Comments on: Ableton Live 8: Group Clips with Track Groups

By: Stu

Stu — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:46:29 +0000

3 little things that I agree could make a big difference =
follow actions for whole scenes/groups,
midi map fold/unfold group (unfold all function),
Label a group launch cell

I hope these appear in a minor update.

sub groups could be cool but I imagine a resource headache, I can live without I think.

BTW Thanks god the did decide to do sub racks, thats a killer feature!!

PS re:follow actions I wish we could specify no of loops instead of bars.

By: organofqwerty

organofqwerty — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:57:05 +0000

so, angstrom, i am not one of the “3 Ableton users know where the hierarchic navigator for the racks is.” care to share your knowledge?

By: garyboozy

garyboozy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:08:18 +0000

@Fauve
just select the adjecent scene and ‘duplicate’

By: Paul N

Paul N — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:48:37 +0000

This is a great trick. I often work with four subgroups in live and discovered this feature of 8 straightway. I am well relieved to no longer be bussing things over and keeping the group bus armed all the time.

My step further with this technique is kind of a homespun digital take on Michael Brauer’s self-dubbed “Brauerization.” What it works out to be in my case is that I use my liquidmix (32) on my four main busses w/ various stereo comps and eqs for bus compression/ overall definition eqing. I run the whole deal in 88.2 and it just sounds brilliant.

One thing I am curious about- I know there was some amount of partnering between focusrite and ableton- but had wondered if the fact that my liquidmix seems to be performing even better in the new version was a coincidence of general improvement or the fruition of said partnership… Anyone know?

By: Fauve

Fauve — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:27:23 +0000

The most annoying thing to me is the fact that you can’t copy/paste group clips. If you want to duplicate a group clip, you’ll have to select all the clips in the group… silly, innit?

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:50:42 +0000

Right, but in fairness, this is why Live isn’t the same as other DAWs. Live is typically loading samples into those slots, and instantiating plug-ins so that they’re instantly available, so there are implications of nesting that there may not be in other hosts. Not saying one is better than the other, just that it demonstrates there isn’t one “right” way of doing things – it depends on the task.

By: stk

stk — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:36:34 +0000

Re: groups within groups.
Reaper handles this in a really cool and powerful fashion with its (infinitely nestable) folder tracks.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:53:05 +0000

Well, having that kind of hierarchy can cause problems. And there are questions in terms of resource management, etc.

I’m sticking by my critique; at the very least, you might want to be able to label those different groups of clips, because it’s the ONLY kind of slot in a Session that can’t be labeled, and it’s not terribly useful looking at a bunch of colored stripes when things are collapsed.

By: Angstrom

Angstrom — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:51:12 +0000

re: groups within groups.
‘a source close to Ableton’ told me that they are averse to this sort of thing and actually regretted allowing racks within racks.
Yep, I know that sounds crazy.
The thing is it does make a crazy kind of sense because they don’t really have an established system to manage deep racks OR deep groups. If that management system were to appear then I think they might change their minds on this.
I think only 3 Ableton users know where the hierarchic navigator for the racks is. ;)

By: Jerome LeBel

Jerome LeBel — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:33:01 +0000

I use it for “crates” when im djing. You can drag in drop a group to save it on your hd. So I have different crates with different BPM, keys, styles…