Ableton Live Tutorial: Follow Actions
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 3:24 pm
So one thing about Ableton Live people either don't get, don't care about, or don't know about is the follow actions in session view.
So what you are going to do is go to your browser and just grab 16 samples and drag them into a new track.
make sure you click on the [L] button in the bottom left to open up the Launch settings.
See how I have it set to "0.0.1" ? that means that each clip will play for one 1/16 note. If it was 0.1.0 that would be one quarter note. Since I chose "Play next" after one 1/16 note the proceeding clip will play
For the sake of simplicity keep your samples in groups of four so you can keep the whole sequence in time.
The benefit of doing this is that you don't have to spend endless time tweaking stuff in arrangement
something like that manually placed could take a while, but this was done in a few minutes with follow actions.
now you can experiment by changing the quantization of the clips with the same way you changed the launch settings. I would suggest having all of the clips at 1/16 quantization with the first clip at 1/4 or 1/2 or one bar.
this way you can fire off segments of the loop in a "slicing" manner but the loop will continue after triggering the sample. However, since triggering random clips for fun might make the beat be several steps off time, the first clip has a larger quantization so it can automatically be launched back in time with everything else.
Things to experiment with:
1. Draw volume envelopes for each individual sample
2. Tune each sample different
3. Make different warpings for each sample to add space for a groove
4. Make different grain settings on each clip
you also may want to resample the loops if you don't want Live to be processing thousands of clips.
Another mode is "legato" mode. This is really a great thing. So say you have 5 drum loops but the start of the extra drumloops are basically the same as the first, and you want to get the end of each loop instead.
Select all the clips, turn on the "RAM" button, and the legato button.
Launch the first clip.
Now when you launch any other clip while the first one is playing...it will start from the SAME PLACE THE FIRST CLIP LEFT OFF
meaning
if you played the first clip for 1 beat, and started the second clip, the second clip would play from the second beat!
so even though you have 5 loops, you can make them act as one essentially.
It's a lot to take in, but its well worth it. I have gotten some severely glitchy loops this way, and it is lots of fun.
give it a go.
So what you are going to do is go to your browser and just grab 16 samples and drag them into a new track.
make sure you click on the [L] button in the bottom left to open up the Launch settings.
See how I have it set to "0.0.1" ? that means that each clip will play for one 1/16 note. If it was 0.1.0 that would be one quarter note. Since I chose "Play next" after one 1/16 note the proceeding clip will play
For the sake of simplicity keep your samples in groups of four so you can keep the whole sequence in time.
The benefit of doing this is that you don't have to spend endless time tweaking stuff in arrangement
something like that manually placed could take a while, but this was done in a few minutes with follow actions.
now you can experiment by changing the quantization of the clips with the same way you changed the launch settings. I would suggest having all of the clips at 1/16 quantization with the first clip at 1/4 or 1/2 or one bar.
this way you can fire off segments of the loop in a "slicing" manner but the loop will continue after triggering the sample. However, since triggering random clips for fun might make the beat be several steps off time, the first clip has a larger quantization so it can automatically be launched back in time with everything else.
Things to experiment with:
1. Draw volume envelopes for each individual sample
2. Tune each sample different
3. Make different warpings for each sample to add space for a groove
4. Make different grain settings on each clip
you also may want to resample the loops if you don't want Live to be processing thousands of clips.
Another mode is "legato" mode. This is really a great thing. So say you have 5 drum loops but the start of the extra drumloops are basically the same as the first, and you want to get the end of each loop instead.
Select all the clips, turn on the "RAM" button, and the legato button.
Launch the first clip.
Now when you launch any other clip while the first one is playing...it will start from the SAME PLACE THE FIRST CLIP LEFT OFF
meaning
if you played the first clip for 1 beat, and started the second clip, the second clip would play from the second beat!
so even though you have 5 loops, you can make them act as one essentially.
It's a lot to take in, but its well worth it. I have gotten some severely glitchy loops this way, and it is lots of fun.
give it a go.
