User's Manual

• Up and Down Buttons

Press the Up and Down arrow buttons (left of the pads) to move vertically in Ableton Live’s Session View. These

buttons move the selection ring up or down by one scene at a time and allow you to launch, record or stop many more

clips and scenes in your Live Set.

• Soft Keys

Another way to directly select a track/s within the selection ring is to use the eight soft keys (beneath the screens and

above the pads). This is sometimes faster than using the Track Left and Track Right buttons. As you would expect,

these soft keys correspond to the tracks in order (left to right). For example, if tracks 1-8 are within the selection ring,

the left-most soft button selects track 1, the next from the left selects track 2, and so on.

• The Screen Label

The screen label (highlighted with a red box in the image above) provides a quick overview of which controls currently

display across the screens. When a Live device changes, or the parameters of a device are banked through, this label

will update to indicate what you can currently control. (More on viewing and editing Live devices in the Options sec-

tion).

• Control Notications

At the bottom of the notication screen is an area that gives you instant feed-back on the changes you make to certain

parameters. This feedback is a ‘pop-up’ style notication only appears when making changes and disappears again

after a brief time. In the image above, the track containing the instrument ‘TR-909’ has had its input monitoring mode

changed to ‘In’. This notication area will also show volume changes when a fader is moves.

iii. Pads

• Controlling Clips and Scenes (formerly Clip and Scene Launch/Stop)

By default, the SL MkIII’s 8x2 pads represent clips in Ableton Live’s Session View. More specically, the pads show

which clips - or empty clip slots - are within the selection ring, and therefore which clips you can record, launch or stop.

If a track is armed, available clip slots turn pads red. Press these red pads to begin recording to them. Press them

again to stop clip recording, and start playback.

A clip that has been recorded, and is either ready to launch or playing, will pulse green; a clip that has been record-

ed but is idle will take the colour of its track. In other words, press any coloured pad (assuming it is not bright red) to

launch playback.

Press the play button (green right arrow button) to the right of a pad row to launch a scene (i.e. all clips in the same

row). This play button, as well as available clips, will ash until the scene successfully launches.

To stop a clip on an unarmed track, press the dim (unlit) pad above or below on the same track.

To stop a clip on an armed track, or to stop all clips, rst hold the Shift button (upper-left of the controller). This turns

the lower row of pads and the lower scene launch button red. Pressing a red pad will stop the clip on that track, and

pressing the red play button will stop all playing clips (equivalent to how the ‘stop all clips’ button acts in Live).

• Grid

Just above and to the left of the pads lies the Grid button. Pressing Grid changes the pads to a ‘drum view’. Also,

notice how the Grid button turns green. This view is ideal for playing Ableton Live’s Drum Racks since it allows you to

use pads to play drums or samples, which some producers nd to be more ‘drummer-friendly’ than using a keyboard.

The leftmost pad on the bottom row triggers C1. The pad to its right triggers C#2, and so on until you reach the top

row’s rightmost pad, which triggers D#2. To access lower or higher octaves click the green up/down buttons directly

left of the pad area.

With a Drum Rack on a track, pads containing audio samples will appear yellow. The last played pad will be blue. Mut-

ed pads turn orange, while pads in solo mode take on a purple colour. Finally, empty pads will be dark.

Press the Grid button again to return pads to their clip-launch capabilities.