How to be a Live Power User

Ableton Live users understand that the DAW is essentially one huge performance instrument designed for compositional speed and creativity. However, in order to work faster with Ableton’s grey-hued host, you need to push past its initial learning curve and spend some time getting to grips with its myriad of advanced features, tricks and under-the-hood hacks – hence why we’ve put together three pages of power tips to help you fast-track your skills to ‘ninja’ level!

MIDI tips

Stacking MIDI effects such as Live’s Chord and Arpeggiator will generate complex chord and riff ideas from a single MIDI note input, but it’s easy to change a parameter and lose an inspiring musical idea. Get around this by routing the MIDI signal into a new MIDI track, then record the new MIDI data into a new clip.

We all know that Live allows you to stretch and manipulate audio clips, but did you know that you can do similar tricks with MIDI data? Simply highlight your MIDI notes, then drag the MIDI Stretch Markers at the top of the MIDI Note Editor.

To make snare rolls more interesting, give each snare note a different velocity value, load Live’s Velocity plug-in on the channel, then automate the Out Low dial up over the course of a breakdown to bring up the level of the quieter notes and ramp up the intensity.

When recording MIDI into a new clip in the Session View, don’t punch the space bar to stop recording – instead, hit the clip’s play button to stop recording and automatically quantise the loop to the nearest bar. This also keeps the clip and project playing continuously, so you can keep jamming without stopping/starting.

Audio Effect Rack tips

To use a Rack’s macro knob as a ‘kill switch’, assign a device’s Device On (ie, bypass button) to a spare Macro knob. Enter the Macro Mapping Editor and set Min to 1 and Max to 0. Now, when the Macro knob is set to fully left (ie, a value of 0), the effect is bypassed. As soon as the macro is raised to a value higher than 1, the device is engaged. Assign the filter’s Frequency to the same Macro and you can simultaneously activate the filter and sweep the cutoff.

To make a quick and easy mid/ side matrix, load an Audio Effect Rack on a channel and create two parallel Chains. Place a Utility on each Chain, then set one’s Width value to 0% and the other to 200%. You can now load any effect you like on each Chain independently, and process the mid and side of a signal separately.

When using Live’s Utility plug-in for volume fades and automation, note that it only goes down to -36dB. If you need to automate a signal down to silence, load an empty Audio Effect Rack and automate the Chain Volume amount, which goes down to -inf dB.

When using Live’s Reverb device, the Wet/Dry parameter turns the dry signal down, altering the mix balance. Instead, set up an Audio Effect Rack and load a 100% wet Reverb on a parallel Chain in parallel to an empty (ie, dry) Chain.

Drum Racks tips

Toggle the I/O button on a Drum Rack’s bottom left. Now you can define which MIDI note is received and played back, as well as assign a pad to a Choke Group, so one sound will cut off another when it’s triggered. Also, use the Auto To drop-down to route a Chain’s signal out of the Drum Rack out to other channels in your mix.

Speed up sample browsing by creating a separate ‘128’ Sampler for all your favourite kicks, snares etc (Google ‘Ableton 128s’ for more), then drop these inside a Drum Rack and assign the sample selector Macros to the Drum Rack’s main Macros. Voila – all your favourite drum samples can be programmed and auditioned in a flash within one single ‘kit selector’ Drum Rack!

Get to grips with Live’s myriad of advanced features, tricks and underthe-hood hacks