Ableton/Live/UG/25 Racks
- Instrument, Drum and Effect Racks: chains, zones, Macro Controls and mixing inside a Rack.
- A Rack holds effects, plug-ins and instruments in a track's device chain. Racks can build complex processors, playable performance instruments and stacked synths, while gathering the most important controls in one place. Even a single device gains from a Rack, through new control relationships between its parameters.
- Saved Racks are Ableton/File/.adg files.
- How signals flow through a Rack's parallel chains, and what Macro Controls are.
- A track's devices normally run in series, left to right, in one chain. A Rack adds parallel chains.
- In Instrument and Effect Racks, every chain receives the same input at once, processes it through its own devices in series, and the chains' outputs are mixed into the Rack's output.
- In a Drum Rack, each chain receives only its assigned MIDI note.
- A whole Rack behaves as a single device: it can go anywhere in a chain, Racks can nest without limit, and devices after it receive its output.
- Macro Controls are a bank of knobs, each able to control any number of parameters across the Rack's devices — to bring one parameter forward, to morph many at once, or to hide a complex instrument behind a small custom panel. See Ableton/Macro.
- Mapping the Macros to a hardware controller makes them playable.
- Four kinds of Rack, each with its own rules:
- MIDI Effect Rack — MIDI effects only, on MIDI tracks.
- Audio Effect Rack — audio effects only, on audio tracks or after an instrument on MIDI tracks.
- Instrument Rack — instruments, plus MIDI effects before them and audio effects after.
- Drum Rack — like an Instrument Rack, plus up to six return chains of audio effects with per-chain send levels. See Ableton/Instrument/Drum Rack.
- Create an empty Rack by dragging a generic Rack preset (such as "Audio Effect Rack") from the browser, then drop devices into its Chain List or Devices view.
- To wrap existing devices, select their title bars, right-click and choose Group (
Cmd+G / Ctrl+G) or Group to Drum Rack. Grouping again, or grouping chains, nests a Rack inside a Rack; the Device View shows each level as a pair of brackets. - Ungroup on a Rack's title bar takes it apart.
- A column at the Rack's left holds selectors for its views: Macro Controls, Chain List (with return chains in a Drum Rack), Devices, and the Drum Rack's Pad View.
- Rounded corners bracket a Rack's contents; with Devices shown, the closing bracket moves to keep nesting clear.
- Select a Rack by its own title bar to move, copy, delete, rename it, or edit its info text.
- Hiding every view folds the Rack into its view column, the same as Fold or double-clicking its title bar.
- Right-click the Device View selector for a list of every device in the track, nested Racks included; choose one to jump to it.
- The Chain List is where incoming signals branch: each parallel chain is one entry. Drop presets, devices or whole chains into the area below to add chains. Racks, chains and devices drag freely between Racks and tracks; hovering over another track while dragging opens its Device View.
- The selected chain is what the Devices view shows; arrow keys flip through chains. Several chains can be selected for copying and regrouping.
- Each chain has an Activator, Solo and Hot-Swap. Instrument, Drum and Audio Effect Rack chains add volume and pan; Drum Rack chains add sends and MIDI note settings.
- Chains save as presets in the browser, and can be renamed, given info text, or coloured from the context menu.
- With Auto Select on, chains are selected as they process signal: in a Drum Rack, when their note arrives; in other Racks, according to their zones. Useful for troubleshooting.
- Zones are filters at the input of each chain in Instrument and Effect Racks that decide which values reach it. They pass everything until you change them.
- The Key, Vel and Chain buttons above the Chain List open their editors; Hide closes them. Audio Effect Racks have only chain select zones; Drum Racks have no zones and filter by note in the chain list.
- Each zone has a lower bar to move or resize it and a thin upper bar for fade ranges. Drag edges to resize, the middle to move.
- In a MIDI Effect Rack with four chains, all chains receive the same MIDI.
- Before entering a chain, a note must pass that chain's key zone, then its velocity zone, then its chain select zone. Failing any one keeps it out.
- The outputs of all chains are mixed and passed to whatever follows the Rack.
- The Key Zone Editor shows each chain's range across the full MIDI note range, almost 11 octaves. Chains respond only to notes in their zone, which makes keyboard splits.
- Fade ranges lower the velocity of notes entering the chain.
- In Instrument and MIDI Effect Racks, each chain also responds only to a range of Note On velocities, 1–127, edited like key zones.
- Fade ranges lower the velocity of notes entering the chain.
- Chain select zones let one parameter, the draggable Chain selector above the 0–127 scale, choose which chains can play. Only chains whose zone overlaps the selector's value produce output.
- In Instrument and MIDI Effect Racks they filter only notes by default; Chain Selector Filters MIDI Ctrl in the ruler's context menu makes them filter all MIDI.
- In MIDI Effect Racks fades lower note velocity. In Instrument and Audio Effect Racks fades lower each chain's output volume: moving the selector off a zone that ends in a fade silences the chain, while a zone without a fade lets reverb tails and delays ring out.
25.5.4.1 Making Preset Banks Using Chain Select
- Chain select zones default to a length of 1 at value 0. Place four chains with different effects at values 0, 1, 2 and 3 with no overlap, and map the Chain selector to a hardware encoder: turning it switches between four setups.
25.5.4.2 Crossfading Preset Banks Using Fade Ranges
- Lengthen the zones and add fade ranges so neighbouring presets overlap, keeping one value where each plays alone. Moving the selector then crossfades between presets; wider fades make smoother transitions.
- Ableton/Instrument/Drum Racks share most features with other Racks but are laid out for drum kits.
- Four extra toggles in the view column show the Input/Output, Send and Return sections and Auto Select.
- Input/Output: Receive sets the incoming note the chain answers (with note names, numbers and General MIDI drum names); Play sets the note sent on to its devices; Choke puts it in one of sixteen choke groups, where triggering one chain silences the others, such as a closed hi-hat cutting an open one. With Receive on All Notes, Play and Choke are disabled. The Preview button fires a test note.
- Mixer: besides volume, pan and Hot-Swap, each chain has post-fader sends to the return chains, once they exist.
- Return chains: up to six chains of audio effects at the bottom of the list, fed by the sends. Each return's Audio To goes to the Rack's output or straight to the Set's return tracks.
- Pad View shows one pad per MIDI note (128 in all). Shift the visible 16 pads by dragging in the overview or with the arrow keys; hold
Cmd (Mac) / Alt (Windows) to move one row. - Drop almost anything from the browser on a pad and it maps to that note: a sample makes a chain with a Ableton/Instrument/Simpler; an audio effect goes after it; another sample replaces only the Simpler and its sample, keeping effects. In Hot-Swap,
D switches the target between the Rack and the last selected pad. - Dropping several samples maps them upward chromatically from the pad.
Cmd/Alt-dragging them layers all on one pad in a nested Instrument Rack. - Dragging one pad onto another swaps their notes, so existing clips play different sounds;
Cmd/Alt-dragging layers both pads. See also Ableton/How To/Preserve Name of Clip when Dragging into Drum Rack. - Receive choosers in the chain list remap notes too; chains sharing a note all fire from its pad.
- A pad stands for a note, not a chain — every chain at any depth that receives that note:
- an empty pad shows its note, and its General MIDI suggestion in the Status Bar;
- a pad with one chain shows its name and gives mute, solo, preview, Hot-Swap, rename and delete;
- a pad with several shows "Multi"; mute, solo, preview and delete affect them all.
- With a natively supported pad controller selected in Settings → Link, Tempo & MIDI, its pads play the pads visible on screen and follow when you scroll.
- A Rack can show up to 16 Macro Controls; new Racks show eight. Buttons in the view column add or remove visible Macros, and the count is saved with the Set.
- The Map button in the Macro view turns on Macro Map Mode: mappable parameters get a coloured overlay, Map buttons appear under each Macro, and the Mapping Browser opens.
- To map, click a device parameter, then a Macro's Map button. The Macro takes the parameter's name and units. Set the range with Min and Max in the Mapping Browser; Min above Max, or Invert Range, inverts it. Click Map again to finish.
- A mapped parameter is greyed out, controlled by the Macro, though clip envelopes can still modulate it.
- Edit or delete mappings in the Mapping Browser while Map Mode is on.
- A Macro with several parameters reverts to a generic name (such as "Macro 3") and a 0–127 scale unless all share the same units and range.
- Macros can be renamed, coloured and given info text from the Edit or context menu.
- The Rand button in the title bar randomises every mapped Macro.
- Exclude Macro from Randomization in a Macro's context menu protects it. Macros mapped to Volume in Instrument Rack presets are excluded by default.
- Variations store snapshots of a Rack's Macro settings — for capturing sound design states, comparing mix settings, or jumping between settings for builds and drops while performing or recording.
- Open them with the Show/Hide Macro Variations button. New stores the current state as "Variation 1", "Variation 2" and so on; rename, duplicate or delete from the Edit or context menu.
- Launch Macro Variation recalls one; Overwrite Macro Variation replaces it with the current state.
- Exclude Macro From Variations in a Macro's context menu keeps it unchanged when variations launch.
- Instrument and Drum Racks with more than one chain can be shown in the Session mixer: a button in the track's title bar, and on nested chains, folds the Rack's chains in or out.
- Chains look like tracks without clip slots. Their mixer controls mirror the chain list, and reordering, renaming and regrouping work in either place. Clicking a chain's title bar shows its devices.
- Adjusting one of several selected chains in the Session mixer changes them all; this doesn't happen in the chain list.
- Chains can be dragged out of Racks into other tracks or Racks from the chain list or the mixer. Drum Rack return chains dragged to the mixer become return tracks.
- A drum chain dragged from the mixer to a new track takes its MIDI notes along — for example, moving the snare from a drum loop to its own track with its devices and notes. Drag from the chain list to move only the devices.
