What's new in BuildAble 12

New

• Pick a song's color. The Song tab has a Color dot beside Tags. Pick one of AbleSet's colors, or No color, and press Apply. It goes in the song's title locator, your file name stays as it is, and StitchAble carries it into your sets.

Fixed

• A song with no title isn't built. Clearing a song's title used to build a hidden session named ".als" in a folder called "| | 0 BPM | 4:4". Convert now marks that song "Needs a title" and builds the rest of the batch.
• The key, BPM and time stay visible. A long name on a song card now shortens in the middle, so the end of the folder name still shows. In the Library, a long artist shortens and the key, BPM and time stay.

Using StitchAble too? Update it to 1.4.3 as well, so it reads everything this version writes.

New

• One Tracks tab. Track Names and Returns are one tab now, and every track gets one row: a speaker button to mute it in Live, its color (click it to pick any of Ableton's 70 colors), its name (type over it to rename, leave it blank to keep the original), and the return it sends to, with the colored lines to the returns on the right. It works for a new song and for a finished song opened from the Library, where Apply writes the mutes, colors, names and routing back.
• Renamed to say what they do. Name Rules… (was Defaults…) is the rules that rename tracks on every song. Apply Return Rules (was Apply Default Returns) puts your returns on the song, and its arrow picks another place. Return Rules… (was Places…) is where each place you play keeps its returns and routing rules.
• The song's own click and guide are tracks you can see. If the download or stems folder came with a click or guide file, it now sits at the top of the song's group, black by default (you can change the color), going to the click and guide outputs. It starts muted while BuildAble's own CLICK and GUIDE lane is on, and plays when that lane is off. Uncheck a row to leave that file out, and unmute it in Live any time. On a finished song, unchecking removes the track and checking brings it back from the file in _MultiTracks.
• Don't transpose. The no-shift list on the Song tab is a folding list of checkboxes now, straight down, in two columns when there are more than 8 stems, with a count when it's folded. Checked stems keep their pitch when StitchAble changes the song's key. Drums and percussion start checked. It's the same [noshift] tag as before.
• A 4-bar count-in. The count-in is 1, 2 or 4 bars. Four bars is two bars of click, then the usual ONE, TWO and the count into the song.
• A better Import tempo sheet. The zoom slider runs the right way now (zoomed out on the left, in on the right). Swipe with two fingers on the waveform to scroll, pinch to zoom, or just drag it. The yellow bar 1 line drags freely so you can line it up exactly: it snaps to a hit when you let go close to one, shows how many ms it sits off the hit, and Snap to Hit puts it back. Sliding it moves the whole grid, so the tempo stays the click's. There's a time ruler along the bottom, the numbers by the scroll bar show what's on screen ("0:12.4 to 0:18.4 of 3:36"), and the bar 1 position is on its own line below. Pick 1/8 notes for an eighth-note click, which is what MultiTracks clicks are.
• One folder per song. A new song is one folder, Build My Life - Passion | Gmaj | 70 BPM | 4:4, with the .als, _MultiTracks, AbleSet, Ableton Project Info and Album.jpg right inside it. There's no "Project" folder inside it anymore. Songs built before keep working, and rebuilding one writes it where it already is, so sets built from it still find their files.

Changed

• Master isn't offered as a return output. The template's Main goes out 7/8, so a return on Master came out 7/8 and sounded like nothing. A return already saved on Master still shows and builds the same.
• With no section at the song's downbeat (no sections at all, say), the count bar opens on ONE instead of silence.

Fixed

• A stems-folder song with an imported click ran one bar too short. On Map to click, it ended one bar after the count-in: SONG END, click, guide and lyrics stopped, and only the stems ran on. It runs to the end of the stems now.
• A typed 123 BPM stays 123. Importing a click on Map to click named the folder "122.9992570797788 BPM" and put that in the tempo lane. A steady click reads as the whole number now, and a click that slows for its ending is named by the tempo it spends most of its time at (Won't Stop Now: 122, not 121.92). Folder names show two decimals at most, and 70.05 no longer comes out "705". Normalize's BPM field starts at your typed BPM when the click agrees with it.

New

• Tags in a name, in light blue. Type Cadenas #Rock as a song's title and the tags go into its folder and session names as you typed them, for AbleSet's multi-file setlists. In the Library they show in light blue after the title.
• Tags in the title locator. A checkbox beside the Tags row, on by default. Off, the song's title locator leaves its tags out.
• Song name lane matches the title. A switch in Settings, on by default: the SONG TITLE lane follows the title locator, tags included or left out.
• The Song Library has a search box and a Tags menu.

Changed

• BuildAble no longer puts tags in a file name on its own. The switch from 1.3.1 is gone: tags you add live on the song's card. A session that switch already renamed keeps its name, and a rebuild writes into it.

New

• Tag your songs. The Song tab has a Tags row: type worship, fast or #Worship #Fast. Tags are saved with the song, show under the artist in the Library, and StitchAble 1.4.1 shows them and filters by them.
• Tags in the file name, if you want them. Settings, AbleSet has Put tags in the session's file name, off by default, for AbleSet's multi-file setlists: a build names the session Build My Life - P #Worship #Fast.als, and its card and backup follow it. Nothing is ever deleted: if another file already has the new name, the session keeps its old one.

Using StitchAble too? Update it to 1.4.0 as well, so it reads everything this version writes.

New

• Song titles, your way. Settings has a Song titles box: pick whether a song's title shows the artist, the key, the BPM and the time signature. AbleSet shows it with the song. If the StitchAble on your Mac is older than 1.4.0, the box tells you before you pick something it can't read yet.
• The section colors you pick are the colors in Live. Pick a color for a section in the Sections editor and the built song has it on its SECTIONS lane. A section you don't pick keeps its usual color, and a section name BuildAble doesn't know shows the pink it builds with, not grey.
• AbleSet settings, if you want them. Settings, AbleSet has a new Settings box under Scripting. Tick it and Choose… which of AbleSet's own settings files come with every song: your OSC connections and their On Create commands, your project settings and password, your device views. The ones that only work on one Mac say so.
• Pick which tracks stay out of previews. A new Previews card sets the words that keep a track out of the editor mix and the waveforms. It starts with click and guide, so a Count In or Cuerdas stem plays in the preview now, unless you add those words.
• Click pads match StitchAble. Same row in both apps. An untouched pad says Classic, and Classic (default) puts a pad back.

Changed

• New songs start clean in AbleSet. Your AbleSet folder still brings your canvases, styles and script, but not the shared variables your last show left behind, like a transpose of -1. Your backup files and setlists stay where they are too.
• Teaching a guide doesn't pile up copies. Learning from a song's guide skips recordings BuildAble already knows, the same way Learn every voice does.
• Import Chart speaks the song's language. It picks the guide voice the same way the Sections editor does, so a song with its own voice gets its section headers in that language.
• Add cue menus use your voice's spelling. Every menu shows cues the way your guide voice says them, and still offers all of them.
• Disable section cues for AbleSet Cues plugin is the new name for the switch that used to say Count-In Sections During Playback. It does the same thing: match it to the plugin's own setting.
• A click loop's card no longer offers Trim, Count it in and Rename, which never applied to a loop.
• A short stem no longer smears across the whole waveform.
• The update pill uses far less CPU while it pulses.

Fixed

• The click plays straight. It had a 16th swing on it.
• The Song tab's click preview plays the pads its checkboxes show. A song that never touched its SIXTEENTH box played 16ths anyway.
• A renamed song keeps its group after a rebuild, and a rename keeps your Song titles choices.
• An untouched POST-CHORUS keeps its spelled-out callout. It could reach AbleSet's stage display shortened.
• Switching a song's guide language carries its Jump Guide cues too.
• A chart header's "Key: Gmaj" stays G major.
• The Library shows the same bar numbers as the Sections editor after a meter change.
• [<] reads as a lyric marker, like [>], in the chart editor and the AbleSet preview.
• Applying a Library edit keeps a section color you picked.

New

• Check it, then BUILD. A song's Convert button opens the Song Editor now, and the editor ends on a pulsing BUILD button. Press it and the song builds, and its card turns green when it's done. Open it again and it says BUILD AGAIN.
• Pick the guide per song. The Song tab has Audio, Drum Rack or AbleSet Cues for that song alone. Audio is greyed out when the song has no guide stem. A song you don't touch follows the main screen.
• Start a new song on the right hit. Importing a click shows its waveform with every hit marked. Click the one that's bar 1 and anything before it, silence or a count, is left out, so the tempo and the stems line up from there. It starts on the first hit, which also fixes a click with a little silence at the top putting the grid ahead of the band.
• Listen with the band. Before you apply a click, hear your stems with the click the song will get, or with the click file itself.
• Drop a folder of stems to make a song. A folder that isn't a MultiTracks download opens as a new song, straight into the Song Editor. Create New Song… does the same.
• Places you play. Return defaults are now places: each one keeps its own returns and routing rules, and Apply Default Returns on a song's Returns tab puts one on in a click. Your current defaults became the first place, Main.
• Loop Guide follows your sections. On a new song, the Loop Guide's cues update as you add, move and rename sections, and the ones you placed by hand stay put. Add lane now offers Loop Guide and Jump Guide for a song that doesn't have them, and each can be removed again.
• A clearer Cue Library. Every cue on one list, with the recording that says it, a Stock or Yours tag, and the ones nothing records. Add your own, play a different one, search, or show only what's missing. Matching another family's songs has its own tab, and every match there can be seen and changed. It's the same page in StitchAble.
• Your recording wins. When you've recorded a phrase the family also has, yours is the one a song plays.
• Stems live next to the session. A built song's _MultiTracks folder is inside its project folder now, beside the .als. Songs built before still open, and rebuilding one moves its stems in.
• Zipped downloads, your call. BuildAble no longer unzips anything on its own. When it finds MultiTracks downloads that are still zipped, it asks: Unzip, Unzip and Move Zips to Trash, or Not Now. A zip only goes to the Trash once its folder has a song in it, and you can still get it back from there.
• About BuildAble 12 says whether this copy is activated, or how many trial conversions are left.

Fixed

• Chart import fills every verse. A chart that labels its verses just "Verse" left a song's "VERSE 1" sections empty, because the names didn't match. Now the song's first verse takes the chart's first Verse, the second takes the second, and a chart's numbered verses fill a song's unnumbered ones the same way.
• No more missing click files. A freshly built song could report four missing media files from the click, even though the click played fine. Make Consistent clears them from songs built before.
• The explanation box on a cue tick no longer covers the right-click menu.
• The Cues settings are the same row in BuildAble and StitchAble now: Family, Cue Library, Order Cues, the folder, Import Family, Build Test Set.

Changed

• Where a song's card is kept. A song in its own project folder keeps its .stitchcore.json beside the .als, which is every song BuildAble builds. A loose .als or a raw MultiTracks download keeps its card in your User Library instead, under StitchCore/Cards, so nothing is dropped into a folder that isn't the app's. Shared with StitchAble, which reads and writes the same cards.
• The activation screen has a Buy button, for a copy that hasn't got a license yet.

New

• Arrangements, from the Song Library. Open a finished song and arrange its sections over its own waveform: drop one, repeat one, drag them into a new order, trim bars off either end, give a section a count-in, or rename what the guide calls it, to a phrase the song's guide can actually say. Add a click loop from the bottom of the + list, a bar of click with no tracks under it, at the tempo before it or one you set. Set the crossfade on each seam, and choose with the AbleSet switch whether a dropped section is cut or kept in the set with +SKIP, and whether the cards can loop. Saved on the song, so StitchAble finds it. It never changes the song; pick it in StitchAble to hear it.
• Each song in its own voice. A song keeps the guide family it was built with instead of following the Settings default, and you can give it another from the Library or the Sections tab. Picking one re-voices the song: every cue is read back through the family it was written in and written out in the new one, sections included, and nothing is re-detected, so hand-placed cues survive. Cue menus only offer what the chosen family can say, spelled its way.
• Learn every voice in this library. One command in the Library's options teaches BuildAble the voices your songs already speak, with a confirmation that says exactly what will and will not change, a progress overlay and a summary. For a library in a voice the bundled pack does not know, this is the one-click path.
• The guide lane says what it thinks. On a finished song the guide's cues are coloured for what the check found: white is a section callout, green is confirmed, orange is the guide speaking something the matcher cannot place. The strip counts them separately, and a per-cue Teach this voice turns an orange one into a known one.
• Time Lyrics plays the click. A Click checkbox in the Time Lyrics sheet plays the same click the built song carries, every tempo and meter change included. Marks land where you heard the line, not where the playhead was drawn, with a tap-offset stepper for your own reaction time.
• A preview cache that stops growing. Preview mixes are Apple Lossless now, a quarter of the size and bit for bit the same. Settings shows what the cache holds, a size budget, a per-song breakdown and a Reclaim button, and Render all now renders every song's mix ahead of time so no first open pays for it.
• Housekeeping from the right-click. Update Song Card checks first and shows what would change; Rename shows every folder, file and sample reference that would move, and waits; Delete Song measures the folder, shows the size, and moves it to the Trash. A song whose folder name disagrees with what it plays is flagged, in the Library and in the editor.
• Artist initials. Settings has a place to force the initials for an artist whose name is already an initialism (SEU Worship reads SEU, not SW), stored in your User Library rather than shipped as a default.
• Guide settings shared with StitchAble. The family menu, the Cue Library and From a Drum Rack… are the same screens in both apps and read the same files under StitchCore in your User Library. Make consistent now checks the cue recordings too and adds any that are missing, never deleting one you put there.
• Hover any marker and a box says what it means: cue tick colours, the guide and click badges, the card version, the Live 12 lock, Edited and Built. Medley titles show their slash. The card is now <song>.stitchcore.json; the old name is still read.

Fixed

• The Library opens fast. Opening a song in the editor went from 5.4 s to 0.4 s, and the library scan from 83 s to under a second, measured on an 84-song library. The list paints from the last walk while the new one runs.
• Saving no longer wipes StitchAble's settings. A save wrote a whole fresh sound library and erased the fields this app does not edit; only its own fields are written now, and the other app's changes are picked up without a relaunch.
• [noshift] tags come back. They are read from the track names again, so the No-shift menu no longer says "none" on every song in the library.
• Whisper no longer crashes when two chunks load the model at once. Make consistent also names section locators and refreshes cards that are behind. A stray double-click on a lyric line's bar chip no longer rewrites its timing.

Changed

• The Song Editor opens straight away. Opening a song out of the Library used to sit there frozen while the session was read. Now the window opens on the click with a loading screen, the reading happens out of the way, and the editor arrives ready to play.
• Waveforms are scanned once and kept. The band and original-guide peaks are stored somewhere macOS won't clear out from under you, so opening a song again reads them off disk instead of scanning every stem over again.
• It checks for updates on its own now. A quiet check a few seconds after launch and again every hour, with the usual prompt when there's something new. You don't have to remember to go looking.
• The About window says BuildAble 12. It's live text now rather than baked-in artwork, so it can't go stale again.

Changed

• The control tracks panel reads properly now. The four locked lanes, Song Title, Tempo, Time Sig, and Sections, are pinned as a block on top, and the ones you can actually change, Click, Guide, Loop Guide, Jump Guide, and Lyrics, sit under a divider. They used to intermix across the wrapped rows, so what was fixed and what was yours took a moment to work out.

Fixed

• The Band waveform is the instruments only. Click and guide were bleeding into the mixdown on songs opened from the Song Library or built by hand. They stay out of it now and play on their own lanes, so what you hear while you're laying out a song is the band.

New

• Review the chart against the original. On a PDF import, turn on Original and the source chart sits beside the parsed text. Move the cursor and the PDF turns to the page that line came off. Repeated choruses go to the right copy, not always the first one.
• A warnings box on import. Anything questionable is flagged with its location, so a quick import can't slip a bad chord past you.
• It remembers where you were. BuildAble reopens the folder you last worked in, with already-converted songs flagged in their own group, and Choose Folder… starts there instead of at the top of your drive.

Fixed

• Sharps and flats now come in correctly from a chart. Chart Pro draws accidentals as small graphics rather than text, which is why they used to come in wrong. BuildAble reads them off the page now, in sharp keys and flat keys, in letters, Nashville numbers, Roman numerals, and DoReMi, and it holds up on the complicated ones like 7#9#5 and maj9#11. It doesn't guess: a chord it can't read cleanly gets flagged instead of faked.
• Cleaner imports. Section headers, page numbers, and bar-count markers are handled properly instead of leaking in as chords.

New

• Rename tracks and edit returns from the Song Library. Open a finished song, rename its tracks or re-route its returns (add and remove returns too), and Apply writes it straight back into the session. It backs the song up first, and uses the same routing the converter does.
• A pageable song view. The Library detail keeps the arrangement pinned while you page through sections and cues, a returns patchbay, track names, and collapsible lyric lanes.

Changed

• First update delivered in-app. If you are on 1.1.0, this one arrives through Check for Updates.

New

• The Song Library. Manage a whole set, not just one conversion. Load a folder of built sessions and every song shows its sections, cues, click pads, guide and click families, and lane state at a glance. Open any song back in the editor, change it, and apply the change straight to the .als.
• Make consistent. The Library finds guide drum-rack drift, clips firing the wrong pad, click-sound mismatches, and missing media, then normalizes a whole library onto one layout. Mark as same remembers a cue alias across every song.
• Custom OSC and MIDI control lanes. Add your own lanes to the Sections timeline and place cues on them. An OSC-named lane loads AbleSet's command catalog on its own, so the commands are there to pick rather than to remember.
• A graphical CC editor. Draw a CC envelope with as many breakpoints as you want, option-drag a segment to curve it, ramp over a number of bars, put several controllers in one clip, and snap to the 16th or the bar. It all becomes real automation in the built session.
• AbleSet Cues mode. Let AbleSet's own Cues plugin speak the cues instead of the drum-rack guide. Section count-ins come from the SECTIONS locators, performance cues become a /cues/say lane, and you either let AbleSet generate the voice or hand it a WAV family so it speaks in the voice you already use. A whole library converts to Cues mode in one pass.
• Lyric timing comes back. Open a finished song and its lyrics and per-line timing load back in, so you can keep editing instead of starting over. Time Lyrics also gained Re-time from here, Copy timing from another lane or section, the [>] pickup marker, and 16th-note snapping.
• It updates itself. A version badge next to the title checks for updates when you click it, and it checks quietly in the background too. Signed updates install once you approve them. Coming from 1.0.x, grab this one from the site by hand, since the older builds have no updater in them; everything after 1.1.0 arrives on its own.
• Import a family from a zip, not just a folder, with the vendor detected for you. Families sit in collections shown as nested menus, so a long list stays readable.

Changed

• The guide rack was rebuilt. The guide is now one Live-authored 128-pad rack that BuildAble repoints to your family, so every callout plays in full and lands on the pad it is supposed to.
• Faster play and scrub on the Sections timeline, from a single cached stereo mixdown instead of mixing the stems every time.
• Hover the waveform and it tells you which section you are over.
• Songs saved by an older Ableton are flagged in the Library and blocked from editing until you re-save them in Live 12, so one old song cannot quietly break a mixed library.

Changed

• A safer Clear. Clearing no longer throws away work without warning.
• Cleaner Settings layout, so the options are easier to find.

Fixed

• More robust guide-cue detection, catching cues it used to miss.

Changed

• Smarter import. BuildAble finds MultiTracks downloads even when they are nested deeper in a folder, and reads the .als first so the session drives the import.

New

• Free trial. Five full conversions with nothing held back, then a Gumroad license key unlocks unlimited conversions in the app you already have.

New

• Import chords and lyrics from a chart. Pull the words and chords out of a chart PDF or pasted text instead of typing them. Reads MultiTracks Chart Pro in letters, Nashville numbers, Roman numerals, or solfege, plus SongSelect and plain text charts, with each chord placed above the syllable it falls on.
• Apply to lanes. Send one chart to several lyric lanes at once, or import separate PDFs into their matching lanes. Lanes that already have content are flagged before anything is replaced.
• Section notes from the chart. Chart Pro performance cues drop into each section's Note, and notes you already wrote are never overwritten.

Changed

• Much faster waveforms, rendered in parallel and cached, so the editor stops making you wait.
• A snappier click, and a per-song click nudge for when a song sits a hair off.

Fixed

• Compressed stems no longer sit behind the click.

New

• Import your own click, either building a tempo map from the hits or normalizing to one steady BPM and warping the stems to match.
• Import a guide on the Sections page.
• Guide and click now ship with the app, so there is no setup step before your first song.
• Downloads unzip themselves.

New

• Convert one song at a time, rather than only in batches.
• Guide voice families, with Jessa bundled and Import Family… for your own.
• Voice-fingerprint cue matching.
• Editor upgrades: zoom, section bands, the guide-stem strip, color-coded cues, and the ability to hear the original guide.

First public release

• MultiTracks to Ableton Live 12 conversion.
• Song Editor with automatic guide-cue detection and a waveform split editor.
• Lyrics and chords editor with a live AbleSet preview, plus Time Lyrics.
• Returns patchbay.
• Gumroad licensing.