Live Version 5.2 for Windows and Mac OS Created by Bernd Roggendorf, Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke, awi, Reiner Rudolph, Stefan Haller, Torsten Slama, Eduard Mueller, Stefan Franke, Frank Hoffmann, Andreas Zapf, HansThomas Mueller, Henrik Hahn, Ralf Suckow, Gregor Klinke, Matthias Mayrock, Friedemann Schautz, Ingo Koehne. Reference Manual by Rose Knudsen, Gerhard Behles, Jakob Rang, Robert Henke, Torsten Slama. Loops and samples provided by Big Fish Audio. Web: www.big shaudio.com E-mail: info@big shaudio.
Chapter 1 Welcome to Live 1.1 The Ableton Team Says: Thank You Live is the result of musicians wanting a better way to create, produce and perform music using a computer. A great deal of effort has been put into making Live easy and fun to use, yet at the same time capable of helping you create music with unlimited depth and sophistication. This effort continues even as you read these lines...
1.2. WHAT'S NEW IN LIVE 5? Your Ableton Team. 1.2 1.2.1 What's New in Live 5? Remix Features Support for MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC and FLAC compressed audio les Auto-Warp Complex Warp Mode for warping music containing beats, tones and textures Clip scrub, nudge and improved transport controls 1.2.
1.2. WHAT'S NEW IN LIVE 5? Track Delay controls to control for human, acoustic and hardware delays Multi-selection clip editing Clip deactivation option 1.2.4 Working with Arrangements Launchable Arrangement Locators New Arrangement Transport Track I/O in the Arrangement View 1.2.5 Editing MIDI Detailed and adaptive MIDI quantization options Preview in the MIDI Editor MIDI note deactivation option 1.2.
1.2. WHAT'S NEW IN LIVE 5? 1.2.7 Resources Valuable library of clips, device presets and Live Sets Library expansion and customization with Live Packs New interactive built-in program lessons 1.2.8 Live Effects and Instruments Beat Repeat for reorganizing and shredding beats and vocals Phaser and Flanger Auto Pan for LFO-driven manipulation of amplitude and panning Saturator for subtle-to-drastic distortion effects Arpeggiator New features for Simpler and Operator 1.2.
1.2. WHAT'S NEW IN LIVE 5? 1.2.
Chapter 2 First Steps When you install Live and run it for the rst time, you will be presented with the Products Preferences tab. If you own Live, you can authorize your copy of the software by selecting it from the listed products and clicking the Unlock button at the bottom of the window. Please see the chapter on unlocking Live should you have questions or concerns that arise during the unlocking process.
2.1. LEARN ABOUT LIVE 2.1 7 Learn About Live Live comes with a set of interactive lessons to take you step by step through the key features of the program. The lessons are organized in a table of contents, which can be opened directly in the program via the Help menu. We highly recommend following the lessons. Many users have told us that the lessons helped them get familiar with the program very quickly.
2.2. SETTING UP PREFERENCES 8 The Info View. If you require more information on a speci c user interface element or topic, please consult this reference manual. The index, found at the end of the manual, contains the names of all user interface elements and will lead you to the relevant section. 2.2 Setting up Preferences Live's Preferences dialog is where you can nd various settings that govern how Live looks, behaves and interfaces with the outside world.
2.3. THE MAIN LIVE SCREEN 9 Lessons Table of Contents from the Help menu. The MIDI/Sync Preferences are used to help Live recognize MIDI devices for three separate and distinct purposes: Playing MIDI notes. To learn how to route an external device into Live for MIDI input, or how to send MIDI to an external device, please see the chapter on routing. Controlling parts of the interface remotely. This subject is covered in detail in the chapter on remote control.
2.3. THE MAIN LIVE SCREEN 10 Each one of the selector buttons at the screen borders calls up a speci c view; click this one, for instance, to access the Live devices: A View Selector. To hide one of Live's views and free up screen space, click on the triangle-shaped button next to it. To restore the view, click the button again. A View Show/Hide Button. You can run Live in Full Screen Mode by selecting Full Screen from the View menu.
2.3. THE MAIN LIVE SCREEN 11 Adjusting the Main Window Split.
Chapter 3 Unlocking Live Live is protected against illegal use by a copy protection scheme. This scheme has been designed to meet the highest security standards while avoiding hassles for the customer. If you nd this procedure to be an inconvenience, please understand that the copy protection secures your investment: It allows Ableton to provide you with support and to continue developing Live.
13 The Products Tab in the Preferences. Clicking on any product listed in the Products tab will give you the option of unlocking or buying that product. Please click the Unlock button here to complete the unlocking process in two steps. If you have not yet purchased the product, you can do so online by clicking the Buy button. You can always return to the Products Preferences tab later or visit the Ableton webshop1 to make a purchase.
3.1. STEP 1: ENTERING YOUR SERIAL NUMBER 3.1 14 Step 1: Entering Your Serial Number As an owner of Live, you have received a Serial Number from Ableton, either via e-mail (if you ordered Live directly from Ableton), or on a card as part of the Live package. The Fields for Entering Your Serial Number. After selecting Unlock in the Products tab, you will be presented with six elds for typing in your Serial Number. Each eld holds four characters. The Serial Number is composed of numbers 0..
3.2. STEP 2: UNLOCKING LIVE 15 Live with your Serial Number more than once under the legal and technical conditions described later. 3.2.1 The Unlock Key For unlocking, you require an Unlock Key that can only be created by the Ableton server. Unlocking therefore requires access to the Internet. The computer from which you connect to the Internet does not have to be the same computer for which you wish to unlock Live, but it does make things easier. 3.2.
3.2. STEP 2: UNLOCKING LIVE 16 from the server. No information other than this is exchanged between your computer and the Ableton server. 3.2.4 Unlocking Of ine Unlocking Live Of ine. If the computer you want to unlock Live for is not connected to the Internet, you can use any other computer to access the Ableton server's web interface3 . This is a website with elds for entering your Serial Number and the Challenge Code, which you can copy from Live's Unlock dialog. The Live Unlocking Web Site.
3.2. STEP 2: UNLOCKING LIVE 17 If you have entered your Serial Number and Challenge Code correctly, another website will appear to provide you with the Unlock Key. There now are two options for transferring the Unlock Key to the computer that is to be unlocked: Follow the weblink to download the Unlock Key as a le. Transfer the le to the target computer via a diskette or CD-ROM. Then, press the Unlock dialog's Load Unlock Key button to load the Unlock Key le.
3.2. STEP 2: UNLOCKING LIVE 18 Manually Enter Your Unlock Key.
3.3. COPY PROTECTION FAQS 3.3 3.3.1 19 Copy Protection FAQs Can I Use Live or Other Ableton Products Without a Serial Number? If you do not (yet) own Live, you can work with Live in Demo Mode. Demo Mode offers Live's complete functionality, but saving and exporting are disabled. Live will run in Demo Mode by default if it has not been authorized. You can try out other Ableton products, such as the Operator instrument, by individually switching them to Demo Mode in the Products tab of the Preferences.
3.3. COPY PROTECTION FAQS 20 Click Here if You Are Interested in Buying Live. 3.3.2 What if I Change My Computer's Components? If the Challenge Code of your computer changes for some reason, Live will indeed ask you to unlock the software another time. The Challenge Code does not change, however, when computer peripherals are replaced (audio or MIDI hardware, printers, modems). The Challenge Code may change if the motherboard, processor or network card is replaced.
3.3. COPY PROTECTION FAQS 21 Keys in good faith that you will use Live on only one machine at a time. Just proceed as described in the corresponding section. You can therefore run Live on both a studio desktop computer and a tour laptop, but not at the same time. Should the Ableton server reject your demand for another Unlock Key, please contact Ableton's technical support.
3.3. COPY PROTECTION FAQS 22 program CD and a CD with the last state of your Live Set(s). In case of an emergency, you can install and run Live on any computer available and play your backup Live Set(s). 3.3.5 How Can I Turn Demo Mode Off? If Live is unlocked but other products are set to Demo Mode, Live will also run in Demo Mode, and you will not be allowed to save or export your work.
3.3. COPY PROTECTION FAQS 3.3.6 23 What Do I Do About Problems or Questions Regarding Copy Protection? Please contact technical support9 . They are happy to help! 9 support@ableton.
Chapter 4 Live Basics This chapter introduces the essential concepts of Live. We advise you to read this chapter early in your Live career, as a solid understanding of the program's basic principles will help you fully exploit Live's potential for your music-making. 4.1 Live Sets The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set. Live Sets can be opened either through the File menu's Open command or via the built-in File Browsers.
4.2. ARRANGEMENT AND SESSION 25 A Live Set in the Browser, Accessed via the Library Button. Pressing the Library button in Live's Browser will take you to Live's library of creative tools. There are a number of starter Sets here; double-clicking a Live Set's name in the Browser will open that Live Set. 4.2 Arrangement and Session The basic musical building blocks of Live are called clips. A clip is a piece of musical material: a melody, a drum pattern, a bass line or a complete song.
4.3. TRACKS 26 View; you can toggle between the two views using the computer's Tab key or their respective selectors. Because the two views have distinct applications, they each hold individual collections of clips. However, it is important to understand that ipping the views simply changes the appearance of the Live Set and does not switch modes, alter what you hear or change what is stored. The Arrangement and Session View Selectors.
4.3. TRACKS 27 A Track in the Arrangement View. Session and Arrangement share the same set of tracks. The tracks are vertically laid out from left to right in the Session View, and horizontally from top to bottom in the Arrangement View. A simple rule governs the cohabitation of clips in a track: A track can only play one clip at a time.
4.4. AUDIO AND MIDI 28 Arrangement playback until explicitly told to do so. This is what the Back to Arrangement button, found in the Control Bar at the top of the Live screen, is for. This button lights up to indicate that one or more tracks are currently not playing the Arrangement, but are playing a clip from the Session instead. We can click this button to make all tracks go back to the Arrangement.
4.5. AUDIO CLIPS AND SAMPLES 29 recorded and played back using MIDI tracks. The two track types have their own corresponding clip types. Audio clips cannot live on MIDI tracks and vice versa. Information about inserting, reordering and deleting audio and MIDI tracks is found here. 4.5 Audio Clips and Samples An audio clip contains a reference to a sample (also known as a sound le or audio le ) or a compressed sample (such as an MP3 le).
4.6. MIDI CLIPS AND MIDI FILES 30 are computed in real time, while the sample is played. The respective settings are made in the Clip View, which appears on screen when a clip is double-clicked. An Audio Clip's Properties as Displayed in the Clip View. Many powerful manipulations arise from Live's warping capabilities. Warping means changing the speed of sample playback independently from the pitch so as to match the project tempo as adjusted in the Control Bar's Tempo Field.
4.6. MIDI CLIPS AND MIDI FILES 31 the original le is not referenced thereafter. In the Live File Browsers, a MIDI le appears as a folder that can be opened to reveal its individual component tracks, which can be selectively dragged into the Live Set. MIDI Files Are Dragged in from Live's File Browsers. As expected, a MIDI clip's contents can be accessed and edited via the Clip View, for instance to change a melody or paint a drum pattern. A MIDI Clip's Properties as Displayed in the Clip View.
4.7. DEVICES AND THE MIXER 4.7 32 Devices and the Mixer A track can have not only clips but also a chain of devices for processing signals. Doubleclicking a track's title bar brings up the Track View, which shows the track's device chain. The Track View Displaying an Audio Track's Device Chain. Live's built-in audio effects, MIDI effects and instruments are available from the Device Browser and can be dragged from there into the Track View or onto a track title bar.
4.7. DEVICES AND THE MIXER 33 Live's Built-in Devices Are Available from the Device Browser. You can also use plug-in devices in Live. VST and Audio Units (Mac OS X only) Plug-ins are available from the Plug-In Device Browser. Plug-In Devices Are Available from the Plug-In Device Browser. Consider an audio clip playing in an audio track. The audio signal from the clip reaches the leftmost device in the chain.
4.7. DEVICES AND THE MIXER 34 In practice, the computer's processor speed does impose a limit on the number of devices you can use at the same time, a topic that deserves separate discussion. Note that the signal connections between audio devices are always stereo, but the software's inputs and outputs can be con gured to be mono in the Audio Preferences. When the signal has passed through the device chain, it ends up in Live's mixer.
4.7. DEVICES AND THE MIXER 35 The Live Mixer in the Arrangement View (Top) and Session View (Bottom). The mixer has controls for volume, pan position and sends, which adjust the contribution each clip track makes to each return track's input. Return tracks cannot host clips, only effects. Via their sends, all tracks can feed a part of their signal into a return track and share its effects. The mixer also includes a crossfader, which can create smooth transitions between clips playing on different tracks.
4.7. DEVICES AND THE MIXER 36 Live's Crossfader. Devices that receive and deliver audio signals are called audio effects. Audio effects are the only type of device that t in an audio track or a return track. However, two more types of devices are available for use in MIDI tracks: MIDI effects and instruments. Consider a MIDI track playing a clip. The MIDI signal from the clip is fed into the track's device chain. There, it is rst processed by any number of MIDI effects.
4.8. PRESETS AND DEVICE GROUPS 37 the track's mix and Send controls disappear from the mixer. The Mixer for a MIDI Track without an Instrument. 4.8 Presets and Device Groups Every Live device can store and retrieve particular sets of parameter values as presets. As presets are stored independently from Live Sets, new presets become part of a library that any project can draw from. Live's Device Groups allow saving combinations of devices and their settings as a single preset.
4.9. ROUTING 38 select a signal source and destination. The In/Out section, accessible through the View menu's In/Out entry, is Live's patchbay. Its routing options enable valuable creative and technical methods such as resampling, submixing, layering of synths, complex effects setups and more. Track Routing Is Set up Using the In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Top) or Session View (Bottom).
4.10. RECORDING NEW CLIPS 39 from another track or device in Live. The Monitor controls regulate the conditions under which the input signal is heard through the track. 4.10 Recording New Clips Audio tracks and MIDI tracks can record their input signal and thereby create new clips. Recording is enabled on a track by pressing its Arm button (Hold down the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er to arm several tracks at once).
4.11. AUTOMATION ENVELOPES 40 method of choice for creating drum patterns, which are built up by successively adding notes to the pattern while it plays in a loop. It only takes a MIDI keyboard (or the computer keyboard) and a MIDI track with Live's Impulse percussion instrument to do this. 4.11 Automation Envelopes Often, when working with Live's mixer and effects, you will want the controls' movements to become part of the Arrangement.
4.12. CLIP ENVELOPES 4.12 41 Clip Envelopes Envelopes can be found not only in tracks but also in clips. Clip envelopes are used to modulate device and mixer controls. Audio clips have, in addition, clip envelopes to in uence the clip's pitch, volume and more; these can be used to change the melody and rhythm of recorded audio. MIDI clips have additional clip envelopes to represent MIDIcontroller data.
4.14. SAVING AND EXPORTING 42 In this mode, you can click on any mixer or effect control, and then assign it to a controller simply by sending the desired MIDI message (for example, by turning a knob on your MIDI control box). Your assignments take effect immediately after you leave MIDI Map Mode. Session clips can be mapped to a MIDI key or even a keyboard range for chromatic playing. MIDI keys and controllers that have been mapped to Live's controls are not available for recording via MIDI tracks.
4.14. SAVING AND EXPORTING 43 appear with these settings. This is especially useful if you have made warp settings for a clip and want to use it in multiple Live Sets. Exporting audio from Live can be done from both the Session and Arrangement Views. Live will export the audio coming through on the Master output as an audio le of your speci cations via Render to Disk. Live can also export individual MIDI clips as MIDI les.
4.15. THE LIBRARY 44 Variations of a sample loop created by applying Warp Markers, clip envelopes and effects; Ideas that may not t your current project but could be useful in the future. 4.15 The Library Live comes with a library of sound ideas that can serve as a starting point for your own creations. The rst part of the library is a large preset collection for Live instruments and effects, accessible through the Live Device Browser.
4.15. THE LIBRARY 45 The library is built from several Live Packs, which can be separately downloaded, installed and uninstalled. Live Packs are available from installation CDs or the Ableton website2 . 2 http://www.ableton.
Chapter 5 Managing Files and Sets Various types of les are used in making music with Live, from those containing MIDI and audio, to more program-speci c les such as Live Clips and Live Sets. This chapter will explain everything you need to know about working with each of these le types in Live. However, we should rst take a look at Live's File Browsers, through which most les arrive in the program. 5.1 5.1.
5.1. WORKING WITH THE FILE BROWSERS 47 on speci c criteria, a topic that we will cover in the next section. Each File Browser can have its own root directory, shown at the top of the Browser, the contents of which are available for browsing below. Library Is this Browser's Root. The Browser root can easily be changed: The Folder-Up button moves the Browser root one step up in the disk hierarchy. The File Browser's Folder-Up Button.
5.1. WORKING WITH THE FILE BROWSERS Close and open folders with and 48 . Jump to the parent folder of any closed folder using . (Hint: If executed on a top-level folder, this is an alternative to pressing the Folder-Up button, and will move the Browser root up one level.) (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) to access the context menu, and To clean up the Browser, use then select the Close All Folders option to show only top-level folders.
5.1. WORKING WITH THE FILE BROWSERS 49 Live will search for the contents typed in the Search eld throughout the entire Browser root. Alternatively, you can search within a single folder in the Browser with the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu's Search In Folder command. After entering search criteria, begin the search by pressing Return on your computer keyboard. Live will nd les that contain the search criteria in their name or suf x (e.g., .wav ).
5.1. WORKING WITH THE FILE BROWSERS 50 The Locate In Browser Button. 5.1.3 Previewing Files The Preview Switch. Live allows you to preview les in the File Browser before they are imported into the program. Previewing is activated using the Browser's Preview switch. Click on the les (or use and ) to select and listen to them. You can adjust the previewing volume using the Preview Volume knob in the mixer. The Preview Volume Knob.
5.1. WORKING WITH THE FILE BROWSERS 5.1.4 51 Adding Clips from the Browser There are several ways to add clips to a Live Set: Files can be dragged and dropped from the File Browsers into tracks in the Session or Arrangement View. Dragging and dropping material from the Browser into the space to the right of Session View tracks or below Arrangement View tracks will create a new track and place the new clip(s) there. Dropping a Clip to Create a New Track.
5.2. SAMPLE FILES over the target Browser's 52 button. Rename les and folders using the Edit menu's Rename command or the R (Mac) shortcut. Cancel renaming with the Esc (PC) / key. Create folders by opening the context menu with selecting the Create Folder command. (PC) / Ctrl Ctrl R (Mac), and then Delete les and folders using the Edit menu's Delete command or your computer's Backspace or Delete key.
5.2. SAMPLE FILES 53 writes the result to a temporary, uncompressed sample le. This usually happens quickly enough that you will be able to play the sample right away, without waiting for the decoding process to nish. Note: When adding a long sample to a project, Live might tell you that it cannot play the sample before it has been analyzed. Please see the section on analysis for an explanation. 5.2.
5.2. SAMPLE FILES 5.2.2 54 Analysis Files (.asd) An analysis le is a little le that Live creates when a sample le is brought into the program for the rst time. The analysis le contains data gathered by the program to help optimize the stretching quality, speed up the waveform display and automatically detect the tempo of long samples. When adding a long sample to a project, Live might tell you that it cannot play the sample before it has been analyzed.
5.2. SAMPLE FILES 5.2.3 55 File Pre-Analysis To avoid waiting for longer samples to be analyzed the rst time they are imported into Live, you may want to pre-analyze them. Pre-Analyzing Audio Files. To pre-analyze all the les contained in any folder in the Browser, use the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu's Analyze Audio command. This process can also be cancelled via the context menu. 5.2.
5.2. SAMPLE FILES 56 Which Signal Will Be Rendered? Render to Disk will always render the signal at Live's Master output. If you are monitoring the Master output, you can be sure that the rendered le will contain exactly what you hear. To export individual tracks, deactivate all tracks other than the ones you want to export by turning off their Track Activator switches in the mixer. When Render to Disk is invoked while the Arrangement View is up, Live will render the selected time range.
5.3. MIDI FILES 57 samples to disk, but add the speci ed delay effect. As the second pass starts writing audio to disk, it will include the delay tail resulting from the rst pass. File Type, Bit Depth, Sample Rate. These options specify the type of sample to be created. Create Analysis File. If this is activated, Live will create an .asd le that contains analysis information about the rendered sample. If you intend to use the new sample in Live, check this option. Convert to Mono.
5.4. LIVE CLIPS 58 A MIDI File and Its Tracks in the Browser. 5.3.1 Exporting MIDI Files Live MIDI clips can be exported as Standard MIDI les. To export a MIDI clip, use the File menu's Export Selected MIDI Clip command. This command will open a le-save dialog, allowing you to choose the location for your new MIDI le. Exporting a MIDI le is different from saving the clip as a Live Clip, as described in the relevant section. 5.
5.4. LIVE CLIPS 59 To save a clip from the open Live Set to disk, simply drag it from the Session View to the File Browser and drop it into any folder. You can then type in a new name for the clip or con rm the one suggested by Live with Return . A Live Clip in the Browser. Live Clips are a great way of storing your ideas for later use or development, as they save not only the original clip, including all its clip and envelope settings, but also the original track's devices.
5.5. LIVE SETS 60 the same source sample. 5.5 Live Sets The type of document that you create and work on in Live is called a Live Set. 5.5.1 Creating, Opening and Saving Sets Use the File menu's New command to create new Live Sets, and the Open or Open Recent command to open existing ones. In the File Browser, you can double-click or press Return on a Live Set to open it. The File menu's Save command saves the current Live Set exactly as it is, including all clips and settings.
5.5. LIVE SETS 61 A Live Set in the Browser. These tracks and clips can be selectively previewed and dragged into the current Set, or the entire Live Set can be dragged in to merge the two. Dragging a Set into the space to the right of Session View tracks or below Arrangement View tracks will create new tracks to host the new content, whereas dragging a Set into existing tracks will replace any current clips.
5.6. OFFLINE AND LOST FILES 62 Computer key mappings. MIDI mappings. The template Live Set Template.als is located in Live's Preferences folder and can be copied or deleted from there. The easiest way to locate this folder is to search your disk for Template.als. 5.6 Of ine and Lost Files If you load a Live Set or Live Clip that references samples missing from their referenced locations, Live will issue a warning message and ask whether you want to locate the missing les.
5.8. LIVE PACKS 63 its Sounds folder, or send it to collaborators via the Internet, and all les used in the project will be included. The Sounds folder for My Live Set is called My Live Set Sounds. It is located next to (in the same folder as) My Live Set. 5.8 Live Packs Live's library is broken down into several Live Packs that can be separately downloaded, installed and uninstalled. A Live Pack is a single le (much like a ZIP le) that expands into many les upon installation.
Chapter 6 Arrangement View The Arrangement View displays the Arrangement, which contains music laid out along a song timeline, like a multitrack tape. A Piece of Music Laid out in the Arrangement View.
6.1. NAVIGATION 65 The Arrangement View is a powerful editing tool that easily lets you combine and arrange musical material of all types: MIDI, loops, sound effects and complete pieces of music. 6.1 Navigation Live offers several fast methods for zooming and scrolling the Arrangement display: 6 1 2 3 4 5 Navigating the Arrangement View. 1.
6.2. TRANSPORT 66 sents the part of the Arrangement that is currently displayed in the Arrangement display below. To scroll the display, click within the outline and drag left or right; to zoom out and in, drag up and down. 4. To change the displayed part of the Arrangement, drag the outline's left and right edges. 5. To see a speci c part of the Arrangement in more detail, click on it in the Overview and drag downwards to zoom in around that part.
6.2. TRANSPORT 67 will return the Arrangement play position to 1.1.1. Arrangement Playback Begins from the Insert Marker. To continue playback from the position where it last stopped, rather than from the insert marker, hold down the modi er while pressing the space bar. 3. Clicking in the scrub area above the tracks will make playback jump to that point. The size of these jumps is quantized according to the Control Bar's Quantization menu setting.
6.3. LAUNCHING THE ARRANGEMENT WITH LOCATORS 68 The Arrangement Position elds show the song position in bars-beats-sixteenths. To change the values: Click and drag up or down in any of these elds. Click and type a number, then hit Return . Click and decrement or increment the value with and . 5. Arrangement playback can be started at a particular point in one of your clips using the scrub area in the Clip View. 6. Several Arrangement playback positions can be set using launchable locators.
6.3. LAUNCHING THE ARRANGEMENT WITH LOCATORS 69 can also create a locator using the context menu in the scrub area above the tracks or via the Insert menu. Note that the position of a new locator is quantized according to the Control Bar's Quantization menu setting. The Locator Controls. You can recall (jump to) locators by clicking on them, or with the Previous and Next Locator buttons on either side of the Set button. Locators can also be recalled using MIDI/key mapping.
6.4. THE ARRANGEMENT LOOP 6.4 70 The Arrangement Loop The Control Bar's Loop Switch. For Live to repeatedly play a section of the Arrangement, activate the Arrangement loop by clicking on the Control Bar's Loop switch. The Loop Start Fields (Left) and the Loop Length Fields (Right). You can set loop length numerically using the Control Bar elds: The left-hand set of elds determines the loop start position, while the right-hand set determines loop length.
6.5. MOVING AND RESIZING CLIPS and 71 shift the loop brace left/right in steps the size of its length. The Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi er used with the arrow left and right keys shortens or lengthens the loop by the current grid setting. The Ctrl (PC) / halves the loop length.
6.6. SELECTING CLIPS AND TIME 6.6 72 Selecting Clips and Time With the exception of moving and resizing clips, Arrangement editing in Live is selectionbased: You select something using the mouse, then execute a menu command (e.g., Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate) on the selection. This editing method lends itself to an ef cient division of labor between the two hands: One hand operates the mouse or trackpad, while the other hand issues the keyboard shortcuts for the menu commands.
6.7. USING THE EDITING GRID 73 Clicking on the loop brace is a shortcut for executing the Edit menu's Select Loop command, which selects all material included within the loop. Holding Shift while clicking extends an existing selection in the same track or across tracks. Clicking the Loop Brace to Select the Loop for Editing. 6.7 Using the Editing Grid To ease editing, the cursor will snap to grid lines that represent the meter subdivisions of the song tempo.
6.8. USING THE ...TIME COMMANDS 74 3 (PC) / 3 (Mac) to toggle triplets mode; this would, for instance, Use Ctrl change the grid from eighth notes to eighth note triplets. 4 (PC) / 4 (Mac) to turn grid snapping on or off. When the grid is Use Ctrl off, the cursor does not snap to meter subdivisions. Use Ctrl 5 (PC) / 5 (Mac) to toggle xed and adaptive grid modes. The current spacing between adjacent grid lines is displayed in the lower right corner of the Arrangement View or Clip View. 6.
6.9. SPLITTING CLIPS 75 Duplicate Time places a copy of the selected timespan into the Arrangement, thereby increasing its overall duration by the length of the selection. Delete Time deletes a selection of time from the Arrangement, thereby moving any audio or MIDI on either side of the deleted area closer together in the timeline. This command reduces the length of your Arrangement by the amount of time you have deleted.
6.10. CONSOLIDATING CLIPS 76 The Result of Splitting a Clip. 6.10 Consolidating Clips The Consolidate command replaces the material in the Arrangement View selection with one new clip per track. This is very useful for creating structure. Consolidating Several Clips Into a New Clip.
6.10. CONSOLIDATING CLIPS 77 Suppose you have, by editing or improvising, come up with a layout of clips that sound good in Arrangement Loop Mode. Selecting that part of the Arrangement, for instance by using the Edit menu's Select Loop command, and then executing the Consolidate command creates a new clip that can be treated as a loop. You can now, for instance, drag the clip edges to create more repetitions.
Chapter 7 Session View In Live's Arrangement View, as in all traditional sequencing programs, everything happens along a xed song timeline. For a number of applications, this is a limiting paradigm: When playing live, or when DJing, the order of pieces, the length of each piece and the order of parts within each piece is generally not known in advance. In the theatre, sound has to react to what happens on stage.
7.1. SESSION VIEW CLIPS 7.1 79 Session View Clips The Controls for a Session View Clip. 1. Each clip in the Session View has a triangular button at the left edge. Click the button with the mouse to launch clip playback at any time, or pre-select a clip by clicking on its name, and launch it using the computer's Return key. You can then move on to the neighboring clips using the arrow keys. Please refer the manual section on clip launch settings for details on how to customize this behavior. 2.
7.2. TRACKS AND SCENES 80 You can always return the Arrangement Position elds to 1.1.1 and stop playback for the entire Live Set by pressing the Control Bar's Stop button twice. The Arrangement Position Fields and the Stop Button. 7.2 Tracks and Scenes Each vertical column, or track, can play only one clip at a time. It therefore makes sense to put a set of clips that are supposed to be played alternatively in the same columns: parts of a song, variations of a drum loop, etc.
7.2. TRACKS AND SCENES 81 A Session View Scene. The horizontal rows are called scenes. The Scene Launch buttons are located in the rightmost column, which represents the Master track. To launch every clip in a row simultaneously, click on the associated Scene Launch button. This can be very useful in organizing the live performance of a song with multiple parts.
7.3. THE TRACK STATUS FIELDS 7.3 82 The Track Status Fields You can tell a track's status by looking at the Track Status eld just above the active track's mixer controls: A Track Playing a Looping Session Clip... The pie-chart icon represents a looping Session clip. The number to the right of the circle is the loop length in beats, and the number at the left represents how many times the loop has been played since its launch. ... A One-shot Session Clip...
7.4. SETTING UP THE SESSION VIEW GRID 83 If the track is playing clips from the Arrangement, a miniature display representing the Arrangement clips being played appears. 7.4 Setting Up the Session View Grid Clips arrive in the Session View by being imported from the File Browsers or through recording. Dropping Multiple Clips Into the Session View. If you are dragging multiple clips into the Session View, Live defaults to arrange them vertically, in one track.
7.4. SETTING UP THE SESSION VIEW GRID 7.4.1 84 Select on Launch By default, clicking a Session View clip's Launch button also selects the clip, since you will typically want the Clip View to show the newly launched clip. However, some power-users don't want the current focus (e.g., a return track's devices) to disappear just because a clip has been launched, especially when starting a clip in order to try it with the return track device settings.
7.5. RECORDING SESSIONS INTO THE ARRANGEMENT 85 Paste Scenes works like Paste, but inserts blank scenes before pasting. Live inserts enough scenes to t the material from the clipboard. The new scenes will be inserted behind the current selection. Duplicate Scenes works like Duplicate, but inserts blank scenes before pasting. Live inserts enough scenes to t the material from the clipboard.
7.5. RECORDING SESSIONS INTO THE ARRANGEMENT 86 The Control Bar's Record Button. When the Record button is on, Live logs all of your actions into the Arrangement: the clips launched; changes of those clips' properties; changes of the mixer and the devices' controls, also known as automation. To nish recording, press the Record button again, or stop playback. The Arrangement Selector. To view the results of your recording, bring up the Arrangement View.
7.5. RECORDING SESSIONS INTO THE ARRANGEMENT 87 The Back to Arrangement Button. Arrangement playback does not resume until you explicitly tell Live to resume by clicking the Back to Arrangement button, which lights up to remind you that what you hear differs from the Arrangement. The Stop All Clips Button. To disable all Arrangement clips simultaneously, click on the Stop All Clips button in the Master Track Status eld.
Chapter 8 Clip View The Clip View is where clip properties can be set and adjusted. Clicking the Clip Overview Opens the Clip View. The Clip View is opened by clicking on the Clip Overview or double-clicking a clip in the Session or Arrangement View.
89 Clicking a Session View Track Status Field Opens the Clip View. In the Session View, clicking on a Track Status Field opens the Clip View for editing the clip that is currently running in the track. The properties of more than one clip can be edited collectively in the Clip View as a multiselection. To create a multi-selection, click and drag to highlight the clips, or select one clip and use the Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) or modi ers to add to your selection.
90 The Clip box contains basic clip settings. The Envelopes box and the Envelope Editor manage the clip's envelopes, which are used to modulate the effects, mixer, and clip or MIDI controls. Clip envelopes and their associated Clip View components are covered in detail in a separate manual chapter. The Launch box controls clip launch behavior and, as such, only appears for Session View clips. Setting Session View clip launch properties is covered in detail in a separate manual chapter.
91 The Notes box contains settings pertaining to how Live plays a MIDI clip and what it displays in the MIDI Editor. The Clip View for a MIDI Clip. To make best use of the screen real estate, you can show or hide the Launch, Envelopes, and Sample or MIDI boxes using the Clip View Box selector in the Clips box. You can also toggle between the Sample Display/MIDI Editor and the Envelope Editor by clicking in the title bars of the Sample/Notes box and the Envelopes box, respectively.
8.1. THE CLIP BOX 8.1 92 The Clip Box The Clip Box. 8.1.1 Clip Activator Switch Using this switch, you can deactivate a clip so that it does not play when launched in the Session View or during Arrangement playback. Clips can also be activated/deactivated directly from the Session or Arrangement View with their (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menus. 8.1.2 Clip Name and Color The Clip Name eld allows naming the clip.
8.1. THE CLIP BOX 8.1.3 93 Clip Signature Using the Clip Signature elds, you can specify the signature of an audio clip's sample. This setting is relevant only for display; it does not affect sample playback. 8.1.4 Groove The Clip Groove chooser selects the type of groove used for the clip. example, applies an 8th-note groove. Swing 8, for The Control Bar's Global Groove Control. The Global Groove control de nes the amount of the groove for every clip in the Live Set.
8.1. THE CLIP BOX 94 Groove can be applied to both MIDI clips and audio clips. Applying groove to audio clips does require that the Warp switch be activated and a Warp Mode other than Re-Pitch selected. If an audio clip is in Beats Mode, the Transients setting must be greater than or equal to the Clip Groove chooser's swing setting (e.g., with a Transients setting of 1/16, Swing 8 and Swing 16 can be used, but not Swing 32).
8.1. THE CLIP BOX 95 The Scrub Control in MIDI Map Mode. With quantization set to values less than one bar, it is easy to offset clip playback from Live's master clock by launching clips, using the Nudge buttons or scrubbing within the clip. Clip Offset from Global Time as Shown in the Clip's Display. When clip play is offset from global time in this manner, a little dot will illuminate in the Sample Display or MIDI Editor to display the offset start position.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 96 Using the Keep and Revert Buttons to Manage Meter Offset. The current offset as indicated by the dot can be made permanent by moving the start marker to the dot's position - and this is exactly what the Keep button, found just beneath the Nudge buttons, does. Or, the current offset can be undone using the Revert button. 8.2 8.2.1 The Sample Box Warp Controls The Clip Warp Controls.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 97 When the Warp switch is off, Live plays the sample at its original, normal tempo, irrespective of the current Live Set tempo. This is useful for samples that have no inherent rhythmic structure: percussion hits, atmospheres, sound effects, spoken word and the like. Turn the Warp switch on to play rhythmically structured samples (such as sample loops, music recordings, complete music pieces, etc.) in sync with the current song tempo. The Control Bar's Tempo Control.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 8.2.2 98 Sample Loop/Region and Display Zooming and Scrolling The Clip Zoom/Scroll Area. Zooming and scrolling in the Sample Display work much like they do in the Arrangement View. Using the zoom/scroll area in the top half of the waveform, you can click and drag vertically to smoothly change the zoom level, and horizontally to scroll the display. The Clip Overview. The Clip Overview provides additional zoom/scrolling functionality.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 99 clip that is currently displayed. You can click within the outline and drag horizontally or vertically to scroll or zoom. To have the Sample Display follow the play position and scroll automatically, turn on the Follow switch, or use the Follow command from the Options menu. The Follow Switch. Playing and Scrubbing Clips The section of the sample that plays when a clip is launched is set with the clip's region and loop controls.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 100 Using Clip Start and End Controls to Change Clip Length. You can also adjust the clip start and end numerically using the respective value elds to the left of the Sample Display. For warped clips, these elds display values as bars-beatssixteenths; for unwarped clips, the display is in minutes-seconds-milliseconds. Notice that you can use the Set buttons here to place the markers during playback. Setting markers this way is quantized according to global quantization.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 101 The size of this jump is quantized by the global quantization setting, which can be quickly 6 (PC) / 6 (Mac), 7 , 8 , 9 and 0 shortcuts. While changed using the Ctrl the mouse is held down over the scrub area, a portion of the clip the size of the chosen quantization setting will be repeatedly played. With small quantization settings, or a setting of None, this allows you to scrub through the music.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX (PC) / current grid setting. Ctrl Ctrl (PC) / 102 (Mac) shortens or lengthens the loop brace by the (Mac) doubles or halves the loop length. Regardless of the position of the loop brace, clip play upon launch will begin at the position marked by the start marker, which means you can set up the clip to run into a loop. Setting the Clip to Run Into a Loop.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 103 through a sample in increments the size of the chosen quantization interval. 8.2.3 Clip Pitch and Gain The Clip Pitch and Gain Controls. The Transpose control shifts the clip pitch in semitones. The Detune eld ne-tunes the clip in cents (100 cents = one semitone). The Clip Gain slider, calibrated in dB, changes the clip gain. 8.2.4 Destructive Sample Editing The Launch Sample Editor Button.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 104 to stop Live's playback. Upon returning to Live, the edited version of the sample will be played back. The current set of Warp Markers is retained only if the sample length remains the same as before. Remember that changes to one sample may affect other clips playing the same sample. 8.2.5 Replacing the Clip's Sample To replace the sample referenced by the clip with a different sample, drop the new sample directly from the File Browser into the Clip View.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 105 new sample has the same or a greater length as the old sample and discarded otherwise. This function is also useful for locating missing samples that are marked of ine . 8.2.6 Saving Default Clip Settings with the Sample The Save Default Clip Button. The Save Default Clip button saves the current clip's settings with the sample. Once saved, Live will restore the current clip settings whenever you drop the sample into a Live Set.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 106 If the High Quality switch is on, Live uses an advanced sample-rate conversion algorithm that provides better sound quality at the expense of a higher CPU load. Samples processed with the Hi-Q algorithm generate less distortion, particularly at high frequencies, when transposing a sample and/or matching an imported sample's sampling rate to the system's sampling rate. Note: This feature involves only sample rate conversion, not the timestretching quality.
8.2. THE SAMPLE BOX 107 Your computer's hard disk is too slow to deliver audio for as many tracks as desired in real time. For more information on disk-related problems, please refer to the respective section. You are experiencing audio dropouts when playing clips in Legato Mode. Use RAM Mode with care, as RAM is usually a scarce resource. Your computer is using the hard disk for swapping out RAM contents that have not been used in a while.
8.3. THE NOTES BOX 108 position in time. Therefore, a mixer volume envelope that lowers the volume of the rst half of a clip will continue to do exactly that after reversal. The reversal process is quite fast (about as fast as copying), but for very long samples it might take a little time.
8.3. THE NOTES BOX 8.3.1 109 Tempo Controls The Orig. BPM eld displays Live's interpretation of the tempo at which the clip's MIDI was recorded. When dragging up or down in the Original BPM eld, or clicking the :2 and *2 buttons, you will see that the notes in the MIDI Editor are correspondingly stretched or compressed. This is useful for aligning notes that you have recorded without a tempo reference, like Live's metronome. 8.3.
8.4. CLIP DEFAULTS AND UPDATE RATE 8.4 110 Clip Defaults and Update Rate You can change the rate at which Live applies your Clip View settings to a running clip. Clip View changes will be quantized by the rate selected from the Clip Update Rate chooser in the Misc Preferences. Certain clip settings, such as Launch Mode and Warp Mode, can be set up as defaults for all new clips. This is done in the the Default Preferences.
Chapter 9 Tempo Control and Warping Unlike music stored on tape or in a traditional digital audio workstation, the music in Live remains elastic at all times. Live is capable of time-warping samples while streaming them from disk so as to synchronize them to the current project tempo. This happens without affecting the pitch, which can be changed independently. Mixing and matching audio from different origins is therefore extremely easy. 9.1 9.1.1 Tempo Setting the Tempo The Control Bar's Tempo Field.
9.1. TEMPO 112 The Control Bar's Tempo eld allows you to change the playback tempo of your Live Set at any time, in real time. You can even automate the tempo to create smooth or sudden tempo changes along the song timeline. You can have an external sequencer (or drum machine) play along with Live or have Live play along with the sequencer. The respective settings are made in the MIDI Preferences, and the EXT switch next to the tempo control is activated to have Live follow an external MIDI clock source.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 9.2 113 Time-Warping Samples Live's ability to play any sample in sync with a chosen tempo is a unique and important feature. In addition, you can warp the rhythmic ow of a piece, changing its feel, or even move notes to other meter positions. Think of a sample as a rubber-band that you want to pin to a (musical time) ruler. In Live, the pins are called Warp Markers. A Warp Marker forces the software to arrive at a speci c point in the sample at a speci c musical time.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 114 The Follow Switch in the Control Bar. In the following sections, we will look at a couple of applications for time-warping samples. Warping is, of course, an optional feature, and you have several different options for deactivating warping, as described in the respective section in this chapter. Note: For a tip on how to apply the same set of Warp Markers to several multitrack samples, please see here. Of course, your Warp Markers will be saved with the Live Set.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 115 A One-Bar Loop as It Appears in the Clip View, by Default. The Orig. BPM eld displays Live's guess of the loop's tempo; if you happen to know the tempo of the loop, you can type it in here. Sometimes Live's guess of the original tempo is wrong by half or double. If so, correct this by clicking on the buttons labeled *2 and :2, respectively.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 116 Setting the Warp Markers for a Badly Cut Loop. 9.2.3 Syncing Odd-Length Loops If you import a sample that contains a seven-bar loop, Live initially assumes the loop is eight bars long (or four, depending on its length) and plays it out of sync. For correct playback, the last marker needs to show a eight, not a nine. To achieve this do the following: 1. Double-click on the last Warp Marker to delete it. 2. Double-click on the eight to create a new Warp Marker. 3.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 9.2.4 117 Manipulating Grooves You can now create any number of Warp Markers by double-clicking on one of the gray grid markers. Drag in a straight looped sample, set a few Warp Markers, and move them around to see what happens. Warp Markers really serve two purposes: 1. to provide a correct interpretation of the ow of musical time in the sample; 2. to mess up the ow of time in the sample.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 9.2.5 118 Syncing Longer Pieces Live's Auto-Warp algorithm makes longer samples and entire songs readily available for integration into your project. You can use the Browser to import long samples or MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC and FLAC les. When you drag a le into Live that is too long to justify the assumption that it is a loop or a one-shot, Live will auto-warp the clip by default (though this can be changed in the Default Preferences).
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 119 probably come in handy as you warp longer pieces. The Metronome Switch. It might happen that Auto-Warp guesses the tempo correctly but gets the downbeat wrong. To remedy this, you can do the following: Zoom in and drag the 1.1.1 marker to the desired position; Use the start marker's Here command. (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu to select the Set 1.1.1 Using the Context Menu to Direct Auto-Warp.
9.2. TIME-WARPING SAMPLES 120 left to right. You can set a Warp Marker by double-clicking one of the gray grid markers to the right of each correctly warped section, pinning it into place. The shortcuts for working with the clip loop brace and start/end markers can speed up this process considerably. You might also nd it helpful to select multiple Warp Markers for moving by appending to your selected Warp Marker with the or Ctrl (PC) / (Mac) modi ers held down.
9.3. ADJUSTING FOR GOOD STRETCHING QUALITY 121 want to save them with the sample, so that they are reconstructed the next time you drag the le into Live. To do this, click the Clip View's Save button. Note that, if a sample has a saved set of Warp Markers, Auto-Warp will have no effect. When this is the case, you can use any of the (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) context menu commands described in this section to initiate auto-warping. 9.
9.3. ADJUSTING FOR GOOD STRETCHING QUALITY 122 some interesting rhythmic artifacts, choose large transient values in conjunction with pitch transposition. 9.3.2 Tones Mode Tones Mode serves well for stretching material with a more or less clear pitch structure, such as vocals, monophonic instruments and basslines. Grain Size provides rough control over the average grain size used. The actual grain size is determined in a signal-dependent way.
9.4. DEACTIVATING WARPING 123 method of using variable-speed turntables to sync two records, or what happens to samples in samplers when they're transposed. The Transpose and Detune controls have no effect in Re-Pitch Mode. 9.3.5 Complex Mode Complex Mode is a warping method speci cally designed to accommodate composite signals that combine the characteristics covered by other Warp Modes; it works well for warping entire songs, which usually contain beats, tones and textures.
Chapter 10 Editing MIDI Notes and Velocities A MIDI clip in Live contains notes and controller data for playing a MIDI instrument. This instrument can be a virtual instrument in a MIDI track's device chain or an external synth fed via the track's output routing. The MIDI clip provides the device with a musical score to play, specifying note pitch, length, position and dynamics (referred to as velocity in the MIDI lexicon). MIDI is composed and edited in Live's MIDI Editor. 10.
10.2. THE MIDI EDITOR 125 or by selecting an empty Session slot in a MIDI track and choosing the Insert menu's Insert MIDI Clip command; or, in the Arrangement View, by selecting a timespan in a MIDI track and choosing the Insert menu's Insert MIDI Clip command. 10.2 The MIDI Editor To bring up the MIDI Editor, double-click a MIDI clip to open the Clip View.
10.2. THE MIDI EDITOR 126 The Control Bar's Draw Mode Switch. Switch to Draw Mode by activating the Control Bar's Draw Mode switch. You can now draw MIDI notes into the Note Editor with the mouse. Deactivating Draw Mode allows notes to be selected and moved around by clicking and dragging, either vertically to change their transposition, or horizontally to change their position in time. Previewing MIDI Notes.
10.3. MIDI EDITOR NAVIGATION AND TRANSPORT 10.3 127 MIDI Editor Navigation and Transport Note Scale Position Is Shown Vertically and Beat-Time Horizontally. The MIDI Editor has both vertical and horizontal navigation. Along the horizontal axis lies a time ruler, which shows note position along a musical timeline. The vertical axis contains both the note ruler, displaying octaves C0 C10, and a representation of a piano keyboard (the piano roll).
10.3. MIDI EDITOR NAVIGATION AND TRANSPORT 2 1 3 5 128 6 MIDI Editor Navigation. 1. To smoothly change the time-zoom level, click and drag vertically in the time ruler. Drag horizontally in the time ruler to scroll from left to right. 2. Click and drag vertically in the note ruler to change which octaves are shown, or drag horizontally to change the vertical zoom size of MIDI notes and the keyboard. 3. Click and drag over one or more notes to de ne a selection.
10.3. MIDI EDITOR NAVIGATION AND TRANSPORT 129 in and out, drag up and down. 6. Change the length of what is shown in the Editor by dragging the left or right edges of the outline in the Clip Overview. 7. To quickly change what is shown in the Editor, click on a section that you want to examine in the Clip Overview, then drag downwards to zoom in, or scroll by dragging left and right. 8. The Page Up and Page Down keys on your computer keyboard scroll the Note Editor vertically.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 130 View to enlarge the MIDI Editor. Enlarge the MIDI Editor by Dragging the Window Split Between Session and Clip Views. 10.4 Editing MIDI 10.4.1 Non-Destructive Editing You can always return your MIDI clip to its previous state by using the Edit menu's Undo command. Furthermore, if the MIDI clip being edited originated in a MIDI le on your hard drive, none of your editing will alter the original MIDI le, as Live incorporates its contents into your Live Set when importing. 10.4.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 131 (e.g., snares grouped together two octaves down from hi-hat cymbals, etc.). When working with a MIDI le created by such a mapping, sometimes only one or two of each type of percussion sound is used, and it becomes unnecessary to view the entire keyboard range. The Fold Button Extracts Key Tracks Containing Notes. When editing MIDI, you might nd that you want to change which part of the clip you are listening to, or loop the clip in order to listen to it repeatedly.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 132 Note movements will also snap to an offset, which is based on the original placement of the note relative to the grid. This is useful for preserving a groove or loose playing style that you do not necessarily want to set straight. 10.4.4 Arranging and Quantizing Notes As we have seen, notes in the MIDI Editor can be moved both horizontally (changing their position in time) and vertically (changing their transposition).
10.4. EDITING MIDI 133 Quantizing MIDI Notes. Using the options presented here, you can select a meter value for quantization and set either the note start or end (or both) to be quantized. Quantizing the note end will stretch the note so that it ends at the chosen meter subdivision. You can also quantize notes without giving them that quantized feel using the Amount control, which will move notes only by a percentage of the set quantization value. 10.4.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 134 Copying (Above) and Pasting (Below) a Loop. As we have already seen, creating new MIDI notes is as simple as activating Draw Mode and drawing them into the Note Editor. MIDI notes can also be added and deleted by double-clicking when Draw Mode is inactive. Vertical movements in Draw Mode correspond to velocity changes. This means that, with one horizontal motion and one vertical motion, you can draw multiple notes and their velocities without releasing the mouse button.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 135 draw afterward. You may sometimes, by dragging or by drawing, place a new note on top of one that already exists. If the new note overlaps with the beginning of the original note, the original note will vanish. The original note is invisible, but still exists, and will reappear intact if the new note is moved away again. If the new note overlaps with the tail of the original, the original note's length will change so that it lasts just until the new note's beginning.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 136 vertically with others, Live highlights the velocity marker for whichever note your mouse is hovering over.) Velocity changes will be shown numerically in a small display in the time ruler. Changing Note Velocity. As in the Note Editor, you can select multiple velocity markers to change by clicking with the modi er held down.
10.4. EDITING MIDI 137 Drawing Identical Velocities (Above) and a Crescendo (Below).
10.4. EDITING MIDI is activated and draw the ramp into the Velocity Editor while holding the so that you affect only the selected notes. 138 modi er, Notes in the Note Editor display their velocity in their coloring light notes play softly, and vice versa. To change the velocity of notes without the Velocity Editor open, click any selected note and drag vertically while pressing the the Alt (PC) / (Mac) modi er. 10.4.
Chapter 11 Launching Clips The Live Session View is set apart by the fact that it gives you, the musician, an spontaneous environment that encourages performance and improvisation. An important part of how you take advantage of the Session View lies within how you con gure your various Session View clips. This chapter explains the group of settings used to de ne how each Session View clip behaves when triggered, or launched. 11.
11.2. LAUNCH MODES 140 To view the Launch box, open the Clip View of a Session View clip by double-clicking the clip, then activating the leftmost Clip View Box selector panel. Use the Clip View Box Selector to Bring up the Launch Box. Note that you can edit the launch settings of more than one clip at the same time by rst selecting the clips and then opening the Clip View. 11.2 Launch Modes The Clip Launch Mode Chooser.
11.3. CLIP-LEVEL QUANTIZATION 141 Repeat: As long as the mouse switch/key is held, the clip is triggered repeatedly at the clip quantization rate. 11.3 Clip-Level Quantization The Clip Quantization Chooser. The Clip Quantization chooser lets you adjust an onset timing correction for clip triggering. To disable clip quantization, choose None. To use the Control Bar's Global Quantization setting, choose Global.
11.4. VELOCITY 11.4 142 Velocity The Velocity Amount Field. The Velocity Amount control allows you to adjust the effect of MIDI note velocity on the clip's volume: If set to zero, there is no in uence; at 100 percent, the softest notes play the clip silently. For more on playing clips via MIDI, see the respective section. 11.5 Legato Mode The Legato Mode Switch. Suppose you have gathered, in one track, a number of looping clips, and you now want to toggle among them without losing the sync.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 143 Legato Mode is very useful for creating breaks, as you can momentarily play alternative loops and jump back to what was playing in the track before. Unless all the clips involved play the same sample (differing by clip settings only), you might hear dropouts when launching clips in Legato Mode. This happens because you are unexpectedly jumping to a point in the sample that Live has had no chance to pre-load from disk in advance.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 144 this setting is one bar. 2. The Follow Action choosers allow selecting two different Follow Actions, A and B. 3. The Chance A and Chance B controls set the likelihood of each of the two Follow Actions occurring. If a clip has Chance A set to 1 and Chance B set to 0, Follow Action A will occur every time the clip is launched. As we can see from this example, a Chance setting of 0 means that an action will never happen.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 145 or short melodic fragments has a tendency to sound static. Follow Actions allow you to create structures that will repeat but can also be surprising. Remember that you can always record the results of your experiments, so this can provide a good source for new material. In the following sections we will look at some practical examples and ideas for Follow Actions. 11.6.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 146 with a Chance setting of 1, leaving Follow Action B alone. Now this clip is set up to advance to the looping clip after it plays. 4. Activate the Loop switch for the second clip. The rst clip will now proceed to the second after it has played in its entirety; the second clip will simply play in a loop until it is stopped. 11.6.2 Creating Cycles One of the most obvious possibilities that Follow Actions open up is using a group of samples to form a musical cycle.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 147 Or, a clip can be played from its start to a speci c point, when its Follow Action tells it to Play Next Clip. The same le can be used in the next clip in the group, but this one can be set to loop. This second clip can have any manner of Follow Action settings, so that it might then play forever, for a speci ed time or until random chance leads to the next clip in the group. 11.6.
11.6. FOLLOW ACTIONS 148 other clip settings. As long as Follow Action Time in each clip is equal to the length of the clip that you want to play, you can set up two Follow Actions with different Chance values in each clip, launch a clip, and surprise yourself. 11.6.6 Creating Nonrepetitive Structures Follow Actions are great when it comes to sound installations, as they allow you to create structures that play for weeks or months and never exactly repeat.
Chapter 12 Routing and I/O In the context of Live, routing is the setup of the tracks' signal sources and destinations (i.e., their inputs and outputs). Routing happens in the mixer's track In/Out section, which offers, for every track, choosers to select a signal source and destination. The mixer's In/Out section is Live's patchbay. You can check the In/Out View menu entry to access the In/Out section in the Session or Arrangement View.
150 The Mixer's In/Out Section and Mixer Section Selectors. For every track (except the Master), the In/Out section has the same layout: The upper chooser pair ( Audio/MIDI From ) selects the track's input. Audio tracks have an audio input, and MIDI tracks have a MIDI input. Return tracks receive their input from the respective sends. The Monitor radio button selects the monitor mode, or the conditions under which the track's input is heard through the track.
12.1. MONITORING 12.1 151 Monitoring Monitoring, in the context of Live, means passing a track's input signal on to the track's output. Suppose you have set up an audio track to receive its input signal from a guitar. Monitoring then means that the signal from your live guitar playing actually reaches the track's output, via the track's device chain.
12.2. EXTERNAL AUDIO IN/OUT 152 using an external mixing console for monitoring or when using an audio hardware interface with a direct monitoring option that bypasses the computer so as to avoid latency. Generally, it is preferable to work with an audio interface that allows for negligible latencies (a few milliseconds).
12.3. EXTERNAL MIDI IN/OUT 153 Mono is turned into stereo simply by using the identical signal for left and right channels. When a track is routed into a mono output, the left and right signals are added together and attenuated by 6 dB to avoid clipping. 12.3 External MIDI In/Out MIDI from the outside world is routed into Live just like audio.
12.3. EXTERNAL MIDI IN/OUT 154 You can con gure which MIDI devices are made available to Live using the Active Devices section in the MIDI Preferences. This section lists all available input and output MIDI devices. For Live's tracks to receive/send MIDI from/to a speci c MIDI device, make sure the corresponding switch in the Track column is set to On. You can use any number of MIDI devices for track MIDI input/output; the mixer's In/Out section allows you to individually address them. 12.3.
12.3. EXTERNAL MIDI IN/OUT 155 otherwise been assigned to remote-control elements of the Live interface. To prevent this, you can turn the computer MIDI keyboard off when it is not needed. 12.3.3 Connecting External Synthesizers Routing MIDI to an external synthesizer is straightforward: The Output Type chooser is set to whatever MIDI port the synthesizer is connected to; the Output Channel chooser is used to select which MIDI channel to send on.
12.4. MASTER AND CUE OUTS 156 2. MIDI messages that are used for remote-controlling Live's user-interface elements; 3. MIDI messages coming from and going to Live's MIDI tracks. MIDI messages that are mapped to remote-control Live's user-interface elements are eaten up by the remote-control assignment and will not be passed on to the MIDI tracks. This is a common cause of confusion that can be easily resolved by looking at the indicators. 12.
12.5. REWIRE SLAVE ROUTING 157 An Audio Track Receiving Audio From and a MIDI Track Sending MIDI to Reason. The following example shows how to send MIDI from one of Live's MIDI tracks into an instrument within Propellerhead's Reason, and then route the audio result back into an audio track: 1. First, start Live. 2. Then, start Reason and set up the Reason rack as desired. 3. Select Reason from the MIDI track's Output Type chooser. 4.
12.6. RESAMPLING 158 8. Select All Ins from the MIDI track's Input Type chooser. 9. Arm the MIDI track. Now, any MIDI that you are playing into Live will arrive in Reason, which will generate the corresponding audio back into the audio track, ready for further processing in Live's mixer and effects. If you want to continue work on the project without reopening Reason, simply record Reason's audio by arming the audio track and engaging Record Mode. 12.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 12.7 159 Internal Routings Live allows for inter-track routings. These routings, albeit potentially confusing, enable many valuable creative and technical options. Inter-track routing can work two ways: 1. Track A is set up to send its output signal to Track B. This is possible because every track that can receive an output signal of the appropriate type from Track A shows up in its Output Type chooser. 2. Track B is set up to receive its input signal from Track A.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 160 layering is a good example of such a one-to-many routing setup. The rest of this section presents internal routing examples in more detail. 12.7.1 Post-Effects Recording Let's say that you are feeding a guitar into Live, building up a song track by track, overlaying take onto take. It is certainly powerful to have a separate effects chain per track for applying different effects to different takes after the fact.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 161 other tracks' Monitor radio buttons are set to Off. 12.7.2 Recording MIDI as Audio When working with MIDI and complex software instruments, it is sometimes more useful to record the resulting audio than the incoming MIDI. A single MIDI note can prompt, for example, Native Instruments' Absynth to produce something that sounds more like a piece of music than a single tone.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 12.7.3 162 Creating Submixes Submixing the Individual Drums of a Drum Kit. Suppose we have the individual drums of a drum kit coming in on separate tracks for multitrack recording. In the mix, we can easily change the volumes of the individual drums, but adjusting the volume of the entire drum kit against the rest of the music is less convenient. Therefore, we add a new audio track to submix the individual drums.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 163 track. We could now drag another Simpler into the new track, but we would really like to reuse the Simpler from the pad track, so that changing the pad's sound affects the notes from both tracks. Feeding an Additional MIDI Track Into an Existing MIDI Track to Reuse its Instrument. This is accomplished by setting the new MIDI track's Output Type chooser to Pad.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 164 The Instrument Has Been Isolated in a Dedicated Track. We might be bothered by the fact that muting the pad track (by turning off its Activator switch) also mutes the other MIDI track. To be precise, the other track keeps playing, but its MIDI is played by an instrument that is out of the mix. This can be easily remedied by cutting the clips from the pad track and pasting them into a third track that can be independently muted (and that can hold its own MIDI effects).
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 165 Using Impulse's Individual Outs to Separately Process Sample Slots. We simply create an audio track and select from its Input Type chooser the track with the Impulse. The Input Channel chooser now offers, in addition to Track Out (the audio signal at the end of the track's device chain), Impulse's eight individual outputs, labeled according to the sample used in each slot.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 166 offers individual outputs so that the parts can be separately routed into the mixer. Or, the instrument might offer a submixer of its own. Tracks Feeding MIDI to and Tapping Audio From the Parts of a Multi-Timbral Instrument. Sending MIDI to a multi-timbral instrument is a variation of a case described above. One MIDI track hosts the multi-timbral instrument, and additional MIDI tracks are used to feed its individual parts.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 167 track. From the Output Channel chooser, we select the vocoder's sidechain input. Routing a Speech Signal Into a Vocoder's Sidechain Input. Some vocoder plug-ins include a built-in synthesizer to generate the carrier signal. In this case, the only difference from the above procedure is that the vocoder instrument is dragged into a MIDI track. Feeding the side-chain audio input works as described above. 12.7.
12.7. INTERNAL ROUTINGS 168 Using an Auxiliary MIDI Track to Layer Instruments. Perhaps you wonder why this works, given that the string track's output is audio and not MIDI. When routing MIDI in from another track, we are tapping the MIDI at the latest possible stage, which is just before the instrument.
Chapter 13 Mixing 13.
13.1. THE LIVE MIXER 170 The Arrangement View Mixer. In the Arrangement View, the mixer appears as a horizontal strip to the right of the track area. To display all mixer controls for a track, unfold the track using the triangular button next to its name, and adjust its height accordingly. The Session View Mixer. The Session View is a standard vertical mixer layout. You'll likely nd the Session View mixer more intuitive than the Arrangement mixer, which comes in handy when you work with automation.
13.1. THE LIVE MIXER 171 mixer view setups in the Session View and in the Arrangement View: In/Out Sends Returns Mixer Track Delays Crossfader The Mixer Section selector on the right-hand side of the screen makes it possible to quickly show or hide different mixer components. The Mixer Section Selector. Let's look at the mixer controls: 2 3 4 5 6 3 2 1 1 4 5 6 The Mixer Controls.
13.2. AUDIO AND MIDI TRACKS 172 1. The Meter shows the track's RMS (average) and peak output level. While monitoring, however, it shows the input level. 2. The Volume control adjusts the track's output level. 3. The Pan control positions the track's output in the stereo eld. To reset the pan control to center, click on the little triangle. 4. To mute the track's output, turn off the Track Activator switch. 5. The Solo switch solos the track by muting all other tracks, but can also be used for cueing.
13.3. RETURN TRACKS AND THE MASTER TRACK 173 A track is represented by its track title bar. You can click on a track title bar to select the track and then execute an Edit menu command, such as Rename, on the track. One can quickly rename a series of tracks by executing this command and then using the Tab key to move from title bar to title bar. Tracks are Represented by Track Title Bars.
13.4. USING LIVE'S CROSSFADER 174 The Send Controls and Pre/Post Toggle. A clip track's Send control regulates how much of the clip track's output feeds the associated return track's input. What's more, even the return track's own output can be routed to its input, allowing you to create feedback. Please use this feature with care, as runaway feedback can boost the level dramatically and unexpectedly.
13.4. USING LIVE'S CROSSFADER 175 The crossfader is accessed via the Session View mixer. The Crossfader. The crossfader is a horizontal slider that can be mapped to any continuous MIDI controller (absolute or incremental). In addition to the crossfader's central slider, its absolute left and right positions are separately available for MIDI or keyboard mapping.
13.5. SOLOING AND CUEING 176 If A is on, the track will be played unattenuated as long as the crossfader is in the left half of its value range. As the crossfader moves toward the right across the center position, the track fades out. At the crossfader's rightmost position, the track is muted. Likewise, if B is on, the track's volume will be affected only as the crossfader moves left across its center position.
13.5. SOLOING AND CUEING 177 in the Session View mixer. Make sure you have Mixer and In/Out checked from the View menu. 4 5 3 2 1 The Cueing-Related Session Mixer Controls. 1. The Master Out chooser selects the output on your interface to be used as the main output. 2. The Cue Out chooser selects the output on your hardware interface to be used for cueing. This has to be set to an output other than that selected for the Master.
13.6. TRACK DELAYS Note that when cueing is set up and activated, the output of audio previewing in the Browser is also heard through the Cue Out. 13.6 178 les that you are Track Delays A Track Delay control is available for every track in Live. The control allows delaying or predelaying the output of tracks in milliseconds in order to compensate for human, acoustic, hardware and other real-world delays. This section of the interface can be shown or hidden using its respective Mixer Section selector.
Chapter 14 Recording New Clips This chapter is about recording new clips from audio and MIDI input signals. Note that this is a different kind of recording than the capturing of Session clips into the Arrangement. For successful audio recording, please make sure the audio preferences are set up properly. For more on this, please see the built-in program lesson on setting up Audio Preferences.
14.1. CHOOSING AN INPUT 14.1 180 Choosing an Input A track will record whatever input source is shown in its In/Out section, which appears when the View menu's In/Out option is checked. (In the Arrangement View, unfold and resize the track in order to completely see the In/Out section.) The Track In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Top) and Session View (Bottom). Audio tracks default to recording a stereo signal from the external input pair 1/2.
14.2. ARMING (RECORD-ENABLING) TRACKS 181 For every track, you can choose an input source other than the default: any mono or stereo external input, a speci c MIDI channel from a speci c MIDI-in device, audio from ReWire slave programs or a signal coming from another track. The Routing chapter describes these options in detail. 14.2 Arming (Record-Enabling) Tracks Track Arm Buttons in the Session (Left) and Arrangement (Right) Mixers. To select a track for recording, click on its Arm button.
14.3. RECORDING 14.3 182 Recording Recording can be done in both the Session and the Arrangement Views. If you want to record onto more than one track simultaneously and/or prefer viewing the recording linearly and in-progress, the Arrangement View may be the better choice. If you want to break your recording seamlessly into multiple clips or record while you are also launching clips in Live, use the Session View. 14.3.1 Recording Into the Arrangement 6 1 3 2 4 5 Recording Into the Arrangement.
14.3. RECORDING 183 3. When the Overdub switch is on, the new clips contain a mix of the signal already in the track and the new input signal. The Overdub option only applies to MIDI tracks. 4. To prevent recording prior to a punch-in point, activate the Punch-In switch. This is useful for protecting the parts of a track that you do not want to record over and allows you to set up a pre-roll or warm-up time. The punch-in point is identical to the Arrangement Loop's start position. 5.
14.3. RECORDING 4 184 3 2 1 Recording a New Clip Into the Session View. 1. Set the Global Quantization chooser to any value other than None to obtain correctly cut clips. 2. Activate the Arm button for the tracks onto which you want to record. Clip Record buttons will appear in the empty slots of the armed tracks. 3. Click on any of the Clip Record buttons to commence recording. A new clip will appear in the slot with a red Clip Launch button that shows it is currently recording.
14.3. RECORDING 185 record-enabled slots belonging to that scene. However, you can use the Start Recording on Scene Launch option from the Misc Preferences to tell Live that you do want empty scene slots to record under these circumstances. 14.3.3 Overdub Recording MIDI Patterns Live makes pattern-oriented recording of drums and the like quite easy. Using Live's Impulse instrument and the following technique, you can successively build up drum patterns while listening to the result.
14.4. RECORDING IN SYNC 186 8. Stop recording by pressing a Clip Stop button or the Stop button in the Control Bar. Note that holding Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) while double-clicking the empty slot to create a new clip will implicitly arm the track and launch the clip. At any time while overdub recording is going on, you can use the Undo command to remove the last take, or even draw, move or delete notes in the Clip View's Note Editor.
14.5. RECORDING QUANTIZED MIDI NOTES 187 The Preview Volume Knob. To adjust the metronome volume, use the mixer's Preview Volume knob. Notice that Live's metrical interpretation of the audio being played can be edited, at any time, using the Warp Markers. Warp Markers can be used to x timing errors and to change the groove or feel of your recordings. Using Warp Markers, you can x things in your recordings that would otherwise require complicated editing or could not be done at all.
14.6. RECORDING WITH COUNT-IN 188 When overdub recording with the Clip View Loop activated, changes to the Record Quantization take effect immediately, and they cannot be separately undone with the Edit menu command. Recorded MIDI notes can also be quantized post-recording with the Edit menu's Quantize command, as described in the chapter on editing MIDI. 14.6 Recording with Count-in A count-in for recording can be set in Live's Misc Preferences.
14.8. USING REMOTE CONTROL FOR RECORDING 189 The sample le type you would like Live to create can be chosen from the Record File Type chooser in the Misc Preferences. The bit depth of the sample le you will create by recording can be chosen from the Record Bit Depth chooser in the Misc Preferences. The Audio Record Folder selected in the Misc Preferences is the disk location where Live will put the samples you record into an unnamed Live Set.
14.8. USING REMOTE CONTROL FOR RECORDING 190 One key is used to jump to the next scene... A Track Launch Button. ... and another key to start and end recording in the respective track.
Chapter 15 Working with Instruments and Effects Every track in Live can host a number of devices. These devices can be of three different sorts: MIDI effects act upon MIDI signals and can only be placed in MIDI tracks. Audio effects act upon audio signals and can be placed in audio tracks. They can also be placed in MIDI tracks as long as they are downstream from an instrument. Instruments are devices that reside in MIDI tracks, receive MIDI and output audio.
192 Devices in the Track View. The Track View is where you insert, view and adjust the devices for the selected track. To select a track and open the Track View to access its devices, double-click the track's name. The Track View appears in the bottom area of the Live screen.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 15.1 193 Using the Live Devices The Live Device Browser Selector. Click on the Live Device Browser selector to access the palette of Live's built-in devices. You will notice that MIDI effects, audio effects and instruments each have their own folders in the Browser. To place one instance of a device in a track, click on the desired device and drag it into the Track View of an appropriate track.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 194 MIDI and Audio Track Arm Buttons Play with the device's controls to change the result, or get more hands-on by assigning device controls to MIDI or key remote control. To learn what a device does and how to operate it, consult the Live Audio Effect Reference chapter, Live MIDI Effect Reference chapter or the Live Instrument Reference chapter. To add another device to the track, simply drag it there or double-click its name to append it to the device chain.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 195 A MIDI Track's Device Chain Can Contain All Three Device Types. To remove a device from the chain, click on the name and either press your computer's Delete or Backspace key, or select Delete from the Edit menu. To change the order of devices, drag a device by its name and drop it between any of the other devices in the Track View, or drag it onto another track in the mixer to place the device in that track.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 196 there is practically unlimited headroom. Clipping can occur when an overly strong signal is sent to a physical output or written to a sample. Further information about track types in Live can be found in the Routing and I/O chapter, including information on using return tracks to distribute the effect of a single Live device amongst several tracks.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 197 You can browse and load presets quickly with the computer keyboard: Scroll up and down using the and Close and open device folders using the keys. and keys. Use (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) to access the context menu, and then select the Close All Folders option to show only top-level folders. Double-clicking the Device Browser icon will also close all sub-level folders. Press Return to load a device or preset. The Browse Presets Button.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 198 Saving and Organizing Presets You can create and save any number of your own presets in the Device Browser. The Preset Save Button. Click the Preset Save button to save a new preset. You can then con rm Live's suggested name or type in one of your own. Note that a preset with unsaved changes is shown in the Device Browser with an asterisk next to its name.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 199 Searching for Presets Live's search function is available in the Device Browser to help with nding presets by name. Opening Search Mode in the Device Browser. Clicking the Search button in the upper right corner of the Device Browser or using the Ctrl F (PC) / F (Mac) shortcut will open the Browser's Search Mode. Live will search for the contents typed in the Search eld throughout the Device Browser.
15.1. USING THE LIVE DEVICES 200 it and click this button to open the preset in Browse Mode, where its location in the folder hierarchy will be displayed. The Locate In Browser Button. 15.1.2 Device Groups Device groups allow you to save powerful multi-device creations, effectively adding all the capabilities of Live's MIDI and audio effects to Simpler, Impulse and Operator presets. To create a device group, multi-select any number of devices in the Track View by clicking on their title bars.
15.2. USING PLUG-INS 201 A Device Group in the Track View. The entire device group, along with its component device settings, can be stored as a preset by clicking its Preset Save button and typing a new name in the Device Browser. Groups containing an instrument are stored with the respective instrument in the Device Browser; groups without an instrument appear in the MIDI Effect Groups or Audio Effect Groups folders.
15.2. USING PLUG-INS 202 Working with VST and Audio Units Plug-ins is very much like working with Live devices. VST and Audio Units instruments can only be placed in Live MIDI tracks and, like Live instruments, they will receive MIDI and output audio signals. Plug-in audio effects can only be placed in audio tracks or following instruments. Please see the section on working with Live devices for general information about working with devices in Live. The Plug-In Device Browser and Selector.
15.2. USING PLUG-INS 203 If you install/de-install a plug-in while the program is running, Live will not detect your changes or implement them in the Plug-In Device Browser until the next time you start the program. Use the Re-Scan button in the Plug-In Preferences to re-scan your plug-ins while Live is running, so that newly installed devices become immediately available in the Plug-In Device Browser. Hint: You can also use Re-Scan if you believe that your plug-in database has somehow become corrupted.
15.2. USING PLUG-INS 204 The Plug-In Unfold Button. You can view or hide the VST Plug-in's parameters by toggling the triangle-shaped button in the plug-in's title bar. The X-Y control eld can be used to control two plug-in parameters at once and is therefore especially well-suited for live control. To assign any two plug-in parameters to the Live panel X-Y eld, use the drop-down menus directly beneath it.
15.2. USING PLUG-INS 205 The Plug-In Edit button opens a oating window that shows the original VST or Audio Units Plug-in panel. Changing parameters on the oating window has the same effect as changing them in the Live panel, and vice versa. There are a few important Plug-In Preference settings for working with plug-in edit windows: If activated, the Auto-Open Plug-In Windows Preference assures that plug-in edit windows open automatically when plug-ins are loaded into tracks from the Browser.
15.3. VST PLUG-INS 15.2.3 206 Plug-In Performance Options The Plug-In Preferences contain a Performance setting for balancing plug-in latency and performance. Here, you can set the number of samples processed at any one time by the plug-in. Higher settings may result in a noticeable performance increase but will also result in higher latencies. With the As Audio Buffer setting selected, the plug-in will calculate the exact number of samples per millisecond as the computer's sound card.
15.3. VST PLUG-INS 207 Setting up VST Plug-In Sources for Windows. For Windows, proceed as follows: 1. Use the VST Plug-In Custom Folder entry to tell Live about the location of your VST Plug-ins: Click the Browse button to open a folder-search dialog for locating and selecting the appropriate folder. 2. Once you have selected a VST Custom Folder and Live has scanned it, the path will be displayed. Note that, on Windows, Live may have found a path in the registry without the need for browsing. 3.
15.3. VST PLUG-INS 208 Setting up VST Plug-In Sources for Mac OS X. Set up your VST Plug-ins under Mac OS X by doing the following: 1. Your VST Plug-ins will normally be installed in the following folder in your home and local directories: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST. You can turn Live's use of these plug-ins on or off with the Use VST Plug-ins in System Folders option. 2. You may have an alternative folder in which you store your VST Plug-ins (perhaps those that you use only with Live).
15.3. VST PLUG-INS 209 partition or hard drive on your computer. Live will scan the set VST Plug-in folder as well as any alias folders contained therein. Some VST Plug-ins contain errors or are incompatible with Live. During the scanning process, these may cause the program to crash. When you re-launching Live, a dialog will appear to inform you about which plug-in caused the problem.
15.3. VST PLUG-INS 210 Renaming a VST Plug-In Program. To rename the current program, select the VST program chooser and execute the Edit menu's Rename Plug-In Preset command. Then type in a new program name and con rm by pressing Return. The VST Program/Bank Load Button (Left) and The VST Program/Bank Save Button (Right). VST programs and banks can be imported from les. Clicking the VST Program Load button brings up a standard le-open dialog for locating the desired le.
15.4. AUDIO UNITS PLUG-INS 15.4 211 Audio Units Plug-Ins Audio Units Plug-ins are only available in Mac OS X. In most respects, they operate just like VST Plug-ins. An Audio Units Plug-In. The rst time you open Live, Audio Units Plug-ins will not appear in the Plug-In Device Browser. In order to activate your Audio Units as a plug-in source, please press the Activate button in the Plug-In Device Browser, or go to the Plug-In Preferences via the Live menu. There you will nd the Active Sources section.
15.4. AUDIO UNITS PLUG-INS 212 Activating Audio Units Plug-Ins. Audio Units Plug-ins sometimes have a feature that allows choosing between different modes for the device. You might be able to choose, for example, between different levels of quality in the rendering of a reverb. Choosers for these device modes can only be accessed through the original plug-in panel, which is opened using the Plug-In Edit button. Opening an Audio Units Plug-In Window.
15.5. DEVICE DELAY COMPENSATION 15.5 213 Device Delay Compensation Live automatically compensates for delays caused by Live and plug-in instruments and effects, including those on the return tracks. These delays can arise from the time taken by devices to process an input signal and output a result. The compensation algorithm keeps all of Live's tracks in sync, regardless of what their devices are doing, while minimizing delay between the player's actions and the audible result.
Chapter 16 Automation and Editing Envelopes Often, when working with Live's mixer and devices, you will want the controls' movements to become part of the music. The movement of a control across the song timeline is called automation; a control whose value changes in the course of this timeline is automated. Practically all mixer and device controls in Live can be automated, including the song tempo. 16.
16.2. DELETING AUTOMATION 215 automation for track panning and the Track Activator switch as well; their automation LEDs appear in their upper left corners. Volume, Pan and the Track Activator Switch Have Been Automated. 16.2 Deleting Automation To delete automation data, simply select an automated control by clicking on it, and choose the Edit menu's Delete Automation command. The automation LED disappears, and the control's value stays constant across the entire song.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 216 The Back to Arrangement Button. When one or more of the automated controls in your Live Set are not active, the Control Bar's Back to Arrangement button lights up. This button serves two purposes: 1. It reminds you that the current state of the controls differs from the state captured in the Arrangement. 2. You can click on it to reactivate all automation and thereby return to the automation state as it is written on tape. 16.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 217 1. To access a track's envelope, unfold the track by clicking the triangular button next to the track name. 2. Clicking on one of the track's mixer or device controls will display this control's envelope. 3. The envelope appears on top of the audio waveform or MIDI display. Its vertical axis represents the control value and the horizontal axis represents time. For switches and radio buttons, the value axis is discontinuous. 4.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 218 Drawing an Envelope. Drawing creates steps as wide as the visible grid, which you can modify using a number of handy shortcuts. For freehand drawing, you can hide the grid using the Snap to Grid 4 (PC) / 4 (Mac) shortcut. Options menu entry or the Ctrl 16.4.2 Editing Breakpoints With Draw Mode off, the envelope display looks and works differently. The line segments and the breakpoints connecting them become draggable objects.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 219 To Move all Breakpoints Within the Selection, Drag Any One of Them. Your movement is constrained by the neighboring breakpoints unless you hold down the modi er while dragging, which will eliminate breakpoints as you wipe over (PC) / (Mac) modi er while dragging switches them. Holding down the Ctrl to a ner resolution. Click and drag a line segment between two breakpoints to move it vertically, without affecting the breakpoint's horizontal position.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 220 You can also choose to lock envelopes from the Options menu. The Lock Envelopes Switch. 16.4.4 Edit Menu Commands There are a number of useful Edit menu commands for editing envelopes. To cut or copy automation from a track, independent of the associated clip, use the Edit menu's Cut Envelope and Copy Envelope commands, respectively. To simultaneously copy and paste a selection of envelope into a track's future, use the Duplicate Envelope command.
16.4. DRAWING AND EDITING AUTOMATION 221 The Tempo Envelope. When adjusting the tempo envelope, you might want to scale the value axis display, which is the function of the two value boxes below the envelope choosers: The left box sets the minimum, and the right box sets the maximum tempo displayed, in BPM. Note that these two controls also determine the value range of a MIDI controller assigned to the tempo.
Chapter 17 Clip Envelopes Every clip in Live can have its own clip envelopes. The aspects of a clip that are in uenced by clip envelopes change depending upon clip type and setup; clip envelopes can do anything from representing MIDI-controller data to modulating device parameters. In this chapter, we will rst look at how all clip envelopes are drawn and edited, and then get into the details of their various applications.
17.1. THE CLIP ENVELOPE EDITOR 17.1 223 The Clip Envelope Editor Use the Clip View Box Selector to Bring up the Envelopes Box. To work with clip envelopes, bring up the Clip View's Envelopes box by activating the rightmost Clip View Box selector panel. The Envelopes box contains two choosers for selecting an envelope to view and edit. The Clip View's Envelopes Box. The top menu is the Device chooser, which selects a general category of controls with which to work.
17.1. THE CLIP ENVELOPE EDITOR 224 Audio clips have entries for Clip (the clip's sample controls), every effect in the track's device chain and the mixer. MIDI clips have entries for MIDI Ctrl (MIDI-controller data) and every device in the track's device chain. The bottom menu, the Control chooser, selects among the controls of the item chosen in the top menu.
17.2. AUDIO CLIP ENVELOPES 225 Let us now look at some uses of clip envelopes. 17.2 Audio Clip Envelopes Clip envelopes extend Live's elastic approach to audio and, in conjunction with Live's audio effects, turn Live into a mighty sound-design tool. Using clip envelopes with audio clips, you can create an abundance of interesting variations from the same clip in real time anything from subtle corrections to entirely new and unrelated sounds. 17.2.
17.2. AUDIO CLIP ENVELOPES 226 The Transposition Envelope with Steps (Top) and Ramps (Bottom). Note that the warp settings determine how accurately Live's time-warping engine tracks the envelope shape. To obtain a more immediate response, reduce the Grain Size value in Tones and Texture Mode or choose a smaller value for the Transients control in Beats Mode.
17.2. AUDIO CLIP ENVELOPES 227 added to the Transpose control's value. The result of the modulation is clipped to stay in the available range (-48..48 semitones in this case). 17.2.3 Muting or Attenuating Notes in a Sample Click on the Volume envelope quick-chooser to access an audio clip's volume envelope. By drawing steps in Draw Mode or creating shapes with breakpoints, you can impose an arbitrary volume shape onto the sample. Imposing a Volume Envelope on a Sample.
17.2. AUDIO CLIP ENVELOPES 228 Try sample offset modulation with a one-bar drum loop: Make sure Beats Mode is chosen; in the Envelopes box, choose Clip from the Device chooser and Sample Offset from the Control chooser. The Envelope Editor appears with a vertical grid overlay. In envelope Draw Mode, set steps to non-zero values to hear the loop scrambled. What is going on? Imagine the audio is read out by a tape head, the position of which is modulated by the envelope.
17.3. MIXER AND DEVICE CLIP ENVELOPES 17.2.5 229 Using Clips as Templates As you are making creative use of clip envelopes, the clips containing them develop a life of their own, independent of the original sample. You might wonder at a point: What does this clip sound like with a different sample? This is easy to nd out by selecting the clip so that it is displayed in the Clip View and dragging the desired sample from one of the File Browsers, or the Session or Arrangement View, onto the Clip View.
17.3. MIXER AND DEVICE CLIP ENVELOPES 17.3.1 230 Modulating Mixer Volumes and Sends Notice that there are actually two volume modulations: Clip Volume and Mixer Volume. The latter is a modulation for the mixer's gain stage and therefore affects the post-effect signal. To prevent confusion, a small dot below the mixer's volume slider thumb indicates the actual, modulated volume setting. Modulating the Mixer Volume. The Little Dot Below the Volume Slider Thumb Represents the Modulated Volume Setting.
17.4. MIDI-CONTROLLER CLIP ENVELOPES 17.3.3 231 Modulating Device Controls All devices in a clip's track are listed in the upper clip envelope Device chooser. Modulating the devices' controls works just as you would expect. When modulating device controls, it is important to keep the interaction of clip envelopes and device settings in mind: Unlike a device preset, the clip envelope cannot de ne the values for the devices' controls, it can only change them relative to their current setting. 17.
17.5. UNLINKING CLIP ENVELOPES FROM CLIPS 232 A MIDI-Controller Clip Envelope. Many of the techniques described in the following section on unlinking a clip envelope from its associated clip can be adapted for use with MIDI-controller clip envelopes. 17.5 Unlinking Clip Envelopes From Clips A clip envelope can have its own local loop/region settings.
17.5. UNLINKING CLIP ENVELOPES FROM CLIPS 2 1 233 4 3 1. Choose the Clip Volume envelope, and unlink it from the sample. The clip envelope's loop braces now appear colored to indicate this envelope now has its own local loop/region settings. The loop/region controls in the Envelopes box come to life. 2. Make sure the clip envelope's Loop switch is off. Notice the Sample box's Loop switch is not affected. The sample will keep looping although the envelope is now playing as a one-shot. 3.
17.5. UNLINKING CLIP ENVELOPES FROM CLIPS 234 menu's Undo command. 17.5.2 Creating Long Loops from Short Loops Let us take this a step further. For a different part of your set, you would like to use the same one-bar loop because it sounds great but its repetition bores you. You would like to somehow turn it into a longer loop. We depart from the clip we just set up to fade out over eight bars. Activate the clip volume envelope's Loop switch.
17.5. UNLINKING CLIP ENVELOPES FROM CLIPS 235 To keep this complexity under control, it is important to have a common point of reference. The start marker identi es the point where sample or envelope playback depart from when the clip starts. Note that the start/end markers and loop brace are subject to quantization by the zoomadaptive grid, as is envelope drawing. 17.5.3 Imposing Rhythm Patterns onto Samples So far, we have been talking about imposing long envelopes onto small loops.
Chapter 18 Live Audio Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in audio effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live.
18.1. AUTO FILTER 18.1 237 Auto Filter The Auto Filter Effect. The Auto Filter effect provides classic analog lter emulation. It can be modulated by an envelope follower and/or an LFO to create moving lter effects. There are four different lter types: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch. For each type, the X-Y controller adjusts frequency (to adjust, click and drag on the X-axis) and Q (also called resonance; to adjust, click and drag on the Y-axis).
18.1. AUTO FILTER 238 while the Attack control sets how the envelope responds to rising input signals. Low Attack values cause a fast response to input levels; high values integrate any changes gradually, creating a looser, slower response. Think of it as adding inertia to the response. Lower Release values cause the envelope to respond more quickly to falling input signals. Higher values extend the envelope's decay.
18.2. AUTO PAN 18.2 239 Auto Pan The Auto Pan Effect. Auto Pan offers LFO-driven manipulation of amplitude and panning for creating automatic panning, tremolo and amplitude modulation, and beat-synchronized chopping effects. Auto Pan's LFOs modulate the amplitude of the left and right stereo channels with sine, triangle, sawtooth down or random waveforms. The Shape control pushes the waveform to its upper and lower limits, hardening its shape.
18.3. BEAT REPEAT 240 The device's in uence on incoming signals is set with the Amount control. 18.3 Beat Repeat The Beat Repeat Effect. Beat Repeat allows for the creation of controlled or randomized repetitions of an incoming signal. The Interval control de nes how often Beat Repeat captures new material and begins repeating it. Interval is synced with and set in terms of the project tempo, with values ranging from 1/32 to 4 Bars.
18.3. BEAT REPEAT 241 Gate de nes the total length of all repetitions in sixteenth notes. If Gate is set to 4/16 , the repetitions will occur over the period of one beat, starting at the position de ned by Interval and Offset. Activating the Repeat button bypasses all of the above controls, immediately capturing material and repeating it until deactivated. The Grid control de nes the grid size the size of each repeated slice.
18.4. CHORUS 242 repetitions are playing but passes it otherwise; and Gate passes only the repetitions, never passing the original signal. Gate mode is especially useful when the effect is housed in a return track. You can set the output level of the device using the Volume control, and apply Decay to create gradually fading repetitions. 18.4 Chorus The Chorus Effect. The Chorus effect uses two parallel time-modulated delays to create chorus (thickening) and anging effects.
18.4. CHORUS 243 To set both delay lines to Delay 1's delay time, turn on the link button ( = ). This is especially useful if you want to change both delays with a single gesture. The Modulation X-Y controller can impart motion to the sounds. To change the modulation rate for the delay times, click and drag along the horizontal axis. To change the amount of modulation, click and drag along the vertical axis.
18.5. COMPRESSOR I 18.5 244 Compressor I The Compressor I Effect. A Compressor reduces gain for signals above a user-settable threshold. Compression reduces the levels of peaks, opening up more headroom and allowing the overall signal level to be turned up. This gives the signal a higher average level, resulting in a sound that is subjectively louder and punchier than an uncompressed signal.
18.5. COMPRESSOR I 245 sound loudness-maximizing tool in the master channel. Less is often more here. Because compression reduces the volume of loud signals and opens up headroom, you can use the Out(put) slider so that the peaks once again hit the maximum available headroom. The Output meter shows the output signal's level. A second set of two essential parameters de nes how fast a compressor reacts to input-level changes: Attack time and Release time.
18.6. COMPRESSOR II 18.6 246 Compressor II The Compressor II Effect. Compressor II is a state of the art compression unit the tool of choice for a wide range of dynamic processing applications including limiting and loudness maximization. Compressor II's design is a lot more sophisticated and capable than Compressor I's. It includes frequencyselective compression using a sidechain EQ, variable look-ahead times and two response modes, Peak and RMS.
18.6. COMPRESSOR II 247 better since it reacts more to the actual signal level, while RMS is usually more musical. But as always if it comes to compression, trust your ears and not the meter! The most exotic feature of Compressor II is the sidechain EQ. The sidechain is the part of the signal that is used to control the compressor. Normally the sidechain signal is the same as the input signal. However, it can make sense to apply some ltering here.
18.7. EQ THREE 18.7 248 EQ Three The EQ Three Effect. If you have ever used a good DJ mixer you will know what this is: An EQ that allows you to adjust the level of low, mid and high frequencies independently. Each band can be adjusted from -in nite dB to +6 dB using the gain controls. This means that you can completely remove, for example, the bass drum or bassline of a track, while leaving the other frequencies untouched.
18.8. EQ FOUR 249 cutting the signal at the crossover frequency. The higher setting results in more drastic ltering, but needs more CPU. Note: The lters in this device are optimized to sound more like a good, powerful analog lter cascade than a clean digital lter. The 48 dB Mode especially does not provide a perfect linear transfer quality, resulting in a slight coloration of the input signal even if all controls are set to 0.00 dB.
18.9. EROSION 250 frequencies higher than the speci ed frequency) or high-cut (cuts frequencies above the speci ed frequency) modes. Each lter band can be turned on or off independently. Turn off bands that aren't in use to save CPU power. To edit the lter curve, click and drag on one of the lter dots in the XY View. Horizontal movement changes the lter frequency, while vertical movement adjusts the lter band's gain.
18.10. FILTER DELAY 251 The Erosion effect degrades the input signal by modulating a short delay with ltered noise or a sine wave. This adds noisy artifacts or aliasing/downsampling-like distortions that sound very digital. To change the sine wave frequency or noise band center frequency, click and drag along the X-axis in the XY eld. The Y-axis controls the modulation amount. If you hold down the Alt (PC) / Alt (Mac) modi er key while clicking in the XY eld, the Y-axis controls the noise bandwidth.
18.10. FILTER DELAY 252 The Filter Delay provides three independent delay lines, each preceded by linked low-pass and high-pass lters. This allows applying delay to only certain input signal frequencies, as determined by the lter settings. The feedback from each of the three delays is also routed back through the lters. Each of the three delays can be switched on and off independently.
18.11. FLANGER 253 in a return channel. 18.11 Flanger The Flanger Effect. Flanger uses two parallel time-modulated delays to create anging effects. Flanger's delays can be adjusted with the Delay Time control. The Feedback control sends part of the output signal back through the device input, while the Polarity switch ( + or - ) sets the polarity. Delay Time and Feedback can be changed simultaneously using the effect's X-Y controller.
18.12. GATE 254 Rate can also be synced with the project tempo and set in meter subdivisions (e.g., sixteenth notes). The Phase control lends the sound stereo movement by setting the LFOs to run at the same frequency, but offsetting their waveforms relative to each other. Set this to 180 , and the LFOs will be perfectly out of phase (180 degrees apart), so that when one reaches its peak, the other is at its minimum. Spin detunes the two LFO speeds relative to each other.
18.12. GATE 255 sound by turning up the threshold to where it cuts off reverb or delay tails or truncates an instrument's natural decay. The Threshold slider sets the gate's sensitivity. If the gate is open and passing signal (i.e., the signal exceeds the gate threshold), the green LED lights. The Floor parameter located above the threshold fader can allow attenuating signals below the threshold rather than just cutting them off. If set to -inf dB, a closed gate will mute the input signal.
18.13. GRAIN DELAY 18.13 256 Grain Delay The Grain Delay Effect. The Grain Delay effect slices the input signal into tiny particles (called grains ) that are then individually delayed and can also have different pitches compared to the original signal source. Randomizing pitch and delay time can create complex masses of sound and rhythm that seem to bear little relationship to the source.
18.13. GRAIN DELAY 257 parameter to the X-axis, choose it from the parameter row below the controller. To assign a parameter to the Y-axis, use the parameter row on the left side. The Feedback parameter sets how much of the output signal returns to the delay line input.
18.14. PHASER 18.14 258 Phaser The Phaser Effect. Phaser uses a series of all-pass lters to create a phase shift in the frequency spectrum of a sound. The Poles control creates notches in the frequency spectrum. The Feedback control can then be used to invert the waveform and convert these notches into peaks (or poles). Filter cutoff frequency is changed with the Frequency control, which can be adjusted in tandem with Feedback using the effect's X-Y controller.
18.15. PING PONG DELAY 259 Amount control. LFO speed is controlled with the Rate control, which can be set in terms of hertz. Rate can also be synced with the project tempo and set in meter subdivisions (e.g., sixteenth notes). The Phase control lends the sound stereo movement by setting the LFOs to run at the same frequency, but offsetting their waveforms relative to each other.
18.15. PING PONG DELAY 260 The delay is preceded by a low- and high-pass lter that can be controlled with an XY controller. To de ne the lter bandwidth, click and drag on the vertical axis. To set the position of the frequency band, click and drag on the horizontal axis. To refer delay time to the master tempo, activate the Sync switch, which allows using the Delay Time beat division chooser. The numbered switches represent time delay in 16th notes.
18.16. SATURATOR 18.16 261 Saturator The Saturator Effect. Saturator is a distortion effect that can add that missing dirt, punch or warmth to your sound. Incoming signals are clipped to the Drive control's setting in dB. Signal clipping has several modes: Clip, Soft, Medium, Hard and Sine. In Clip mode, the signal is clipped completely and immediately. Soft, Medium and Hard modes soften signal clipping to varying degrees. Sine mode can be used for special effects.
18.17. SIMPLE DELAY 18.17 262 Simple Delay The Simple Delay Effect. The Simple Delay provides two independent delay lines, one for each channel (left and right). To refer delay time to the master tempo, activate the Sync switch, which allows using the Delay Time beat division chooser. The numbered switches represent time delay in 16th notes. For example, selecting 4 delays the signal by four 16th notes, which equals one beat (a quarter note) of delay.
18.18. VINYL DISTORTION 18.18 263 Vinyl Distortion The Vinyl Distortion Effect. The Vinyl Distortion effect emulates some of the typical distortions that occur on vinyl records during playback. These distortions are caused by the geometric relationships between the needle and the recorded groove. The effect also features a crackle generator for adding noisy artifacts. The Tracing Model section adds even harmonic distortion to the input signal.
18.19. REDUX 264 There are two distortion modes: soft and hard. The soft mode simulates the sound of a dub plate, while hard mode is more like that of a standard vinyl record. The stereo/mono switch determines whether the Pinch distortion occurs in stereo or mono. Set it to stereo for realistic simulation of vinyl distortions. The Crackle section adds noise to the signal, with noise density set by the Density control. The Volume control adjusts the amount of gain applied to the noise. 18.
18.20. RESONATORS 265 and the more deconstructed the sound. Downsampling is like applying a mosaic effect to an image: There's a loss of information and sharp edges occur between the blocks. The Downsample Mode switch de nes if the downsampling either interpolates over a smaller range ( soft, down to 20.0 samples) or does not interpolate over a larger range ( hard, down to 200 samples). Bit Reduction is similar, but while downsampling superimposes a grid in time, bit reduction does the same for amplitude.
18.20. RESONATORS 266 This device consists of ve parallel resonators that superimpose a tonal character on the input source. It can produce sounds resembling anything from plucked strings to vocoderlike effects. The resonators are tuned in semitones, providing a musical way of adjusting them. The rst resonator de nes the root pitch and the four others are tuned relative to this pitch in musical intervals. The input signal passes rst through a lter, and then into the resonators.
18.21. REVERB 267 The output section features the obligatory Dry/Wet control and a Width parameter that affects only the wet signal and blends the left and right outputs of Resonators II-V into a mono signal if set to zero. 18.21 Reverb The Reverb Effect. 18.21.1 Input Processing The input signal passes rst through high and low cut lters, whose X-Y controller allows changing the band's center frequency (X-axis) and bandwidth (Y-axis).
18.21. REVERB 18.21.2 268 Early Re ections These are the earliest echoes that you hear after they bounce off a room's walls, before the onset of the diffused reverberation tail. Their amplitude and distribution give an impression of the room's character. The Shape control sculpts the prominence of the early re ections, as well as their overlap with the diffused sound.
18.21. REVERB 18.21.4 269 Diffusion Network The Diffusion network creates the reverberant tail that follows the early re ections. The decay time control adjusts the time required for this tail to drop to 1/1000th (-60 dB) of its initial amplitude. High and low shelving lters provide frequency-dependent reverberation decay. The highfrequency decay models the absorption of sound energy due to air, walls and other materials in the room (people, carpeting and so forth).
18.22. UTILITY 18.22 270 Utility The Utility Effect. Utility can perform some very useful tasks, especially in combination with other effects. Most obvious is the Gain control, which allows adjusting the level of the input signal from -36 to +36 dB. The Gain control is located below the Mute button, which simply turns the signal off if pressed. Note: The active/mute controls of a track are always placed at the very end of the signal chain.
18.22. UTILITY 271 either the Left or Right button is activated, the Width control has no function and is therefore bypassed. At the bottom of the device you will nd two Phase (ø) controls, one for each channel. As the name implies they invert the phase of each channel.
Chapter 19 Live MIDI Effect Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in MIDI effects. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using effects in Live.
19.1. ARPEGGIATOR 19.1 273 Arpeggiator The Arpeggiator Effect. Live's Arpeggiator effect takes the individual notes in a played MIDI chord, or notes played singly, and plays them as a rhythmical pattern. The sequence and speed of the pattern can be controlled by the device, which also provides a full complement of both classic and original arpeggiator features. Arpeggiators are a classic element in Eighties synth music.
19.1. ARPEGGIATOR 274 UpDown and DownUp . Down & Up and Up & Down . Converge and Diverge . Con & Diverge . Pinky Up and Pinky UpDown . Thumb Up and Thumb UpDown . Play Order places notes in the pattern according to the order in which they are played.
19.1. ARPEGGIATOR 275 is therefore only recognizable when more than one chord or note has been played. In addition to the Arpeggiator styles above, there are a number of random styles. Random randomly selects incoming MIDI notes for playback. Random Other creates a random pattern from incoming MIDI notes, and then plays the randomly generated chord repeatedly.
19.1. ARPEGGIATOR 276 parameter effectively rotates this circle counter-clockwise one note at a time, changing where in the pattern play begins. With the Repeats parameter, the pattern can be set to repeat a speci ed number of times until it is retriggered. A setting of inf will repeat the pattern inde nitely. Hint: This feature provides an excellent way of emulating the strum of a guitar or playing a chord as an arpeggio once or twice.
19.2. CHORD 277 Tip: The velocity section's Retrigger option can be used in conjunction with Beat retriggering to add rhythm to the dynamic slope. 19.2 Chord The Chord Effect. This effect assembles a chord, as the name implies, from each incoming note and up to six others of user-de ned pitch. The Shift 1-6 knobs allow selecting the pitch of the notes that contribute to the chord from a range of +/- 36 semitones relative to the original.
19.3. PITCH 278 semitone shift added with the Shift 6 control. Note that no two notes of the same pitch can contribute to the chord, and that selecting the same shift value twice (e.g., +8 semitones on both Shift 2 and Shift 3) will result in the latter control becoming gray, indicating that it is a duplicate and therefore not in use. Actually, there is no such thing as two notes with the same pitch playing at the same time within the entire Live universe. 19.3 Pitch The Pitch Effect.
19.4. RANDOM 19.4 279 Random The Random Effect. Random adds an element of the unknown to the otherwise commonplace pitch parameter. The Chance control de nes the likelihood that an incoming note's pitch will be changed by a random value. You can think of it as being something like a dry/wet control for randomness.
19.5. SCALE 280 harmonic range. 19.5 Scale The Scale Effect. Scale alters incoming note pitch based on a scale mapping. Each incoming note is given an outgoing equivalent on the X-Y scale map of the effect: All incoming Cs, for example, might be converted to outgoing Ds. The X-Y scale map is 12 squares in length and width, corresponding to the 12 notes in a full octave. Darker squares represent the black keys on a keyboard.
19.6. VELOCITY 281 by the effect, but are playing at their unaltered pitch. 19.6 Velocity The Velocity Effect. Velocity re-maps the 127 MIDI note velocity values. The Out Low and Out Hi knobs control the outgoing velocity (from 1 to 127), which is represented by the Y-axis of the X-Y display. Incoming velocities that are shown in the display are within the range chosen by the In Low and In Hi choosers, and are represented on the X-axis.
19.6. VELOCITY 282 incoming notes altogether if their velocities are outside of the range. You will see the little LED in the effect ash when a note is blocked by gating. In Fixed Mode, the Out Hi velocity de nes all outgoing note velocities, regardless of incoming note velocity. The Random function adds or subtracts a random value to the all velocities, and is represented by a gray area on the display curve. The Drive and Compand controls can be combined to create more complex curves.
Chapter 20 Live Instrument Reference Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in instruments. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter explains the basics of using instruments in Live.
20.1. IMPULSE 20.1 284 Impulse The Impulse Instrument. Impulse is a drum sampler with complex modulative capabilities. The eight drum samples loaded into Impulse's sample slots can be time-stretched, ltered and processed by envelope, saturation, pan and volume components, nearly all of which are subject to random and velocity-based modulation. 20.1.1 Sample Slots Samples are dragged and dropped into Impulse's eight sample slots from the Browser or the Session and Arrangement Views.
20.1. IMPULSE 285 Each of the eight samples has a proprietary set of parameters, located in the area below the sample slots and visible when the sample is clicked. Adjustments to sample settings are only captured once you hit a new note they do not affect currently playing notes. Note that this behavior also de nes how Impulse reacts to parameter changes from clip envelopes or automation, which are applied once a new note starts.
20.1. IMPULSE 20.1.3 286 Filter The Filter section offers a broad range of lter types, each of which can impart different sonic characteristics onto the sample by removing certain frequencies. The Frequency control de nes where in the harmonic spectrum the lter is applied; the Resonance control boosts frequencies near the points in the spectrum where frequencies are excluded by ltering. Filter Frequency can be modulated by either a random value or by MIDI note velocity. 20.1.
20.2. SIMPLER 20.1.6 287 Global Parameters The parameters located to the right of the sample slots are global controls that apply to all samples within Impulse's domain. Volume adjusts the overall level of the instrument, and Pitch adjusts the transposition of all notes. The Time control governs the time-stretching and decay of all samples, allowing you to morph between short and stretched drum sounds. 20.1.
20.2. SIMPLER 288 Simpler is an instrument that integrates the basic elements of a sampler with a set of classic synthesizer parameters. A Simpler voice plays a user-de ned sample section, which is in turn processed by envelope, lter, LFO, volume and pitch components. 20.2.1 Sample View The Sample View displays the sample waveform. Samples can be dragged into Simpler either directly from the Browser, or from the Session or Arrangement View in the form of clips.
20.2. SIMPLER 289 due to the discontinuity in waveform amplitude (i.e., the sample's loudness). The Snap switch will help mitigate these by forcing Simpler's loop markers to snap to zero-crossing points in the sample (points where the amplitude is zero). Note: Snapping is based on the left channel of stereo samples. It is therefore still possible, even with Snap activated, to encounter glitches in the right channel of a stereo sample.
20.2. SIMPLER 290 time is the amount of time after the end of the note that it takes for the envelope to drop from the Sustain level back down to zero. The in uence of envelopes on pitch and lter cutoff can be decided using the envelope amount controls in each of these sections. 20.2.
20.2. SIMPLER 291 setting assigns higher notes a higher LFO rate. If Key is set to zero, all voices' LFOs have the same rate and may just differ in their phase. The LFO will modulate the lter, pitch, panorama and volume according to the setting of the LFO amount controls in each of these sections. The time taken for the LFO to reach normal level can be set with the Attack control. 20.2.
20.2. SIMPLER 20.2.8 292 Glide and Spread Simpler includes a polyphonic glide function. When this function is activated, new notes will start with the pitch of the last note played and then slide gradually to their own played pitch. Glide can be turned on or off and adjusted with the Glide Time control. Simpler also offers a special Spread parameter that creates a rich stereo chorus by using two voices per note and panning one to the left and one to the right.
20.3. OPERATOR 20.3 293 Operator The Operator Instrument. Operator is an advanced and exible synthesizer that combines the concept of frequency modulation (FM) with classic subtractive synthesis. It utilizes four multi-waveform oscillators that can modulate each other's frequencies, creating very complex timbres from a limited number of objects. Operator includes a lter section, an LFO and global controls, as well as individual envelopes for the oscillators, lter, LFO and pitch.
20.3. OPERATOR 294 eight sections. On the left side, you will nd four oscillator sections, and on the right side from top to bottom, the LFO, the lter section, the pitch section and the global parameters. If you change one of the shell parameters, the display in the center will automatically show the details of the relevant section.
20.3. OPERATOR 295 Operator's Global Display. Typically, FM synthesis makes use of pure sine waves, creating more complex waveforms via modulation. However, in order to simplify sound design and to create a wider range of possible sounds, we designed Operator to produce a variety of other waveforms, including noise. The instrument is made complete with an LFO, a pitch envelope and a lter section.
20.3. OPERATOR 20.3.2 296 Oscillator Section and Aliasing Oscillator D's Display and Shell Parameters. The oscillators can basically play back ve waveform types sine, square, sawtooth, triangle and noise as chosen from the Wave chooser in the individual oscillator displays. The rst of these waveforms is a pure, mathematical sine wave, which is usually the rst choice for many FM timbres.
20.3. OPERATOR the (PC) / Ctrl 297 (Mac) context menu. Aliasing distortion is a common side effect of all digital synthesis and is the result of the nite sample rate and precision of digital systems. It mostly occurs at high frequencies. FM synthesis is especially likely to produce this kind of effect, since one can easily create sounds with lots of high harmonics. This also means that more complex oscillator waveforms, such as Saw32, tend to be more sensitive to aliasing than pure sine waves.
20.3. OPERATOR 298 or inharmonic sounds (which very well could be exactly what you want...). The amplitude of an oscillator depends on the Level setting of the oscillator in the shell and on its envelope, which is shown in its display and can be adjusted from there. It can also be modi ed by note velocity and note pitch with the Level
20.3. OPERATOR 299 The LFO offers a choice of classic LFO waveforms, sample and hold (S&H), and noise. Sample and hold uses random numbers chosen at the rate of the LFO, creating the random steps useful for typical retro-futuristic sci- sounds. The noise waveform is simply bandpass- ltered noise. Tip: FM synthesis can be used to create fantastic percussion sounds, and using the LFO with the noise waveform is the key to great hi-hats and snares.
20.3. OPERATOR using the (PC) / 300 Ctrl (Mac) context menu. With FM synthesis, it is possible to create spectacular, endless, permuting sounds; the key to doing this is looping envelopes. Loop Mode can be activated in the lower left corner of the display. If an envelope in Operator is in Loop Mode and reaches sustain level while the note is still being held, it will be retriggered. The rate for this movement is de ned by the Loop Time parameter.
20.3. OPERATOR 301 Pitch Env control. Tip: If the pitch envelope is only applied to the LFO and is looping, it can serve as another LFO, modulating the rate of the rst. And, since the envelope of the LFO itself can loop, it can serve as a third LFO modulating the intensity of the rst! 20.3.5 Filter Section Operator's Filter Section. As mentioned earlier, the lters are not the main focus of this instrument.
20.3. OPERATOR 20.3.6 302 Global Controls The maximum number of Operator voices (notes) playing simultaneously can be adjusted with the Voices parameter in the global display. Ideally, one would want to leave this setting high enough so that no voices would be turned off while playing, however a setting between 6 and 12 is usually more realistic when considering CPU power. Tip: Some sounds should play monophonically by nature, which means that they should only use a single voice.
20.3. OPERATOR 20.3.7 303 Glide and Spread Operator's Pitch Section. Operator includes a polyphonic glide function. When this function is activated, new notes will start with the pitch of the last note played and then slide gradually to their own played pitch. Glide can be turned on or off and adjusted with the Glide Time control in the pitch display.
20.3. OPERATOR 20.3.8 304 Strategies for Saving CPU Power If you want to save CPU power, turn off features that you do not need or reduce the number of voices. Speci cally, turning off the lter or the LFO if they do not contribute to the sound will save CPU power. For the sake of saving CPU resources, you will also usually want to reduce the number of voices to something between 6 and 12, and carefully use the Spread feature. The high quality setting can also be turned off to conserve CPU resources.
20.3. OPERATOR 305 text that appears in the Info View. Parameters in this list are grouped into sections based on where they appear in Operator. Global Shell and Display Time- This is a global control for all envelope rates. Tone- Operator is capable of producing timbres with very high frequencies, which can sometimes lead to aliasing artifacts. The Tone setting controls the high frequency content of sounds. Higher settings are typically brighter but also more likely to produce aliasing.
20.3. OPERATOR 306 Pitch Shell and Display Pitch Envelope On- This turns the pitch envelope on and off. Turning it off if it is unused saves some CPU power. Pitch Envelope Amount (Pitch Env)- This sets the intensity of the pitch envelope. A value of 100% means that the pitch change is exactly de ned by the pitch envelope's levels. A value of -100% inverts the sign of the pitch envelope levels.
20.3. OPERATOR 307 Filter Shell and Display Filter On- This turns the lter on and off. Turning it off when it is unused saves CPU power. Filter Type- Low-pass, band-pass and high-pass are second order lters with resonance. Their names imply the part of the spectrum they affect. The notch lter passes everything apart from its center frequency and is more audible with low resonance settings. Filter Frequency (Freq)- This de nes the center or cutoff frequency of the lter.
20.3. OPERATOR 308 LFO Waveform- Select from among several typical LFO waveforms. Sample and Hold creates random steps, and Noise supplies band-pass- ltered noise. All waveforms are band-limited to avoid unwanted clicks. Cyclic waveforms restart with each note-on message. LFO Range- The LFO covers an extreme frequency range. Choose Low for a range from 50 seconds to 30 Hz, or Hi for 8 Hz to 12 kHz. Due to the possible high frequencies, the LFO can also function as a fth oscillator.
20.3. OPERATOR 309 Osc Fine Frequency (Fine)- The relationship between oscillator frequency and note pitch is de ned by the Coarse and Fine parameters. Fine sets the ratio in fractions of whole numbers, creating an inharmonic relationship. Osc Fixed Frequency On (Fixed)- In Fixed Mode, oscillators do not respond to note pitch but instead play a xed frequency. Osc Fixed Frequency (Freq)- This is the frequency of the oscillator in Hertz. This frequency is constant, regardless of note pitch.
20.3. OPERATOR 310 Osc Output Level
20.3. OPERATOR 311 Envelope Beat/Sync Rate (Repeat)- The envelope will be retriggered after this amount of beat-time, as long as it is still on. When retriggered, the envelope will move at the given attack rate from the current level to the peak level. Envelope Loop Time (Time)- If a note is still on after the end of the decay/sustain segment, the envelope will start again from its initial value. The time it takes to move from the sustain level to the initial value is de ned by this parameter.
Chapter 21 MIDI and Key Remote Control To liberate the musician from the mouse, most of Live's controls can be remote-controlled with an external MIDI controller and the computer keyboard. This chapter describes the details of mapping to the following speci c types of controls in Live's user interface: 1. Session View slots. Note that MIDI and computer key assignments are bound to the slots, not to the clips they contain. 2.
21.1. KEYBOARD REMOTE CONTROL 313 4. Continuous controls, like the mixer's volume, pan and sends. 5. The crossfader, the behavior of which is described in detail in the respective section of this manual. 21.1 Keyboard Remote Control The Key Map Mode Switch. Creating remote-control assignments for your computer keyboard is straightforward: 1. Enter Key Map Mode by pressing the KEY switch in the upper right-hand corner of the Live screen.
21.2. MIDI REMOTE CONTROL 314 Please be sure not to confuse keyboard remote-control functionality with Live's ability to use the keyboard as a pseudo-MIDI device that can generate MIDI notes from computer keystrokes for use with instruments. 21.2 MIDI Remote Control Live can be controlled remotely with an external MIDI device such as a keyboard or controller box. Live also supports Mackie Control, a topic that is covered in a separate chapter in this manual, for completely mouse-free program operation.
21.2. MIDI REMOTE CONTROL 315 The Active Devices table lists all available input and output MIDI devices. To use a device for remote mapping, make sure the corresponding switch in the Remote column is set to On. You can use any number of MIDI devices for remote mapping; Live will merge their incoming MIDI. When Live recognizes a MIDI message, the Control Bar's MIDI In indicator will ash. Selecting a MIDI Device for Remote Control.
21.2. MIDI REMOTE CONTROL 316 corner of the Live screen. Notice that assignable elements of the interface become highlighted. 2. Click on the Live control you wish to assign to MIDI. 3. Send a MIDI message by pressing a keyboard key, turning a knob, etc., on your MIDI controller.
21.2. MIDI REMOTE CONTROL 317 to which they are assigned. A value message of 127, for example, might turn the Volume control on a Live track all the way up or play a Session View clip. Speci cally, MIDI-controller messages from 0 to 127 have the following effects on controls in Live: Session View Slots- Controller values above 63 are treated like note-on messages. Controller values below 64 are treated like note-off messages. Switches- Controller values 64 and above turn the switch on.
21.2. MIDI REMOTE CONTROL 318 There are several types of relative controllers: Signed Bit, Signed Bit 2, Bin Offset and Twos Complement. Live can recognize the type of relative controller you are working with as you make remote-control assignments, and you can help this by moving the relative controller knob slowly to the left when you make the assignment.
21.3. RELATIVE SESSION VIEW NAVIGATION 21.3 319 Relative Session View Navigation Notice that you can make not only absolute mappings to individual slots and scenes, but also relative mappings to move the highlighted scene and operate on the highlighted clips. In Key or MIDI Map Mode, a strip of assignable controls appears below the Session grid: 4 3 1 2 The Relative Session Mapping Strip. 1. Assign these buttons to keys, notes or controllers to move the highlighted scene up and down. 2.
21.4. MAPPING TO CLIP VIEW CONTROLS 21.4 320 Mapping to Clip View Controls The Clip View displays the settings for whichever clip happens to be currently selected. It might also display settings for a clip multi-selection. In avoiding unpleasant musical surprises, it is important to remember that creating remote-control mappings for any control in the Clip View interface could potentially affect any clip in the Live Set.
Chapter 22 Mackie Control The comprehensive Mackie Control mixing surface puts all of Live's real-time creative power at your ngertips. Mackie Control allows for mouse-free program operation and navigation. Through the bi-directional connection between Live and the Mackie Control, any changes made in the program are re ected in the mixing surface, and vice versa. To establish this connection, open Live's MIDI/Sync Preferences. At the bottom of the window, you will nd the Remote Control Surfaces options.
322 surface. If selected from the lower chooser, the Mackie Control extension should be placed to the right of the main Mackie Control. The following sections will describe how to operate the Mackie Control with Live. You may nd the mixing chapter to be particularly useful in locating and understanding Live's track controls.
22.1. CHANNEL STRIPS 22.1 323 Channel Strips The Eight Channel Strips and the Master Strip. The Mackie Control's eight channel strips and master strip are automatically assigned to tracks in Live. Each of these strips has a set of track controls, including a motorized fader and a V-Pot, for controlling any number of track parameters.
22.1. CHANNEL STRIPS 324 controls allow reassigning the channel strips to access an unlimited number of Live tracks. 1. Arm By default, this arms the track for recording in exclusion of all other tracks. To arm the track nonexclusively (i.e., in addition to other tracks), hold down the Mackie Control's Control button while pressing this. Note that a Misc Preference setting in Live allows deactivating exclusive track arming.
22.2. V-POTS AND ASSIGNMENT SWITCHES 22.2 325 V-Pots and Assignment Switches The V-Pots and Assignment Switches. The Mackie Control's V-Pots have dual functionality in many cases, as they can be both rotated and pressed. When being used to adjust single parameters (those belonging to track devices, for example), pressing a V-Pot returns a control to its default value.
22.2. V-POTS AND ASSIGNMENT SWITCHES 326 V-Pot when dealing with a control that has various options ( lter type choosers, for example), selects the options in sequence. With controls having only two options (e.g., an on/off switch) pressing a V-Pot toggles the options. There are six assignment switches to the right of the channel strips on the Mackie Control. These select which parameters are displayed in the main display, and set these parameters to be available for control with the V-Pots.
22.2. V-POTS AND ASSIGNMENT SWITCHES 5. Previous/Next If, in any of the above assignment modes (especially with devices), more than one page of parameters is available, these buttons will scroll through the pages. LEDs above these switches illuminate when more pages are available before or after the current one.
22.3. BANK/CHANNEL AND FLIP/RETURN 22.3 328 Bank/Channel and Flip/Return Bank, Channel, Flip and Return Buttons. 1. Bank If more than eight tracks are being used in Live, these buttons can be used to page through the additional tracks and set them to the Mackie Control's eight channel strips.
22.3. BANK/CHANNEL AND FLIP/RETURN increments of eight (or more, if a fader extension is installed) to the right or left, respectively. To go to the rst/last page, hold down the Mackie Control's Shift button while pressing these. 2. Channel You can use the channel + and - buttons to scroll through the additional tracks singly, setting them to the Mackie Control's eight channel strips. To go to the rst/last track, hold down the Mackie Control's Shift button while pressing these. 3.
22.4. TRANSPORT 22.4 330 Transport The Transport Controls. 1. Previous/Next Locator Using these buttons, you can skip forward or backward through the Arrangement from locator to locator.
22.4. TRANSPORT 331 using these buttons. The LEDs above these buttons are illuminated when a previous/next locator is available in the respective direction. 2. Loop On/Off Toggles the Arrangement Loop switch on/off. 3. Punch-In/Punch-Out 4. Home 5. End Toggles Live's Punch-In/Punch-Out switches on/off. Jumps to the Arrangement start, 1.1.1. Jumps to the Arrangement end. 6. Rew/Forw When pressed once, these buttons will move the play position one beat backward/forward.
22.4. TRANSPORT In the Arrangement View, with the zoom button enabled (i.e., its LED illuminated), you can use the arrow buttons for zooming and scrolling in the currently selected track. When zoom is not enabled, the arrow buttons can be used to select tracks. 11. Scrub This res the currently selected scene in the Session View and has no effect in the Arrangement View. To stop all running clips, hold down the Mackie Control's Options button while pressing this. 12.
22.5. SOFTWARE-SPECIFIC CONTROLS 22.5 333 Software-Speci c Controls The Software-Speci c Controls. 1. Shift, Option, Control, Alt 2. SMPTE/Beats display. Used to access additional Mackie Control options.
22.5. SOFTWARE-SPECIFIC CONTROLS 3. Name/Value Switches the meters in the main display on/off. Note that these meters appear only when pan assignment mode is active. 4. F-Keys These keys can be mapped freely to controls in Live. 5. ViewArr (On) Toggles Arrangement View and Session View. When the Mackie Control's Shift key is held down, this sets the program focus to the Arrangement View or Session View, whichever is currently on screen. 6. ToggleDetail (Rec/Rdy) Toggles Clip View and Track View.
Chapter 23 Synchronization and ReWire 23.1 Synchronizing via MIDI The MIDI protocol de nes two ways to synchronize sequencers, both of which are supported by Live. Both protocols work with the notion of a sync master, which delivers a sync signal that is tracked by the sync slave(s). MIDI Clock. MIDI Clock works like a metronome ticking at a fast rate. The rate of the incoming ticks is tempo-dependent: Changing the tempo at the sync master (e.g.
23.1. SYNCHRONIZING VIA MIDI 336 (subdivisions of a second). Live will interpret a Timecode message as a position in the Arrangement. Timecode messages carry no meter-related information; when slaving Live to another sequencer using MIDI Timecode, you will have to adjust the tempo manually. Tempo changes cannot be tracked. Detailed MIDI Timecode preferences are explained later in this chapter. With respect to MIDI Timecode, Live can only act as a MIDI sync slave, not a master. 23.1.
23.1. SYNCHRONIZING VIA MIDI 337 Setting up Live as a MIDI Slave. Then, activate external sync either by switching on the EXT button in the Control Bar or using the External Sync command in the Options menu. The upper indicator LED next to the EXT button will ash if Live receives useable sync messages. The External Sync Switch.
23.2. CONNECTING VIA REWIRE 338 format that is used for display in the Arrangement View: Go to the Options menu, and then access the Time Ruler Format sub-menu. The MIDI Timecode Offset setting is also only relevant if MIDI Timecode is chosen from the Sync Type menu. You can specify a SMPTE time offset using this control. Live will interpret this value as the Arrangement's start time. 23.1.
23.2. CONNECTING VIA REWIRE 339 The ReWire technology, developed by Propellerhead Software, provides ReWire-compatible programs with: common access to the audio hardware; shared transport functionality; synchronization to audio word clock and song positioning; exchange of audio streams.
23.2. CONNECTING VIA REWIRE 23.2.2 340 Running Live in ReWire Slave Mode If you have not used Live yet, please launch Live so that it can install its ReWire engine in your system. Live will run in ReWire slave mode if it detects a running ReWire master application upon startup. Therefore, always start the ReWire master application rst, and then start Live. Likewise, you will rst have to quit Live, then the ReWire master application.
23.2. CONNECTING VIA REWIRE If you cannot seem to nd an answer there, please contact the Ableton support team3 . 3 http://www.ableton.
Chapter 24 Computer Audio Resources and Strategies Real-time audio processing is a demanding task for general-purpose computers, which were likely designed to run spreadsheets and surf the Internet. An application like Live requires a powerful CPU and a fast hard disk. This section will provide some insight on these issues, and should help you avoid and solve problems with running audio on a computer. 24.
24.1. MANAGING THE CPU LOAD 343 speed include the processor's clock rate (e.g., speed in MHz or GHz), architecture, memory cache performance (how ef ciently the processor can grab data from memory) and system bus bandwidth the computer's pipeline through which all data must pass. For this reason, many people involved with pro audio use computers that are optimized for musical applications. The CPU Load Meter.
24.1. MANAGING THE CPU LOAD 344 change. 24.1.2 CPU Load from Tracks and Devices Generally, every track and device being used in Live incurs some amount of CPU load. However, Live is smart and avoids wasting CPU cycles on tracks and devices that do not contribute anything useful. For example, dragging devices into a Live Set that is not running does not signi cantly increase the CPU load. The load increases only as you start playing clips or feed audio into the effects.
24.2. MANAGING THE DISK LOAD 345 available. Note that track freeze is not part of Live's Undo history, but executing the Edit menu's Undo command to undo an action that affected a frozen clip will automatically unfreeze the respective track. Once any processor issues have been resolved (or you have upgraded your machine!), you can always select a frozen track and choose Unfreeze Track from the Edit menu to change device or clip settings.
24.2. MANAGING THE DISK LOAD 346 proportional to the number of audio channels being written or read simultaneously. A track playing a stereo sample causes more disk traf c than a track playing a mono sample. The Disk Overload Indicator. The Disk Overload indicator ashes when the disk was unable to read or write audio quickly enough. When recording audio, this condition causes a gap in the recorded sample; when playing back, you will hear dropouts.
Chapter 25 Live Keyboard Shortcuts 25.
25.2. ACCESSING MENUS 348 Windows Hide/Show Mixer Hide/Show Crossfader Open the Preferences Close the Preferences Macintosh Ctrl Alt M Alt M Ctrl Alt F Alt F N/A N/A , Esc 25.2 Accessing Menus Under Windows, you can access each menu by pressing Alt and the rst letter of the F for File , for instance). While a menu is open, you can use: menu ( Alt to navigate the menu items; to open the neighboring menu; Return 25.3 to choose a menu item.
25.4. BROWSING 25.4 349 Browsing In addition to the shortcuts shown here, editing shortcuts can also be used in the Browser. Windows Activate Browser Search Mode Load Selected Item From Browser Ctrl Macintosh F F Return Return or Double-Click Scroll Up/Down Open/Close Folders Preview Selected File Set Selected Folder as Browser Root or Double-Click Return Return 25.
25.6. EDITING 25.6 350 Editing Windows Cut Copy Paste Duplicate Delete Undo Redo Rename Select All Macintosh Ctrl X X Ctrl C C Ctrl V V Ctrl D D Delete Ctrl Z Ctrl Z Z Z Ctrl R R Ctrl A A By holding down an additional modi er key, some of the above commands can also be applied to: Windows Clips and Slots Across all Tracks Time Across all Tracks The Selected Part of the Envelope Alt Macintosh Alt can be used to move from one track or scene to another while renaming. 25.
25.8. SESSION VIEW COMMANDS Move Start Marker to Position Nudge Loop Left/Right Move Loop By Loop Length Double/Halve Loop Length Shorten/Lengthen Loop Select Material in Loop 351 Windows Click Macintosh Click Ctrl Ctrl Click Loop Brace L or Ctrl Click Loop Brace L or 25.8 Session View Commands See also the editing commands.
25.9. ARRANGEMENT VIEW COMMANDS 25.9 352 Arrangement View Commands The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Split Clip at Selection Consolidate Selection into Clip Loop Selection Insert Silence Pan Left/Right of Selection Unfold all Tracks Scroll Display to Follow Playback 25.
25.11. COMMANDS FOR BREAKPOINT ENVELOPES 25.11 353 Commands for Breakpoint Envelopes The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the Envelope Editor and Arrangement View. See also the editing commands. Windows Finer Resolution for Dragging Enable Dragging Over Breakpoints 25.
25.13. ZOOMING, DISPLAY AND SELECTIONS 25.13 354 Zooming, Display and Selections Windows Zoom In Zoom Out Drag/Click to Append to a Selection Click to Add Adjacent Clips to Multi-Selection Click to Add Nonadjacent Clips to a MultiSelection Follow (Auto-Scroll) Pan Left/Right of Selection 25.14 Macintosh + + - - Ctrl Ctrl F F Ctrl Alt Alt Clip View Sample Display The shortcuts for zooming and loop/region settings also work in the Sample Display.
25.15. CLIP VIEW MIDI EDITOR 25.15 355 Clip View MIDI Editor The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region settings also work in the MIDI Editor. Windows Quantize Scroll Editor Vertically Scroll Editor Horizontally Copy Note Change Velocity From Note Editor Add/Delete Note in Edit Mode Scroll Display to Follow Playback Move Clip Region with Start Marker 25.
25.17. GLOBAL QUANTIZATION 25.17 356 Global Quantization Windows Sixteenth-Note Quantization Eighth-Note Quantization Quarter-Note Quantization 1-Bar Quantization Quantization Off 25.18 Macintosh Ctrl 6 6 Ctrl 7 7 Ctrl 8 8 Ctrl 9 9 Ctrl 0 0 Working with Sets and the Program Windows New Live Set Open Live Set Close Live Set Save Live Set Save Live Set As...
25.19. WORKING WITH PLUG-INS AND DEVICES 25.19 357 Working with Plug-Ins and Devices Windows Show/Hide Plug-In Windows Open Second/Multiple Windows with Plug-In Edit Button Open Mac Keystroke Plug-In Window with Plug-In Edit Button Group/Ungroup Devices Activate/Deactivate All Devices in Group Click to Append Devices to a Selected Device Load Selected Device From Browser Ctrl P G G Device Activator Device Activator Ctrl N/A Ctrl Alt Return or Double-Click 25.
25.20. USING THE CONTEXT MENU 358 special grid marker commands for directing Auto-Warp; detailed options for zoom-adaptive and xed grid line width; and copying and pasting for Operator's envelopes and oscillators.
Chapter 26 Index 359
Index A Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Arrangement View Arrangement Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Arrangement Position elds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Arrangement View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 and copying to Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 and Session View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 grid snapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Audio Units Plug-ins, using . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see copy protection Auto Filter effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Auto Pan effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Auto-Hide Plug-In Windows option . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Auto-Open Plug-In Windows option . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Auto-Warp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Clip Launch button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Clip Name eld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Clip Nudge buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Clip Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 for zooming/scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Clip Quantization chooser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Clip Record button . . . . .
INDEX Cut Scenes command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Cut Time command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 D Decoding Cache preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Default Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 and recording clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 for clip settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Delay Compensation option . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices Envelope Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90, 223 envelopes . . . . . . see automation, see clip envelopes Envelopes box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90, 223 EQ Four effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 EQ Three effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Erosion effect . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX and MIDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 lter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 global parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Link button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 pan and volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 sample slots and controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 saturator and envelope . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Loop/Warp Short Samples preference . . . . . . . . . . 123 M Mackie Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321 mapping to MIDI/keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41, 314 and recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Master Out chooser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Master track. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 Metronome switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX O of ine clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Ogg les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see samples Open/Open Recent command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Operator instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 aliasing and Tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 and CPU resources . . . . . . . . .
INDEX for clip launching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 for MIDI notes during recording . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Quantize menu command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 quick-chooser buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 R RAM Mode switch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 Random effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Re-Pitch Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX and recording MIDI as audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 and ReWire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 and sidechain inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 between tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 for creating submixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 with external synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 S sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX Set 1.1.1 Here command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Set Locator button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Set Locator command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 exporting and importing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 saving a template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 saving self-contained . . . . . .
INDEX Track title bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Track View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 activating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 audio and MIDI in. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 automation in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX views, working with see View menu commands, see View Selector button, see View Show/Hide button Vinyl Distortion effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Volume control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Volume quick-chooser button . . . . see quick-chooser buttons VST Plug-ins, using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see devices W Warp ... BPM From Here command . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Warp As ...-Bar Loop command . . . . . . . . . .
