When disabled, recording will not start until the Play button is pressed (or Session clips are launched.) Tip: regardless of the state of this preference, holding Shift while pressing Arrangement Record will engage the opposite behavior. When enabled, recording starts as soon as the button is pressed. The specific behavior depends on the state of the “Start Playback with Record” button in the Record/Warp/Launch preferences. Pressing the Control Bar’s Arrangement Record button starts recording.

If you want to break your recording seamlessly into multiple clips or record while you are also launching clips in Live, use the Session View. If you want to record onto more than one track simultaneously and/or prefer viewing the recording linearly and in-progress, the Arrangement View may be the better choice. Recording can be done in both the Session and the Arrangement Views. Arming a track selects the track so you can readily access its devices in the Device View.

If multiple tracks are selected, clicking one of their Arm buttons will arm the other tracks as well. If you are using a natively supported control surface, arming a MIDI track will automatically lock this control surface to the instrument in the track ( see 29.1.1).Ĭlicking one track’s Arm button unarms all other tracks unless the CTRL(Win) / CMD(Mac) modifier is held. This behavior is called “auto-monitoring“ and you can change it to fit your needs ( see 15.1). It doesn’t matter if you click a track’s Arm button in the Session View or in the Arrangement View, since the two share the same set of tracks.īy default, armed tracks are monitored, meaning that their input is passed through their device chain and to the output, so that you can listen to what is being recorded. To select a track for recording, click on its Arm button.

Track Arm Buttons in the Arrangement (Left) and Session (Right) Mixers. The Routing chapter ( see Chapter 15) describes these options in detail. The computer keyboard can be activated as a pseudo-MIDI input device ( see 15.3.2), allowing you to record MIDI even if no MIDI controller hardware is currently available.įor every track, you can choose an input source other than the default: any mono or stereo external input, a specific MIDI channel from a specific MIDI-in device or a signal coming from another track. MIDI tracks default to recording all MIDI that is coming in through the active external input devices ( see 15.3.1). The Track In/Out Section in the Arrangement (Left) and Session View (Right).Īudio tracks default to recording a mono signal from external input 1 or 2. (In the Arrangement View, unfold and resize the track in order to completely see the In/Out section.) For more information, please refer to Capturing MIDI ( see 17.10).Ī track will record whatever input source is shown in its In/Out section, which appears when the View menu’s In/Out option is checked. This allows for more freedom and flexibility when you want to improvise or experiment. On MIDI tracks, it is possible to “capture” played material after you’ve played it, without the need to press the Record button beforehand. For these devices, you must therefore use either an audio interface with a preamp, or an external preamp. Also, keep in mind that devices such as microphones, guitars and turntables do not operate at line level, meaning that they will need to have their levels boosted before they can be recorded. For more on this, please see the built-in program lesson on setting up Audio Preferences. Note that this is a different kind of recording than the capturing of Session clips into the Arrangement ( see 7.5).įor successful audio recording, please make sure the audio preferences are set up properly. This chapter is about recording new clips from audio and MIDI input signals.

Ableton clip manager