Playback: Session, Scenes, and Arrangement

Back To Arrangement

You must understand the previous sentence to move forward. Here is why: Should the Session View ever be asked to play a clip that is not in the Arrangement View, the Session View’s clip will simply take over the track. When this occurs, it really isn’t a problem a tall. Any overridden Arrangement tracks will be greyed out in the Arrangement View.

Additionally, Live gives us a way to see that the two views are not in agreement by turning the “back to arrangement” button red. Clicking this button (in either view) will return Live to the state reflected in the Arrangement View.

Playing and Stopping

Okay. So far, so good. But now consider this: with two views that are capable of playing clips, the very concept of playing and stopping gets a bit tricker, doesn’t it? What if you want to stop a clip in the Session View while your Arrangement clips are playing? Or what if you’ve launched a bunch of Session clips, they took over the Arrangement, but now you want your Arrangement back?

Here are the rules. We’ll say it, then we’ll show it. Read this and then look at the looping demonstration below.

Control Bar: Play and Stop This plays both views. In the event of a conflict, whatever played last wins.

• The play button in the control bar generally plays clips in the Arrangement — ****unless there aren’t any.
• If you’ve launched any clips or scenes in the Session View, the play and stop buttons will activate/deactivate the Session View clips instead.
• Any clips not overridden in the Arrangement View will play/stop with the control bar buttons (as long as they fall under the position of the Arrangement View insert marker).

Session View: Clip Play and Stop Clips and scenes are played and stopped independently in Session View.

• The little triangle on each clip plays that clip.
• Empty clip slots don’t have play triangles; they have little stop squares. Click any one of those, on an active Session View track, to stop that track’s playback.
• This behavior is identical for playing and stopping scenes.
• The stop square on the master (scene) track is called the “stop all clips” button. Guess what it does? (It stops all clips).

Reverting to Arrange (or Session) Sometimes conflict is good. But to resolve it (and just play what’s in the Arrangement View), ****we have a button for that.

• Live will display a red back to arrangement button (in either view) whenever the state of the Arrangement is different than what you are currently playing. Click this and the Arrangement position will pickup without missing a beat.

• You can always revert back to the state of the Arrangement on a track by track basis by clicking the small arrows on the left side of the Arrangement.

  

• You can also think of the stop all clips button (on the master track in Session View) as a sort of ‘back to session’ button. Yes, we know. That isn’t a thing. But it will disable all the Arrangement tracks and any clips that might be playing in the Session View. It’s handy when you want to start playing with fresh ideas.

  

If this all sounds complicated, don’t worry. Watch the demo (below) a couple times and re-read the above if necessary.

This Should Make Things More Clear Have a look at this.

Incidentally, we’ve used the “Second Window” command from the top-level “View” menu to allow you to see both the Arrangement View and the Session View side by side. Yeah, you can do that.

Enough Already! We Want to PLAY!

Okay, okay. You are ready. All we need to do is get some clips and scenes launching. This is what you came here for! The blueprint looks something like this.

Let’s break it down.

• We will begin by populating the Session View with an assortment of clips.
• We will experiment with various combinations of these clips, launching and stopping them until we come up with a handful of favorites.
• We will organize them along horizontal rows (scenes) so that they may be launched together.
• We will perform scenes (or individual clips) while activating the “Arrangement Record” button in the control bar.
• The result will be our performance, complete with the appropriate clips inserted in the appropriate tracks in the Arrangement View, even if those clips are no longer active in Session View.

Remember this: Session and Arrangement Views display the same set of tracks. But the clips themselves are unique to each view. Do yourself a favor and read that sentence again.

Loading and Playing Clips

As you learned in Getting Stuff In There, you can record into clip slots or you can drag material from the Browser (or from a folder on your computer). We are going to go with the easier way for now.

1. Find some clips. We recommend the “Clips” category in the Browser. Make use of the preview button — it’s the little blue headphone at the bottom of the Browser — to choose something good. Remember, everything will be playing to the current tempo of your Live Set.

2. Drag the clip onto either a track’s empty clip slot or the empty area in the middle of the Session View track area. The clip may be MIDI or audio. If you drag into an empty space in the Session View, it won’t really matter as Live will create the appropriate track type for you.

3. Play the clip.

4. Stop the clip.

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   Animated demonstration of dragging a clip from the Browser into a Session View slot and launching it.

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5. Rinse.

6. Repeat.

Track Status

Notice that as clips play, the track area of the Session View provides feedback as to the status of each clip’s playback. This is called the track status area, and with its miniature timer and bar icons, it is capable of showing where and at which point in its loop it is playing.

Launch Quantization

Cool! You are more than halfway there! But did you notice that when a clip is playing, it doesn’t always start or stop the instant you click the clip’s play button? That is “launch quantization”. It’s making sure that everything starts and ends together — making sure all the clips and beats line up!

Launch quantization keeps everyone playing nicely together. It can be changed (or disabled) globally using the “Launch Quantization Menu” in the control bar.

Clips default to this setting but can be set individually as well. We’ll cover that in Clip Editing: The Basics .

Making a Scene!

Clips can be dragged around freely. Any clips that live on the same horizontal row may be launched together from the master track (all the way on the right).

• Making scenes is as simple as dragging any number of clips to the same row.
• Holding the option (cmd/PC) key while dragging creates a copy wherever you drop the clip, leaving the original clip in place.
• Perhaps best of all, if you have found a combination that you like, you can instantly copy all clips that are currently playing in the Session View and paste copies of them to a new scene using the “Capture and Insert Scene” command*.* This function can be executed from either the contextual menu (right-click any empty scene’s slot on the master track), from the “Create” command in Live’s top-level menu, or simply by using the ⌘ + ⇧ + I (Mac) / ctrl + ⇧ + I (PC) keyboard shortcut.
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  Animated demonstration of Capture and Insert Scene (Cmd+Shift+I) — copying all playing clips into a new scene.

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To the Arrangement View (and Beyond)

So, you’ve made some scenes! Maybe you’ve got one for your verse, another for your chorus, and another for… whatever.

The good news: you can play any of these parts whenever you want to!

The bad news: you have to play these parts yourself if you want to hear them.

If you think this sounds like a perfect use for the Arrangement View, you are correct. It is. Now, how to get it in there. Actually, you are probably going to be pleasantly surprised. Compared to everything else we have covered in this chapter, it’s a piece of cake. Try this:

1. Press the stop button in the control bar two times. That will roll the insert marker to the beginning of the Arrangement View (if it isn’t there already).

2. Press the “Arrangement Record” button in the control bar. The metronome will count you in.

3. Perform! At this point, any and every clip or scene you launch or stop will record a new clip into the Arrangement View. **

4. Press stop (control bar). You’ve done it!

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5. Remember, pressing play — even in the Arrangement View — will play back the last scene (or active clips) in the Session View. Arrangement View tracks will be grey until you activate our friend, the back to arrangement button!

Navigating in Arrangement View Having populated the Arrangement View, you’ll find getting around to be pretty easy. Play and stop using the control bar or the spacebar. Playback starts at the insert marker’s position. The insert marker will follow any selections along the timeline. The scrub area above the track display allows you to playback from any position with a single click of your mouse.

Getting Stuff Out of There

Unless you want to bring your computer over to your friend’s house to play your nifty new song, you are going to want to export. This is also known as the mixdown phase and there is lots and lots to discuss. It’s covered in Mixing: Managing Levels and Frequencies. But here’s a bit of a preview — and some sage advice. Essentially, you will want to lower fader levels on your individual tracks just enough so that the final level of the master does not “clip” (exceed 0dB, turn red, etc.). That said, Live can do this for you automatically using a normalize option, but trust us; best practice dictates that you learn to do this correctly yourself.

But for now, normalize away. Export by going to the “File” menu and choosing “Export Audio/Video”. This will bring up a dialogue where you may choose a which track to export (“Master”), a format (such as PCM), and a file type (like WAV or AIF). Other options are available, including formats like MP3. Finally (for now) turning on the Normalize option will safeguard your final mix from clipping as described.

And there you have it. You have created a song in Ableton Live!

Handy Keyboard Shortcuts and Workflow Practices

• option drag copies instead of moves.
• ⇧ + ⌘ + W (Second Window) shows side-by-side Arrangement and Session Views.
• [F9] Arrangement Record
• space bar Play and Stop
• ⇧ + spacebar Continue playback from where it was last left off
• ⇧ + ⌘ + R Export Audio/Video