My first introduction a group follow action came from being a part of the band Fate Of Fools. We managed to create a ton of awesome stuff as just two people, but it required the triggering of some of the parts we weren’t able to physically reproduce during a live show.
My guitarist and closest friend, Jeff, would fire the first clip of our songs using a foot controller, and he would program follow actions to take us all the way through to the end of the song.
Since we were using multiple different audio parts, and also some midi control tracks, there were times when we would be firing 8 or 9 different channels of clips per scene.
That’s a lot of work if you need to do that individually for each track.
You can’t set follow actions on your master channel, but you can group all of your channel strips together and set follow actions there.
Today, that is our focus.
Setting Up Your Set
Line up clips you want to be played simultaneously horizontally across your layout.
Make sure that there are no blank clips anywhere in your set. Ableton will stop firing clips for that track for the duration of the song.
If you have more than one song in your set, leave a blank scene between songs so separate songs or musical ideas won’t be accidentally included where they don’t belong.
Once this is done, select all the channels you want a follow action to be applied to, right-mouse click and choose “group” (or press Command-G).
Setting Up The Follow Action
Step 1: Chose the first scene of your group. At the bottom of the screen in clip view, make sure you can see the launch tab.
Step 2: Chose a follow action from the drop-down menu. You can choose either one option or two. If you choose one, make sure you are choosing from the left drop-down menu. Remember that follow actions set here will affect all clips in this group
Step 3: If you opt to have two possible follow actions, set the likely hood that each could happen by entering numbers in the boxes below each action.
Step 4: Repeat for all scenes.
Alright, now get out there and make some music! You’re going to do great.
And be sure to connect directly with me and a whole community of Ableton users on my facebook group. It’s a great place to give and receive support, and the easiest way to get in touch with me directly.
Hope to see you there.
Until next time, Happy creating.
-Brett