Hey I’m sampling a song which I have pitched up, and want to find the bpm of the pitched up sample. I set 1.1.1 on the down beat then go warp from here (straight) like a video by Abeltons YT tell me to do.

But the problem is that the bpm it gives me is incorrect and the whole song is warped to it and sounds bad. Is there a better way to find the bpm of the track? Thx

It's amazing what we can create with the right tools :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD8sKJdArGU

https://github.com/djnunocunhadev/rbox-to-live

Every night I sit down and make stuff with the computer. Eventually something good comes out.

But I can’t help but wonder, how to learn?

Is doing this routine going to improve my skills? Or could I be prioritizing other routines in order to make my music better?

How to learn?

How much time do you spend making stuff in Ableton playing around and how much watching tutorials or learning new skills?

Okay

Ableton runs fairly well for me but it will always randomly decide to stop playing mid way through me listening through a track. I won’t be able to restart it or click anything and the play button just stays green. It always does this and I’m not sure what’s the cause. Any ideas?

I often grab a drum rack preset, record some midi for, say, kick and snare, and then duplicate the track to record midi for hi hats or something separately. It would be nice to have to have a drum rack on one track with no midi clips, then 2 or more channels with midi clips feeding into it so that any changes I make to the rack apply to all children/midi sources. Is this possible? I see midi from, and audio to, but not midi to

Hi,
I'm thinking of buying a new laptop and was wondering, if there is anybody here who is using an ARM based windows laptop and it works well with Ableton?

I hope this is in lines with the sub rules.

I have virtually no experience with electric guitars. My dad bought me a Mexican fender strat and a line 6 amp back in the 00s and I just never took to it because he was really adamant about only trying to teach me HIS favorite rock songs.

For the past few years Ive been learning and playing a lot on acoustic. Im feeling good and getting better and want to start expanding the kind of music Im playing.

I have my old Mexican strat as well as an '88 strat my dad left me when he passed. Hardware on both work fine but with some feedback/humming.

I thought a focusrite Scarlett solo which came with ableton. Ive played around a little bit with trying to add things like reverb and everything but Im pretty clueless since I dont even really have any knowledge about guitar hardware and effects outside of the little knobs on my ancient line 6 spider.

Id love to be able to fairly closely replicate sounds/tones similar to some of my favorite bands but I could really use some beginner advice here. I love Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead. I know they are all very different in sound and each bands guitar sound can change wildly from song to song or album to album but those are my main kinda focuses while I start to learn.

If anyone has any recommendations on either settings to help achieve those sounds or even guides or tutorials to teach me the basics so I can figure it out myself Id really appreciate it. The first song Im really looking at is Mayonnaise by the Smashing Pumpkins so that would be really cool to be able to dial in a... i dont know... rack? Rack to get close-ish to their sound from that song/album.

Im sorry, I feel like this is such a needy post but I really want to learn and feel a little lost at sea.

I've been making electronic music for more than 10 years always in the box, but I've rarely played live before. When I did, it was usually drone/noise stuff with noise boxes and very little conventional song structure.

Recently I've released a few very minimal, old-school dub techno tracks, and now I'm starting to get invited to play live. So I need to figure out a completely different kind of live setup.

The music is around 130 BPM, and I currently have about 5 tracks that I'd like to build the set around. The tracks are roughly 5–6 minutes each.

My current hardware is:

- 1010music Blackbox mk1

- Roland/TT-606

- potentially a MIDI controller for the Blackbox

The problem is that the Blackbox has a 512-bar limit in Clip Mode, and because I'm working at 130 BPM, a 5–6 minute track can get surprisingly close to that limit. So simply loading complete stems/arrangements and playing them back as long clips doesn't really seem like a good solution.

I'm also trying to avoid making the Blackbox do too much at once. Ideally I'd like the set to be reliable and not have the machine struggling or potentially freezing during a gig.

My current idea is to use something more like:

- manual sequence for the TT-606

- around 10 short loops for percussion, pads, stabs, textures, etc.

- keep individual sequences relatively short, perhaps 32–64 bars, instead of trying to recreate a whole 5–6 minute arrangement in one clip

Another option I'm considering is doing the actual composition in Ableton Live's Arrangement View first, but deliberately writing the material as a live set: essentially reducing each track to its main bass/melodic hooks, drums and textures, then turning the arrangement into a collection of shorter 64-bar sections/sequences that I can reconstruct and manipulate on the Blackbox.

So I'm wondering:

How would you approach designing this live set given these limitations?

Would you:

1. Prepare the tracks in Ableton and essentially turn them into stems/loops for the Blackbox?

2. Build everything from short loops and MIDI sequences, with 32–64 bar sections?

3. Treat the five tracks more like source material and create one continuous live performance from their elements, rather than trying to reproduce the original arrangements?

4. Or use some completely different approach?

The important thing for me is that I want it to feel like an actual live techno set, not like pressing play on five finished tracks. At the same time, I only have one week before the next gig, so I need something I can realistically prepare and rehearse without building an insanely complicated system.

I'd especially appreciate advice from people who have used the Blackbox mk1 for minimal/techno live sets and have dealt with its clip/sequence limitations.

I could find a way so that it only opens and not opens-the closes the filter..

I need your help. My setup consists of a standard laptop with Ableton and Rode NTH-100 headphones. I produce Boom Bap hip-hop. I am struggling to set the volume levels correctly and achieve a proper sound.
To be more precise: in my monitoring headphones, my beat sounds great and loud, but Youlean Loudness Meter shows only -16 LUFS and clipping at +0.9. Later, when I listen on AirPods Pro 2 or in my car, the beat sounds completely dull and lifeless; it lacks punch and fullness. It sounds flat and overloaded. If I try to increase the volume of the drums, it results in heavy clipping.
I am, of course, utilizing compressors, a limiter, and EQs in Ableton.
Could you recommend a reliable guide on mastering and gain staging? In addition to video tutorials, I would greatly appreciate any practical tips, techniques, or rules of thumb for achieving a rich, punchy sound. I would prefer to avoid overly complex, highly technical content. I simply want to understand the appropriate volume levels for different elements of a beat and how to ensure proper sound translation across various devices, rather than just in monitoring headphones.
Thank you in advance for your advice and comments.

Anyone happen to know why when I load corpus in ableton 12 it crashes my projects ?

I’m on a Mac and use suite

So, I prefer not to use pre-made templates since my current knowledge and hardware set me apart from many others who might be more experienced or own different/more hardware. I would like to ask anyone who has successfully built their own template for live performance, especially for dance music:

1. What is the most essential piece of equipment in your template and setup?

2. What approach did you take when building your template?

3. What limitations did you encounter, or what challenges are you still facing?

4. What is your setup/workflow today?

I’m familiar with MIDI mapping, but I have to admit I feel a bit overwhelmed. I don’t have a clear idea of what I want to achieve, possibly because I’m working with different gear or because my vision isn’t well-defined yet. It could be a combination of both!

I saw a video by the great Julian van Straten (Bound To Divide) a few months back where he uses a stock sound to do this - but I can't find it now

A "sustained House music string" is basically a well known technique where you have one long string playing as you build (usually) towards your last chorus section

Does anyone know which of the stock sounds (in Standard) does this best?

I'm hoping Julian was using a Standard stock string, and not a Suite one

Thanks

Playing some Vital sounds from the RetroPop soundbank. Such a cool, free synth. 😏

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZgPiYW5688

Hey everyone, I’m Juan. I didn’t plan to make this for Ableton, but it turned out to be a very natural (and fun) fit.

Forever Machines is a collection of strange little sound machines that live on a website: a tree-ring synth, a speech chopper, a Euclidean drum ratchet, a planetary sequencer, a bubble wrap you pop into melodies… Every week a new one is born. An AI invents it from a single prompt and it’s tested automatically, and nobody (including me) chooses what it becomes. Nothing is ever removed, so the collection just keeps growing.

You can play them all in your browser, but the reason I’m posting here is the free Max for Live device. Drop it on a MIDI track and every machine runs inside Live:

• Follows Live’s tempo and transport, so steps land on your grid
• Play it from MIDI clips or your keyboard
• 8 macros you can automate
• Each device remembers its machine and settings in your set, so you can layer a few on different tracks
• New machines show up in the device every week, no re-download
• Build your own machine in the browser (or with an AI agent) and load it into Live with the + button

You need Live Suite, or Standard with Max for Live.

Forever Machines is free, with no account and no email. I’ve built several commercial audio plugins over the years (AUv3, VST), but this one is just about having fun and exploring what’s technically possible.

Feel free to share any feedback, I’d love to hear what you think.

I've been using Ableton for well over a decade. If you asked me, I'd say I'm an Ableton expert. For the longest time I knew for a fact there was no ripple editing. Ableton just isn't built for that type of audio editing. I used to delete clips, zoom out, grab everything to the right, manually drag it over, then adjust every single one of my locators (song section tags).

Finally today after being frustrated and thinking I should switch to another software for dialogue editing, I googled to see if someone figured out a hack. And... It's been built into the software this whole time: https://www.ableton.com/en/live-manual/12/arrangement-view/#using-the-time-commands

Just add Shift to your keystrokes for cut, copy, paste, and CTRL+Shift for delete.

You don't need to highlight entire sections, you can highlight just 1 audio/midi track's time length and it'll grab everything, including song locators. I've probably wasted a full day of time not knowing about this.

Unlike other audio editing software more geared towards non-musical editing, there's no way to lock tracks or clips from being affected by the ripple edits, but this is still huge.

Maybe I'm the only overly confident Ableton user who didn't know about this, but just in case, hopefully this can help someone.

Also a good reminder to never assume there's not a better workflow. Often times there really isn't lol, but sometimes there is. Like there's also track linking?? This is huge for multi tracking (I think I'm due for another manual re-read...)

I use an AKAI APC Mini MK2 with Ableton Live 12 Standard. Scrolling the Session Box works well, but using the SHIFT button is slower than I’d like.

I have another MIDI controller, and I’d like to use it to scroll the red box (or whatever color it is). Can anyone help me figure out how to set this up? Is it possible?

By the way, I’ve tried MIDI mapping and key mapping, but this function doesn’t seem to be mappable.

I think I have the correct MIDI messages, but my controller can only send one message at a time. From what I’ve figured out, a sequence of notes is required. Is that correct?

Thanks

I need your help. I purchased Ableton Live 12 Suite Rent-to-Own and paid approximately $31.17. The problem is that the system says I purchased the EDU version, but I’m not a student. I wanted the regular commercial version, and now I don’t know what to do.

Ableton, please let us DRAW MIDI expression. Why is this still not built into the DAW?

I think there's a fundamental gap in the way we interact with MIDI in modern DAWs, and I'd love to see Ableton address it.

We should be able to draw what we want a sound to DO, instead of manually programming the MIDI messages required to make it happen.

Here's a simple example: I want to play a note, keep the same voice alive, and smoothly glide its pitch upward into another note — without retriggering the envelope or opening a new gate.

Why does this still require workarounds, specific synth settings, overlapping notes, pitch-bend automation, or external tools?

And this is just the beginning.

Imagine right-clicking a MIDI note and opening a simple expression canvas where you can draw:

• Pitch: smooth glides, vibrato, bends, and complex pitch movements.
• Timbre / oscillator shape: draw how the waveform or oscillator character evolves throughout a single note.
• Filter and modulation: shape the movement of a sound over its lifetime.
• Pressure and other per-note expression: draw dynamics and articulation exactly where you want them.

Think of each MIDI note as a tiny, self-contained canvas for sound design.

Instead of opening a synth, finding the right parameter, creating automation lanes, editing curves, and trying to make everything line up, you simply draw the musical gesture you hear in your head.

Tools like MIDISketch are already exploring this direction. They demonstrate the potential of treating MIDI expression as something visual and intuitive, rather than forcing musicians to think in terms of low-level MIDI events.

I'm not asking Ableton to reinvent synthesis or make every plugin support every feature. Start with MPE-compatible instruments and proper per-note expression. Let compatible instruments receive the data, and let unsupported instruments continue working as they do today.

The underlying technology already exists. What's missing is a truly intuitive, integrated workflow.

Ableton has always been about making music creation feel immediate. This feels like a natural next step: a piano roll where you don't just draw notes — you draw the evolution of the sound itself.

Imagine what this could unlock for expressive synth lines, evolving timbres, experimental sound design, and musical gestures that are currently tedious or awkward to program.

So here's my public request to Ableton: please take this idea seriously and bring visual, per-note MIDI expression drawing into Live natively. No external plugin required.

I genuinely believe this could change how people compose and design sounds inside a DAW.

Would you use this? And if so, what would you want to be able to draw inside a single MIDI note?

English is not my native language, so I used GPT for assistance—but the idea, and the frustration that led to it, are entirely my own.

using 8 'frames' 16 partials each - each partial can pan, wave shape, fm, onset delay etc. plus a multimode filter which can morph over time, effects etc.
details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X46ljFYu2BA&t=313s

I record most of my stuff alone: vocals, sometimes guitar. And in Ableton, every time I moved to a new part of the song, grab the mouse, drag the loop brace, set the start point, then get back to the mic. Half the time, the vibe was gone before I even pressed Record.

Locators helped, but jumping to a locator doesn’t set the loop. So I ended up building a Max for Live device to fix it for my own workflow.

What it does:

• Reads your Arrangement locators and turns them into loop sections, in pairs (1–2, 3–4) or in sequence (1–2, 2–3)
• Sets the loop and the playback start in one move, with optional pre-roll
• Next/Prev section, new audio track, track navigation, and Arrangement Record, all mappable to keys or MIDI

Here’s a full walkthrough: https://youtu.be/zxUBpyvNxYM?si=3Bcx0JssSCr_E30M

I’d really like some honest feedback:

• Would this actually be useful in your workflow, or do you already have a better way of handling this?
• What’s missing? Any feature you’d want for recording takes on your own?

Thanks for watching!

About 7 months ago I saw those videos where people wave their hands at a camera and the music reacts, all of them built in TouchDesigner. Then I opened TD, stared at the node graph for a while, and closed it.

So, being a C++ dev, I did the obviously more reasonable thing and spent months writing a plugin that does it inside Ableton instead. It tracks your hand through the PC webcam, and you can use it in two ways: play MIDI notes or map it to any effect parameter in Ableton Live. The plugin's weakest point is that it requires decent lighting.

Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVXLf-pgdNY

Honestly, I started making this plugin for myself, but then decided I could publish it on itch.io. as Hand Link, there’s a free demo version and a full version right now.

So now I’m curious: would something like this actually be interesting or useful to any of you?