Ableton Live - Quick Tip #4

Map to Siblings
Ableton Live has some nifty features hidden away, which can be easily unlocked by creating an ‘Options.txt’ file which unlocks specific features in Live. Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found here Options.txt
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There are currently around 12  additional features that can be unlocked and one of the most useful  is ‘Map to Siblings’. To enable this feature create an Options.txt file as per the instructions above and place it in the correct location (This will mostly depend on your operating system). Once you have done that add the following text to the text file on a new line -EnableMapToSiblings=1. Once you have done this, save the file and start Ableton Live.

Now for a bit of background on what the 'Map to Siblings' functionality actually does. Basically it allows us to copy parameters and macro mappings to all of the simpler devices within a Drum Rack. This might seem trivial at first, but given a single drum rack can house up to 128 seperate samples, it can be extremely time consuming going through each sample to assign macro's and adjust parameters when creating a complex rack.

Example
The Drum Rack shown above has four samples loaded into it. By default the filter is turned off on all of the simpler instruments which play back these samples. I would like to enable the filter on all of the instruments, then map the filter of all four Simplers to the first macro. I can achieve this in two simple steps. Firstly I enable the filter (Or any other parameter) on any of the simpler devices, I then right click (Control click on Mac if you don't have right click enabled) on the filter and select 'Copy Value to Siblings'. This will copy it to al the other Simpler devices housed within the rack (You can see in brackets that there are 3 other similar devices). Now I right click on the filter cutoff and select 'Map to Macro 1' and then choose 'Map to all Siblings'. This will map the filter cutoff of all of the Simpler devices to the first macro control.

This is an extremely useful feature, that can save you a lot of time when setting up custom Drum Racks.