Ableton Live Tip: Finding Sets Quickly by Bookmarking Folders

When I play my live show, I use a different set for each song. I’ve optimized my sets so they only take about 9 seconds to load (more on this in a future post).

On stage I don’t want to be mousing around trying to find sets and instead want to just quickly launch the sets in from Live’s browser. A hand way to organize and quickly get to the sets is to create bookmark for the folder with your sets in them, then map this bookmark to one of Live’s 3 “File Browser” buttons.

Here is my approach step-by-step:

1. Store your sets for your show in a folder
2. Rename the sets so they display in the right order by adding 01 to the first song, 02 to the second song so they sort in show order.
   
3. Use Live’s browser to find the folder, then right-click (windows)/option-click (mac) to then select “Bookmark Folder”.
   
4. You can now quickly browse to this folder using the pull-down. You can also associate this folder with one of the three “File Browser” icons by simply clicking one of the icons. Just click the icon to return to the folder at any time.
5. Double-click sets to load.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Comments

[Jonathan Tucker]

Thanks for the tip! Personally, I just pick a bookmark, find the folder I need, then right-click & select "set as root". Is there a difference? Also, what you just described has been quite frustrating for me, simply because I often wonder through various folders to locate different sample sets. In the process, I lose the original file I had bookmarked. It'd be nice if you could lock a bookmark to a certain file. Granted, the ableton search system is better than most, but there are many ways it could be improved... Not to bitch. :)

[Jonathan Tucker]

DANG IT. I just figured out what "bookmarking" does. I get it now! Thanks Mark - this will save a lot of time.

[Mark Mosher]

Your welcome. Glad it all sorted out :^).