Whether you’re an experienced user or just getting familiar with Ableton, years of experience teaching students have shown us that learning your short cuts can really make a difference in your workflow, freeing up time to experiment and create. So with this in mind, pointblank Ableton Tutor, Freddy Frogs, has put together a list of the 20 most useful shortcuts, including some new to Ableton 9. Freddy has found the best way to learn these is to print them out, so for your convenience we’ve created a quick reference A4 print-out to stick on your wall.
Shortcuts for Ableton 9 (Mac)
CTRL + Z – Undo (the mother of all shortcuts)
SPACE – Play/Stop
SHIFT + TAB – Toggle between device view and clip view (what do you want to see? Your effects and synths or your MIDI editor?)
CMD + A – select all (select all notes or clips)
B – Draw mode (do you need your pen?)
CMD+D – Duplicate (you can quickly copy your clips/tracks/scenes/MIDI note)
CMD+1/2/3/4 – Adjust grid size (Are you programming short MIDI notes or long ones? )
CMD+ S = Save (Ableton continuously saves your work in progress but you never know)
0 – deactivate notes/clips (new to live 9)
ESC – Abort value entry (it also let’s you get out of the search engine or the MIDI map mode)
SHIFT + SPACE – Play from stop point (you will wish you knew that one earlier)
CMD + J – consolidate selection into clip (The programmer’s favourite tool)
CMD + L – Loop selection (Highlight the background and loop it)
CMD + R = Rename selected clip/track (Keeping things tidy)
+/- – zoom in zoom out (The magnifying glass tool can be difficult to use so here is an alternative)
CMD + U – Quantize (add CMD + A before that and you have a combo)
TAB – toggles arrangement and session view (Classic!)
Delete – return to default (this works for many different features including volume faders or pan pots)
CMD + SHIFT + I – Insert captured scene (Ideal to capture the clips that are playing and create a new scene out of them)
CMD + E – Split clip at selection (Do you need to edit a small part of a clip? )
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Editor’s Note: This is an old article and things have moved on considerably since the original publication date 🙂
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