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5. How the Session and Arrangement Views interact

1

We’ve seen that Live works in the two separate Session and Arrangement Views, but how do these two different views interact? To find out, here’s a collection of tracks, each containing several clips. We’ve arranged them into horizontal rows, or Scenes, which we’ve renamed and colour-coded. Each Scene represents a different song section.

2

We’re going to transfer a spontaneous performance of these clips and scenes over into the Arrangement View by recording it in real time. First, make sure all tracks are unarmed by clicking any active record arm buttons to disable them. This prevents any accidental overrecording of existing clips when you drop into record to capture your performance.

3

To start recording your performance immediately, click the Session View’s Arrangement Record button and start triggering clips. However, if you hold down Shift when you click Record, or turn off Start Playback with Record in Preferences » Record/Warp/Launch, Live will wait for you to launch your first clip or Scene before recording begins.

4

You can launch clips and Scenes in any combination you like. The clips will fire off according to the Global Quantize setting set in the menu next to the metronome. Here we’re set to 1 bar, so as long as you hit the launch button at any time during the bar before the downbeat you want the clip to come in on, your next clip will come in perfectly on time.

5

If you launch a Scene, all the clips in that horizontal row will play at once, but you can add clips from other rows into the mix by clicking their launch buttons as the Scene plays. If you make any changes to a device parameter or mixer setting, these moves will also be recorded into the Arrangement View as automation.

6

Once you’ve finished recording your ideas, hit the Spacebar to stop playback, then switch to the Arrangement View using either the Tab key or the View switcher buttons. You’ll see your performance, including all triggered clips, cuts and automation moves, laid out horizontally in a full arrangement, ready to be tweaked and edited.

7

At this point, all the tracks in your arrangement will be greyed out and won’t play. To enable playback of your captured performance in the Arrangement View, click the orange Back to Arrangement button in the top right corner. The Arrangement View now has priority over the Session View, and Live will play back its contents as displayed.

8

Launching Session View clips while the Arrangement View is playing will disable the tracks containing those clips in the Arrangement View. The Back to Arrangement button reappears to indicate that the current playback state is different from that in the Arrangement View. Click the triangle buttons to the right of the Arrangement tracks to re-enable them.

9

To move clips from the Session View to the Arrangement View, select them and drag them over to the Arrangement View switcher button. As you hold them over the button, Live will switch to the Arrangement View, where you can place them anywhere on the timeline. This also works in the opposite direction, from the Arrangement View to the Session View.