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Naming
A scene name looks like this:
[CHORUS] @128-Bm NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS {COVER}
└ role ┘ │ │ └ song ┘ └ artist ┘ └ tag ┘
bpm └ key
Everything but the song is optional. Role first, facts and name next, then who plays it, song tag last — so a column of scene names reads as structure rather than as a list of titles, and Live's own narrow scene column truncates the tag before it truncates anything you need on stage.
This is the whole design, not a formatting preference: the name is the mapping.
Scenes have no stable id in Live, so there's nothing to key a sidecar file to. Putting the
song, the bpm, the key and the role in the name means they survive a restart, travel with
the .als to the gig laptop, and are visible in Live itself. Every time the app reads your
set it re-reads the names and works out which scene belongs to which song. Nothing is
stored on the side, and there is nothing to lose.
In the grid the parts are pulled out into their own presentation, so Live holds
[CHORUS] @128-Bm NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS {COVER} and you read
128 · Bm · NIGHTFALL · THE AVIATORS · COVER · CHORUS.
The artist is optional and goes after the song behind -:
NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS
The spaces around the hyphen are what make it a separator, so a hyphenated title like
TWENTY-ONE stays one name. And because both halves are free text, the first - is
the split: SUNDAY - BLOODY SUNDAY - THE BAND reads as the song SUNDAY by
BLOODY SUNDAY - THE BAND.
That's the one thing to know about it. A song genuinely called SUNDAY - BLOODY SUNDAY
reads as a song and an artist, and there's no way around that while both are free text in
one name — so the app won't write one: type - into the song field and Rename is
blocked until you move that half into artist. A name typed straight into Live is the
only way to end up with one, and renaming the scene fixes it.
The artist doesn't change which song a scene belongs to. Songs are still identified by
name alone, so NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS and NIGHTFALL are the same song, half named —
which is what lets you add artists to a set a song at a time. If two scenes of one song
name different artists, the songs list shows both in amber, the same as any other
disagreement.
The bpm in the name changes nothing about how the set plays. It's a fact about the song, written and read exactly like the key.
That's a change from how this used to work, and the reason is mixing. Live has its own
Scene.tempo, and it takes a scene's tempo the moment that scene fires — so when every
scene of a 128 song carried it, that song could only ever be entered at 128. Dropping
into its second chorus while the set was running at 124 snapped everything to 128.
So the name states the bpm and nothing happens. When you do want Live to change tempo, you put it on the song's first scene only — entering the song at the top sets the tempo, mixing into the middle of it doesn't. That's Apply tempo to song start, its own button, described in Tempo is a separate button below.
If you always want that, the gear menu has Song start tempo. Turn it on and renaming a song projects its bpm at the same time, so you never press the button. It's off to begin with and it's saved with the Live Set, not with the browser — the point of it being a setting is that a rename changing how the set plays should be something you chose.
Write the bpm alone, the key alone, or both:
| the name says | means |
|---|---|
@128-Bm NIGHTFALL |
128 bpm, in B minor |
@128 NIGHTFALL |
128 bpm, key unstated |
@Bm NIGHTFALL |
in B minor, bpm unstated |
NIGHTFALL |
neither stated |
The - only appears when both are there, so nothing is left dangling.
@ is the only punctuation the facts need. It can't appear in a role and won't start a
title, so @128-Bm is readable from the front with nothing closing it. After an @ a
digit can only be a tempo and a letter can only be a key, which is why they need nothing
between them but the hyphen that joins them.
The song tag keeps literal braces because its vocabulary is open. {COVER} and
{LATE NIGHT} both read, and neither has to be on a list for the app to find it again —
the braces are what make an arbitrary tag reversible.
The role keeps its brackets for the same reason turned around: a role is recognised by vocabulary, so its tag has to stay visibly there even when the word is unfamiliar. A bare word would go silently missing the moment you renamed the role.
Names are parsed from the front and never guessed at in the middle, so Arp Jam 2 keeps
its whole title rather than having the 2 read as a tempo, and Em Dash keeps its whole
title rather than having Em read as a key. Both facts have to sit behind the @ to
count.
The song is written in caps and read case-insensitively — NIGHTFALL and Nightfall
are one song. The caps are presentation, not identity.
A song tag is one open, optional classification of what the song is —
{COVER}, {ORIGINAL}, {JAM}, {REMIX}, {LATE NIGHT}.
It's a vocabulary of one word you choose, not a list you pick from. The rail's tag
field suggests COVER, ORIGINAL and JAM as you type, and those are suggestions only —
anything made of letters, numbers, spaces, &, ' or - is a tag, and it's written in
caps like the song.
Unlike a role, which describes one scene, a tag describes the song, so every scene of a song is normally tagged the same. The grid draws it as an outlined pill on the song header, in the song's own color, where a role fills a whole cell down in the scene rows — so the two never read as the same kind of thing. Where a song's scenes disagree about their tag, the header shows it in amber like any other clash rather than picking one.
Tags are what the running order can sort on, which is where they earn
their keep: Tag ↑ → Key ↑ puts every cover together and orders them by key.
The convention has changed, and the app reads every form it has ever written, picking whichever gets more out of a given name:
[CHORUS] @128-Bm NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS {COVER} |
current |
[CHORUS] @Bm NIGHTFALL - THE AVIATORS {COVER} |
current, with no bpm stated |
Nightfall 128 Bm [chorus] |
the facts were at the end |
A name written the short-lived {COVER} @Bm NIGHTFALL way — the tag at the front — still
reads too.
Nothing needs renaming for the bpm change. A name with only a key is spelled exactly as it always was, so a set written the key-only way is already in the current convention.
Only the current form reads an artist. A set still on an older one keeps the whole thing as the song name until you rename the scene, which is the same way every other change has moved across.
Any rename converts that scene to the current convention. A set moves over scene by scene as you work through it, and a half-converted song still collects into one entry. You don't have to convert anything in one go.
A bpm carried by an older name is now written back into the name when you rename, along with the key — the conversion no longer loses it. If the bpm is on the scene's tempo instead of in its name, the field is prefilled from there, so one rename moves it into the name where it belongs.
Open Set configuration with the gear in the main header. Default artist is saved in the device with this Live Set, beside its role definitions and colors. It is a starting value, not a rule that overwrites every song:
- New song starts with it in the Artist field.
- Selecting scenes whose artist is blank offers it as a pending rename. Nothing changes until you press Rename; clearing the field leaves that song artistless.
- Use default beside the Artist field puts it into any deliberate scene selection.
The same dialog holds one switch that isn't a naming default, and it's kept in its own section because of that: Song start tempo.
Off — how it arrives — a bpm in a scene name is a label and nothing else, and the only
thing that ever touches Live's Scene.tempo is the Apply tempo to song start button.
On, Rename does both: it writes the name and puts the song's bpm on its first scene, clearing it off the rest of the song. One press, one undo. The scene panel's hint says so while it's on, so you can tell from the panel whether renaming will move a tempo.
It is saved with the Live Set, so a set you've set up this way stays that way on the gig laptop.
For an existing set, Save & fill N songs saves the configuration and fills every song that has no artist. It also completes the blank scenes of a song already using the default. A partially named song that uses another artist is listed and left alone, so the bulk fill cannot create a disagreement. Existing artists are never replaced by this action, and the whole fill is one ordinary undoable rename.
Select some scenes — click a scene, ⇧-click to extend, or click a song title to get every scene of that song. The rail opens with five fields: song, artist, tag, bpm and key.
The rule that makes this work across a mixed selection:
A field you leave alone stays as it is on each scene. A field you clear is cleared.
That's what lets you select two songs' worth of scenes, set one shared key, and not flatten their different names. A blank field means "these scenes disagree" when it arrives and "delete this part" once you've emptied it, so the app tracks which fields you actually touched rather than reading the values alone.
- Fields prefill from what the selection already agrees on. Where scenes disagree you get
a
mixedplaceholder rather than one scene's answer spread over the rest. - When the selection agrees that Artist is blank, the set's default artist is offered as a pending value. A named or mixed artist always wins.
-
song, tag, bpm and key are validated as you type. A bad tag, bpm or key blocks
Rename, as does a song containing
-— all four are written into the name, so any of them being wrong would write a name the app couldn't read back. BPM is 20–999, Live's own range, so a value it would refuse can't reach the tempo button either. - A preview line shows what you're about to write. Read it — it's what makes the leave-alone rule legible.
Then press Rename N scenes.
Renaming preserves each scene's role tag, so renaming a song across eighteen scenes doesn't disturb the roles you assigned them.
Under the fields is Apply tempo to song start.
It writes the bpm onto Live's own Scene.tempo, on the song's first scene only, and
clears it off every other scene of that song. So entering the song at the top sets the
tempo, and mixing into its second chorus leaves whatever is running alone.
This is deliberately not part of Rename. Everything else in the panel changes what a scene is called. This changes what the set does — Live takes a scene's own tempo the moment that scene fires. Folding it into a rename would mean a naming pass quietly altered playback.
Unless you ask for it, that is. Song start tempo in the gear menu joins the two back together for sets where you always want them together, and the panel's hint changes to say so while it's on. It's a set-level setting and off by default, so the joining is a thing you turned on rather than something that happened to you.
A few things follow from it:
- With more than one song selected it reads Apply tempo to N song starts, and each song uses its own bpm unless you type one into the field.
- Emptying the bpm field turns it into Clear tempo on N scenes — the way back out. Every scene of the song then follows the Live Set tempo.
- This is also how you convert an old set. If your scenes each carry their own tempo, select everything and press it once: every song keeps its start tempo and gives up the strays. The songs list flags the ones that still have them.
Unlike scene color, tempo reverses cleanly — turning one on is fully undoable.
Clip names are written from a pattern rather than typed one at a time. Select some clips, and the Inspector's Rename selected field takes a template:
{bpm} {key} {label} {role} → 128 Bm Arp Jam 1
Tokens that have no value are dropped and the whitespace closes up, so a missing {key}
never writes a literal {key} into a clip name and never leaves a double space.
The tokens come from the clip's own scene, so anything the scene name states is available:
{song}, {artist}, {tag}, {key}, {bpm} and {role}, plus {track}, {scene},
{name}, {label} and {n}.
Naming keeps a preview and an explicit Rename N button — unlike color, which writes the moment you pick a swatch. The asymmetry is on purpose: a color is instantly legible in the grid and costs nothing to change, but a name overwrites something you can no longer see.
Writes that would change nothing are filtered out. Renaming a scene where 22 of 30 clips already carry that name writes 8, and the progress bar says 8 — a count that included no-op writes would be a lie about how much work is happening.
The Songs and Unmapped counts along the bottom edge are derived fresh from the names on every snapshot. Click either to open the songs list; click a song there to select its scenes.
That list is read-only on purpose. Its job is to answer "did the app read my set correctly" — and it can't give you a misleading answer if it has nothing to write with.
Two things it won't smooth over:
- A song whose scenes disagree about a fact shows every value in amber rather than picking one. Showing a single value as though it were the answer is how drift hides.
- A song found in more than one run gets a flag rather than an error. Two runs is a reprise, or it's two different songs sharing a name — only you know which.