Tag Archives: workflow

Magic Numbers: Rounded Fractions

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🧠Memorizing Sucks.
As audio engineers, certain numerical values become often-used and thus can become useful to memorize. If you suck at memorizing stuff like me, graphs and charts can be helpful.

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🎛0—127.
In Ableton Live and other programs, range values are often scaled from 0 to 127, rather than 0 to 100. So it can be useful sometimes to know certain fractional values to type in (either mathematically perfect for extreme precision, or rounded values for quick input).

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⚖️Precise Midpoint (63.5) vs Rounded Midpoint (64).
The most common of these is 63.5, the value to input for the precise halfway point of a macro control in Ableton Live.

⚠️Note that Ableton Live only shows the rounded value in the display, and it always rounds all decimals down. (Why?!?) Often if you see a macro that says “63”, it’s actually set to 63.5. If only Ableton Live gave the option to display at least 1 decimal of macro values for this reason.

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🌓FRACTIONS TABLE
Here’s a nifty table of basic simple fractions down to 1/12, provided in precise (to the 5th decimal place) and rounded values for both the 0-100 (aka percentage) and the 0-127 scales.

Fraction0—127 (rounded)0—127 (precise)0—100 (rounded)0—100 (precise)
1/26463.55050
1/34242.333333333.33333
1/43231.752525
1/52525.42020
1/62121.166671716.66667
1/71818.142861414.28571
1/81615.8751312.5
1/91414.111111111.11111
1/101312.71010
1/111211.5454599.09091
1/121110.5833388.33333

⚗️Takeaway / Distillation.
I wouldn’t expect anyone to memorize all of these, but recalling certain key values to pop in in at-whim can be useful. I personally always remember 31.75, 63.5,and 95.25 as precise quarter, half, and three-quarters for macro values — since I’ve had to input them so many times, whereas I tend to round one-eighth to 16 because I forget the exact value and don’t want to do math in my head.

Peace!


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Dumb Stupid Tip: Faster Right-Clicking

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OK, so you know when you right-click on something to open up a context menu?
And then you move the mouse cursor to the item you want, and then you left-click the option you want?

Well, there is a way to do it a tiny bit faster. Maybe you already do it.

I found myself picking up the habit due to right-clicking to change macro colours so often. By saving a tiny little bit of time multiplied by a whole bunch of iterations, one can end up saving a substantial amount of time. Anything that streamlines workflow is useful, right?

So here’s the tip: Right Click and Release

WTF?

Instead of doing this:
right-click -> move mouse -> left click

Do this:
right-click (hold it down) -> move mouse -> release right-click

Doing this implements the menu option (in Ableton Live at least — not in all programs) with a single mouse click instead of with two mouse clicks, thereby saving you a precious minuscule quantity of milliseconds. For example, if you had to select a hundred boring context menu options, you’d be performing one hundred clicks, instead of two hundred.  Brilliant!

This trick does not work in all programs, but it does in Ableton Live, at least.

So yeah.

NOTE: if following this methodology, make sure that your index finger gets some extra exercise to compensate for its less active role going forward. I recommend angry pointing.

Nifty Ableton Option: Auto Adjust Macro Mapping Range

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-AutoAdjustMacroMappingRange will make it so that when you map a parameter to a macro control, the current value becomes the minimum value of the newly-created mapping (rather than 0).
I prefer enabling this option because it streamlines workflow by helping to map macros faster, saving the step of typing in the minimum value when it is already in place.

With -AutoAdjustMacroMappingRange off, when mapping a parameter to a macro control, it will always result in a range of “min” to “max”, ragardless of the current position.

Say i want to map a parameter to a macro, and i want it to range specifically from 37 to 127.

With -AutoAdjustMacroMappingRange set to off, i would first have to map the parameter, click “map”, and then edit the minimum value to be 37.

However, with -AutoAdjustMacroMappingRange set to on instead, by mapping it, the minimum value will automatically be set to the current value (in this case 37), while the maximum will default to 127.

For cases where the maximum is meant to be 127, this reduces the mapping process to a single quick step, without even needing to open map mode. Other types of mappings might still require turning on map mode to adjust the values, but will still save a step of action if you map it while the current value matches one of the target values.

The unprocessed screengrab below demonstrates various mapping strategies, depending on what you want the minimums and maximums to be.

. . .

NOTE: i believe that a recent update of Live 10 enables AutoAdjustMacroMappingRange by default, whereas in previous versions it was off unless you enabled it manually. Either way, it’s handy to know that you can change it around when desired. Just remember that if you do change it, you’ll have to restart live for the change to take effect (i think).

“How the heck do i implement this?” you might ask. To answer that and for more swag info about Ableton Live’s mysterious Options.txt, Madeleine Bloom’s series on the topic is highly recommended.