Ableton Live: Slice to New MIDI Track (Keyboard Shortcut)
Ableton introduced the “Slice to New MIDI Track” functionality a while ago. It’s available both as the right mouse button context menu in the Session View, and in a little place that looks like this:
Now, my experience is that Slice to New MIDI Track is not available as a shortcut by default. It is possible that no-one else has this experience of not having this quite wicked feature available to them as a keyboard shortcut. Some might never miss it, and then go and use the mouse and click on menus. (YMMV)
If it is your experience that you would like to use Slice to New MIDI Track directly from the Session View as a keyboard shortcut, then read on.
One of the nicest things about messing around with OSX is that if there is a top-bar menu entry, it can be made a keyboard shortcut. How?
- Open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Application Shortcuts.
- Click on the +.
- Select Live.app as your Application.
- The Menu Title for the menu title Slice to New MIDI Track will be… Slice to New MIDI Track (make sure to write exactly this, or any other menu title exactly, otherwise you are creating a new menu entry. It will not work if you write Slice to New Midi Track (wrong), instead of Slice to New MIDI Track (right). Always observe capitalization.)
- Pick the shortcut you fancy using for this feature.
Now check it out! This has been a real lifesaver at gigs — it is nice to be able to press a key and start deconstructing a beat. But enough about how it can be used. Back to configuration.
You could use System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Application Shortcuts for anything you like, just pick your favorite function in your application of choice and hack away. One thing I didn’t get at first was that some menu entries have three dots after them. You will have to replicate those exactly. I didn’t, and didn’t get a menu entry to start with the shortcut.
[UPDATE: Here are some bonus suggestions]
