One missing item IMHO from Ableton is the ability to assign notes to tracks, or just even keep notes (i.e. as descriptive text, not dough, ray, mi etc) for a piece. I’m not sure about the position with other DAW’s but the following may be useful.
This is VSTNotepad, free from CodeFN42 (who also do RandARP). You can drop it as an effect on a track, or just insert a single track for all text.
Logic Pro has the ability to store track notes…
Bitwig has that ability
And you can move projects from Ableton (or switch to the latter) quite easily
By default Reaper allows you to add notes at the project level. If you install the SWS extensions you can also add notes at both the track level and at the item (i.e. clip) level.
There is a good video here on adding notes.
You can assign notes to tracks in Ableton Live. Right click on the Track name bar and choose Edit Info Text. It will let you edit text on the lower left of the GUI. That will show up if you hover cursor over the Titla Bar or select the track.
Also there is a free track note pad from MeldaProduction.
You can put one on each track if you want for comments. Available for Mac or Windows.
You are right in that the Live ‘text edit’ is good in that specific notes can be added independently to various elements (tracks, clips, scenes etc), which does indeed give a handy rollover aide memoire, and which has the advantage of being context specific.
The issue I had with this in some cases is that if the text length exceeds the size of the info box it appears to become non-visible. You can keep on adding text, but I’ve found no way of scrolling down if it exceeds the line limit of the box.
Oddly, it’s all still there, and although there is no right click copy, using CTRL A and CTRL V (Windows … don’t know what it is with Apple) allows it to be cut and pasted elsewhere.
But yes, you are absolutely right and good to have in the thread and in 75% of cases it the simplest way - thanks for flagging this !
This appears to work very well: I’ve just tested it with lorum ipsum… and pasted in 3156 characters (why would you want that many on a track note? That’s over 400 words).
I only used it to make notes of patch on synths and samplers in case I had a memory lapse and loaded a new patch and forgot what the original was. And a few bits and bobs for the track settings too. I know it’s not an ideal text area but handy for a quick note. Many people don’t know it’s there.
