Advanced Session

Clip Envelopes

In the Automation chapter, we drew and recorded automation in the Arrangement View — long, sweeping curves that play out over the timeline of a song. Clip envelopes do something similar, but they live inside a clip. The automation travels with the clip. Copy the clip, move it, launch it from a different slot — the envelope comes along for the ride.

To see them, open the Clip View (double-click a clip) and click the small E button in the lower-left section to reveal the envelope controls.

Device and Control Choosers

Two dropdown menus determine what the envelope controls:

• Device Chooser — The first dropdown. Choose whether the envelope affects the clip itself, the mixer, or any device in the track’s chain.
• Control Chooser — The second dropdown. Once you’ve selected a device, this lists every automatable parameter on it.

Below the dropdowns are quick chooser buttons — shortcuts to the most common clip parameters: volume, transpose, and pan.

What Can You Automate?

Everything you could automate in the Arrangement View, you can automate per-clip with envelopes:

• Clip volume — Mute individual beats in a drum loop, create rhythmic volume patterns.
• Clip transpose — Pitch-shift individual notes in an audio loop to change the melody.
• Panning — Move sounds left and right within a single clip.
• Device parameters — Automate filter cutoff, reverb mix, or any knob on any device in the chain.

The key difference from Arrangement automation: clip envelopes are relative. A volume envelope at 80% means “80% of whatever the clip’s volume slider is set to.” This means clip envelopes and track automation coexist without fighting — the clip envelope modulates on top of whatever else is happening.

Drawing Envelopes

Use the same two modes as Arrangement automation:

• Draw Mode (B) — Paint stepped values at grid resolution. Great for rhythmic patterns like muting every other beat.
• Breakpoint Mode (Draw Mode off) — Double-click to create breakpoints, drag to shape smooth curves. Hold Alt/Option while dragging a segment to bend it into a curve.

Linked vs. Unlinked

This is where clip envelopes get really interesting.

By default, the envelope is linked to the clip — it loops at the same length and stays locked in step. But click the Linked/Unlinked button to decouple them, and suddenly the envelope has its own independent loop length.

Why does this matter? Because you can have a one-bar drum loop with an eight-bar filter sweep envelope. The drums loop every bar, but the filter slowly opens over eight bars before resetting. Or a two-bar bass line with a 32-bar volume fade. The clip stays short and manageable; the envelope provides the long-term movement.

When unlinked, separate Start and End controls appear for the envelope’s loop boundaries. You can also turn off looping for the envelope entirely — it plays once and stops.

The Launch Box

We covered the basics of launching clips back in the early chapters. Now let’s look at the Launch Box — the section of the Clip View (press L to reveal it) that controls how clips respond when triggered.

Launch Modes

Five modes determine what happens when you click a clip’s launch button:

• Trigger — The default. Click to play; the clip plays through. Click another clip on the same track to stop this one.
• Gate — The clip plays only while you hold the button. Release and it stops. This is great for momentary sound effects, stabs, or any sound you want precise control over.
• Toggle — Click once to start, click again to stop. No need to launch another clip to silence this one.
• Repeat — The clip restarts from the beginning every time the quantization interval comes around. It ignores additional clicks. This creates a stuttering, rhythmic re-trigger effect.
• Legato — When you launch a new clip on the same track, it picks up at the same position the previous clip was at — instead of starting from the beginning. This lets you switch between clips seamlessly, as if you’re switching the content but not the playhead.

Legato deserves special attention. It’s what makes it possible to have multiple clips on a track — say, different variations of a bass line — and switch between them mid-phrase without any hiccup in timing. The new clip plays from wherever the old one left off.

Clip Quantization

Each clip has its own Quantize setting in the Launch Box that determines when the clip actually starts after you trigger it. Options range from None (plays immediately, no waiting) to 1 Bar, 2 Bars, 4 Bars, and more.

When set to Global, the clip uses whatever quantization value is set in the transport bar’s global quantize dropdown. This is usually the safest default — it keeps everything synced to the same rhythmic grid.

A quantization of None is useful for sound effects and one-shots where you want instant response. For musical clips, some quantization ensures they land on the beat.

Velocity

The Velocity amount controls how much the MIDI velocity of the trigger affects the clip’s playback volume. At 0%, every trigger plays at the same volume regardless of how hard you hit the pad. At 100%, a soft hit plays the clip softly and a hard hit plays it loudly. This adds a dynamic, human feel when launching clips from a MIDI controller.

Follow Actions

What happens when a clip finishes playing? By default, nothing — it either loops or stops. But Follow Actions change that. They tell Live to automatically do something when a clip reaches a certain point in its playback.

Setting Up Follow Actions

Select a clip and open the Launch Box (L). At the bottom, you’ll find the Follow Action controls:

1. Follow Action Time — How long the clip plays before the follow action triggers. Set in bars, beats, and sixteenth-notes.
2. Follow Action A and Follow Action B — Two possible actions, each with its own probability. Live randomly chooses between them based on the ratio you set (e.g., A:B of 1:0 means A always fires; 1:1 means 50/50).

Available Actions

• Stop — The clip stops.
• Play Again — The clip restarts from the beginning.
• Previous — The clip above this one in the same track launches.
• Next — The clip below this one launches.
• First — The first clip in the group launches.
• Last — The last clip in the group launches.
• Any — A random clip in the group launches.
• Other — A random clip other than this one launches.

Why Follow Actions Matter

Follow actions turn the Session View into something closer to a generative music engine. A few ideas:

• Song structure: Set clips to play for 8 bars, then follow to Next. Stack your Intro, Verse, Chorus, and Outro clips vertically and they’ll play through in order — hands-free.
• Variation: Give each clip in a group a follow action of Other with a short action time. The clips cycle randomly, creating evolving variations from a handful of patterns.
• Controlled randomness: Use unequal A/B probabilities. Maybe the clip usually moves to Next (A = 9), but sometimes plays Again (B = 1). This creates predictable structure with occasional surprises.
• Performance: Combine follow actions with Legato launch mode. The clips switch seamlessly at whatever position they’ve reached, creating a flowing, DJ-style performance from pre-arranged material.

Tip: Select multiple adjacent clips and set their follow actions at the same time. They’ll all get the same settings, which is the fastest way to create a cycling group.

Session Automation Recording

You can record automation directly into Session clips — not just in the Arrangement. Here’s how:

1. Enable the Automation Arm button (the button with the circle and line) in the transport bar.
2. Arm the track that contains the parameter you want to automate.
3. Click the Session Record button.
4. While the clip plays, move any parameter — a knob, a fader, a button. Your movement is recorded as a clip envelope.

Every time the clip loops, the automation overwrites itself with whatever you do on the new pass. Each pass can be undone with ⌘+Z (Ctrl+Z) if you don’t like it.

Note: There’s a preference in Record/Warp/Launch that lets you record session automation without arming the track. This is useful when you want to record automation into playing clips across multiple tracks simultaneously.

Consolidate Time to New Scene

Here’s the smile-inducing trick mentioned at the top. Select a time range in the Arrangement View — maybe 8 bars of your favorite section — and go to Create > Consolidate Time to New Scene.

Live takes that slice of the arrangement and creates a new Scene in the Session View, complete with clips from every track. It’s an instant way to turn a section of your arrangement into a launchable, loopable scene. Use it to:

• Pull the best 8 bars out of a long jam and loop them.
• Create scenes from different sections of an arrangement for live performance.
• Move between Session and Arrangement workflows without committing to either.

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