Am I too old for Ableton Live?

[Starship Krupa]

I have the Lite 10 license, and I drop in and mess with it every so often.

Maybe I'm set in my ways with my Cakewalk and Mixcraft and REAPER and Music Maker and Waveform and Vegas and....well, pretty much every DAW and NLE I've ever tried. But when I fire up Live! Lite and try to start off by writing a tune in their piano roll, there's this feature that Ableton seems to lack that is standard in all of those others, which is the Rewind button. A button that returns the playhead to the beginning of the project. This function is handy for things like when I enter a few notes or chords and want to listen to what I just did. I hit play and it plays, then it keeps going on into infinity, and I can stop it, but then just sits out there. I can find no option to have it go back to start when I stop the transport, I can find no keystroke that rewinds, so I wind up clicking back at the beginning and hoping that my click was accurate.

I know there are some fab features that Ableton Live! has that Cakewalk lacks, but really, being able to rewind the transport is not something I'd ever expect to have to do via clever workarounds.

Is it that the music produced with Ableton is expected to be so inconsequential that even the person making it isn't interested in listening to it? That can't be, some of my favorite artists use Ableton Live!

Adding some kind of rewind would be my #1 feature request for Ableton.

[Bapu]

7 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Adding some kind of rewind would be my #1 feature request for Ableton.

Clever one that you are. Making a feature request for Ableton on the Cakewalk forum.

Brillyant!

 

[Starship Krupa]

See, I am a befuddled geezer.

[craigb]

29 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Clever one that you are. Making a feature request for Ableton on the Cakewalk forum.

Brillyant!

 

Well, at least it's "music related..." ?

[Shane_B.]

I think I'm getting too old for any DAW. I've lost my creativity and desire to dive in to it like I used to. At this point I'm kind of like a zombie. Getting slower, running on muscle memory/instinct only, can't learn anything new, forgot 99% of what I used to know. I feel like I should like recording but can't remember why.

Essentially I've turned in to a real life Bub.

[John K]

Shane,

You got at least one big benefit going forward. Complete cure for GAS if you do it right.

Realized the trend when trying to buy a delay unit several years ago and the site responded that I had already purchased the plug, did I want another set of licenses.

Then I knew that fading memory was a gift. All I had to do was wait a few months and I forgot whatever it was I bought. Could then start cycling thru the purchases I had no clue I'd made. Like getting new expensive plugins all the time without having to buy anything anymore. Big perk for surviving thru time past my limit, but have to admit that getting old has otherwise not so many other benefits. All you young dudes out there don't got to worry about it (for awhile...)

John

 

 

[Shane_B.]

I haven't had that happen with paid plugins but it sure has with the free stuff. I'm constantly trying out new things and when I go to install it it asks me if I want to overwrite the previous install. My wife cured me of buying stuff. She keeps an extremely tight grip on the funds.

[abacab]

On 4/4/2021 at 4:55 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I know there are some fab features that Ableton Live! has that Cakewalk lacks, but really, being able to rewind the transport is not something I'd ever expect to have to do via clever workarounds.

Maybe it's not too obvious or intuitive, but simply clicking the STOP button a second time returns the play head to zero. ?

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, abacab said:

simply clicking the STOP button a second time returns the play head to zero

OMG, you've saved my 60-year-old Ableton bacon.

And now it becomes apparent to me WHY there's no rewind/RTZ button on their transport. Probably 20 years ago, when Live! was created, when its purpose was, uh, live performances only, in a live performance there is no rewinding.

Raises the question in my mind whether FL Studio has non-loop playback and recording modes as the default like most DAW's.

On 4/4/2021 at 9:49 AM, Shane_B. said:

I've lost my creativity and desire to dive in to it like I used to.

I started this topic with tongue firmly in cheek, so I hope you're exaggerating. I know the feeling though. One of my favorite mental playtoys is "what am I doing this for?" Which is odd, I don't remember making a conscious decision to take making music "seriously" at any point. Even when I was at the right age playing genres that were starting to explode in the music scene (80's-90's grunge-shoegaze), I never maintained any illusions about making a living playing music.

So I go through the process of reminding myself that if I were into model railroading (as one of my musical heroes, Neil Young is) I wouldn't be asking "what am I doing this for?" Simple answer: because it's fun, I like playing with trains (or in my case, drum kit and guitars), I have made lifelong friends through doing it. Same with participating in online forums. My last three girlfriends I met via some combination of online forums and the music scene.

I do have the impulse to want to share my music with other music lovers. There's a lasting thrill that comes from people connecting with it. Even if it's only a handful of people. I'd be happy to put my music up on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or BandLab Albums and get five comments telling me that my ambient music helped them relax, or that they could relate to the lyrics in my rock songs. It would probably be the same with a cool Lionel train layout. I'd want to show it off to other enthusiasts and especially young kids, to see that wonder that I remember when I saw these amazing train layouts.

Unfortunately, starting in the '60's music equipment (and now software) marketing has been mostly ignoring making music as strictly a hobby for one's own enjoyment, in favor of selling the rock star/hot producer illusion. This contributes to the idea that my hobby has to be "going somewhere" to have value as a pursuit.

Also, I just turned 60 last month and I know intellectually that continuing to do creative pursuits and hobbies is good for keeping the aging brain nimble.

What I'm getting at with all this is that I think we all wonder why we're doing what we do and that it's good and natural, even necessary to consider that and maybe that it's changed since we started doing it in our teens or 20's. Revisiting that (as I'm doing by writing this) can help relight the fire.

One more thing: for me this is a hobby (I don't know if you're a pro or not). It's okay for me to walk away from it (or dial it back) for a while to whatever degree and let the batteries recharge. If the hobby is something I'm "meant" to be doing, my interest will come back. I just make sure not to liquidate the tools I need to start back up. At one point in my life, I pretty much stopped playing music at all for half a dozen years. I was all about woodworking and vintage home restoration. But music inevitably pulled me back.

17 hours ago, John K said:

the site responded that I had already purchased the plug, did I want another set of licenses.

Then I knew that fading memory was a gift. All I had to do was wait a few months and I forgot whatever it was I bought. Could then start cycling thru the purchases I had no clue I'd made. Like getting new expensive plugins all the time without having to buy anything anymore.

?

I am pleased to say that in all my years of being a plug-in 'ho, I've only had this happen once. I help avoid it by keeping all of my installers archived, that way I can quickly find out if I either own a license or demo'd it and decided against.

And heck yeah to having enough gadgets that I can go into the toy chest and pull out ones I entirely forgot I owned. It goes directly against the whole "does this bring me joy" concept (which I don't discount), but it's not a bad thing to have something sitting around waiting for me to delve into it when inspiration has otherwise taken a hike. Especially these days when "delays" can be incredibly feature-packed. My "delays" folder has ObjeqDelay, Hysteresis, Sandman Pro, Sphere Delay and at least half a dozen other one-of-a-kinds.