Okay, so last time we looked at tempo automation in Ableton’s Arrangement View, but this time we’re looking at doing this in Session View. We’ll be covering a few methods so stay tuned.

Using Scenes for Tempo Changes

Let’s say you’ve got a song that has a tempo change between sections or you’re transitioning between songs. The simplest way to change the tempo on the next down beat is to have 2 different scenes which are labeled with the 2 different tempos.

You can manually trigger the scenes at the appropriate time or you can set the next scene to be triggered after a certain amount of bars. (More on automatic scene triggering found in this post).

Notice at bar 3, the tempo changed from 90 BPM to 95 BPM

Using Clips for Gradual Tempo Changes

You can also create gradual tempo changes in session view. We do have to admit, though, that this is a bit of a hack with a drawback. That drawback is that you’ll be limited in your tempo range.

The reason is because we’ll be using MIDI Control Changes to control the tempo but MIDI CC is limited to 128 values, 0-127 (including 0). If we had 128 values but our tempo range is 20 BPM to 999 BPM, it’d be impossible to assign a specific tempo. (This is because the tempo range of 20-999 BPM is 980, and 980 is not divisible by 128). In order to rectify this, we’ll limit our tempo range to 50 BPM – 177 BPM which gives us a range of 128 values which is exactly the amount of MIDI CC values we have, one for each tempo in that range.

One last thing to explain, because our tempo range begins at 50, and our first MIDI CC value is 0, if we set our MIDI CC value to 0 the tempo will be 50 BPM. So let’s say we had a song that was 122 BPM, in order to find out what the MIDI CC value is, we would just take away 50. 122 – 50 = 72, so MIDI CC Note 72 = 122 BPM. (Please note that this formula is based on the tempo range that we’ve given as an example. If your tempo range was 40 BPM – 167 BPM, then MIDI CC value 0 = 40 BPM etc.)

After assigning a free MIDI CC channel to your tempo (more on MIDI CC in this post) we can update the tempo range in the MIDI mapping browser and set it to 50-177 BPM.

Next, we’ll do a gradual change from 90 BPM – 100 BPM over the course of 2 bars. We’ll create a MIDI clip 2 bars long and at the start we’ll plot a point at 40 on bar 0 and a point at 50 on bar 2.

Using Clips for Abrupt Tempo Changes

You can also use this method for abrupt tempo changes. It’s probably rare that you have a tempo change mid section or maybe you use our Session View Method 1 and need a tempo change without having to create a separate scene, whatever your reasoning, we got you.

Just as before, create a clip and create a point for the first tempo, we’ll use 90 BPM (which for us would be MIDI CC value 40). Then, create a second point and drag it to be directly above the previous point and set it to the desired tempo. In our case, we’ll set it to 95 BPM which, based on our tempo range, would be MIDI CC value 45. Done!

Closing Thoughts

Navigating some of these topics can be tricky but we hope this has been informative and has helped you consider how creative you can be with automation. We love to be of help and if anything is unclear any comments or feedback is much appreciated as it helps us to help you.

Thanks for reading!