I'm considering going from ableton 11 to 12. I really like some of the features they added in 11 - even minor stuff like the scales feature is pretty convenient. It wasn't hard to program in a reference scale in 10, but it's super convenient to not have to and much easier to see when you go out of key (on purpose). There are a lot of other cool features and I'm still discovering new tricks. But there are a few annoying bugs I wish they would fix - like when I move the play head and it starts and then wants to jump back after a moment. You can always do a trial and see if it's worth it for you. I'll be looking into 12 soon and see if it's worth upgrading for me or if I want to wait.

Awesome! Glad it was helpful!

No problem! It's a cool trick - put it to use!

That's a great question! Although this is Ableton specific, it may be possible to do something similar in Reaper. I don't have Reaper so I can't confirm. You need to have access to the plugin parameters (the DAW needs that for automation and saving states, so I would imagine most DAWs would expose that to the user) and then some way to randomize specific parameters. In Ableton the instrument rack is great for that - it lets you assign macros and then you can randomize the macros. Perhaps Reaper has something similar? At one point, I looked for a similar thing using plugins but didn't have much luck. I think this is more of a DAW thing, or the randomization is built directly into plugins (and only for that plugin), which is becoming more and more common.

Great question! I tried nesting the instrument racks but that didn't work. More than 16 macros is probably not something you need to do very often. One solution, if you have Ableton Suite, is the "Device Randomizer" Max 4 Live device. It looks like it can randomize more than 16 parameters, modulate them, along with a few other features. If you don't want modulation running, you can turn off the Randomize button to lock in values. You can also turn on or off each parameter so not everything has to be randomized. You don't have as much control as macros (which you can assign to multiple parameters and set limits) because it works on the full set of inputs individually. Now, you can add the randomizer on the macros themselves rather than the device to get the best of both, but then you'd be back to being limited to 16 macros (unless you add a second randomizer to the device - then you can have macros on a few parameters and randomize a few parameters individually). I'm sure there are other options that don't require Max 4 Live / Ableton Suite, but I haven't thought of them yet.

@@idlethoughtsmusic It worked, thanks for that. Im using the Device Randomizer + 16 Macros. After using the Devious Machines randomising feature I've been randomising everything! Great results if you experiment for long enough, thanks for the info again.