I'm going to show you a few quick tips that will make moving
around in Ableton much faster and organizing your sessions
but easier as well.
So let's start by naming these tracks.
By default, when you add a virtual instrument,
it's going to title that track whatever the name of the instrument is.
But this doesn't really have any relationship to what I mean when I see it.
I want it to be called Drums.
So with the track selected,
I can right-click here and then you can see I have the option to rename
this track and the key command is Command-R on a Mac or Control+R on a PC.
So I'm going to hit Command-R or to rename.
I'm going to just type in Drums and press Enter and I've renamed this track successfully.
So here as well,
I'm going to use the key Command this time.
I'm just going to Command-R,
Control+R on a PC, and I'll call this Keys.
Now I quickly want to jump from this track to the next track.
So instead of pressing Enter and then having to go through this rename protocol again.
I'm just going to hit Tab, and it's going to bring me over to this next track.
I call this Vocal Loops.
Then for this fourth track,
I'll call this Longer clips.
So it makes sense to me,
and you name it whatever makes sense to you.
The same thing goes for each of these clips,
on a clip basis, I'll say Command-R in order to rename,
and I'll call this 1.
Then instead of pressing Tab to go over to the next track,
I just press down and then I have got the next clip selected.
I'll call this 2, and we'll call this 3.
So just to finish up here,
I'm going to call this keys1, keys2, and keys3.
So I've got this all compartmentalized.
It's feeling really good to me.
So additionally, I can create groups if I want to have like
minded or like sounding tracks and put them together in a single category.
I can put them in what's referred to as a group.
So I've got my first tracks elected.
I'm holding down Shift, and I'm selecting the next clip.
So both of these tracks are currently selected.
Again, I can go to edit up here and I can choose
group tracks if that's something that I want to do, or here's the key Command listed.
So I'm just going to go ahead and use the drop down menu to create this group.
So now both of these tracks live inside of what's called 3 Group.
It's track 3 and it is a group.
I can open and close the group by
clicking on this little circle that's on the right-hand side of the track title.
I'm going to rename this Vocal Loops because they
are both tracks full of vocal loops and I can expand or contract.
So I don't have to just launch on a per clip basis.
I also can launch per scene and on the Master here you can see that I've got
numbers and there's a play icon on
the left-hand side of what looks like as an empty clip slot, but it's not.
It's a scene launch button.
If I launch scene 1,
every single clip got horizontal row is going to be launched for me.
[MUSIC]
I go with number 2.
[MUSIC]
So for some people,
it might make a lot of sense to compartmentalize and organize your clips like
song form that may be scene 1 is reverse or in scene 2 is your chorus.
Just like we we're renaming the tracks in the groups,
we can also rename these scenes as well using the key Command.
I'm going to call this Verse, and we just keep on going.
Name them whatever makes sense to you.
So we have a lot of options in terms of organizing,
naming, and lastly, if I right-click here,
you can see I can color code things however I want as well.
So I have a large pallet to select from.
I'm going to say that group is pink, and even on a per clip basis,
this clip is going to be dark gray.
So you can color coordinate things.
You can choose your naming protocol,
whatever makes sense for you and makes it easier to navigate inside of the DAW for you.
As you continue to compose,
you're likely going to need a lot more tracks than
the two MIDI and two audio tracks that you're create with in the default session.
So in order to create a new audio track or new MIDI track,
you're going to go up here,
select Create and you can see that you can insert an audio track.
Here I have three audio,
Create, Insert a Midi Track,
and here is my new MIDI track.
I can also insert another scene.
So if you run out of clips here,
you can see I can go down and it stops at eight for me here and I go.
So if you need more clips in a vertical sense,
you can always just insert another scene by going to Create,
Insert Scene and then I've given another row to keep adding clips and keep composing.
The last quick tip I'm going to show you today is how to transpose MIDI really quickly.
So I'm going to select all of these nodes and I can do that by highlighting or I can use
Command-A or Control+A on a PC, and that is to just
select everything that's currently in what I'm looking at in this sequence.
So I've used Command-A to do that.
Now if I use the arrow key,
[NOISE]
you can see that I'm transposing up by semitone at a time, [MUSIC] back down.
If I hold down Shift and up,
I go an octave at a time.
That's a really nice way if everything needs to be shifted up or down,
you can go by semitone or you can go by octave as well and do some really quick at it.
A lot of times I find that all sequence things around the same range,
I have a very small MIDI Controller,
so it's all kind of laying in the same spot.
Sometimes it's makes a huge difference just to
take a sequence and notch it up an entire octave,
leave a little space for the other instruments
and that's one of my favorite key commands,
is to just quickly transposed MIDI like that.
[MUSIC]