CLIP ENVELOPES IN ABLETON LIVE

Clip envelopes are Live’s take on automation, particularly in Session View, while in Arrangement they merge into track automation as well, but fundamentally, there’s not much difference. Clip envelopes can be little useful messages that tell a track to fade or pan, for example, but they can be powerful creative tools in themselves… if you want busy, evolving sounds, they are your friends! There are so many things we can do with clip envelopes, but it’s the more sound-designery ones I’m drawn to. It’s a good exercise to take just one clip and use envelopes to push it and exploit it as far as possible. When combining envelopes in a project, it’s important to practice with different-length clips playing together, and to use different-length envelopes within those clips – they don’t have to be in units of bar-length, either.