What's with Ableton Live's midi-note editing?

[Brother Greg]

I’ve been demo-ing the free trial of Live. My initial impression, as a Logic Pro user, is that it is surprisingly intuitive to use. The little gray explanations box on the lower left corner is very helpful when I mouse over various things I don’t understand. And just clicking around helps explain things, too. I get the impression of a system especially good at handling loops of all kinds, maybe especially helpful for creating EDM.

My big question, though, was how it handled piano-roll-style midi editing, which is how I compose, and here I hit a wall. When I created a note and dragged it out to the length I wanted, I couldn’t just click on it to hear how it sounded. I had to mouse way up to the top of the track to see a little speaker icon emerge, click, and then it would play the note audibly. To do this on a regular basis strikes me as unnecessarily awkward and time-consuming. In Logic, I can just click on any midi note and hear it. If this isn’t possible in Live, my interest in it ends with this.

[Yorrrrrr]

I think you can enable the little blue headphones icon and then save the current set as default in the file/folder preferences. Then the behavior is almost the same as in Logic.

I use both Logic Pro X and Live, but Live is way faster, fluid and intuitive for creation. I keep Logic for mixing duties, though. But 90% of the time, it's Live my way to go.

[Brother Greg]

I think you can enable the little blue icon and then save the current set as default in the file/folder preferences. Then the behavior is almost the same as in Logic.

I use both Logic Pro X and Live, but Live is way faster, fluid and intuitive for creation. I keep Logic for mixing duties, though. But 90% of the time it's Live my way to go.

Thank you for offering to help! I'm not sure where this little blue icon is that I should click. Does this make each midi note audible if I click on it?
This is the only drawback I've encountered so far in a setup that otherwise is very clear and pleasant to work with.

[Yorrrrrr]

Yes. At least here it does.

[pottering]

It is a round button with a headphone icon above the black&white keys in the piano roll. (obs: It is grey if not enabled)

[Brother Greg]

It is a round button with a headphone icon above the black&white keys in the piano roll. (obs: It is grey if not enabled)

Thanks! I found it and clicked on it, and I can see it's supposed to do what I'm looking for. I'm still not getting a response when I click on midi notes, so there must be some other factor. Well, maybe I can live with this. It's such a nice DAW in other ways.

[Biscotto]

It is a round button with a headphone icon above the black&white keys in the piano roll. (obs: It is grey if not enabled)

Thanks! I found it and clicked on it, and I can see it's supposed to do what I'm looking for. I'm still not getting a response when I click on midi notes, so there must be some other factor. Well, maybe I can live with this. It's such a nice DAW in other ways.

I hope you loaded a MIDI instrument on that track.

[thecontrolcentre]

You might need to turn up the headphone volume (next to the master fader).

[Brother Greg]

It works! Thanks to all of you for your help! After rebooting my Mac and reopening Live, loading a nice fat brass sound and pushing that little blue headphone icon on, I get audio with each midi note clicked on. I'm so happy.