If you’re working with short loops, for example, this can help minimise the repetition that comes with multiple carbon-copy delay sounds, by giving you the opportunity to alter the positions of their crescendos and tails.Īutomation can take the form of straight lines or curves, and can also be used in a more blocky fashion. Every parameter that can be automated can run at a different length, including those longer and shorter than the host clip. This can open up a whole new realm of automation-based madness. Live also offers users the ability to unlink envelopes, which separates the automation from the audio or MIDI clip, allowing, for example, an automated reverb effect to run on beyond the length of the clip it was initially applied to. (Hopefully, Ableton will one day add a single-click function that’s able to unfold and display all lanes at once.) In Live 10, you can right-click or control-click on automation points, select Enter Value, and type in your desired amount, which allows you to circumnavigate the frustrations of trying to make precise adjustments by fiddling with the mouse. You can, however, in Arrangement View: press A on your keyboard to view automation, then use the + buttons beneath each track name and add lanes.

In Session View, you can’t see multiple automation envelopes. You may well end up with a lot of moving controls across a single track. With MIDI tracks, there are often more parameters, found within MIDI effects and software instruments. For audio tracks, you’ll see controls for the mixer and any installed audio effects. In terms of Live’s Session View clips, automation is available for audio and MIDI tracks. By entering the key-map mode, the computer keyboard in lowercase or uppercase can be used as a virtual-hardware controller too. Almost everything can be assigned via MIDI Map Mode. Ableton’s DAW is incredibly automation-friendly. This is a relatively democratic feature you won’t need any fancy equipment for these 18 steps. In this tutorial, our focus is on automation envelopes. In Live, automation runs deep, encompassing everything from Follow Actions, which can be used to trigger audio clips, to LFOs, whose waveforms can be applied to lend movement to controls in instruments and effects. Today, however, there are many more options, some of them far more accessible and affordable than the market’s £20,000 32-channel units. There was a time when expensive mixing desks or control surfaces with motorised faders were required to implement automation.

Automated movement comes as a result of controls that are drawn in via a DAW’s tools, captured from live inputs or programmed in some other way. Other times, it’s the result of automation. Sometimes that movement occurs by human hand. The sound of synthesis is the sound of controls being moved.

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