gustavo bravetti at noisepages.com

Ableton Live’s Session view demystified

By Gustavo Bravetti

Este artículo se encuentra diponible en castellano: Link

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Introduction

Besides some GUI and workflow ideologies, which draws the attention and usually tends to confuse the new Ableton Live user, is the Session View. I remember some students that said they had some experience working on Live, telling me on the course admission interviews ‘I don’t like the Session View; I feel more comfortable working on the Arrangement View. I also remember my shrinks ‘hmmm’ face.

As it is written: ‘Those that at the beginning show themselves as the most skeptical about the greatness of Live’s Session View will become, through the path of knowledge, the most devoted believers when they accept and convert to Abletonism’.

In more mundane and less spiritual words, not to use the Session View for producing electronic music is like trying to uncork a bottle with a Swiss Army knife using the ‘large blade’ because we don’t know our Swiss knife extras, but far from being an ‘extra’, the Session View and its relationship with the Arrangement View is one of the strongest and exclusive features available on Ableton Live so let’s introduce it but first, let’s talk a bit about the Arrangement view.

The Arrangement view is a timeline-based sequencer approach as founded in traditional sequencers like Logic Audio, Cubase, etc. Without going too deep (for now) we can say that on this approach, that resembles a multi track recorder, you have all the tracks disposed horizontally and their content placed at a particular musical position. There is a vertical bar that will move through the window, to indicate which part of the arrangement is being played (or recorded). As in traditional sequencers you can create an A-B loop to endless repeat a segment of your arrangement, obviously this doesn’t need a lot of explanation, everybody is familiar with timeline-based sequencing methods. Now the Session View is a completely different approach, and that gives you an extra dimension to composing!

 

Composing electronic music the conventional way.

To understand the advantages of using the Session View let’s analyze what I will call ‘the conventional electronic music composition method for timeline-based sequencers’. (Don’t bother memorizing that because I have just invented it and I’ll probably forget it)

Disclaimer: based on years of sharing knowledge between colleges and students, I can say that the method I will refer to in the next example is one of the most used when composing electronic music on conventional sequencers (timeline-based). This doesn’t mean that this is the only method you can use on conventional sequencers and because of that, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have a workaround when using conventional sequencers for the common methods disadvantages I will talk about.

Disclaimer 2: the word ‘conventional’ is not used in a deprecating way, most of the ‘conventional’ sequencers I’m talking about are actually exceptional in many ways. Anyway, with all the factors on the leveler, my pointer is on the Ableton side.

 

The Main Loop

Periodic or cyclic events are common in life, the universe and obviously in music. A perceptible cycle can be translated by your brain as rhythm. A sum of cycling elements that shares a certain degree of coherency in its periods will create in your brain a composition that we usually call ‘groove’. Please note that cyclic doesn’t means ‘repetitively boring’, that’s the responsibility of the producer. So the usual approach to composing modern electronic music starts with an element that will be repeated periodically giving origin to the ‘main loop’. This element could be a percussion loop, a bass loop, a synthesizer riff, etc. Even a sample of my uncle Eddie playing his banjo, whatever you like. Note that if you decide to use Eddie’s stuff please first get informed about copyright laws and his infringement consequences. After that, double check your musical taste. I have nothing against banjos; I even encourage my students to use banjos.

After placing your first element in a traditional sequencer application you set the classic A-B loop, so the element will be on the endless cycle, becoming a reference to which you can add other elements you may already have in mind, and/or, as an inspiration to create new ones. Usually the main loop elements adding process continues until your production’s groove, harmony, etc., gets the desired shape.

As mentioned before, adding elements to the main loop shapes our production’s groove and harmony. This stage is extremely experimental, you can picture the ‘greatest’ element in your head, but until it is running on the main loop you won’t know for sure how well it will fit, so implementing an easy way to test possible combinations is a must. Note that as you win experience points at this stage your predictions will become more accurate.

Because the resultant groove and harmony will depend on which elements you combine, a commonly used technique is to turn on/off the main loop’s elements testing the possible combinations and the resultant grooves, in that way you can also simulate on the ‘main loop’ your production’s different stages, this being very useful for planning the ‘intro’, ‘break’, etc.
It is very common to have variations of your elements, whether you want them for different moments of your production or just to have more options to choose from later. If you want to have these variations interacting on your ‘main loop’ you must place them there. Also a convenient way to turn them on-off to test the possible combinations, transitions, etc. must be implemented. I remember when I was working on Logic Audio or Cubase, I used to create extra tracks to have the variations interacting on the main loop, therefore ending with a lot of ‘extra’ tracks, this plus some grouping and soloing techniques allowed me to try combinations and transitions on the main loop without stopping the music, but not in a completely satisfying way. In first place you have to turn the elements on-off/soloing ‘at tempo’ which means to press the relevant keys/buttons to perform that operation, in the exact musical time to feel how good that explosion after the breakdown would be. Generally I’d had to leave the ‘main loop’ to construct that part on the time-line which means to stop the music decreasing the creative and emotional vibe. If you really enjoy working for hours on the main loop you know what I’m talking about.
Large period elements, for example those that draw your attention each 8, 16 and even 32 bars are great to distend your tracks groove but if you want to include that kind of element you have to resize your main loop, adapt other elements lengths, repeats, etc.
Another problem I remember is with elements whose length period is not a straight bar or a bar’s multiple, for example an element with a 3/4 bars period. Those kinds of period lengths (fractional) are fascinating. Superimposing over the other elements in a different bar subdivision each time they repeat. Those elements seem to be rotating over the main loop, enlarging the groove and adding movement and smartness while smoothing repetitive or static designs. The problem here is that in a linear mode, unless you build a ‘main loop’ big enough to hold all the possible superimpositions, each time the ‘main loop’ re-starts you lose all the magic.

Just for the record: if you want to create a seamless main loop for a 4 bar period element and a 15/16 bar period element you’ll need a 61 bar length main loop, which is a 2 minutes loop at 120 bpm, actually not too practical for a ‘main loop’. Note that a 15/16 bar length, far from being a bizarre value, is a commonly used one.

A 61 Bars length main loop is needed to hold a 4bar element with a 15/16bar element in a seamless loop.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that you know some of the disadvantages of using the ‘conventional electronic music composition method for timeline-based sequencers’ it is a good time to see how Ableton Live Session View deals with those issues.

 

Understanding the Session View

The first step in understanding the Live Session View is to tilt our head 90 degrees to the right. Now all should be clearly familiar, you should be seeing the tracks disposed horizontally with the track names at the right. Ok, keep that picture and back your head to the upright position.

We can say that the Session view is a multi-track ‘pattern-based’ sequencer, where Tracks are disposed vertically in columns. Unlike conventional sequencers where you place elements on a track at a particular musical or time position, the Session View’s tracks has cells where you can place (or record) audio or midi events, those represented by a colored rectangle named Clip. A Clip refers to an audio file or contains MIDI events. Each clip has its own set of parameters that rules its behavior. You can start Clips individually by pressing Clip’s Launch button without worries about pressing it exactly at the right moment. A configurable function that quantizes the Clip launch action is also provided, so unless you explicitly require it, your Clips will always start in sync with the main musical time, no worries about accidentally Launching a clip at an unwanted bar relative position. Because each Clip has its own time ‘vertical bar’ you can play clips of any length together, even using fractional bar lengths, achieving a seamless loop with no effort.
As Session columns are Tracks, Session rows are called Scenes. If you want to launch multiple Clips at the same time just put them into the same Scene and use the practical Launch Scene button. The Launch Scene button launches all the Clips placed in that Scene. Yes, just with a single button. Conveniently each track can play just one clip at once, which means that starting a Clip will stop another clip already running on the same track. This makes vertical cells useful to place Clip’s variations. If you want to test a Clip’s variation you just have to launch it. The main clip will stop automatically as the variation starts. This also allows the proper operation of Scenes.

 

Highlighted: Live’s Clip,Track and Scene.

 

Capture and Insert Scene

As you can see we don’t have to worry about the issues that we spoke of before. Testing Clip combinations and transitions is very easy and practical in the Session View. Also you have a brilliant tool, the ‘capture and insert scene‘ command (CTRL+Shift+I Win or Command+Shift+I on Mac). This command, as its name says, captures all running Clips and puts them into a new Scene. A great time saver to capture your Session’s cool moments so they can be used later in the production structure (especially if you have a lot of Clips running).

 

Conclusion

All this added to the Clip’s parameters which include from basic level and tone settings to advanced warping features, powerful Clip envelopes and our beloved Follow Actions, a function that allows, in a controlled random fashion, to perform a Launch command over itself or another Clip, making the Ableton Session View a superb and flexible tool where you’ll materialize your musical ideas effortlessly, with an advanced algorithmic composition instrument capable of producing very quickly the most complex and/or chaotic articulations.

I like to think of the Session View as a color palette where I blend the primary colors to produce the tones I need for painting a landscape in the Arrangement View but that analogy isn’t enough because the Session- Arrangement offers different advantages whose interactions are usually in both directions.

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