Ableton/Live/UG/03 Live Concepts
- The ideas the rest of the manual builds on: Live Sets, the two main views, tracks, clips, devices, the mixer, routing and recording.
- The strip across the top of the window: transport and tempo, scale and MIDI settings, CPU monitoring, and the switch between Session and Arrangement View. See Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar.
- It has nine sections:
- Browser Options: show or hide the browser; the Browser Config Menu expands it to full height and shows the Tuning and Groove Pool sections.
- Tempo Settings and Metronome: Link, tempo, time signature, metronome options, and Tempo Follower.
- Scale Settings: the selected clip's scale; changes apply to that clip and to clips created afterwards.
- Follow and Arrangement Position: Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Switch/Follow and Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Field/Arrangement Position.
- Transport Controls: Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Button/Play, Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Button/Stop and Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Button/Arrangement Record.
- Automation and Capture MIDI: MIDI overdub options, Automation Arm, Re-Enable Automation, Capture MIDI, and Session Record.
- Arrangement Loop Settings: Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Toggle/Arrangement Loop, loop start and length, and the punch-in and punch-out points.
- MIDI and CPU Settings: Draw Mode, the Computer MIDI Keyboard, Key and MIDI Map Modes, project sample rate, and the CPU meter.
- View Selector: Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Toggle/View Selector switches between Session and Arrangement View.
- The Status Bar at the bottom of the window shows error messages and notices of new releases.
- In the MIDI Note Editor it shows a selected note's position, pitch, velocity and probability. Hovering over an insert marker shows the marker's exact position.
- The Ableton/Browser is where you reach the Core Library, installed Packs, your saved presets and samples, built-in and third-party devices, Sets in Ableton Cloud, files on Push, and folders you add.
- Show or hide it with the Control Bar toggle or
Cmd+Option+5 (Mac) / Ctrl+Alt+5 (Win).
- Live analyzes sounds to support two features: Similarity Search, which lists Core Library and User Library items that sound like a reference, and Similar Sample Swapping, which replaces samples in Drum Rack, Simpler or Drum Sampler.
- Similarity Search works on samples up to 60 seconds long, instrument presets and drum presets. Open it with the Show Similar Files icon next to a selected file, the context menu, or
Cmd+Shift+F (Mac) / Ctrl+Shift+F (Win). Results run from most to least similar. - Analysis runs in the background on new user audio files and can be paused from the Status Bar. Core Library content comes pre-analyzed.
- A Live Set (Ableton/File/.als) is the document you work on. It lives in a Live Project, a folder that collects related material.
- The open Set's Project folder is also reachable from the Current Project label in the browser's Places.
- Clips are Live's building blocks: a melody, a drum pattern, a bassline, or a whole song.
- The Arrangement lays clips out on a linear timeline; the Session is a launching base where each clip has its own play button and can start at any time in any order. See Ableton/Live/Mode/Arrangement and Ableton/Live/Mode/Session.
- Switch views with
Tab or the view controls at the top right. With "Use Tab Key to Navigate" on, use Option+1 / Option+2 (Mac) or Alt+1 / Alt+2 (Win), or the Navigate menu. With two windows, Tab swaps the views between windows. - Each view holds its own clips. Switching views changes only the display, not what is playing.
- The views connect through tracks, so you can improvise with Session clips and record the result into the Arrangement.
- Tracks hold clips and manage signal flow: recording, synthesis, effects and mixing.
- Session and Arrangement share one set of tracks, shown as columns in the Session and as stacked rows in the Arrangement.
- A track plays one clip at a time, so clips that alternate go in the same Session column, and clips that play together go across a row, called a scene.
- A track plays a Session clip or an Arrangement clip, never both, and Session clips win. A track that switched to a Session clip stays off the Arrangement until you press Ableton/Live/UI/Arrangement View/Button/Back to Arrangement, found in the Main track in Session View, at the top right of the scrub area, and on each Arrangement track.
- Pressing Ableton/Live/UI/Control Bar/Button/Arrangement Record from Session View captures the Session into the Arrangement.
- Arrangement recordings can produce several takes for comping, and tracks can be linked to edit them together (Ableton/Linked-Track Editing).
- Live handles two kinds of signal. Audio is a series of numbers approximating a waveform; MIDI is a series of commands, like "play a C4 at mezzo piano", closer to a written score.
- An instrument turns MIDI into audio. Ableton/Instrument/Simpler plays one sound chromatically; Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/07 Impulse assigns a different drum sound to each key.
- Audio tracks record and play audio clips; MIDI tracks record and play MIDI clips. A clip can't go on the other kind of track. See Ableton/Track/Audio and Ableton/Track/MIDI.
- An audio clip points to a sample (sound file), or a compressed one such as an MP3, and says which part to play and how.
- Dragging a sample in from the browser creates a clip. The headphones toggle previews a sample when you select it.
- Clip View settings, opened by double-clicking a clip, change playback in real time without altering the file.
- Warping changes playback speed independently of pitch to match the song tempo. Auto-Warp lines up most material with the tempo, and extreme settings can change a sound's character.
- A MIDI clip holds notes and controller envelopes. Importing a
.mid file copies its data into the Set; the file isn't referenced afterward. - Edit notes in the Clip View. Besides recording from devices, notes can come from Draw Mode, MIDI Tools, or audio-to-MIDI conversion.
- Each track can hold a chain of devices. Double-click a track's title bar to open the Device View.
- Audio effects take and return audio and are the only devices allowed on audio and return tracks. MIDI tracks can also hold MIDI effects and instruments.
- Add devices by dragging them from the browser onto a track or the Device View, or by selecting one and pressing
Enter. VST plug-ins, and Audio Units on macOS, appear under the browser's Plug-Ins label.
- The Ableton/Clip/View sets clip properties such as start and end, looping and scale; in Session View it also has follow actions. Audio clips add warping and audio transformation tools; MIDI clips add pitch and time utilities and MIDI Tools.
- The Device View lists the devices on the selected track.
- Stack the two views with the triangle toggles beside their selectors in the bottom-right corner.
Cmd+Option+3 / Cmd+Option+4 (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+3 / Ctrl+Alt+4 (Win) show the Clip View and Device View.
- Scale Mode makes a clip, effect or device scale aware. Turn it on in the Control Bar or the Clip View, then choose a root note and scale. Settings apply to the selected clip, or to new clips when none is selected.
- In the MIDI Note Editor, Fold to Scale shows only the scale's key tracks, and Highlight Scale tints them purple, the color Live uses for scale awareness everywhere.
- MIDI Tools and the Pitch and Time Utilities follow the active scale. Arpeggiator, Chord, Pitch, Random and Scale have a Use Current Scale toggle that switches their pitch parameters to scale degrees. Auto Shift's Quantizer and Meld's oscillators and filters can follow the scale too.
- A clip's signal passes through the track's device chain from left to right and then into the mixer, which Session and Arrangement share.
- Device-to-device connections are always stereo; inputs and outputs can be set to mono in the Audio Settings.
- The mixer has volume, pan and sends. Sends feed return tracks, which hold only effects, so every track can share them.
- The crossfader works like a DJ mixer's but can fade between any number of tracks, returns included.
- On a MIDI track, MIDI effects come first, then an instrument, then audio effects. A MIDI track with no instrument outputs plain MIDI and loses its mix and send controls.
- Show or hide mixer sections from View → Mixer Controls or the Mixer Config Menu at the bottom right.
- Every device can save its settings as a preset. Presets live in the User Library, apart from any Set.
- Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks save several devices and their settings as one preset. See Ableton/Instrument/Drum Rack and Ableton/File/.adg.
- The mixer's In/Out section, shown from View → Mixer Controls, is Live's patchbay: a source and a destination chooser for every track.
- Tracks can send to audio and MIDI interfaces, to other programs, or to a group track that acts as a submixer. They can take input from outside Live or from another track or device, with monitoring controls deciding when the input is heard.
- External Audio Effect and External Instrument route signals to hardware from within a device chain.
- Arm a track to record its input. Selecting several tracks and arming one arms them all;
Cmd-click (Mac) / Ctrl-click (Win) arms several. With Exclusive Arm on, adding an instrument to an empty MIDI track arms it. See Ableton/Track/Record Arm. - With Arrangement Record on, each armed track records into the Arrangement, one new clip per take.
- Session Record records new clips into the selected scene on armed tracks without stopping the music; pressing it again stops recording and launches the clips, cut to the beat by launch quantization.
- Session recording with overdub and Record Quantization is the usual way to build drum patterns as they loop.
- Automation is a control's change over time, stored as a breakpoint envelope you can draw, edit or record. Almost every mixer and device control can be automated, tempo included.
- With Automation Arm and Arrangement Record on, control changes are recorded into the Arrangement. With Automation Arm on while Session recording, they go into the clip.
- Moving an automated control while not recording overrides its automation until you press Re-Enable Automation or launch a Session clip that carries automation.
- Clips have their own envelopes for automating or modulating device and mixer controls. Audio clips add envelopes for pitch, volume and more; MIDI clips add envelopes for controller data.
- Unlinked from the clip, an envelope keeps its own loop, so a long fade or a short gesture can run over the clip's material.
- MIDI Map Mode, switched on with the MIDI switch in the Control Bar, assigns most controls to an external MIDI controller: click a control, then move a knob. Mappings take effect when you leave the mode. Session clips can map to a key or key range. See Ableton/Remote Control.
- Mapped notes and controllers are filtered out before MIDI reaches tracks, so they can't be recorded.
- Key Map Mode does the same for computer keys, for Session clips, switches and buttons.
- Push 1, Push 2 and Push 3 have dedicated support.
- Saving a Set stores its clips, positions and all settings, but an audio clip loses its sample if the file is moved or deleted. Collect All and Save copies every sample into the Project folder.
- The Save button in an audio clip's title bar stores default clip settings, such as warp settings, with the sample.
- File → Export Audio/Video, or
Cmd+Shift+R (Mac) / Ctrl+Shift+R (Win), renders the Main output by default. MIDI clips can be exported as MIDI files. - Dragging a Session clip to the User Library saves it as a Live Clip (Ableton/File/.alc), which keeps the clip settings and the track's instruments and effects. Useful for drum patterns with their kit, loop variations, and ideas set aside for later. See Ableton/Clip/How To/Save to Library.