Over the past few months I’ve had the privilege of beta testing the new version of Playback Pro. I’ve been really impressed with what it can do. One thing that really caught my attention was the Dynamic Guide Cues feature.
Guide cues are vocal cues to let you know what section you’re about to head into. You’ll hear “verse” a measure before the verse. This helps keep your band together and heading in the right direction. It’s a great feature-but things have always gotten hairy when you decide to repeat a section. Your cue says Verse…but you’re actually repeating the intro.
Dynamic Guide cues change automatically based on whatever section you’re going to-even if you loop the current section. When you press “loop” on Playback Pro, the section you’re on will automatically loop and the guide cues will automatically change to reflect where you’re going. This is revolutionary! There’s no software currently available that can do this, but an iPad app can-this is crazy.
As soon as I saw this I started thinking…how can I do this in Ableton? I know it’s not going to be automatic, like it is in Playback Pro, but there’s got be a way I can do this. After a few days of wondering, I sat down to try it and figured it out.
Using the IAC Driver which is built into every Mac (or LoopBe1 for PC), you can set up a Live set so that if you repeat a section, your guide cues will follow. It will take a few minutes of setup for every track you build, but once you do it, it’s saved with the file and you’ve now got Dynamic Guide cues!
Check out the video below and enjoy the freedom you now have to loop any section of your song in Ableton-and continue to use Guide cues while doing it. If you wish it was automatic, then check out Playback Pro-it will amaze you!
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