Ableton Live Intro presents an elegant user interface that is as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Once you comprehend the architecture after going through tutorials, you can start working within this audio production software. The Arrange view shows time along the x axis and tracks along the y axis. If you click the Follow button, the music scrolls as it plays.
A Beat Time ruler gives you control to move forward and backward along the timeline, and allows you to compress and expand the scale at which it is displayed
Ableton Live
Another basic view is the Session view, which you access by toggling the tab key. Session view lets you record, play and improvise. The unit of composition in Ableton Live Intro is called a Scene. Scenes are comprised of smaller parts called Clips, which are containers for audio or MIDI data. You can operate on Clips to create Scene variations.
All Clips start on the next downbeat after they are triggered. The Clips are displayed as waveforms. You have real-time control over the pitch and tempo of every Clip.
The Track View window shows the instruments that each MIDI Clip is triggering. For example, in the Track View, you can see the built-in Drum Rack instrument pad and the Beat Repeat effect, which creates semi-random variations of the sounds that the Drum Rack produces.
The mixer controls are extensive. A meter shows the tracks' average RMS (Root-Mean-Square) and peak output levels. If you are just monitoring playback, it shows the input level. Volume control lets you select multiple tracks so that if you adjust one track, all those linked to it will also be adjusted. Likewise, the Pan control, which places a track's output in a specific location within the stereo soundscape, lets you adjust multiple selected tracks by adjusting the pan knob for just one of them. In Session Mode, the mixer is resizable, so you can extend the height of the track meters. You can also widen the tracks to include a decibel scale. Ableton's live mixer supports crossfading for transitions between Clips that are playing on different tracks.