about the name? We posted way back about the confusion surrounding this - how to pronounce it, how to spell it. The most important rule is dont confuse the company name with the software name! 'Ableton Live', or just Live', is the software, Ableton' is the company that makes it! Dont call the software Ableton, as in Okay lets launch this Ableton project". Wrong wrong wrong. Especially now that Ableton have another product - Push (tell you a secret tho, everybody calls the software Ableton once in a while. It just slips out!). Ableton begins with an A, and follows it with a B. This makes it a perfect choice of name for people who choose their software by browsing alphabetical lists; Reason hasnt got a hope in hell. Its a similar tactic used by mini cab companies and window cleaners in printed business directories. AABB Cabs.ABCAB window cleaners. Possible spin-off business ideas for the future, guys? Just in case the software thing doesnt work out?
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
B is for BACK TO ARRANGEMENT BUTTON
Otherwise known as the music software
incarnation of pure evil. The BTA button lets you tell Live to override the clips that are currently playing in the Session View, and revert back to playing whats in the Arrangement View timeline. Quite simple, and a very important control when you have clips in both views. As of Live 9, and Push, this changed a bit. During the beta phase, the BTA button moved around the screen a bit, before settling in the scrub area at the top right of the Arrangement View tracks. Live 9 also introduced separate BTA buttons for each track, so you can conveniently combine Session and Arrangement playback, which is a great feature. Confusingly for newbies, these buttons disappear when not needed, which is not a good way to go; same as Im not sold on the way the buttons on Push only light up when 'neededI wanna see the labels the rest of the time as well.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
C is for CLIP
You can keep all the fancy features that have
been added to Live over the years; audio to MIDI? Phooey! its still about what it has been since day 1 - clips and warping! Clips are the Lego, the building blocks from which Live is made. We can create and drag them around in the Arrangement View, but clips - and Live itself - really come to life in Session View, when you start exploring all the different ways you can trigger them. Its all about launch modes and quantization. With the right hardware MIDI controller, launching perfectly synced loops and immaculately timed one-shots has never been more like playing an instrument. When you first start out with Live, this is the most amazing thing. One of the best things about teaching Live is that I get to live that moment of discover over and again with the new students. A room full of kids firing off loops set to Gate or Repeat, with quantization of 1/16thnothing like it. Hell, you can even use the computer keyboard to launch em! And just teasing about the Audio to MIDII love that!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
D is for DEVICES
Lives compatible with Audio Unit and VST
plug-ins, the little bits of software that provide extra instruments and effects, but before you add anything, it includes a great selection of plug-ins - or devices, as Ableton call them - to get you started. Open your Browser and youll see them organised as Instruments, Audio Effects, and MIDI Effects. Which ones youll see depends on the version of Live youre using; Live Intro currently includes a total of 29 devices, Live Standard has 40, and Live 9 Suite has 49 - every Live device available - as well as a whole bunch of Max for Live devices, which have their own category in the Browser. Spend some time getting to know these devices before adding more; youll definitely need more plug-ins along the way, but focus on learning how to use the native ones first! As of Live 9 the Instrument devices have audio previews so you can hear an example sound before you load the factory presets; very helpful. Just click once on the preset name in the Browser to hear the preview, and use the arrow keys on your computer keyboard to buzz around the devices and presets like a champ.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
E is for ENVELOPES
When you move one of Lives controls during
recording, those moves are recorded as automation. Youll see evidence of this in two ways - red dots on the controls that have automation attached to them, and red lines and dots in either the clip envelope view, or in the Arrangement View tracks. Yes, we can work with automation at clip and track level. New in Live 9 was the ability to record clip envelopes, instead of having to draw the pesky things in - this works quite well with Push. In an experimental mood with clips, a fun thing to do with envelopes is to click and drag to select a section, then copy and paste that section across the clip or track - or go nuts and paste it into a totally different parameter, just to hear what it does. One more useful envelope thing - when you Commit a Groove into a Live clip, it converts the velocity from the groove into an envelope that you can tweak further - this works with audio and MIDI clips. Top points for flexibility! Work those envelopes hard; theyre a great way to add organic quality to what otherwise can be just a bunch of loops going on and off!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
F is for FOLLOW ACTION
We heart follow actions! Youll find the controls
in the Session Views Launch box. A follow action is a way to affect clip launch behaviour after the current clips finished playing. Select a clip, then enter a time value in bars, beats, and sixteenths - this is the time that passes before the follow action occurs. Then enter one or two follow actions - these events such as Stop, and Play Again. Finally, enter either one or two randomisation values - the higher the value, the more likely the follow action will occur. You can select multiple clips in the same track and apply follow actions to all of them. Follow actions play through until they reach an empty clip slot. How to use them? So many waysfor stopping particular clips in scenes that continue playing; for randomised clip playback during your live show; for writing a melody automatically (put a different note in each clip and it will play a tune); for creating weird phrases with speech samples; for a jamming buddy with drum beats while you practice guitar. Best of all is that if youre in record mode, the follow actions are recorded - FANTASTIC!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
G is for GUITAR
Yeah - GUITAR! Live is still very underrated as
a tool for guitar players; you can use it as a host for software amps and cabs, as a sophisticated effects processor, a looping device, a multitrack recorder, and a jamming buddy (especially with follow actions). These days your entire guitar rig can be a little laptop and interface like the Apogee Jam - see our earlier post about that. The main thing that stops Live achieving full instant guitar rig status is that the onboard Amp and Cabinet devices are HORRIBLE; its embarrassing. Theyre the worst guitar amps in any major DAW software (very good for mashing up drums and vocals, though). Also, there really should be a guitar tuner device in there. So you have to shop around for other guitar modelling solutions, which is a shame and a bit of a deterrent. To be honest, if I want to record guitars, I use the Logic amps, or hardware modelling solutions like Fenders Mustang and Avids Eleven Rack. Yow - the letter G has turned into a bit of a downer! Well, lets be more positive and remember all the other reasons I mentioned that makes Live rock for guitarists. If you havent plugged into it yet, dont wait any longer.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
H is for HOT SWAP
In case you havent realised, that little button
with the rotating arrows you see all over Live - on devices, on sample slots, all over the place - thats the Hot Swap button, and its one of the best time-saving tools in Live - that and Live 9s updated search function; start using both of these and youll be buzzing around the Browser like a champ. Lets say youre using Auto Filter - click the Hot Swap button and youre taken straight to the Auto Filter presets in the Browser. Now use your computer keyboards arrow keys to browse up and down the list, and enter to load a preset. This doesnt end the swap action, so you can continue to go through the list, loading and auditioning effect presets directly from your keyboard; this is a very fast way to get around, but if you want to go even faster - which you probably do - type q to punch in and out of Hot Swap instead of using the button. Thats my recommended method, but we couldnt call this Q is for HOT SWAP, though, that would be wrong! Hot Swap works with presets youve created in third-party plug-ins as well, and its awesome for sample swapping inside drum racks!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
I is for INFO VIEW
Live has an Info View, at the bottom left of the
screen; type ? to open it, or use the little triangular button thats down there - Ive never used that button until today, when I wrote this - ? is much faster! As you mouse around Lives interface, Info View shows you the most- needed facts and tips about what youre looking at. Its very useful - this and the Context Menu are the first and fastest ways to get a heads-up in Live. Talking of the Context Menu, when you right-click on certain items inside Live, like clips, track headers, and scenes, you get an menu item for Edit Info Text. Choose that, then you can type yourself some handy reminders about your set. This pairs well with our tip about renaming empty clips for on-screen messages. You can be more creative and amuse yourself by putting ASCII art in there. I first did this in 2008 for a Ministry of Sound gig - I was projecting my Session View screen, so I kept the Info View open, and anybody who was really paying attention wouldve seen ASCII images, and dumb comments about the music and the gig. I dont think it made much different to the audience, but I got a kick out of putting it up there!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
J is for JAMMING
The stereotype of the computer-based
musician used to be a grouchy hermit seeing out his days in a dark studio somewhere actually, its still like that for Pro Tools users! ;-) Us Live users are a more sociable crew - and more of us use laptops than desktop computers, more of us are working together, putting our systems next to each other, for jams in our homes, studios, and in the clubs (by the way, I had a celebrity client who banned me from using the word jam because it had musicianly connotations!). Were usually syncing with MIDI, sending or receiving it through our hardware interfaces, or over wifi. Ive had ELEVEN iMacs synced over wifi - its quite a power trip when you tap your spacebar and they all start running. If MIDI sync doesnt do the trick, we have Tap Tempo and Nudge to get us in the ball park. If youre doing a big-room tour, youre better off using a hardware sync box, like Rolands new SBX-1. Its really fun to work out your strategies for jamming - how to route audio? Maybe one of you takes the audio output from the other and remixes it on the fly; maybe one handles beats and the other melodies - this is a good division of labour, especially if you're not both clued in about jamming with harmonic material; it avoids a lot of pitfalls. My top jamming tip? Listen to the other players!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
K is for KEYBOARD
Keyboards. You cant escape them. Whether
you can play properly or not (I cant), a keyboard is still the single most useful tool in music creation, whether its a MIDI keyboard, a graphic representation of one on an iPad screen, or Lives own Computer MIDI Keyboard (which if I remember correctly used to be officially called the Pseudo MIDI Keyboard). The piano-style keyboard is such a great all- rounder - you can play chords and melodies, sure, but its also great for programming beats, with the velocity sensitivity of the keys being put to good use; Id say using an average MIDI keyboard is better for programming drums than using average drum pads. And of course as a controller, theyre fantastic - most MIDI keyboards have an assortment of knobs, faders, and pads, and we Live users can employ the keys to launch clips and scenes, as well as to play notes. See our movie about Blondies Matt using a keyboard just like that. There are MIDI keyboards for every budget, and in every sizeand when you want to go really small, Lives built-in keyboard is so useful for travelling laptop users - type shift-cmd-k to toggle it on and off, use the z and x keys to transpose up and down in octaves, and c and v to change velocity values.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
L is for LAUNCH MODE
When youre viewing the contents of a clip, you
can also view different panels containing controls relevant to that clip. One of these is the Launch box. If you cant see it, click the small L icon at the bottom left of the screen. Its important to understand what these launch modes do, and to use different settings for different clips in your set. Itll feel more alive when youre jamming. Trigger is a good default setting; Toggle is ideal when youre using a hardware controller to launch clips; Gate gives you a more keyboard-like behaviour, sustaining the clip only while you hold it down, and Repeat takes you into more stuttery, glitch-type action. Duplicate the clip, reverse the copy, then use the Repeat mode to get a fun messed-up sound as you switch between them. As well as choosing Launch Modes, we can set quantization values for each clip, which helps get the best out of the different Launch Modes, and turning on Legato makes your clips play back from the current playhead position instead of the beginning. If you want a very cool instrument vibe with pads or a keyboard, assign some velocity sensitivity to the clips as well. All of these launch activities are recorded into the Arrangement View, which is cool!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
M is for MAX FOR LIVE
Max For LiveMax 4 LiveM4Lhowever
you like to call it, its a spinoff from Cycling 74s Max MSP, and is included in Live 9 Suite, as well as being available separately; it lets you create your own Ableton Live devices, be they instruments, like the excellent CatStretch from Max for Cats, or audio effects like the Dub Machines devices which won our Max For Live Award last week. Theyre also great solutions for interacting with hardware instruments and controllers, like Abletons 8 CCs device for Push. The downsides are that you need M4L installed to use the devices, and if you want to build your own, be prepared for a steep learning curve. The only M4L device Ive ever built is one that randomly loads different cat pictures, so what do I know? There are some more helpful devices out there, but also a lot of stuff where people waste their time showing off instead of doing something more constructive - M4L is a great way to put off doing music for a bit longer - time to get a life, maybe? Its also a fine excuse for Ableton to offload development onto users - well, Live doesnt have that feature, but you could always make a Max For Live patch!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
N is for NOTE
In Ableton Live, a note is an indicator of pitch
and time, but its also a trigger. The note range spans C-2 to G8 (middle C is C3). You can draw in notes, record them from external hardware, or capture them from other tracks inside your set. Entering notes in Live is deceptively basic, and the ignorant person will tell you Live sucks at MIDI programming, but they are dead wrong because Live has the most fantastic MIDI Effect Devices, and thats where a few simple, even aimless, MIDI notes, can come to life in a musical, and dynamic way. As I said though, a note is also a trigger. You could say it triggers the sound of a software instrument, true enough, but what I mean is that we can go into MIDI Map Mode and use notes from our MIDI keyboards, from our drum pads, from our fricking phones even, to trigger clips and scenes. Thats why even a basic, humble, MIDI keyboard makes such a great controller for Live. One minute youre using it to play melodies or work out beats, the next, its launching scenes or doing cool stuff with firing clips. Maybe you should go back and see L is for LAUNCH MODE after reading this one :-) note edit mini-tip: hold down alt (PC) or cmd (OSX) when dragging a notes end, to change length without it snapping to grid.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
O is for OVERVIEW
Near the top of the Live screen, below the
control bar, is the Overview. If you cant see it, choose it in the View Menu, or type alt-cmd-o. Once you start adding content to your Arrangement View youll see a small representation of it in the Overview. This is helpful when you're jamming in the Session View while theres also material in the Arrangement View; it helps keep track of where youre up to on the timeline. When in Arrangement View, you can click and drag inside the Overviews zooming hot spot (the black rectangle) to navigate around the timeline. The Overview expands vertically as you add more tracks - if you have hundreds of tracks in a set, itll be hogging a lot of screen space! I always turn it off in Session View to reduce visual clutter; even when Im working with content in both Views at once, I dont think it gives me enough information to be worthwhile. Itd be awesome if we could drag the Overview downwards to expand it, and start showing more detail about the clips in the timelinekind of like getting both Views at once. In Arrangement View of course, its invaluable as a fast way to get around!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
P is for PUSH
Ableton have indulged in hardware
partnerships before, but Push is the first proper Ableton-branded controller (though still built by Akai). Push gives you drum pads, a keyboard (kind of), and a level of controller functionality. Is Push an instrument? No. Its a controller. Its great for drum programming. If youd surveyed Live users and asked if they wanted something like Maschine for Live, the answer wouldve been Hell yeah!. So you got it. I used to say that the ultimate Live controller would be a Launchpad with a Remote Zero SL, and thats kind of what Push is, although the integration with the software - which no outside company could have achieved - makes it capable of doing far more. Push is bulky; Ive noticed that my friends who are Push users are keeping them in the studio and not taking them out for live shows. Push is seen as a bit of a no-brainer for the Live newb. For more experienced users, with their established working methods, its not so obvious. You cant please everybody; try before you buy, is what I say. Theres a lot of talk about using it without looking at the computer but I dont know why people get so hung up on that. Youre using software - get used to it!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
Q is for QUANTIZATION
I like to talk about how Live treats MIDI and
audio in the same way, and heres another great example of that quantization. Thats what its called when software automatically corrects the timing of recorded MIDI notes. It can either do it in real-time as the notes are played in, or afterwards, applied to selected regions. Every DAW has quantization, but Live does it faster and easier. But theresaudio quantization as well: use cmd-u inside an audio clip and you can fix the timing of the audio just as easily as if it was MIDI! Shift-cmd-u takesyou into Quantize Settings so you can adjust the note values involved; you can choose whether to correct note start, end, or both, and set an Amount value (as a percentage), to blend in some of the original timing if you want to. This is a fantastic time-saver its a great way to start on any task where youre correcting timing use quantization to fix the entire clip automatically, then go in and manually adjust or delete any warp markers that havent gone in the right place. Its also a fantastic tool if youre working with ambient/ found sounds and you want to quickly lock them to some kind of rhythm it works with anything!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
R is for RECORDING
We can record audio or MIDI into either of
Lives Views. Lets start with the Session View; arm the track or tracks you want to record into, then click the Session Record button to begin recording. Shift-click if you want to wait until you launch a clip before commencing recording. This will record into all of your armed tracks at the same time, and from audio and MIDI inputs at the same time across their respective tracks. With Session recording, you can be recording on several tracks, and take one out of record and start cutting it into loops and playing it back while recording continues on the others. As of Live 9, Session recording can also capture control and mixer movements as clip envelopes. If you enable Start Recording on Scene Launch in Preferences, you can launch a scene and begin recording in all armed tracks at the same time, which is nice! Also in Preferences you can enable Record Session automation in All Tracks, and record envelopes into tracks which arent even armed. This can be quite confusing! You can record just as easily in Arrangement View, again across multiple MIDI and audio tracks. Which view you record into depends on the project. Anything short, I record into Session View; anything longer, like guitar tracks or full vocal takes, I record into Arrangement View.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
S is for SCENE
In Session View we can only launch one clip
per track at a time, but as many as we like across separate tracks. There are times when you want to launch several clips in a row at once, and instead of clicking and mousing furiously across the screen before the next bar starts, do it with one click by launching a scene; thats what those launch buttons in the master track are for. One click fires every clip in that horizontal row. This is great when you need a bunch of things to happen at once, like changing between song sections. If you want a clip to ignore a scene change, remove the stop button from the clip below it, using cmd-e. Then when you launch the scene containing the empty slot, the first clip keeps playing. This gets you more fluid and organic scene changes. Use cmd-r to rename scenes, and the context menu to colour-code them. If you name your scene with a BPM value, your project BPM changes when you launch it. If you name your scene with a time signature, your project time signature changes when you launch that scene. AWESOME. Name a scene with both BPM and time signature, like this: 124 bpm 5/4, and both values will change on scene launch. If you have a bunch of clips playing on different rows and you want to quickly collect them together into one scene use shift-cmd-i; the Capture and Insert Scene command.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
T is for TEMPO
Tempo is the speed a piece of music is played
at; in our world, were talking about BPM - beats per minute. A few BPM up or down can make a crucial difference to how your audience perceive your music, especially in dance music, where it can move you into a whole different genre. In Live we interact with tempo in different ways. First, theres the project Tempo - which we set in the Control Bar at the top of the screen. A projects BPM doesnt have to be fixed, because we can automate it in Session View using Scene names (see last time), and in Arrangement View using track automation. And if we use tap tempo, like from a live drummer with a MIDI pad, everything in your Live project follows the real musician instead of everybody having to follow the computer - awesome for live band setups! Live has a separate Tap tempo assignment button near the top left - you can assign this to any MIDI source, or even your computer keyboard. If Live isnt running and you tap one bar, itll start playing at the rate of your taps. You can keep tapping to top it up as you go along. Its one bar as I said, so if your time signature is 4/4, thats four taps, if its 5/4, thats five taps, and so on. The Tempo Nudge buttons are very useful for lining up Lives tempo with another source. Awareness of how to use tempo organically can make your loop-based productions much more dynamic!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
U is for UTILITY
Lives Utility effect device can be found with the
other audio effects in your Library.Its not one of the most glamorous plug-ins around, but its damn useful for problem solving and imaging effects. You can use Utility to mute a track, filter out DC offset and low-level noise, control track gain, stereo width, pan, and phase. Its very useful for sampling, field recording, and voice recording if you want to extractone channel froma stereo sample, or if you want toclean up and maybe re-balancethe sound a bit, Utility will get the job done. Ive used Utility in conjunction with Waves Center plug-in to manage stereo imaging when I was working on a project last year, refreshing some old stereo mixes I had, where I couldnt access the original stems. Because like every other Live device, Utility isMIDI mappable, you can use it as an effect as well as a tool try automating the Width and Pan control on a synth track, it can be quite disorientingI mean that as a good thing. I also like it as a gain control for some projects, I have one in every track; sometimes you want to keep your track faders flat, and this is a great way to pre-mix your track volumes, alongside the clip gain control. Because Utility has that Mute switch, you could MIDI map a bunch of them and assign them to a second hardware controller if for some reason you needed two ways to mix your tracks. Just an idea
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
V is for VIDEO
Yes, you can use video in Live! It has
limitations, but it trades those off against some very cool things. You can drag any QuickTime compatible movie straight into Live; how it behaves depends on what View you're in. In Arrangement, the movie clip looks and behaves like an audio clip (they load into audio tracks). You'll see some little 'frame' lines along the clip edges. Live will open a video window which shows the movie content; toggle this at any time with shift-cmd-v. If your computers connected to a second display or a projector, drag the video window across. Put a bunch of videos in the timeline on one or more tracks and you have a music video ready to go. If there's audio in the movie clip, you can add audio effect devices to it. Turn on warping for the clip and you can timestretch the video - this is very useful for fitting video loops to your beats! You can't play video out of Session View, but it has another trick up its sleeve; drop a movie clip into Session, and the video is dumped, but the clip audio is retained - this is the fastest way to get an audio sample from a movie into Live! If you want real integration with video for live performance, the best way to go is to pair Live with a VJ application like Arkaos VJ. I've used this combo for many live shows, sending MIDI notes and CCs from Live to launch movies and control visual effects in sync with your music.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
W is for WARPING
Like it or not, sports fans, Ableton Live is about
two things and two things only the Session View and Warping. Everything else is optional. Im not beefing Live is a fantastic achievement and has revolutionised music creation; other DAWs have their versions of time stretching, but Id take Lives warping over Logics flex time (for example) any day of the week. Warpings a big subject, but here are a couple of quick pointers. Make sure you choose the right warp mode for your audio clips, otherwise the cumulative effect across a mix can be disastrous but dont be afraid if the right warp mode is not the one that you expected; judge it case by case. We use Live to straighten out song timings so we can lock them together; your best tools for this are in the Context Menu Warp From Here and so on. Try them all, and dont be surprised, with less straight material, if you have to re-applythese at points throughout a song, to keep everything on track. Sometimes audio quantisation is a good way to get a quick fix on straightening out a song, or part of a song. For some purposes you might only want to warp the start and end of a song, and quantization can be good for that. Live 9.2 has improved the sound of warping with Complex and Complex Pro modes, as well as Auto-Warp and downbeat detection; good to see these core features getting continued tweaks.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
X is for X-Y CONTROL
X-Y controls are a great way to use one action
to control two effect parameters at the same time. Load one of Lives audio effect devices, such as Auto Filte, to see what I mean; that black box where you drag the little yellow circle around - those are X-Y coordinates at work. X is the horizontal movement (axis), and Y is the vertical movement (axis). This is one of Lives visual trademarks - the X-Y grid with the little ring. Even with a mouse or trackpad, this is a good way to interact with effects, but if you use a hardware controller like a joystick or a touch surface, it really comes alive. Controllers with joysticks or other X-Y controls include Elektrons Analog Keys, Kentons Killamix, Novations SL Mk II (with a touch pad as well as joystick, for double the fun), and Korgs Kaoss Pad, and Taktile keyboards. For touch surfaces, thats mostly going to be iOS devices, with apps such as Lemur and MIDI Touch. You can a game controller - I still like the Wiimote, especially that little joystick on the Nunchuk accessory. You can customise Lives X-Y behaviours from the MIDI Mapping Browser - limit the range of the parameter changes, or invert their ranges, and of course you can assign more than one device to the same joystick for more complex moves. One thing a mouse is good for though, is to click around inside the black box for value jumps - that can be a useful effect.
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
Y is for YOU THE USER
Its all about the user. If youve gotsomething in
mind, if theres a statement you want to make, Live will help you get there. If youre merely curious at this point, and not really sure about the whole music productionthing, Live will show you that theres nothing to be scared of - its fun, and it can be very simple at the beginner level. Dont be put off by all the complicated stuff you see online - that will be there for you if and when you need it. Live is about the users and the community - they interact online, they share information, theyjam together (in ways that are impossible with other music software), they bring it back into the real world; Live was at the forefront when the computer-based music scene began to move away from grumpy guys with Pro Tools rigs trapped in a studio with tower PCs and CRT monitors deeper than they were wide - to a more dynamic, flexible, andmobile type of interaction. Socialising with other Live users is an important thing - theres still nothing like getting together and thrashing out some ideas in meat space! So often, you will be talking to a Live user and then realise he has his entire live rigwith him - laptop, headphones, petite soundcard, bijou MIDI controller. We are ready to throw down 24 hours a day. Like they say in the old movies - lets do the show right here!
The A-Z of Ableton Live - by Martin Delaney
Z is for ZOOM
Theres more than one way to use zooming in
Live. Lets start with Zoom Display, under the Look Feel tab in Preferences. You can set any zoom value between 50% and 200%, its useful I use it a lot, especially on a laptop for live shows I can fill the screen with just what I want to see. In fact I use it often enough that I wish there was a key command for it. Consider that a feature request, Ableton! Weve got zooming in the Arrangement View; use the - and + keys on your keyboard to zoom in and out of the timeline. You can also click and drag up/down/ left/right in that little rectangle in the Overview and double-click in there to quickly zoom out to see your entire arrangement, or you can do the same thing when you mouse over the beat time ruler, when you see the magnifying glass icon. I wish I could use the two-finger swipe to zoom in and out in Arrangement View, Im very used to it from Logic! Ah, maybe thats feature request number two! You get similar zoom options inside the Sample Display and Note Editor, with the same hot spot rectangle at the bottom right, and the magnifying glass along the top. Youll find other zoom controls around Live, like inside Simpler, and the instrument rack zone editor!
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