoke to workaround, but this bug (or the removal of "select on launch") has killed live looping in 4 and now 5. This is totally stupid--version 3 (which is no longer availible) is the best Ableton looper to date. So now, if one of the hordes of hardware guitar loopers tries to switch to Ableton, they'll go "this is stupid, I can't even delete a clip I'm currently recording using a midi foot pedal, geez even my $250 boss pedal can do that. I have to have the ability to delete on stage, otherwise I have to play absolutely perfect....Hmmmn, guess I won't use Ableton Live." They have essentially pulled themselves OUT of the looping market just as it is really starting to grow, and as people (like myself 3 years ago), get frustrated with the limitations of hardware looping. WAKE UP ABLETON, don't shoot yourself in the foot and miss out on a whole range of customers just to make DJ's happy, or because of oversight. ARghhh. 3.0.2 is still my live instrument.
Ryan
