Ableton user should check out Vitamin L from Tonearm. If you haven’t heard of it here is what it is and does:
Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements. The features include:
- a set of ergonomically placed “smart” single-key shortcuts
- context-sensitive mouse wheel assignment
- easy keyboard access to many clip properties and envelopes
- quick modes for adjusting clip gain, pitch and BPM from the timeline/session
- keyboard timeline navigation, play-from-mouse-cursor, etc.
- a quick and simple solution to recording and combining multiple takes
- power-zoom: mouse-wheel zoom, accelerated zoom, vertical zoom, zoom presets
- precision editing (nudge, move/copy to an adjacent track and more)
- automation tools, including working with lanes and editing the tempo envelope
- sample-audio-to-midi-track function and shortcut
This really corrects one of the weakness with Ableton. I have not been one for shortcuts. I played all those old school RTS games to develop mad point and click skills right? Well it is like learning to type correctly. It is slower going at first if you have been hunting and pecking but pays off huge in the long run. I am not that great at remembering shortcuts. My brain is just wired to make that easy. But it something I need to get better at if I am serious about getting more done. More doing and less time clicking about sounds good to me.
Well, you could label the keys. Or get one of those programmable key units so it’s separate from the keyboard, and assign/label/etc.
I am using a cheat sheet. It works ok. It just until you memorize things it is not any faster. Short cuts aren’t shorter at first I guess if you have to look them up. But when I remember then it is great. I am getting it.
I thought of labeling the keyboard or getting a fancy specialized one but I am always multi tasking I love rewire. Of course I could have got this http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/9836/?cpg=wnrss but it cost more that my computer.