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The Clip View

Lesson 8 from: Ableton Live 9 Fast Start

Isaac Cotec

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Lesson Info

8. The Clip View

Lesson Info

The Clip View

Awesome now we're going to move to the next section, which is the clip view and this is a big part of controlling our clips and our playback once we know the clip view, once we have this there's a lot to it, we can then move into recording, adding our own parts and then we're finally going to end up like editing, chopping these things up and creating her own tracks but before we can get there like you could start recording and not know this stuff for a long time but by knowing it now it's going to save you a lot of confusion in the future so we're gonna look at the clip. You, um remember before we're talking about navigation, we showed off this area down here, which was the clip for you and how you can move between it and the devices. Well, this gives you the ability to change a sample on the fly either through live performance or in the studio. The key is that the clip and how life triggers samples the clip box that lets you gain deeper and deeper control over the playback of your sam...

ples. So ah okay, all right, let's say I have this clip now if I copy this clip on making different versions there's really no difference right now, right? Because it's just a different version of the same thing well that's where all these controls come in as I can start controlling how it launches what it does, how is it transposed? And I could've multiple versions like we talked about earlier it's nondestructive now in here we have all these different parameters for our clip. Now right here this turns everything on and off or sorry it shows these different windows, so I'm not showing any windows except for the one that I have two, which is the clip, the clip box and then this is the sample so that's what we're seeing currently, then we can open different windows the four windows that we have is this is first the clip box, then the launch box, which has to deal with how it launches something. How does it start the next clip? What does it do when it starts a clip? Then we move into a sample box and the sample letter this is where we have transposed volume, we've looked at warping already, but we're also going to look a looping and then finally we have envelopes envelopes is when we start modulating things, we start changing the sound over time like fading the volume or bringing in mohr delay or less delay through our envelopes so we look at each one of these boxes all right, so the first ones that clip box clip blocks the clip box let us change the name the color and aspects of the clip. It also lets this change the time signature of the track from our master time, that signature, and can also open up the other clip view boxes from this one. So I showed you how you can open those other boxes. Let's look at this one. This is probably the least interesting of all the other ones because it does riveting things like changing the color because what its most used for, but it also has time signature, so let me play this. I'm gonna put this to three four to four I noticed the playback didn't change. You might notice the only thing that does change is the ruler. So let's go four four see how the ruler changed that's all that is it's, representing the time it doesn't change playback, it doesn't change warping or anything, but if you had something that was in three four, you'd want to see a three, four time ruler to make sure everything was on that time. So that's all that that does, it also does not change your global, so you can have one if this at three, four and you can have your global it for four and it's it's just how you're viewing the sample, really, and then we have the grooves and I don't don't really have the time to go over groups that's a little bit more advance again I'm trying to give you the very basics of able to get you up and running and not afraid of like eight of features or basic navigation because I am still learning about this program I you know I'm one of I think it's eighty certified trainers united states were very select few I think there's a little over two hundred in the world and we all teach each other stuff all the time I have learned things from the programmers of able to and I've also taught them things they didn't know because you have like you know so many coders doing things they don't necessarily know themselves every aspect of the program it's intense and awesome and you're going to have fun with it and no you don't have to know everything it's all right take take steps so we're not going to get into this this is just another heady think you can look up and you know we could maybe talk about another class s o that's clip box then we have the launch box this is when things start getting more fun and creative now the launch box allow us to affect the way live launches or plays a clip this khun give you control over the launch mode quant ization and even follow actions what does that mean all right which box and if you get this course you're gonna get all these examples the master track walks you through and tells you to do things is kind of review and I'm going to walk through them as well so we have the lunch box it's always so weird looking at this screen and like moving your mouth because you're not used to doing it backwards uh but I have this clip and I can open my launch box with this little eloped above way change your different launch modes and you might wonder like, well what is what is a launch mode? Why do we have these settings? Well, the first one is trigger trigger is very easy I press play and plates if I press it again it plays again that's just triggers it just says start so you know they're they're they're two things happening here there's two information every time I click this there is me pressing a button which is called the on message so the on message in this case is play the off message when I let go it actually sends another message called an off message off doesn't do anything it's just it only pays attention to on means play that's important cause there's a few that change that um then if I change to something else like gate if I press play yeah, this is another important aspect this is all all you're launching is happening in time of your global uh your global timing up here your global quant ization so if I set this just for this example to sixteenth notes, you'll notice that when I press it it plays and stops on the sixteenth note let me just show this in trigger to start so if I have this as a bar and I press play it waits until that bar so it won't start on like a thirty second note off of the bar's that way everything starts in time as their global clintonization what if I said it to sixteenth? It starts on the sixteen so I don't have the weight all the way through a bar to start that's what that want ization is so I'm gonna go to gate now if I have gate if I press it like I'm gonna press the mouse it plays when I let go it stops it gates the playback so play and stop now this becomes a lot easier with air controller because aiken you could just see it a lot better and I'm holding it playing stop great ah that's your gate mode this is really awesome to know for live performance because if you have multiple clips and roll gating and you have different rhythms and you can bring him in and out you can also start making this like a drum pad because you have a bunch of them gating that just plays basically like a one shot or whatever um super funny uses for my life said all the time but it's like the other ones we have toggle now toggle I'm just going to use this controller as an example now this light represents that clip so whenever I press it it's sending a message as if I were to press my mouse it's just visually easier for you to see what's happening now if I press this it plays if I press it again it stops now the other one played and if I press it again it played so this is giving an on message and an off message and that can be useful for what however you want to do your life set or certain aspects and then the last one is repeat in this one super fun so the idea here is if I press play I place my clip now if I press and hold repeat so as long as I hold it it repeats that is also really awesome in a live set to have like a vocal sample that you khun studdard's uh you know play right there it's a really cool um so those are different notes most people I mean by default it's trigger so just start start to stop I have to hit an empty clip which can be either one of these stop buttons or I can on this controller just press an empty clip right but I have different ways of doing this um great there's just one more thing with this uh yeah which is all launch modes we'll all launch modes are affected by the global timing or the clip clintonization that's pretty important so if I have this clip for instance let's put it on repeat so it's very obvious remember I told you this global clintonization affects it let's go thirty seconds let's go with the bar it's gonna only repeat that first bar just much slower not quite what but most the time I start things at a bar it's just easy accuse my life set in time but sometimes I might want a particular clip to start different in my global time and that is where I have my clintonization setting right here so I can set this particular clip three second I'm gonna duplicate it I'm gonna set this one to eight on this one to sixteen so now right different settings different clips so I can get that kind of repeating thing I want now if I'm you can select multiple clips at once and affect them which is pretty cool to know so I just clicked one hold shift and select all this so I can do let's say gate so now they're all gate and now they gave on and off a different timing like this will stop on the eighth note this will stop on the thirty second lot quicker um so yeah it's important to know how those two interact you can also I can't yet because I'm a terrible rhythmic person but you can set this to none on it'll start right on time and then they're like one shots you just play them if you're in gate or repeat it'll just started right then again in my life sets I just don't have that good of timing so I usually put on sixteenth notes to make sure I'm in time um at the very least so there we go that's that and there's one more feature see all right there's one mohr important feature which is a llegado mode and this is super cool I didn't know this for a few years, but llegado mood takes over the play position from whenever a clip was played in that track before this way you can toggle clips at any moment and rate without ever losing sink so in other words, if I have a track the playing and it's halfway through it's going to start the next thing I start halfway through that sample so everything starts in the same type of play back now let me see ah yeah ok, so I have this sample right? And I'm gonna have this sam now right now whenever I pressed the next sample notice it starts at the beginning and if I click this sample starts in the beginning now if I'm gonna put this in llegado mode but both him and we gotta mode I'm going to play this first one notice its position it's about three and then that started at it's kind of hard for me to do that quick enough but it started its six because that's where the last play back was and now this one starts at four so it's trying to like figure out whatever the length is and then start wherever that last one ended so if it played halfway through it starts the next clip halfway through this is really cool because instead of having something always started the beginning which might not be where the phil position of the other ones are you can now fluidly move between these clips and it will always be in the same time awesome so then we have follow actions as one of our last things um so the idea here with follow actions it is let's say I'm playing this this is great it's gonna keep playing forever it'll just keep playing is just going to keep looping in looping limping right? Well, what happens if I want this after a certain time to start the next thing I can automate that with my follow action that's down here so it's separated by ours beats and then sixteenth notes so in this example in one uh bar I'm going to then I have this little thing that opens up I can go to nothing I can stop it I can play it previous other you name it so let's press next so if I play this notice how this one's blinking and it moves down I have automated it's playback this is awesome for a live set because now if I have something like all of these I just selected all of them I said to one and then next if I play this it's just going to cycle through next one notice how it went back to the beginning because it kind of sees it as a group if they're touching and it just kind of will keep going up and down next next next is awesome this is a huge part of my life set because now like let's say you're a singer and you have a backing track that you want to play to this is the key you as a singer can have different sections of your song that are automatically moving so you can sing or do whatever but you can also come in and and it's playing I could just press it again and restarted so I still have control but it will automatically move if I don't do anything that's follow actions um I have different options here to like I could do other which means anything except for itself any means any including itself next last you name it so let's just go with other so now all of these air set to other let's um let's bring these in just actually no it's ah go to I'm just going to bring in a bunch of these clips just so we have a lot more variation I'm gonna select all these my follow action toe one two other and now knows how it's randomly moving around and I'll just keep doing that that's you can start getting into these cool generative music things and other stuff that we're gonna start looking at but we can also come here we can change it let's change it tio yeah so I'm gonna change this to two so now it's playing too beats all these samples and moving in right now this is pretty cool I'm getting kind of his generative b but remember what licato lotus llegado without it it means every single one of these clips is starting in the beginning so I'm not quite getting the same type of eat I could get if you remember I'm selecting all of these and hitting one shift to select the whole group now let's put him on the goddamn mode now wherever the playback is it's in time so all the other ones so instead of starting in the very beginning every time it's starting different parts of the clips so now I have more of a natural rhythm this's all these generators cool so that's follow actions oh there is one other thing which is a little confusing first or interesting very germ it's very german I always say that uh right here we had this right which was whatever that follow action is and then we have a one and we have a zero and you're like well why is that reason is because it's a probability of a second option so let's say this second option is stop so I have a one to zero chance of playing me and stop which means one zero it's never gonna happen right let's change it to one toe one now I have a fifty fifty chance of it playing stopping playing I played the next one play the next one fifty fifty it's doing pretty well stop right so that's what that means it's like a probability against you can you wanted to it's crazy you could do like four hundred to five you got to think like you're talking about minimal techno a lot of stuff from germany which is like generative music they'll sit there and they'll have all these parameters that are all possibly moving and then you have like this live set were like one out of one hundred times some totally weird things happens because it's automated you know they do stuff like that like that's just kind of in the john run kind of that type of music so you can do that within the follow actions. So this is a probability of doing whatever that set too awesome.

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Ratings and Reviews

Malcolm King
 

Hello, Firstly gotta thank you for your great tutorials, and sharing the knowledge of making music; then I wanna say, I bought the Ableton Live 9 tutorial package, but I didn't heard or better say understand some of Mr. Cotec's words; that's why I wonder would you please send me an English subtitle of his excellent teaching? I will be much grateful for this. Best Regards, Malc

Casey Dart
 

Isaac is the man! He is such a great teacher and you can tell has full control over the information. I already feel like I am many steps above friends who have used ableton for years because of this course setting a foundation for me to learn and experiment. Thank you Isaac and crew!

Claudio Martins
 

Great start course! And Isaac is a super-teacher. Many lessons and great tips. This the first time Im really learned how to handle Ableton!

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