CHAPTER 4. LIVE CONCEPTS
14
Selecting the Library bookmark in Live's File Browser will take you to the Live Library of
creative tools. Depending on what content you have installed, there may be a number of
demo Sets here, and double-clicking a Live Set's name in the Browser will open that Live
Set. You can also nd Live Sets made by others at the Ableton website, as well as upload
your own. This makes it easy to
collaborate with other Live users
.
4.2
Arrangement and Session
The basic musical building blocks of Live are called
clips
. A clip is a piece of musical material:
a melody, a drum pattern, a bassline or a complete song. Live allows you to record and alter
clips, and to create larger musical structures from them: songs, scores, remixes, DJ sets or
stage shows.
A Live Set consists of two environments that can hold clips: The
Arrangement
is a layout of
clips along a musical timeline; the
Session
is a real-time-oriented launching base for clips.
Every Session clip has its own play button that allows launching the clip at any time and in
any order. Each clip's behavior upon launch can be
precisely speci ed through a number of
settings
.
Clips in the Session View
(Left) and in the
Arrangement View
(Right).
The Arrangement is accessed via the
Arrangement View
and the Session via the
Session
View
; you can toggle between the two views using the computer's Tab key or their respective
selectors. Because the two views have distinct applications, they each hold individual
collections of clips. However, it is important to understand that ipping the views simply
changes the appearance of the Live Set and does not switch modes, alter what you hear or
change what is stored.
