Ableton tricks and tips

[Freddyhaynes]

Anyone got any tips or tricks in ableton that have greatly improved their workflow? Or any general tricks you have picked up over time which you wish to share?

[antic604]

Anyone got any tips or tricks in ableton that have greatly improved their workflow?

Switching to Bitwig!

/ sorry, couldn't resist /

But more seriously - and that might not apply to everyone, or every music style - for me it was to stay as long as possible in the stage of quickly comming up & collecting ideas in Session View, because as soon as I started putting them on a timeline, I got "locked" into a certain sequence and structure, that would stiffle me - reduce potential options forward - and also lead to tweaking stuff on low-level to have that portion that's already there feel like it's "done" or "ready".

In terms of geting from collection of ideas to full arrangement, what worked for me is a clip launching controller (Push, Launchpad, APC40, etc.) that I'd use to 1st experiment - while still in Session - with different order and mix of clips & scenes, and 2nd when I knew on high-level what I want to simply "live perform" it and record to Arrangement. The benefit of this is that such arrangement is very "raw" and "basic" (as opposed to when you'd move clips by hand, added automation, fades, elaborate transitions, etc.) so you won't hesitate to scrap it altogether and try another one if it turns out doesn't work after all.

Oh, and bounce ("freeze & flatten" in Ableton speech) stuff often & early, so that you can avoid the temptation to endlessly tweak things. If you're bold enough, throw away the source / MIDI; if not, then at least hide it away in some folder.

[revvy]

This thread might be useful

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=551026&p=7865919&hi ... s#p7865919

It was longer but some of the posts got deleted, including the first reply which suggested moving to BW. I'll let you guess who posted that one.

I would suggest following the included link to the thread on the Abes forum in that thread, a goldmine.

[antic604]

I'll let you guess who posted that one.

[leeleema]

Anyone got any tips or tricks in ableton that have greatly improved their workflow?

Oh, and bounce ("freeze & flatten" in Ableton speech) stuff often & early, so that you can avoid the temptation to endlessly tweak things. If you're bold enough, throw away the source / MIDI; if not, then at least hide it away in some folder.

Top tip about freezing/bouncing. With original midi, I keep it in a closed group at the bottom of my tracks, just in case. But it would be brilliant to just delete that, even for the pure catharsis of it all, never mind the clunk of moving tracks one by one down slowly in arrangement view

[liquidsound]

Switching to Bitwig!

So you fell to “B” category.

[antic604]

Switching to Bitwig!

So you fell to “B” category.

That still beats the hell out of being an L

[Mister Natural]

my fave tip : practice, practice, practice
: = )

[liquidsound]

Switching to Bitwig!

So you fell to “B” category.

That still beats the hell out of being an L

It's an "A"
Memory regrets challenge?

[liquidsound]

my fave tip : practice, practice, practice
: = )

YES, and often try to do the same things in different ways. You'll be surprise at the personal results.
I'm also always following other accomplished users and keep learning.

[PieBerger]

Read the manual (and or dip in and out), it's well written and useful. If you're not using/abusing racks, then you really ought to be, they are one of Live's best features and make up for it being so potato in other areas like audio editing for example. One of my favourite rack tricks are inline send-returns, which give the flexibility and control of a traditional send-return routing i.e. ducking and or processing of wet signal, while leaving the dry signal unchanged, but it's per channel so you can freeze, resample, backup the channel and all of the other good stuff that's possible with simple, single channel routing (also exporting with the new Returns and Masters options is slow af). If you have a Push or plan to get one (or even use something like a nanokontrol with the nativeKONTROL script), then racking up all of your favourite third party plugins and mapping useful parameters to the 8 macros, will give you instant hands on control. I have a Pro Q 3 setup with low cut/shelf and high cut/shelf macro mapped for quick topping and tailing via macros and tonnes of FX processors for quick and fun jamming in of parameter changes to add that human feel to my otherwise sterile, robotic programmed music

PDC in Live is still pants and it doesn't report latency higher up the chain, this means that time dependent plugins like ShaperBox, LFOTool etc don't work properly after latency inducing plugins such as linear phase EQ. You can get around this by grouping the channel and adding the aforementioned plugins first in the chain. For plugins that support it, you can send MIDI triggers clocked to a ghost MIDI channel, to keep things in time. This technique is explained in more detail on the Cableguys website, if you want to know more.

[antic604]

It's an "A"
Memory regrets challenge?

"Ableton" is the name of the company. "Live" is the DAW you use

[Rivanni]

Anyone got any tips or tricks in ableton that have greatly improved their workflow?

Switching to Bitwig!

Given the constant complaints of Bitwig users about the lack of workflow improvements, I doubt that this is such good advice.

[Rivanni]

It's an "A"
Memory regrets challenge?

"Ableton" is the name of the company. "Live" is the DAW you use

True, but you can keep correcting that until the end of time.

[antic604]

...One of my favourite rack tricks are inline send-returns, which give the flexibility and control of a traditional send-return routing i.e. ducking and or processing of wet signal, while leaving the dry signal unchanged, but it's per channel so you can freeze, resample, backup the channel and all of the other good stuff that's possible with simple, single channel routing (also exporting with the new Returns and Masters options is slow af)...

^^^ this is such a solid advice! I try to avoid using Sends (or FX Tracks in Bitwig lingo) as much as possible, because they always turn out to be a problem one way or the other further down the line.