Program like Abelton

Trust me, figuring Ableton has a learning curve too. These are pretty advantage sound manipulation tools and you have to put in the time to either read manuals and practice and experiment or invest in getting training from someone who knows the software inside out.

No shortcuts that I know of.

Obviously you can use Audacity for some simple stuff like cutting and pasting, cropping beginning and ending of songs and such. But if you want to do more advanced stuff, you need more advanced tools.

Just my two cents.

Greetinx.