ableton live tricks and tips

[unownunown]

a general ableton help thread sounds like a good idea! i have had this program for a while but i can't do anything other than general fuckery and making cool sounds. i'm sure i'm not the only one having issues. post video tutorials, your own guides, whatever the fuck.

[Ancient Astronaught]

Tip #1 when importing audio files into a track, make sure to turn off the WARP function. So much headache before i figured that one out.

[Deltaphoenix]

Wow this is a great idea! I have the program and don't use it that much. It seems kind of overwhelming, I am in school and it's like I would need to take a class in it. I haven't devoted the time to the program that it requires...School, Girlfriend, Band, Dog, getting my feet wet by building some pedal kits.
I have a friend who is pretty good with it and one thing he told me was to take the time to set up hotkeys in a way that make sense to me. It will pay off in spades in the long run.

[charles]

Great thread! I wish I knew how to use ableton. All I can do is make sounds and record them. I want to make those crazy ass loops I see people make all the time with it on youtube.

[Moustache_Bash]

I completely helpless as everyone else here, ha ha. I bought it when I was in high school, and it was so hard for me to find my way around it that the only recording I've done since has been on a RadioShack casette recorder.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

not an expert by any means, but i've been using live heavily for quite some time now, i started out just using it to multi track into and literally like nothing else, but over time i started picking up like the clips/fx/routing/midi/racks all that extra shit. i kinda know my way around most of it now.

i'd love to help/offer advice, but i'm struggling to think of any "tips" at this moment. what things would u guys be interested in learning about?
most of the shit is covered in video tutorials, and theres a shit ton of them out there but some are prob better than others.

the thing that confused me most about live is the layout and the icons that represent things. took a bit to get u sed ot.

ahh i got a few now:
the ableton saturation effect is boss at giving your shit extra pump and thump, drums, guitars/bass, keyboards, anything. i use that guy a lot on the analog and soft settings.
and a boring tip i know, but the manual is actually really helpful, cleared up a lot of confusion for me.
using the sends and return channels are really cool for setting up an fx chain w/ a dry/wet blend.
u can also setup an fx rack to do dry/wet blending too.
i can explain this further if need be, but i'd have to refresh my brain on that process.

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

i don't have any tips but damn i love ableton... been using it for like 7-8 years now.

[steevdeadman]

I'm slowly getting into ableton, man it's some powerful shit once you figure it out!

[unownunown]

BUMP?!

[IEatCats]

Does anyone know how I can do audio looping in a live environment?

I want to set it up so that I can switch recording tracks with hotkeys, and record to them and mute/unmute them from different hotkeys. (Each track's mute having it's own hotkey.)
That way, I can play a few lines, and control the song's progression by muting/unmuting tracks.

But I have no fucking clue how to do that.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

set the loop to your desired length and turn it on. get all your audio trakcs ready and set up how u want them.

then in the topright corner there is two buttons, one says "key", one says "midi" click on "key" if u want to set assignments on your keyboard, select "midi" if u are going to use a midi controller. then everything should kinda be shaded orange in key mode, or blue in midi mode. if using key make sure the option "computer midi keyboard" is off
click on a parameter/button/fader/whatever on the screen u want to assign, then press the key/button/turn knob/whatever that u want to assign it to. in the left side of the screen u should see an assignments list, and when u assign something to a key it will show up in this list.
rinse and repeat until u have assigned all the controls u want. then click "key" or "midi" again to go back to normal mode.

nowwww, if you are going to use this setup a lot, save it as a live set and its like your template, or in the options u can save it as default template so it loads up by default everytime u start up live.

remember to save it either as a regular live set or as default when your done assigning the controllers cuz live doesn't remember these the next time u open it and u will have to re-assign everything.

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

BUMP?!

do you have any questions in particular? it's tough to give random tips on such a program, especially when there are so many uses for it (live performance, recording, sequencing, etc...). i'd be more than happy to help someone out over the phone -- it seems like a lot more ground can get covered and we could post results after the conversation for others to read. (908 405 2615) don't everyone call at once!