Manual ableton live 5

Live comes with a selection of custom-designed, built-in instruments. The Working with Instruments and Effects chapter see Chapter 19 explains the basics of using instruments in Live. These routings, albeit potentially confusing, enable many valuable creative and technical options. Via the mixer, inter-track routing can work two ways: Track A is set up to send its output signal to Track B.

This is part 4 of the 4 part video series of chapter 4 of the ableton live manual. There is more talking than showing going on. I will be discussing a few of. In addition, both audio and MIDI tracks have a manual delay setting, adjustable in. This means that any Live Set can serve as a pool of sounds for any other, suggesting creative reuse and crossover.

You can export a selection of Session View clips as a new Live Set by dragging them to the browser. Live will use these settings as the initialized, default state for new Live Sets.

You can use this to pre-configure:. These Sets will then function as templates: they will load with the configuration you saved, but with the name Untitled. To view a list of the files referenced by the current Live Set, choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, click the Manage Set button, and then click the View Files button. Live will display one line for each file used by the Live Set. To list all clips or instruments in the Live Set where the file is actually used, click the triangle to expand the line.

Here is what you can do:. A Live Project is a folder containing Live-related files that belong together. Consider, for example, work on a piece of music: You start out with an empty Live Set; you record audio and thereby create new sample files; you drag in samples from collections; you save different versions of the Live Set along the way so that you can go back and compare.

When you save a Live Set under a new name or in a new folder location, Live will create a new project folder and store the Live Set there — unless you are saving the Live Set into an existing Live Project.

We have recorded some audio into a new Live Set. The Desktop is available in the browser because we have previously added it as a user folder. Here is the result as displayed by the Live browser:. Next, we record another track into our Project. We save the modified version of the Live Set under a new name so that we do not lose the previous version. As this has nothing to do with our tango dabblings, we decide to save it outside the Tango Project folder, say on the Desktop.

Live creates a new project folder named Samba Project next to Tango Project. So far we have seen how to create Live Projects and save versions of Live Sets into them.

How do we open a Project? Simply by opening any of its contained Live Sets. Note that the new project folder has no Samples folder yet.

You can prevent this by collecting external files see 5. A note for users of older Live versions : Live does not allow overwriting Live Sets that were created by older major versions to prevent compatibility problems. Doing this will insure that the newly saved Live Sets reside in project folders. By default, new instrument and effect presets are stored in your current Project.

At times however, it may make more sense to save a preset to another folder or to your User Library, so that you can access them from other Projects.

You can drag a preset between folders after saving it see When saving presets that contain samples to a new location, Live may copy the samples depending on the settings in the Collect Files on Export chooser in the Library Preferences. You can then type in a new name for the device or confirm the one suggested by Live with Enter. Click on the Status Bar message to access these. This is actually a shortcut for choosing the Manage Files command from the File menu, clicking the Manage Set button, and then clicking the Locate button found in the Missing Files section.

The File Manager will present you with a list of the missing files and associated controls. To manually fix a broken file reference, locate the missing file in the browser, drag it over to the File Manager and drop it on the respective line in the list of missing files. Note that Live will not care if the file you offer is really the file that was missing. Live offers a convenient automatic search function for repairing file references. To reveal detailed options for guiding the automatic search function, click the neighboring triangular-shaped button.

For each missing file, the automatic search function may find any number of candidates. To prevent a Live Set from containing broken file references, Live provides the option of collecting i. This is accomplished via the File Manager:. Separated by location other Projects, the User Library, installed by factory Packs, and elsewhere — sample collections from external drives, for example , the File Manager provides:.

Note that this can cause a lot of copying, especially if your Live Set uses large multisample collections! When you save Live Clips, device presets or tracks by dragging them into the Browser, Live manages the copying of associated files based on the selection made in the Collect Files on Export chooser in the Library Preferences.

This chooser provides the following options:. Instead of having to deal with problems while you are in a creative mode, you might prefer putting aside some dedicated housekeeping time to solve all the problems in one go. Remember to click the Collect and Save button at the bottom of the File Manager when you are finished.

Otherwise your changes will be discarded. You can then review them and decide to delete them individually or collectively. If not, the file is regarded as unused — even if other Projects or programs still use it. Clicking the Show button makes the browser list the unused files; there, you can preview samples see 5. Note you can also find the unused files from the Library: choose the Manage Files command from the File menu, then click the Manage Library button, and then see the Unused Files section.

Live inspects each Project individually and labels a file unused even if another Projects in the same folder does use that file. To prevent losses, you may want to first collect the files into their respective Projects and then purge the Projects of unused files. Creating a new Pack from a Project does not affect the Project.

If you want the Project deleted, you can delete it using the browser. Live employs lossless compression techniques to minimize the file size of Packs.

Depending on the audio materials in a Project, this saves up to 50 percent in file size. To unpack a Pack i. A Project is automatically created whenever you save a Live Set, except when you save it into a preexisting Project. You can then use the File Management tools, collect any referenced samples, etc. This will usually be the Project that was created when you saved the first version of the Live Set.

If a Project contains multiple Live Sets it will only collect one copy of any samples used by the various versions, which can save disk space and help with organization. You can save Live Sets anywhere you want, but saving to pre-existing Project folders can cause problems, and should be reserved for special cases.

The Browser. The Edit Button in the Browser. Editing Shown and Hidden Collections in the Browser. The Done Button in the Browser. Categories The Categories labels show all items of a given type, regardless of where they are in your library.

The Categories section is organized as follows: Sounds — all of your Instrument Racks see Chapter 20 and instrument presets, organized by the type of sound they make rather than by their devices. Drums — all of your drum presets. This includes full drum kits, which are available as Drum Racks, as well as single drum hits, which are delivered as Instrument Racks.

Clips — all of your Live Clips. Samples — all of your raw audio samples. Grooves — all of your Grooves see Chapter Templates — all of your template Live Sets see 5. It shows search results for every section of the browser in a single list. Places The Places labels show the contents of folders on your hard drives. Presets, samples, and Live Clips installed by Packs will also appear in the appropriate Categories labels. The Packs label also shows updates for installed Packs, as well as additional Packs that you can install.

Please refer to Downloading and Installing Packs in the Browser see 5. User Library — the User Library is the default location for items you save yourself, including default presets, grooves, your personalized Racks and device presets, your own samples, Live Clips, etc.

Files that you save to your User Library will also be available in the appropriate Categories labels. Current Project — all of the files that are contained in the currently active Project see 5. Close and open folders, or move between the sidebar and content pane with the left and right arrow keys. Downloadable Packs Appear in the Browser. Press the Download Icon to Download a Pack.

To resume a paused download, press the download icon again. When the download is complete, you can install the Pack by pressing the Install button. Press the Install Button to Install a Pack. Show or Hide the Size of Packs in the Browser. Show or Hide Downloadable Packs in the Browser. Previewing Files Live allows you to preview samples, clips, and instrument presets in the browser before they are imported into the program.

The Preview Switch. You can select Live Clips in the browser to load them into the Preview Tab. The Preview Volume Knob. Adding Clips from the Browser There are several ways to add clips to a Live Set: Files can be dragged and dropped from the browser into tracks in the Session or Arrangement View. Dragging and dropping material from the browser into the space to the right of Session View tracks or below Arrangement View tracks will create a new track and place the new clip s there.

Dropping a Clip to Create a New Track. In the Session View, double-clicking or pressing Enter on a file in the browser will automatically create a new track to the right of the other tracks and load it with the clip.

Hot-Swap Mode In addition to the drag-and-drop method of loading files from the browser, Live offers a Hot-Swap Mode to reduce your mouse travel. Preferences for the Decoding Cache. If you are monitoring the Master output, you can be sure that the rendered file will contain exactly what you hear. All Individual Tracks — the post-fader signal at the output of each individual track, including return tracks and MIDI tracks with instruments. Live will create a separate sample for each track. All samples will have the same length, making it easy to align them in other multitrack programs.

Selected Tracks Only — this is identical to the All Individual Tracks option, but only renders tracks that were selected prior to opening the Export dialog.

The other Selection fields determine the start time and length of the exported material: Render Start — sets the position at which rendering will begin. Render Length — determines the length of the rendered sample.

Rendering Options Audio Rendering Options. The Export dialog offers several audio rendering options: Include Return and Master Effects — If this is activated, Live will individually render each selected track with any return tracks used by that track, as well as effects used in the Master track.

This is especially useful when rendering material for a live performance, or when providing stems to a mixing engineer or remix artist. Render as Loop — If this is activated, Live will create a sample that can be used as a loop. For example, suppose your Live Set uses a delay effect.

If Render as Loop is on, Live will go through the rendering process twice: The first pass will not actually write samples to disk, but add the specified delay effect.

Convert to Mono — If this is activated, Live will create a mono file instead of a stereo file. Normalize — If this is activated, the sample resulting from the render process will be normalized i.

Create Analysis File — If this is activated, Live will create an. If you intend to use the new sample in Live, check this option.

If you export at a sample rate that is lower than your current project sample rate, Live will first export at the current project sample rate and then downsample the file in a second step using a high-quality process. Note that this may take a few moments.

Upload Audio to SoundCloud — If activated, a helper application will launch that will allow you to upload your exported audio file to SoundCloud.

Encoding Options Audio Encoding Options. Encode PCM — If activated, a lossless audio file is created. Bit Depth, Dither Options — If you are rendering at a bit depth lower than bit, choose one of the dither modes. Dithering adds a small amount of noise to rendered audio, but minimizes artifacts when reducing the bit depth. Rectangular mode introduces an even smaller amount of dither noise, but at the expense of additional quantization error. The three Pow-r modes offer successively higher amounts of dithering, but with the noise pushed above the audible range.

Note that dithering is a procedure that should only be applied once to any given audio file. In particular, the Pow-r modes should never be used for any material that will be sent on to a further mastering stage — these are for final output only. Please note that the Pow-r modes are not available in the Intro and Lite Editions. If neither toggle is enabled, the Export button will be disabled.

Note: video rendering is not available in the Intro and Lite Editions. In addition to settings for audio rendering, the Export dialog provides additional options for rendering video: Create Video — If this is activated, a video file will be created in the same directory as your rendered audio. Note that this option is only enabled if you have video clips in the Arrangement View. Also, it is not possible to only render a video file — enabling video rendering will always produce a video in addition to rendered audio.

Video Encoder — This chooser allows you to select the encoder to use for the video rendering. The choices you have here depend on the encoders you have installed. Video Encoder Settings — This button opens the settings window for the selected encoder.

Note that the settings options will vary depending on the encoder you have chosen. Certain encoders have no user-configurable options. In this case, the Edit button will be disabled. Real-Time Rendering Normally, rendering happens as an offline process. Skip — By default, Live will wait for ten seconds before starting a real-time render.

After the render has begun, the dialog changes to show a recording progress bar: Real-Time Rendering in Progress. Auto-Restart on drop-outs — Rendering in real-time requires somewhat more CPU power than non-real-time rendering, and in some cases drop-outs small gaps or glitches in the audio can occur.

Live detects when drop-outs happen, and rendering will start again from the beginning if the Auto-Restart option is enabled. Restart — manually restarts the rendering process. Cancel — stops the rendering process and deletes the partially rendered file.

A Live Clip in the Browser. Unfolding a Set to Reveal its Contents. In addition to unfolding Sets, you can further unfold the tracks within the Sets to access the individual Session View clips that were used on the track: Revealing the Session View Clips Contained in a Set.