Songs without markers in ableset

Feature Requests
1

Hello,

I have just purchased AbleSet for our band. However, we have both songs with backing tracks and some that do not require any. Unfortunately, I find it cumbersome and confusing to add those songs as markers in the set. In addition, the timings are not necessarily accurate since the songs without tracks are played without a click.

I would like to have them in the setlist simply as placeholders so that the setlist is complete.

It is possible that I have overlooked an existing option. Otherwise, I would be very happy if this feature could be added in the future.

Thank you very much and best regards,

Christian

2

Hey @FireDito, welcome to the forum!

You can do exactly what you’re after with just a couple of tweaks to your locators. A song without backing tracks is handled the same way as any other: a locator with the song title acts as a placeholder, so your setlist stays complete.

Here are the two things that solve your specific concerns:

1. Fix the timing
Since these songs play without a click, the space they take up in the Live timeline doesn’t reflect their real length. You can override the displayed duration by adding it in square brackets at the end of the locator name:

Song Without Tracks [3:20]

That makes the total setlist time accurate regardless of how much room the song actually occupies in the arrangement.

2. Make sure it doesn’t run into the next song
Since nothing is playing, you’ll want AbleSet to stop there instead of rolling on. The cleanest way is to end the song with a SONG END locator and then enable Stop After Song for it in the Setlist Editor — that’s flexible and can be toggled per setlist. Alternatively, you can use a STOP (or AUTOSTOP) locator directly in Ableton if you always want it to stop at that point.

With a stop in place you don’t need to reserve a big block of empty timeline as a safety buffer, though leaving a little room never hurts.

You can also see this in action in the official tutorial.

Would that work for your use case?

3

Thank you very much. This is a good workaround. I have one more question. If I Set a new Locator for a Song, this will be add at the current Setlist. But I will add this manually not automatic. Is this possible?

Thank you and best regards

Christian

4

Hey @FireDito,

That’s a good question!
By default, AbleSet automatically adds any new song locator to your setlist based on its position in the Ableton timeline, so there’s no way to make AbleSet “ignore” a new song locator for the active setlist (the * ignore-flag would also hide it entirely, including from search, so that’s not quite what you want here).

What you can do instead is remove it from the setlist after it gets added:

  1. Open the Setlist Editor (edit button at the bottom right).
  2. Click the x next to the song you don’t want in the active setlist. It’ll just be grayed out, not deleted, the locator stays in your Ableton project.
  3. Save and exit the editor.

Whenever you want to bring it back, open the Setlist Editor again and either press + (or ⌘K) to search for it and add it back, or toggle the eye icon to show grayed-out songs and re-add it from there.

So your full repertoire can live in the Ableton timeline at all times, and you just curate which songs are active for a given setlist using the editor.

Hope that helps!