Would love to able to include the Sections description during playback and not just on the Auto-Speak Sections.
Would be handy for me to be able to include band dynamics cues like “Build”, “Breakdown”,etc. I tried just adding it to the title, but it generates a whole new phrase that sounds wonky instead of being able to utilize both of the available audio files. Possibly being able to place that dynamic cue on the previous measure or mid measure of the section count-in would be a big help as well.
Overall Ableset Cues is NEXT LEVEL and will save a lot of time for myself. So Thank you!
Hey @Cjbelt14,
Most of what you’re after is already built in.
There are two pieces to it:
1. Put the dynamics cue in the section description, not the title
Instead of baking it into the section name, add it as a description in curly braces in the clip name:
Chorus {Build}
That way AbleSet speaks the name and the description as two separate cues (using the two audio files, like you mentioned) instead of generating one combined phrase, which is exactly what’s causing the awkward read.
2. Enable “Auto-Speak Section Descriptions”
There’s a dedicated toggle for this, separate from “Auto-Speak Sections.” Turn on Auto-Speak Section Descriptions and your {Build}, {Breakdown}, etc. will be spoken during playback alongside the section name.
On the count-in timing
For when the cue gets announced during the count-in, take a look at the Speak Section on Second Bar and long count-in options — those control at which point in the count-in the section (and its description) is spoken, so you can nudge it earlier or later.
Placing the dynamics cue on its own at a specific measure, fully independent of the section announcement, isn’t something you can fine-tune per cue at the moment, I’ll pass that along!
Hope that helps!
I’ve got both of those settings enabled, but the description within the curly braces will only play when clicking through the session and not during playback. You’ll see in the screen recording I tried changing a few settings to see what happens and the description just doesn’t play during playback.
Hey @Cjbelt14,
Thanks for the video!
Here’s the distinction: Auto-Speak Section Titles / Include Section Descriptions only announces sections when you jump to them while playback is stopped — that’s why it works when you’re clicking through the session, but not during playback.
During playback, the announcement comes from a separate feature: Count-In Sections During Playback. That one speaks the section name along with the count (“Chorus, 2, 3, 4”) — but it doesn’t include the section description. So it’s not that the description gets cut off for lack of time, it’s just not part of the count-in phrase at all.
If you want your dynamics cue spoken during playback, the workaround is to put it directly in the section name instead of the description. To avoid the awkward combined TTS phrasing, you can supply your own recording: create a Custom folder inside the Cues folder of your project’s AbleSet folder, and add a mono WAV file named exactly like the phrase (e.g. Chorus All In.wav). AbleSet will use your recording instead of generating one. You can also give it more room with [c:2] for a 2-bar count-in, or [c:2.3] to choose exactly which beat the name lands on.
Hope that helps!
Might we expect the Cues VST in an upcoming update to include additional cues during playback aside from section names?
Announcing song titles during playback doesn’t work yet, so I haven’t been able to eliminate the need for a Song Title Slate track containing a recorded clip with Name/key signature(/sometimes tempo/sometimes time signature).
Some kind of elegant method for this VST to drop song dynamic cues (“all in”, “break”, “hold”, “build”) at precise points within a section, or singer info cues (“Verse 1, Chris solo”, “Pre-Chorus, harmonize”) would eliminate the need to still drop these cues into the +GUIDE, +LOOPGUIDE, and +JUMPGUIDE tracks.
I do want to express how useful I find the addition of this Cues VST. It is especially useful for spontaneous jumps as there is just no way to make this work with the +JUMPGUIDE track if there’s any number of possible jump destinations when you’re in the flow at performance time. With the addition of triggering any kind of cues in addition to section titles, this would be perfection.
I totally agree here. There are guide call outs that I want to make like “drums in” or “just guitar" that would not live in the sections track. I love the cue plugin and want to make sure the voice used for titles and sections match the guide. Is there a way to use the plugin for guide as well? If not, what would be the workaround to utilize the same voice as the cue plugin for guide?
As a workaround you can make any cues you like with Cues · Pliris. I use oodles of them in a drum rack on a +GUIDE MIDI track. Some of the voice options there match some of the AbleSet cue voices pretty well.
Hey @Trent, @fwbeck, welcome to the forum!
There’s a way to do this today, and it doesn’t need a separate voice or recorded clips: /cues/say. It’s an OSC command that plays a phrase through the AbleSet Cues plugin — so it’s the exact same voice, the same generation pipeline, and the same output as your count-ins. To trigger it at precise points in the timeline, you can drive it from an OSC track.
Setting it up
Create a MIDI track and name it:
Cues +OSC [/cues/say] [single] [playing]
What each part does:
+OSC— flags the track so clip names get sent as OSC commands when the playhead reaches them.[/cues/say]— the prefix, so clip names only need to contain the phrase itself.[single]— treats the whole clip name as one string argument, so “Drums in” isn’t split into two arguments.[playing]— only fires during playback, so you don’t trigger cues while clicking around the session.
To be clear: you don’t put the Cues plugin on this track. The +OSC track is just a MIDI track that sends commands. Your Cues VST stays wherever it already is, and the phrase comes out of that track like any other cue, with the same routing and levels you’ve already dialled in.
Then drop empty MIDI clips wherever you want a cue and name them with the phrase:
Drums in
Just guitar
Chris solo
Build
The cue fires when the playhead hits the start of the clip, so you can place it on any beat you want — mid-section, on the previous measure, wherever. That’s independent of section names and count-in timing.
Using your own recordings instead
If you’d rather have a real voice for some phrases, this still works: put a mono WAV file in the Custom folder inside the Cues folder of your project’s AbleSet folder, named exactly like the phrase (e.g. Drums in.wav). AbleSet uses your file whenever it matches, and falls back to the generated voice for anything else.
The first time a phrase is used it has to be generated, so I’d play through the song once beforehand to get everything cached before a show. So if a cue lands right on top of a count-in, give yourself some space between them until you’ve checked how it feels.
You can see OSC tracks being set up here, and custom cue voices here.
Would that work for your use case?
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@agustinvolpe thank you fro welcoming to the forum. I love the collaboration that goes on here.
This works great. Very easy to implement. I appreciate the detailed walkthrough. I have one additional question for you. is there a way to also automatically add a count-in for these OSC midi clips? I tried just adding 2,3,4 at the end of “drums in” or even separate midi clips for each number “2”, “3”, “4’“, but the timing was off. Not a deal breaker, but also trying to cover all my bases.
Thanks
Hey @Trent,
Glad it’s working! On the count-in question: not natively, no. Count-ins are tied to sections and loops — AbleSet knows those are coming and schedules the audio against the beat grid ahead of time. /cues/say is a different thing: it speaks a phrase the moment the command arrives, so there’s no beat-locking involved.
You could nudge the clips by ear. Turn off snapping and drag each number clip slightly earlier until it sits right. It’s tempo-dependent, so you’d redo it per song.
You could also make it a real section. If you want a proper beat-locked count-in, that’s exactly what the section count-in is for. Put a section named Drums in at that point with [c:1] for a one-bar count-in, and you get “Drums in, 2, 3, 4” perfectly in time, for free. [c:2.3] gives you a two-bar count-in with the name landing on beat 3 if you want more room. The trade-off is that it becomes a navigable section in your sections track, which may or may not bother you.
Or you could skip the numbers. Worth asking whether you need them, as the click is already counting, and the cue landing one bar early usually does the job on its own. That’s how I’d start before building anything more elaborate.
Would one of those work for your use case?
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Thank you @agustinvolpe. I wanted to avoid putting these guides into sections because I did not want them to be a navigable section in my section track.
To your point, it may not be needed. I’ll give it a go with the band during rehearsal, but I agree that it’s probably fine without the additional count in.
Thank you again for all the help!!
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