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 […]
ROUND NUMBER TEMPO MACRO MADNESS
I’ve you’ve been digging in and trying out the tempo change macro, you may have bumped into the problem of getting the tempo exactly right. In other words, you may find that instead of the tempo landing at 95bpm, it ends up at 95.31. From a strict tempo perspective, this isn’t usually a huge deal. […]
TEMPO CHANGE MACRO, pt. 2
A couple more points about the way I’m setting up the tempo change clips: Qantization is set to None. No need to wait until the beginning of the next bar to get the tempo change going. For Launch mode, I’m using toggle. When combined with no quantization, toggle mode makes it easy to jump to […]
TEMPO CHANGE MACRO
In my current version of my live set, I’m using macro clips to change Live’s master tempo. Unlike the previous example which uses a note message to toggle the metronome on and off, this technique is going to involve using a clip to send CC data via a clip envelope. Let’s take a look at […]
MIDI MACRO CLIPS, pt. 2
Alright, so what’s all this about sending MIDI out through IAC and then back into Live? Let’s dig in. We’ll start off with a trick that’s admittedly completely pointless, but very simple: create a MIDI clip that turns the metronome on or off. Don’t worry, from pointless beginnings come great things. The first step happens […]
INTER APPLICATION MIDI
Once you’ve got IAC (or windows equivalent) set up, you’ll need to open up Live’s preferences window, and head over to the MIDI/Sync tab. Under MIDI Ports, you’ll now see a virtual input and output port for the IAC driver. This means that you now have a new source and destination for MIDI data in […]
