One of the problems I’ve been attempting to solve while preparing for the upcoming Zodiacrobatic performance was how to change the global tempo in Ableton Live without launching any clips in the next scene. This is important because the piece is a multi-movement work and sometimes there are segues between movements that require quick changes of the global tempo so that clips in the next scene play back at the proper speed. Changing the global tempo by naming a particular scene with the BPM and beat unit (see image below) and then launching the scene is very easy to do.
But until last night I hadn’t figured out a way to change the tempo with a scene launch without having to mute, stop the clips, and then un-mute everything. The solution I came up with was to create an empty scene with same BPM as the next scenes with the clips for the following movements (see image below). So for example, after the Intro which is 80 BPM, there’s a blank scene which is meant to reset the global tempo to 56.5 BPM, the tempo for the Aquarius movement.
I realize this is a very specific type of problem and not one that the majority of Live users will ever find themselves having to deal with. (And, now that I’ve discovered it, the solution seems pretty obvious.) But hopefully this might be useful to someone out there.
