When looping in Ableton, it’s often necessary to restart a loop recording if a mistake is made. Below I’ve provided a simple script which runs on Windows with Autohotkey. The script sets the “Insert” button on your computer keyboard to send a simple string of keyboard commands to Ableton which will effectively restart the recording of a loop that’s already in progress.
A few tips on using the script:
- The script currently uses the “Insert” key on your keyboard to restart the loop. This can be changed if you wish.
- The script is written to only affect Ableton, so if you switch to another program and press the “Insert” key, it will behave normally.
- You have to restart the script by clicking on it each time your computer is restarted.
- IMPORTANT: The clip slot area of Ableton must be “Active” for the script to work. So if you start a clip by clicking the clip slot area, it will work perfectly. If you then for example, click down in the devices area, it will stop working until you click back in to the clip slot area.
Making Your Own Changes
As mentioned the script uses the “Insert” key to send it’s magic to Ableton. If you’d like to use a different key, here is the list of available commands.
Here is what the script looks like:
#IfWinActive ahk_exe Ableton Live 10 Suite.exe
Insert:: ; this resets recording of an active clip in session view
Send, {Delete}
Send, {Enter}
return
So for example, if you’d prefer to use the PgUp key, you would change the script to look like this:
#IfWinActive ahk_exe Ableton Live 10 Suite.exe
PageUp:: ; this resets recording of an active clip in session view
Send, {Delete}
Send, {Enter}
return
Arrangement View
The script also contains a set of lines that will restart a recording in Ableton’s arrangement view. It’s set to trigger when you press the “Home” key on your keyboard.
#IfWinActive ahk_exe Ableton Live 10 Suite.exe
Home:: ; this resets recording of an active track in arrangement view
SetKeyDelay, 200
Send, {Space}
Send, ^z
Send, {f9}
return
So when the Home key is pressed, the script says to Ableton: Space Bar (stop), CTRL Z (Undo), F9 (start recording again). I added a delay at the beginning because Ableton needed that for it to work properly.