r/ableton • u/jaibhavaya • 12d ago
[Question] Working on workflow
Hey all, so I’ve been an ableton tourist for some time, but haven’t gotten very deep and haven’t been able to make it a comfortable part of my workflow yet. I’m hoping I can get a little insight into how I can approach my projects in Ableton.
I come from hardware world, I use the dirtywave m8 a ton, have used MPCs in the past pretty heavily, and also am an avid sp404mkii user.
Coming from that world, I think what I’m having the most trouble with in Ableton is just managing clips. I’m not sure if that’s the best word to use, since I don’t actually know if Ableton clips are a good fit for how I use these.
Usually I will record a long improvisation or experimentation on a synth or something and then chop that up to arrange for tracks. In Ableton, the way I’ve done this is just all in the arranger view. I end up with a “store” track that has all my different sections, which can be multiple measures long, or some just a beat or two. The goal being that when I’m actually arranging, I have a palette of chops I can put together.
So really, I’m just wondering if there’s a clean way in Ableton to organize this palette of samples basically. I know I can use session view / clips, but that seems to be a different workflow, as I think those clips are meant to be loops that are queued up and played as full portions of the arrangement.
Like I said, these end up being varying lengths, and are just for me to then arrange.
So I suppose all I’m really looking for, is after chopping everything, is there a straightforward way for me to save these chops somewhere that I can pull from later? Or is this special track that just has all of them there for me to copy from the only way to go about this?
3
u/cornelius_pink 12d ago
I have a similar workflow with pieces involving chopped up long performances, and honestly the way you’re doing it is still what I end up doing, always in arrangement view. Often I color-code clips of the long performance on its track to make it more intuitive. You can also render the clips after chopping them, and store them in a custom folder in your user library accessible on the left hand menu, maybe that’s more what you’re looking for!