Splitting MIDI Notes in Ableton Live 12
I’ve been complaining about this for years. All DAWs have a way to split MIDI notes with a scissor tool, but Ableton never did… until today!
With Ableton Live 12 we’ve now got the option to split MIDI notes. Just like we can in Cubase, FL-Studio, Logic, and other regular old DAWs. I wonder why it took them this long.
Split notes
All you need to do is hold down E and drag vertically across the notes you want to cut.
You can also click your cursor on the background above or below the notes and press the shortcut CTRL/CMD + E. This will split all the notes intersecting that blue vertical line.
Selecting a range by clicking and dragging your mouse and pressing CTRL/CMD + E will split the notes at the start and end of this selected range.
Using this same shortcut but on selected notes, will create multiple cuts depending on the currently activated grid size. It is very useful if you want to quickly turn chords into 8th notes.
Finally, if you hold down CTRL/CMD + E and press the Up/Down Arrows, you’ll divide the selected notes by integer values.
This is super helpful as you can easily create complex rhythms using odd values like 3 and 5. This simple tool inspired me to create an entire track as I’ll explain in the video below.
Join Notes
Of course, you can also join notes with the shortcut CTRL/CMD + J. In many DAWs, this is called the glue tool.
Splitting Clips
By the way, in case you didn’t know. The shortcut to split entire MIDI clips in the arrangement view is CTRL/CMD + E.
Alright, I hope this helps. Let me know what you think about this feature in the comments, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me.
