Something I recently learned is the power of using the shift key in Ableton. This is another Ableton tip that has been huge for me from a productivity and workflow perspective.
Let’s say you wanted to change the pitch on a sample. I’ve known that when you press up or down on your keyboard, it changes the semitones. What I didn’t know, is that if you hold down the shift key and then press up or down, it goes up or down by octaves. If you’re on -4 and hold down shift and press up, it goes up an octave from -4. Before I learned this trick of using the shift key in Ableton, I used to have to do this math in my mind. So depending on what semitone you’re on, it’ll just add or subtract 12 every time.
Another shift key cheat code in Ableton is for when you’re on gain. If you press up or down, it goes up or down by .31dB, so you can quickly change the volume by holding down shift.
If you go over to the track volume and press up or down, it does so by 1dB. If you hold shift, then it’s .1dB.
This also works with track delay. Pressing up or down, then it does so by 1ms and by holding shift, then it’s .1ms. And you can use the power of the shift key throughout Ableton. Major cheat code.
If you’re interested in boosting your productivity and workflow inside of Ableton, check out some of my other recent tutorials.
