iv.
8x2 Soft Buttons
The 8x2 soft buttons area (above the faders) allow you to change the state of your tracks quickly. The button labels
(highlighted with a red box below) show on the rightmost screen the current function of the soft buttons.
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Mute and Solo
Looking again at the above image, you will see that the buttons are functioning according to bank 1 (the default)
where the top row (the yellow buttons) mutes and un-mutes tracks, and the lower row (the dark blue buttons) tog-gles
solo on and off. When muted, the yellow soft buttons will become a dark yellow; conversely, when soloing a track the
corresponding soft button will be-come bright blue.
•
Monitor and Record Arm
You can move to bank 2 by pressing the green down arrow to the right of the 8x2 soft button area. Now, the rightmost
screen will indicate that the top row of soft buttons (again in yellow) cycles through MIDI/Audio Monitoring options. By
default, Ableton Live tracks are set to ‘Auto’, but pressing the top row of buttons will allow you to change monitoring
to ‘Off’ or ‘In’. The bottom row (dark red) controls the ‘record arm’ option. When you set a track to ‘Monitor In’ its soft
button turns ice blue, and when you record arm a track its soft button becomes bright red.
v. Options
Options View provides functionality for viewing and editing various track param-eters as well as displaying device
chains and selecting from the devices in the chain.
Within InControl mode, pressing the Options button opens the Options View.
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Displaying Device Chains and Device Selection
Upon entering the Options View, the upper part of the screens will show the de-vice chain on the currently selected
track. These devices may be Ableton in-struments or audio/MIDI effects, or third-party ones.
•
Click a pink pad to select the devices you wish to control. This turns the pad bright pink and selects the name
of the device on the screen above.
•
Press the Options button again to return to the default InControl View (where pads control clips).
•
Now, the first eight parameters for the device you just selected are dis-played on the screens and moving the
rotary knobs above will adjust those parameters.
The images above show an Ableton Live device chain and the corresponding SL MkIII view after clicking the Options
button. In this case, we have selected Lim-iter. This is confirmed by the ‘blue hand’ symbol on the Ableton Live screen,
and by the bright pink pad and highlighted device name on the SL MkIII screen.
The image above shows the selected device’s controls displayed in the screens after choosing the Limiter and exiting
the Options View.
If you want to select another device (coming from elsewhere in Options, like Pan) the first soft key under the screens
called ‘DevceSlct’ will get you back to the Device Chains and Device Selection View.
•
Device Parameter Banking
Of course, the SL MkIII allows you to modify device parameters beyond the first eight (most Live devices, after all,
contain more than eight parameters). With a device selected, pressing the up or down arrow buttons (to the left of the
screens) will switch through available ‘banks’ of parameters. As per usual, the rotary knobs above will modify these
new parameters.
Summary of Contents for SL MkIII
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