Forever trying to incorporate live jamming / interaction while using tracks.
Had the thought it would be really cool to be able to solo the click track / disable tracks for a chorus / section and for example have crowd sing, then have tracks back in on downbeat of next section. Making it feel seem less.
I figure I could do this easily enough - but timing the footswitch hit could be clunky.
Wondering if there could be anyway Ableset could tell the solo button to disengage at end of section… Kinda like how you can auto loop a section, have it auto solo the click / chanell in Ableton…
Am I dreaming or possible?
Or maybe there’s a better way to do this I’m not seeing?
If the moment is planned as part of the song, you could add a 1-bar loop at the point where you’d like to solo the click track and remove all other audio clips in that loop. You can disable the loop when you’re ready to move to the next section.
The core idea is for it to be spontaneous. And to continue the normal flow of the song.
I do have sections baked into songs for said purpose already. But lately have been thinking it would be nice to be able to just go into that “mode” whenever the feeling hits - rather than having it baked in.
I’ll try out the simple version of just mapping a FS to the solo button of the click track. That might be good enough. I just know there will be some
not great re entry / timing of the tracks this way.
Was thinking there might have been a way for Ableset to tell the solo button to disengage ( after being engaged ) on the next locator, for example.
If you’re using Companion, you could potentially leverage its logic with the Ableset module to disengage the solo button at the end of the current section, if it’s engaged. I’m thinking you could create a custom variable triggered by a foot pedal, which could have three states:
1. Zero – not looping
2. One – looping and staying in loop mode
3. Two – looping, but this will be the last loop
The variable would change based on the foot pedal input, and at the end of the section, if it is “two” then it would trigger the solo to turn off and continue to the next section. You could also possibly make use of envelopes in Ableton to fade the track back up.
I’ve had a few instances where bands wanted something like you mentioned but it was last minute so I had to just do everything manually. It would be nice to have something like this on stand-by if needed.
I’d be happy to try and come up with a solution on this tomorrow and over the weekend to see if I can figure it out.
This would be a perfect use case for the Transitions feature. Its whole purpose is to accommodate spontaneous “auxiliary” sections of a song.
I’ve proposed the idea several times but I understand that Leo has a lot of irons in the fire. A feature like this would be absolutely huge in my church worship community.
I can imagine having an “alternate part” that works in parallel with normal song flow - where it can be whatever you want it to be, for example a quieter kick drum with hit hats keeping a pulse, a simpler quieter bass part - just like what a real band would do in these situations - and then a transition fill to make the next section feel natural / seem less, again like a real band would do.
I get this is very niche - overkill perhaps - but I would indeed make use of it.
For now tho, the solo click feature gets the job done for me.
What you’ve described is a perfect scenario. Having a Transitions feature would accommodate so many additional scenarios where the user wants a spontaneous alternate song flow. Spontaneity is huge in the worship space and i have absolutely no doubt that a feature like this would be a huge hit.
I run looped pads (with variations) at the end of the song so we can fill the space before we can move on to the other one.
You can use the same approach putting section with Click/Pulse/Drums after the end of the song so you can jump to it and back whenever you want. Just keep in mind that you’ll have to handle song end so that when you are finished, extra part woun’t start playing out of nowhere.
In the video I jumped queing another song, not exiting loop (what I would usually do, since I don’t have anything else at the end of the song).
Hi. I am a keyboardist at my church and I control ableset directly from my midi controller (novation impulse), but I don’t know how you control your ableset. If it were through a midi controller… Then I’ll tell you how I do it:
1- Activate the Auto-Loop the Current Section option
2- on the ableton master channel, on the Ableset OSC Midi device you have to assign a midi controller button to “scape loop”
3- group the volume faders of all tracks into a master fader (except click and cues)
Now well. While they play along with the tracks and that moment arrives to make the audience sing, you just have to press the loop (scape loop button) to stay in the desired section and lower the volume of the tracks through the master fader and that’s it. . When you want to continue the song you just have to press (escape loop button) and increase the volume of the tracks again. This way it will be much more fluid. I hope it helps you.
