5 Time Saving Ableton Live Shortcuts

Using Ableton Live’s Edit Time commands can save you tons of time when editing your arrangement. You can add, remove, or double a highlighted section of your song while keeping everything to the left and right in place (like locators). Accessing these via their keyboard shortcuts will allow you to blaze through editing any arrangement quickly. In this article we’ll take a look at how to access Ableton’s Edit Time commands via keyboard shortcuts. We’ve also included a free downloadable diagram you can use to reference these as you work. Click the gifs in each section to see the commands in action. Using keyboard shortcuts will drastically speed up your workflow. Trying to memorize every keyboard shortcut is a huge task. A better approach is to learn a few shortcuts that relate to each other. Once you get those under your fingers it’s time to move on to another batch of shortcuts. Using Ableton Live’s Edit Time commands can save you tons of time when editing your arrangement. You can add, remove, or double a highlighted section of your song while keeping everything to the left and right in place (like locators). Accessing these via their keyboard shortcuts will allow you to blaze through editing any arrangement quickly In this article we’ll take a look at how to access Ableton’s Edit Time commands via keyboard shortcuts. We’ve also included a free downloadable diagram you can use to reference these as you work. Click the gifs in each section to see the commands in action.

Time Commands

What makes the Time Commands different from the normal edit commands (Cut, Copy, etc...)? The main difference is they perform their task on time not just clips. Look at the example above (click the picture to view the animated gif). When we highlight the bridge section and hit delete-we delete the clips but the amount of time stays there. When we use the Delete Time command we delete the clips and the time while the content to the left and right of our bridge stays the same. Let's look at our Edit Time commands and their corresponding keyboard shortcuts.

[learn_more caption="Cut Time" state="open"] The Cut Time shortcut is [shift] [ctrl] [X] (PC)// [shift] [cmd] [x] (MAC). Cut Time is a great way to delete a section and move it elsewhere in your arrangement. If you use the Paste Time command, you can paste the section wherever you’d like it in the arrangement.[/learn_more]

[learn_more caption="Paste Time" state="open"] The Paste Time shortcut is [shift] [ctrl] [V] (PC)// [shift] [cmd] [V] (MAC). Paste Time allows you to paste the area you selected using the Cut Time command. Even though there is NO official “copy time” command you can copy any section and use Paste Time to move that section elsewhere.[/learn_more]

[learn_more caption="Duplicate Time" state="open"] The Duplicate Time shortcut is [shift] [ctrl] [D] (PC)// [shift] [cmd] [D] (MAC). It’s the fastest way to double a section. Let’s say you want to double your chorus. Highlight your chorus and use the Duplicate Time shortcut to double your chorus.[/learn_more]

[learn_more caption="Delete Time" state="open"] The Delete Time shortcut is [shift] [ctrl] [delete] (PC)// [shift] [cmd] [delete] (MAC). Use this command to delete any section of your song. As mentioned previously, this deletes an entire section of time-not just the clips in that section.[/learn_more]

[learn_more caption="Insert Time" state="open"] The Insert Time shortcut is [ctrl] [I] (PC)// [cmd] [I] (MAC). If you have two songs loaded into arrangement view but you’d like to add space between them you can click between the two songs and use the Insert Time command to add space.[/learn_more]