why are live and bigwig the only DAWS to have clip launchers ?

[machinesworking]

Clip launching was not originally a classic DAW concept. Early DAWs were built to emulate a multi-track recording studio using a linear recording model with the tape recorder transport, and sometimes an on screen mixing console so you could see the channels and tracks, effects and busses, etc.

Ableton Live pioneered the clip launching concept with their session view, and later Bitwig tried to one-up Ableton.

You're skipping a whole section of DAW development in your timeline here. Early MIDI sequencers played around with clip launching ideas, I don't know if Logic still does Touch Tracks? but they weren't the only ones. Clips or the idea of launching a musical phrase instead of just placing it on a timeline has been around in some form since the beginnings of MIDI. I don't think Max/MSP was the first to do it with audio, but it's definitely where Ableton's developers got their inspiration for Live.

[zzz00m]

Ableton Live pioneered the clip launching concept with their session view, and later Bitwig tried to one-up Ableton.

You're skipping a whole section of DAW development in your timeline here. Early MIDI sequencers played around with clip launching ideas,

Well I wasn't actually trying to write a wiki on the entire history of clips. Rather I was trying to answer in as few words as possible (TL;DR) the question asked in the topic of this thread "why are live and bigwig the only DAWS to have clip launchers ?"

I thought it was a relevant comment in the context of that question, which was obviously referring to modern DAWs. While Ableton didn't "invent" the idea, they were the ones that successfully brought it to market in the current generation of modern DAWs.

[machinesworking]

Well I wasn't actually trying to write a wiki on the entire history of clips. Rather I was trying to answer in as few words as possible (TL;DR) the question asked in the topic of this thread "why are live and bigwig the only DAWS to have clip launchers ?"

I thought it was a relevant comment in the context of that question, which was obviously referring to modern DAWs. While Ableton didn't "invent" the idea, they were the ones that successfully brought it to market in the current generation of modern DAWs.

True, but it was also a relevant comment that MIDI sequencers had clips, it's obvious where the idea came from, and we I think can agree that most of us think of DAWs as being a bit more than just audio. Nobody I know of would call the 8 tracks of audio Pro Tools could record into a mac in the early 90's a DAW, though if we take that term literally I suppose it is. When Pro Tools got MIDI and DP, Cubase etc. got audio I think that's when we could call them DAWs.

Anyway arguing on the internet is silly, but talking about fun stuff we like isn't. Just saying MIDI clips definitely played a role in the development of Live and modern clips.

[diaper@ky]

I launch clips with Bidule.
Use note on/offs or assign events to any button, or Pedal too.
Roland MV-30 was a great sound module sequencer that had what they called phrase sequencing which was great for performance.
Still remember my first clip.
Lucky Star by Madonna had a great arpeggiation I turned into a clip.
It would even sync with tap tempo, no need to run the hardware sequencer to get sync.
I should be ashamed but I would pretend on my upper tier keyboard to play the lick with my left hand.

Now I just use clips for segues or special SFX of reversed phrases and samples I create.

You don’t have to be a DJ to have fun.

[zzz00m]

It's way cooler if you use clips and loops that you created youself.

[ls1xxx]

Did Optical Code Studio Vision have a clip launcher?

[JonHolstein]

I guess there's something I'm not getting about what people are wanting. The video shows how you can record takes, clips, loops, riffs...whatever you want to call them. From there you can drag/drop or copy/paste to Arrangement View.

Are people wanting takes automatically recorded and stacked into tracks for something?

I'm not doing "takes" in the traditional sense. For this request, I'm not playing the same part many times and looking for the best performance, I'm just jamming on my instrument, and letting new musical phrases/melodies/basslines/progressions happen, which I would like to continually stack as new clips in session view, so I can then easily review them all, delete what doesn't work, keep what does, and then play around with the session clip launcher to make an arrangement, once I have finished jamming. currently in live, it saves as one long clip, which is alright, I can loop and drag different portions of that clip into new clips. that's what I do now, but being able to set this up to happen automatically would be outrageously useful for my songwriting and workflow.

also I am talking mostly of audio recordings of my guitar(s)/Bass/voice/shaker etc... but I do jam on my MIDI keyboard too. Looking hard at bitwig. I already have Live 9 suite, although it seems I can probably pick up bitwig for about the same as it will take to upgrade Live to 10, and since this feature is obviously never going to be added to live 9, it might be that bitwig will be a better expenditure of bucks for me.

I'm not too familiar with ableton. If they haven't implemented it, they should really add something like "convert to session" and "convert to arrangement". And if it doesn't, keep recording Audio, like midi in to the arrangement track (then it would be possible to later on convert that arrangement track to clips in session, and with the possibility to edit before converting). But it would still be nice, with automatically record to new clip. And it would be nice with automatic takes, so there would be no risk in overwriting (and with comping for takes, of course).


Well I get the feeling that there really isn't any DAW (except for perhaps reaper) that is even attempting to be the ultimate DAW. I would think that should be the goal for every DAW developer. As long as there are features missing, a lot of users are forced to use multiple DAWs, and suddenly one might implement that one thing missing from another, and then users might ditch that other DAW, and no DAW developer should be happy with losing customers.
And if DAW makers feel, a fully featured DAW would be too confusing... well then there would be the option to develop a second DAW in house, that would be completely compatible with the project files, but with a different feature-set for other types of work, but the same commands for the features they both share.