Actually being able to import audio clips is what I’m most excited about lmao
The rack/group system in Ableton is what does it for me, don’t think I could switch to anything else now. So much flexibility in processing. And with 10 they’ve fixed a lot of things that needed to be addressed for a while from what I’ve heard (I only switched to Ableton a few months before 10 was released). I think to a large extent it really is more about how well you know what you’re using rather than which one you pick, but Ableton is pretty unique. Don’t find the scenes view to be a huge deal unless you play live, I basically don’t feel the need to touch it for production. Only thing I really feel like is a big deal that it just can’t do is playlists a la Pro Tools/Logic but for electronic production that hardly matters tbh.
That said I am pretty curious about Bitwig still… might watch some videos of what it can do cause I haven’t really seen it in action but some of the concepts I’ve heard about it seem intriguing
I compose in Session view and use scenes to build an arrangement. Then I record that into arrangement view.
I think a lot of people just work in arrangement view.
1 BigUp
Yeah definitely and whatever works for you is good ofc. I can see how it’d be an interesting way to work but I’ve never really gotten into it, just feels right to me to lay stuff out manually and design the flow of the track that way
Out of curiousity, do you play your drums in with a keyboard or MIDI controller live, or do you mouse them in?
Combination really, depends on the genre and the groove/feel of the song. I’ll use the drum pads or keys on my midi controller, or mouse them in, most of the time probably both for different elements. It’s nice to be able to just play in a beat that I have in my head at times but for some drum patterns it’s almost easier when I just know visually where to put the hits to make the beat I’m thinking of. Either way I’ll definitely go in and play around with quantizing, velocities, shifting things around etc. manually and nail it in afterward. So I guess it’s good to be comfortable doing either.
That’s another thing about Ableton I really like is the drum rack (which for me any percussion element I’m using goes into in a track, unless I’m pitching it around in which case it’ll be Simpler or Sampler) because there’s just so much useful stuff tucked away in it that once you get used to using it its annoying to go back to placing audio samples manually. Only things I drag in as audio and place are things that are like, little one shot fx, risers/impacts or cymbals that aren’t being triggered many times through the song.
1 BigUp