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Adding reArranger For the first time

reArranger and reArranger Lite can be dragged in to an open Live set, then click the little save icon on the Device and this will save the device to your User-library in your \User Library\Presets\Audio Effects\Max Audio Effect\Imported

Alternatively if you want to have the device in a specific location in your user library, create the folder such as \User Library\Presets\Audio Effects\Max Audio Effect\3rd Party Devices and drag the .amxd file into that folder.


Creating Cue Markers

Open a Live song of yours which already has some music in it, make sure there are some named “cue locators”.

If there are no locators in your song:
Add a Cue Locator: Right-click the top timeline/ruler area and choose Add Locator (or hover near the top until you see the marker/speaker area, then right-click).
Name Your Cue: Type a description or name for your section (like “Verse” or “Chorus”) and press Enter.

Now if you dont already have a reArranger in this song, drag in a reArranger and you will see a list of the cue markers down the left side of the devices interface.

Making a Playlist – Add Cues to your first playlist

click on a cue in the cue list and click “Add” to see it added to the playlist on the right side. You will see a number there alongside the title of the section, that’s the number of bars the section will play for. So if you set “Verse One” with a number 8 , that section will play for 8 bars before jumping to the next section. The duration defaults to “4” (bars).

Add several more sections, try repeating a section, or several sections. There’s no limit on how many sections you can have, but in the Lite version its limited to 8 sections.

When you have enough sections, make sure that the “Active” button is illuminated, then play your live set to hear your new arrangement

Editing a playlist

You can click and hold on a playlist item to move it up or down in the play order. You can add or insert an item into the list (they will get inserted after the currently active / illuminated playlist item. Clicking the Delete button will delete the current playlist entry from the active playlist (though not the actual cue).

drag and drop in reArranger Ableton Device

You can update items by selecting the playlist item, the corresponding cue will be selected in the list on the left side – now you can change the duration by altering the number in the duration box using the arrows. Click “update” and the duration will be updated to reflect the new duration.

Additionally you can choose an alternative cue to replace the selected one. Click your playlist item, choose a different cue from the list on the left side, then click “update” to replace the entry.

If you want to try lots of different variations to see which arrangement works best – click the Menu button and choose “duplicate” to duplicate the current playlist. Now you can rename this duplicate and try some alternatives out. Flip back and forth between versions using the pulldown playlist selector menu.


Moving and Renaming Cue Markers

You can drag and re-name the cues on the arrangement timeline as a quick way of testing out ideas. For example if you have three different sections representing potential “drops” you could make a cue titled “drop” and move it to the start of each section to try how each version works.


Exporting a Playlist

You can export Playlists as Edit Decision Lists as guides for use elsewhere, for example in media editing.

The Playlist and all related playlists for each song are also available in raw text format in your Live Project, each time you save your set it will create an authoritative file of all playlists associated. The file has a name like “My Cool New Song_allPlaylists.json”

Additionally the reArranger also saves a backup state in the case of you saving your set, then tinkering with the playlist, and then closing the set and/or Ableton without saving. In this case you might have done some arrangement that you want to keep, well the reArranger will offer you to restore that next time you load the song.

You can use Fix It to make the playlist conform to the saved song, or Keep, to keep the edits you tried out but didn’t save

Rendering Your Arrangement as Audio

Live doesn’t offer a way for us to destructively rearrange your arrangements using the playlist info that’s in the reArranger (not yet anyway) so rendering as usual wont work.

To render out reArranger arrangements what we can do is record the output by using Live’s Resample settings, as shown.

Create a new audio track, set the input to resampling (if you want to capture everything you are hearing) then record the playback in either Arrangement view or Session view.

In arrangement view the recording will look a little odd as you see the playhead jumping around, but when the playlist completes playback you can open up the recorded wave and see that its exactly as you heard. Alternatively recording into a Session clip might feel more natural to you.

Note that if you have effects on your main channel and playback your recording you will hear it through those effects unless you use the settings shown above. (output Ext. Out)

Troubleshooting

If you have issues here are some common gotchas:

  • the Active button has flipped to inactive at the end of a playlist playback
  • something else I haven’t thought of yet

Configuration – Error Logging

To log errors you can go to the configuration menu, choose a log location, activate logging and the recreate the bug.

Send me that log and I will aim to fix the issue.