Is it Ableton Live - or is it me?

[Buzap Buzap <buzap@gmx.net>]

Hi Loopers

when I first encountered Ableton Live, I was quite impressed.
I still am besides the fact that I'm always biased toward computer-based 
applications for anything in real-time.

Anyway, it is really doing wonderful things, but there are somethings that 
seem very annoying I can't seem to work around. I'm even skipping the 
latency issue, which is ovious I guess...

A. "AUTO BPM DETECT"
When I want to record/play several loops in parallel & in sync I seem to 
have to do the following:
- Tap tempo for setting global tempo
- Set quantize i.e. to 1 bar
- Record first loop
- Record second loop...
I would like to get around having to tap the global tempo in the begining. 
I would like to be able to record my first loop _without_knowing_ the 
tempo before. Then, I would like to quantize the next loops according to 
the first etc.

B. SHORTCUT KEYS FOR "RECORD HIGHLIGHTED LOOP NOW"
Ableton offers great MIDI/keyboard shortcut features. But they seem to be 
a bit counter-intuitive to me.
To record a loop, I seem to have to:
- Arm the track I want to record
- Press that tiny little Record circle on that particular loop.
Instead, basically I would like to move the cursor to a loop position and 
say "start recording this loop now". 
This way, I could move the cursor to the loop I want and then send a 
MIDI/keyboard signal "record this loop now". But I don't want to define 
i.e. 8 different "arm recording track" keys for having 8 tracks parallel 
nor do I want to define 32 shortcuts for all the record buttons on a 8x4 
loop matrix.

Theoretically, if I "sacrifice" i.e. 8 keys for arm track 1-8 and two more 
for switching up/down between so-called "scenes" (scene = all the loops 
played in parallel) it is supposed to somehow record the chosen track but 
it doesnn't.

Is all this stuff the limitation of Live or is it just me?
Any practical suggestions or work-arounds?


Best regards
Buzap
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