Let's take a look at Live's Session View, which allows you to play with musical ideas using clips.
Unlike traditional music software, where ideas must be laid down linearly on a timeline, the Session View allows you to mix
and match ideas without committing to a specific order or arrangement.
The basic unit we're working with in the Session View is called a clip. A clip can either be audio or MIDI.
It can be as short as a single drum hit or as long as a full song.
And clips can either play through once as one shots, or they can loop the material they contain.
Over in my browser I have this hi-hat loop and I'd like to add it to the Session View.
To do this, I click and drag it to where it says "Drop files and Devices Here" and let go.
If I look to the Detail View at the bottom, I can see whether this clip is audio or MIDI,
and notice that a new track was created for me.
I can resize the track by clicking and dragging on the edges here
and I can do this for multiple tracks by holding down Shift, selecting the tracks that I want, and clicking and dragging on the edges again.
Now I'd like to play the hi-hat loop so I hit the play button for the clip
and I'd like to add my drums to the mix, so whenever I'm ready, I'll trigger the Drums clip.
Notice that Live waited a little bit after I triggered the Drums clip to start playback.
This is because Global Quantization is enabled and it allows everything to remain in sync.
Let's add the chords to this.
At the bottom of each track is the Track Status display that shows us important information about what's playing on the track,
including how many times the clip is looped, where along the clip we're at, and how many beats long the clip is.
If I turn looping off, I can see how many seconds are left in this one shot before it stops playing.
Let's turn the loop back on and trigger the chords again.
And let's add the bass.
I can stop playback on any clip by hitting one of the stop buttons on the corresponding track.
Say I wanted to start and stop the bass and the chords at the same time.
To do this, I'll click and drag the chords so that they are next to the bass.
Hold down Shift and select both the bass and the chords and hit CTRL G on Windows
or Command G on Mac to group these two tracks together.
I can then open and close the group here and now I can start and stop playback for both clips at the same time.
A row of clips is called a Scene. If I want to trigger a scene, I can click the corresponding play button underneath the Master.
Let's trigger the second scene.
You can think of each scene as a different section of your song.
To label a scene, I'll right-click and hit Rename.
I'll call this first scene Verse and the second scene Chorus.
I can also color-code each scene by right-clicking and selecting the color.
If I want to get even more organized, I can right-click on the scene again, hit Select All Slots and Scenes,
right-click on any one of the clip slots and give it all the same color.
If I drag on the Master track to the left, I can also set the individual BPM and time signature for each scene.
This is useful if you want to do a tempo change midway through your track.
Let's go to the chorus.
And then I'll play the last scene.
Notice that my Lead stopped playing when I switched to the last scene.
This is because the stop button underneath the Lead clip was enabled. To get rid of the stop button, I'll right-click and hit Remove Stop Button.
Now when I go from the Chorus...
to the last scene, the Lead keeps playing.
Let's go back to the Verse.
I'd like to record something on my piano track, so I'll arm this track here and whenever I'm ready, hit the Session Record button at the top.
I can hit the Session Record button again to stop recording and start playback.
This allows me to remain in the flow of the performance.
Let's switch to the Chorus.
Over on the right side, I can customize the look of my Session View.
I can choose to minimize the Ins and Outs, Sends and Returns,
the mixer, Track Delay, CPU metering which allows me to see how much each track is using the CPU,
and the crossfader.
I can assign different tracks to either the A or B banks on the crossfader.
Let's assign the drums and the bass to A.
And chords and lead to B.
Now, if I click and drag the crossfader left and right, I can fade between these two banks.
Awesome.
Let's hit the stop button over on the bottom corner of the Master track to stop all clips...
And I'll go ahead and minimize some of the elements that are displayed in the Session View.
Now, what I'd like to do is record my performance into the Arrangement View.
So I'll hit the stop button a couple of times to reset the transport back to 1.1.1.
And whenever I'm ready, I'll hit the Arrangement Record button at the top and start triggering clips.
We'll switch to the chorus.
If I switch over to the Arrangement View, I can see all this material being recorded.
Say I'm done with my recording. I'll hit the stop button at the top and play back from the beginning.
I want to replay my recording, so I'll hit the 'Back to Arrangement' button over on the bottom-right of the Master track.
And now I'm hearing the recording from the Arrangement View as opposed to the Session View.