Ableton for a PT user....(rant warning)

JG009

Is it just me or does it suck big time? The whole damn layout. It looks amazing on youtube but I wish I could actually use it. After much time I managed to get a synth on one midi track and drums on another. I wanted to fade the volume of the drums in as the track played. I could fade the synth with a volume envelope but for some reason I could not find how to do this on the midi track the drums were, like there was no option to view a volume envelope.

Am I ever going to get my head around it after being so use to PT? The layout is kind of pants and I very much dislike the fact there are no presets on compressors and eqs etc from drop down menus like in PT. Also is there a way I can drop them onto the tracks like in the mixer view in PT.

At the moment I find this programme very annoying. If I don't get answers to what I want to do pretty soon I am sensing a smashed laptop.

If PT had instruments like this I think I would be pretty much sorted. This is going to take a lot of patience and time - I don't like that with software.

So in summary what would make it easier for me, like stuff I should know, a few bullet points as a PT head looking at ableton....

Thank you : )

Why not just rewire them into PT?

JG009

Deleted User wrote: »

Why not just rewire them into PT?

Feel like that. No PT on laptop though. I really am failing to see the attraction with it. Guess the videos on youtube of prodigy remakes and so on have led me to have high expectations, I had assumed it would be as easy to move around with as PT.

DamagedTrax

ive been using ableton for gigs in live view since v2 but ive yet to do anything ever with the arrange view. its just strange

Adyx

Like everything else of course it takes time to get used to. I've never used Pro Tools so I certainly wouldn't expect to know where everything is straight away. In saying that, it does help to have someone around who knows their way around it. I think there are some courses advertised occasionally in the Commercial Interaction forum so if you have long-term plans to use Live, it would be no harm to check one of those out.

Live does have presets for effects. They are located as a sub-item of the effect itself in the Device Browser. See here for compressor presets. You can drag and drop the Compressor effect itself or one of the presets. Same goes for most other audio and midi effects.

All effects (preset or not) can be added using drag and drop in either session view or arrangement view.

There are some good tutorials on Ableton's website. The tour one especially might be a good one to start with.

Don't forget you can't compare Live to Pro Tools, they might have similar features and abilities but Live really is designed as much around live performance as it is production.

I'm not a Live fanboy btw, I primarily use Reaper, but I was/am learning production techniques in Live.

Adyx

DamagedTrax wrote: »

ive been using ableton for gigs in live view since v2 but ive yet to do anything ever with the arrange view. its just strange

I'm sure it has many other uses but the main reason for using the arrangement view in my experience has been for arranging clips of say samples or instruments and them consolidating them into new clips. I would have said it's the closest thing in Live to a "conventional" DAW. I think it really is easier to understand it if you can see someone proficient demonstrate it.

JG009: You should be able to use envlopes any midi track. In arrangement view make sure Mixer is selected on the right hand side in Fades/Device Chooser, then select Track Volume (or whatever) from the drop-down menu. See here. Then right click (or Mac equivalent) on the track and select Draw Mode.

JG009

Had a long long play around with it today and did learn some new stuff. Pretty impressed with some of the stuff it has done, even though it might be basic.
Still cant find out how to, say I have an 8 bar beat and want to record only the 8 beats into the edit view, how can I do that accurately so its not a start and stop type job.

Will put some stuff up on sound cloud so yous can laugh at me : )

Paolo_M

JG009 wrote: »

Had a long long play around with it today and did learn some new stuff. Pretty impressed with some of the stuff it has done, even though it might be basic.
Still cant find out how to, say I have an 8 bar beat and want to record only the 8 beats into the edit view, how can I do that accurately so its not a start and stop type job.

Will put some stuff up on sound cloud so yous can laugh at me : )

I'd also be interested in knowing about that.

The session view would be freeking awesome if you could multi-take loop record each song segment (guitar, bass etc.) and then simply arrange the track as you want. The arrange bit I've figured out from the videos.
The multi-take loop recording I can't seem to do in the session window.

It seems like you just record a segment of any length and then select (and edit if necessary) the portion of it that you want to loop within that scene.
Is that right?

Is it possible to define the scene length and force it to loop record (as I understand it from ProTools/Reaper) so you'd end up with say 4 takes that you can audition and select, edit, and then arrange/copy and paste it as a clip in the session as you wish? It's seems like you can do it in the arrange window but not the session.

I suppose you could simply record the part over and over on one long take, and then define the clip segment you want to use form the take within sample display. It would just feel more "normal" to do it the loop record way.

It'd be a really quick/easy song writing tool if you could do it all in the session window.

ogy

say I have an 8 bar beat and want to record only the 8 beats into the edit view, how can I do that accurately so its not a start and stop type job.

You can actually just copy and paste from clip view to arrange view using ctrl+c ctrl+v.

It seems like you just record a segment of any length and then select (and edit if necessary) the portion of it that you want to loop within that scene.
Is that right?

yeh multi-takes aren't straightforward in live unfortunately. thats the handiest workaround. play the section you want to record over in clip view and when you've done a few takes, duplicate the clip and change its start and stop points to create a few takes.

JG009

ogy wrote: »

You can actually just copy and paste from clip view to arrange view using ctrl+c ctrl+v.


yeh multi-takes aren't straightforward in live unfortunately. thats the handiest workaround. play the section you want to record over in clip view and when you've done a few takes, duplicate the clip and change its start and stop points to create a few takes.

I did that today, when I was playing back though even with "S" clicked it played back the whole lot of clips. Why?