To save time during the production process, it helps to be a master of basic (and no-so-basic) automation editing. Let’s take a look at a few techniques for moving around chunks of automation. For example, to quickly adjust the volume for a single clip, highlight it first. Then, drag the automation line and it will […]
FACEBOOK EDITING: DELETING
It’s a sad fact of human nature: If you provide anything even remotely resembling a free service in this world, some folks develop a sense of entitlement to it and become incredibly rude if they think they are no longer getting the value they deserve/demand from you. I woke up this morning to this lovely […]
AUTOMATION EDITING: CLEAR AND PRESERVE
This is a good one. You might have never realized it, but when using the Clear Envelope command, the position of the insertion point determines what value the cleared envelope is set to. For example, let’s say you’re recording a performance and while you do you make a bunch of parameter tweaks to a synthesizer […]
AUTOMATION EDITING: SUPER MEGA DELETING
Live’s Global Record mode is great because it makes it so easy to capture a performance, but it’s also potentially aggrivating because it makes it so easy to record unecessary automation. It’s very common to have to go through and completely remove entire tracks of automation after recording an arrangment – fortunately there are a […]
AUTOMATION EDITING: DELETING
Whether or not you use multiple automation lanes, deleting automation is easy delete a chunk of automation, highlight it…. …and hit Cmd+Delete (Ctrl+Delete PC) If you’re editing the automation in a separate lane, then you just use Delete without the modifier key.
AUTOMATION EDITING: BREAKPOINT DRAG & DESTROY
I mentioned in the prior tip that simple automation shapes are easier to edit, but really It’s easy to edit just about any automation shape, especially if you’re handy with a few techniques. Here’s a good one. Hold down the SHIFT key while dragging a breakpoint to delete any other breakpoints in it’s path. Using […]
AUTOMATION THINNING
You might have noticed at some point that automation that looks like this while you are recording it… …ends up looking like this after the recording stops: This is because Live automatically “thins” the automation data. In other words, it removes breakpoints that are deemed unecessary and creates a simpler shape with more straight lines. […]
PLUG-IN AUTO CONFIGURATION OPTION
As you may already know, Live only auto-configures plug-in devices with fewer than 32 parameters. The number 32, however is just a default value that you can modify via Options.txt. For example, on my system I’ve changed it so any device with 48 parameters or less is auto-configured. Why? Because that’s about how many can […]
KNOW YOUR “OPTIONS”
For quite some time, Live has had a special configuration file that lets you set additional preferences that aren’t accessible through Live’s interface. These preferences were originally created for internal use at Ableton as part of the development and testing process, and therefore aren’t thoroughly documented. Many of them probably won’t have a huge impact […]
ROUND NUMBER TEMPO MACRO MADNESS – ON ICE!
OK, here I go again getting neck-deep into some nerdy minutae. I hope it’s clear by this point that I dig into this stuff partly to demonstrate the broad array of simple solutions there are to all sorts of problems. More than anything, I hope to share with you a bit of my though process […]
