Ableton Live - am I misunderstanding clips in the Arrangement view?

Question

When I first saw a video of someone looping midi clips in Ableton Live's Session view and then placing them down into the Arrangement view, I figured that Live worked a lot like a 'tracker' (early '90s sample-based sequencer programs) in that if you change the pattern, that changes everywhere that pattern is used in the arrangement.

I've been playing with the Live demo and it seems that when you record a sequence of clips from the Session view into the Arrangement view's timeline, it's actually making copies of all the midi data rather than just instancing the clip. Is that right?

I wanted it to work so that if I decide to change some beats in a loop (for example), I don't have to copy/paste that loop all over the timeline again like I would in a more traditional sequencer.

Answer 1

You are correct: Arrangement view clips are separate from Session View clips and from each other, even if they originated with the same clip in Session View (by recording or copying). Editing one clip will not affect the others, although you can copy/paste everywhere if you need to - although I agree that this takes time.

The one time where you can get a "change once, see the change in many places" effect is where you have a clip in Arrangement view that is looped, instead of copied multiple times. In this case, all of the loops come from the same data and you need only to change it in one place.

Looping a clip in the Arrangement View is done by enabling looping for that clip in the clip editor, and then dragging the edges of the clip in the arrangement so that the clip extends past its endpoints.