Oh Live, why hast straight-forwardness forsaken thee? All I ask is that recording external MIDI devices not be a "pain beyond which one might be severely inconvenienced". But that can't (not?) happen, can it?

Let's be fair, it's a problem faced by other loop-based DAWs too (I'm looking at you Maschine) – if your phrase starts just before the bar then you're "screwed", because recording is tied to the start of a bar.

Case in point: my pumping strings part, crafted today. I decided to plunder the Proteus once more, choosing the patch Real Matrix. All well and good, but of all sound types, legato parts with overlaps are the most complicated to capture in a looping domain. So when I came to record the clips I was left with several options of how to do it sub-optimally.

My final solution seemed a good one – the Real Matrix sound was nothing special, so I decided to find a close relative from an instrument in the Live library. And the Simpler's "Violin Section" patch seemed to fit the bill – just a bit of low-pass filtering and I was away.

BUT (of course there was a but), when I came to save the patch (collecting all files in the process) I found that this Simpler patch added 2GB to my 120MB project. Gawsh. So, I'm thinking of going back to the drawing board for this issue – perhaps I can get close with a synthesizer.