Song Chain In Ableton Live? Options

[Mr. Jason E. Lec...]

i have no other way to describe what i'm wanting to do, so i'm going to try my best and hope someone understands me.

i bought Ableton Live 6 a couple years back and never have regretted it! someday, hopefully soon, i'll have the green to upgrade to 8, but for now this is still doing the trick. but keep in mind that this question is about version 6.

what i would like to do is set it up when the first part gets done at measure 128, the sequence will AUTOMATICALLY stop. then when ever i'm ready to start again, i simply press "play" and it continues from where it is at measure 128 (instead of starting again at the beginning). the major part is automating it to stop itself at various points because it's hard to press the spacebar if i'm in the middle of an intricate guitar part.

i hope this makes sense. any help is appreciated.

[antoniosage]

Hello, I think that you can accomplish what you are trying to do within Session view. You can use Follow Actions to launch a new clip containing the rest of your track.
Based on how you asked the question I think that you might be working in Session view (the timeline view) In witch case you can use Markers. Once you create one then you can Right click (or Control clic on a Mac) on the marker. A pop will give you the option to set the song start from that point.

I hope that this helps,


Antonio Sage

[edthened]

Hi Jason:

What you're asking for here should be simple, but I can't find an easy solution, based on a web searches and also going through the relevant sections in the Ableton Live 6 Power! book by John von Seggern. Have you tried contacting Ableton support? They're usually very helpful. You might also want to try contacting John von Seggern directly (he's on Facebook and LinkedIn, for instance) as he seems like a very helpful individual as well.

One way might be to creative with your arrangements, and split the original tracks into 128 bar clips (that don't loop) and launch them in the Session View, but that seems artificial in the extreme, and would leave you with not so much flexibility if you changed your mind later.

As the control you are looking for is basically in the Arrangement View, then the first step is fairly straight forward - you mark your arrangement with one or more Locators (at 128 bars or wherever). There is also the "Start From" function, but unfortunately, you are looking for a "Stop At" equivalent, preferably a "Stop at Next Locator" type of thing. The options seem to be Loop, Play Through or Jump To (again, using the cursor, which is even more fiddly than using the space bar).

You might be able to put a MIDI track into your Arrangement View with appropriate TRANSPORT STOP sequenced instructions, but I would not know how to do this, so I'm really just guessing .... and it seems a bit recursive to me

Now - It seems the real root cause of your problem is that you don't have two pairs of hands, so a foot-operated MIDI controller would seem to be the way to go.

Unfortunately, again, I can't find a simple on/off type of foot switch (similar to the Reverb pedal on a traditional Fender) that sends MIDI when stomped on. I can only find multifunction pedal boards (very, very nice though!) from Roland, etc., or convertor units that turn your analogue 'stomps' on your own choice of foot switch into MIDI, and these just seem very overpriced (well over $100) for providing one and only one function. You can probably pick something up second-hand though, I'm guessing.

A suitable MIDI floor control option, I think, gives you the complete control you are looking for. In the meantime, maybe you work out some visual cues (a la Frank Zappa) and get a friend to handle space bar duties?

There must be a solution for this, because there must be gigging musicians who use Live for their backing tracks in much the sort of manner you are looking for. Somebody? Anybody?

You mentioned that you are on a tight budget, but one way of getting upgraded to Live 8 *and* getting to a MIDI controller that accepts foot switch input would be to go for the new AKAI APC40, which bundles a special edition of Live 8 (limited to 20 scenes), has two 1/4 jacks for non-latching foot switches, and works like a dream with the Live interface.

Just some ideas.....

Best regards,

Edd

[fishboisfo]

i have no other way to describe what i'm wanting to do, so i'm going to try my best and hope someone understands me.

i bought Ableton Live 6 a couple years back and never have regretted it! someday, hopefully soon, i'll have the green to upgrade to 8, but for now this is still doing the trick. but keep in mind that this question is about version 6.

what i would like to do is set it up when the first part gets done at measure 128, the sequence will AUTOMATICALLY stop. then when ever i'm ready to start again, i simply press "play" and it continues from where it is at measure 128 (instead of starting again at the beginning). the major part is automating it to stop itself at various points because it's hard to press the spacebar if i'm in the middle of an intricate guitar part.

i hope this makes sense. any help is appreciated.

Hey . . .
You could always just copy and paste into a new track. Control E the first and delete everything after marker 128. Control E at 128, and then move the remains of that track to where you want it to start.
That may work, if you can control yourself and get your timing right.

Hope that helps -- simple, but effective -- and free

[Mr. Jason E. Lec...]

hey guys, thanks for the suggestions so far. i've actually done various versions of these suggestions. i actually hadn't thought of contacting ableton support, believe it or not, lol. thanks again