If you’re using Ableton Live 8, you’ve hopefully already discovered the joys of Track Groups. Track grouping is a welcome feature in any DAW, but in Live, the mixer-centric Session View can easily get unruly with endless columns of vertical tracks.

I wanted to share some discoveries about Track Groups, including what I thought was a big realization about how they worked with clips that turned out not to be as exciting as I thought.

To group tracks, select multiple tracks first (click one, then shift-click the last one), right-click (ctrl-click on Mac), and choose Group Tracks. The result – what’s basically a submix:

• You can save space by collapsing tracks in your view, clicking the triangle at the top of the Group
• You can add insert effects to the whole Group, and signal will be routed through that entire chain (making them like a quick send)
• You can control the whole “submix” Group at once using the Group’s mixer parameters

No surprise there. Here’s the surprise.

If your musical production sense tends to gravitate towards the clicky, minimal, and weird, you will appreciate the results you can achieve with Ableton Live by employing a few well-placed tricks. Gustavo Bravetti–the Uruguay-based producer / DJ / maker / tinkerer / entrepreneur we interviewed last year–walks us through his process of glitching out Live with a few tweaks, namely some well-placed volume envelopes, using follow actions and legato and then adding swing to groove-ify the whole thing.

Ed.: Okay, this isn’t necessarily helping Live shake its reputation as just this — a wonderland for glitchers. You really can make stuff that isn’t glitchy in Live, and that new compressor and mix engine sound fantastic. But you still have to glitch it out every now and then. It’s good, clean (erm, digitally dirty) fun. 4-bit 4ever. -PK