PLACE THE CLIP, SWITCH THE SAMPLE

A few months back, I did a little series on creating audio files full of strange sounds, then getting them into your productions via Drum Racks. Today I was reminded of another way to work with glitchy goodness. Above you’ll see a sample placed directly into the timeline in a couple of spots. It’s from […]

ONE SCALE, MANY MODES

  Someone just asked me a question about creating custom Scale presets. Scale is used to force all incoming notes to conform to a particular scale. While the Scale’s interface is perfectly logical, it’s pretty tricky to wrap one’s head around. I’m not really going to get into explaining it except to say that it’s […]

EDIT GROUPS

  Did you know that you can edit the clips inside Group tracks from the Group track itself? This is a feature that’s easy to miss because earlier versions of Live 8 (prior to 8.1, I think) didn’t work this way. Group tracks display colored bars to represent the Clips within: Selecting any portion of […]

SEE THE REAL FREEZE

Sometimes when editing a frozen track, it can be tricky to get the editing just right because you can’t really see what you’re editing. What you need to see is the actual waveform generated when the track is frozen, rather than the original audio or MIDI. The trick here is to display an automation lane, […]

KEY MAP TO A/B

  When mixing, it’s really nice how easy Live makes it to A/B different effect settings or configurations – even when spread across multiple tracks. For example, earlier today I wanted to compare two different EQ settings on a layerd bass part. I wanted to hear what it sounded like to boost the lows in […]

THE BEST THING EVER

Yeah, that’s right. I velcroed a NanoKontrol to my macally keyboard. Read it and weep, people. Go ahead and cry like a little girl. Let it all out. For me, this really is a big deal because I’m constantly working on improving the ergonomics of my workspace. And, in particular it addresses an issue that […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 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.