+MUTEFIRSTSEC Directive?

[ArtF]

Hi,

Sorry if I have missed a way to do this with the existing directives. It would be useful to have the capability to mute a specified audio track for the first section of a song if it wasn’t launched after the previous song in the setlist. Somewhat similar to the functionality of “+LOOPGUIDE”, but with a different condition driving the muting of the track.

A couple of scenarios:

• Sometimes between songs. we want to have a simple sustained pad underneath while the keys player “vamps”. Currently, I do this by defining a new “song” in between the two “real” songs that has a looping section that contains the pad sample. I also put a “tail” of the pad at the start of the second “real” song so that we get a nice transition instead of an abrupt stop to the pad when we are ready to jump to the second song. This works great when we transition between the two songs over the normal course of the set. However, if we want to spontaneously revisit the second song at the end of the set, the pad “tail” sounds strange because we are no longer transitioning from the pad section. Ideally, that track would be muted because we jumped to the song out of order.

• Similarly, if I have two songs in the same key that flow together, I might want a pad or string track from the first song to crossfade into the start of the second song. I can easily accomplish this now, but again if I want to spontaneously return to the second song from a different song, I wouldn’t want that crossfade part to play at the start.

The mute could last just for the first section or even the entire next song, whatever is easier to implement.

Thanks for reading!

[leolabs]

Hey @ArtF, that’s an interesting idea!

For the use cases you described, you might be able to use Live’s Drum Rack to trigger samples that continue playing even if Live jumps to a new song. Here’s a video I made for another customer that had a similar challenge:

Cutting off transients when playing next song

Hey @Alex_Knerzer, welcome to the forum! This might be something you can already do in Live. I see two potential solutions to your challenge. First, you could create multiple audio tracks for the different song intros and unmute the one you’d like to use. This is fairly simple to set up but requires a bit of work every time you change the order of your songs. Alternatively, I like use a drum rack that contains the last few bars of the song which I can trigger before the SONG END marker. These…

Would this work for your project as well?

[ArtF]

Hi,

Thanks! I had tried the Drum rack solution originally, but the problem I ran into was that I wanted the pad to loop indefinitely, so I was using a “+LOOP” section. However, when the arrangement view loop jumped back to its beginning, I was still effectively getting a note off message that interrupted the pad.

I have an alternative solution working now with the Drum rack option where I automate a CC 64 envelope to hold the note before the start of the +LOOP selection. I then have a corresponding small MIDI clip at the start of the next song with the sustain pedal turned off. This appears to give me the sustain I was looking for.

Thanks for looking at this!

[leolabs]

Nice, that sounds like a great solution as well! Thank you for sharing your approach