warp modes for when launching scenes live

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kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by kebabman » Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:53 am

Hi there

I'm using Live 9.

I'm working on performing my arrangements of house tracks live. Everything is now rendered to audio - no midi any more.

When I was working in arrangement view, everything seemed to be warped using beats mode but I went and manually changed all this to complex pro (a long job!).

I've then chopped my arrangements into sections (intro, verse, chorus etc) which I've pasted into session view. The warping has now gone back to beats mode. I've saved another copy where I've saved my session to pro (for some reason complex pro isn't appearing in the list)....

With the version where my scenes which are in beats mode, the cpu doesn't go above 10% which is great :)

With the the pro warping version, it peaks around 50% and it's just starting to glitch.

Is it fine to perform using the beats mode version? I wasn't sure if this would add artefacts to the vocals and synth audio...

Is beats mode okay provided you don't change the main tempo much?

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

yur2die4
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Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:02 am
Location: Menasha, Wisconsin
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Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by yur2die4 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:27 pm

You really want to be careful about changing things to complex warp modes. It can change the tonal character of the sound in some strange ways and might give you unexpected amplitude and eq problems. It has various controls for tweaking it for that reason, and yeah, at a glance it’ll seem like it sounds great when stretching things, but if you’re doing it to every single element, there could be so many weird changes to the sound that you had no intention of creating.

Beats mode is good if you do it right. If you do get deviations in tempo from the original tempo, you might hear some artifacts.. but the artifacts themselves depend on what kind of Beats Mode settings you’re using. They give you a few settings to kind of get control of the behavior, it basically slices a clip up into certain kinds of ways and plays those in order, if the tempo is lower, spaces start forming between those bits and different settings even let you decide how it handles that. If too fast, they just cut into each other at the sliced positions. Those slices can be 16th notes, 8th, or even based on transients. If you’re playing a ‘smooth’ sound at a different tempo, it’s much more noticeable. If you’re doing it on drums, you might barely notice it all depending on the content.

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by kebabman » Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:04 pm

Many thanks for this reply - this is all very interesting...

If I've got this right, beats mode is fine if I don't deviate from the project tempo?

I have a number of arrangements of different songs at different tempos that I want to to drop into a single arrangement. Before I put them all into my live set, I'm prepping each song as it were...

Eg.... I've started with a house track (all these are renders btw). The project tempo when I started this tune was 126 bpm. It still is and I have no plans on playing this faster or slower. The track has 909s, piano, pads, vox etc. Is beats mode therefore okay to use if I stick at 126bpm? It certainly seems less cpu heavy than other modes. The track sounds okay warped in beats mode - I can't hear any artefacts.

The plan is to then have another 10 songs scrolling diagonally from top left to bottom right if you get my drift.

I then have another track which was composed at 120bpm. This time when I import it into my live set there will be a scene called 120 bpm which should slow the master tempo down to 120bpm. Again, should this still all be okay in beats mode as the master tempo has now dropped to 120bpm?

Basically, I have no plans at playing any of the songs at tempos other than those they were recorded at.

Hope this makes sense..

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

yur2die4
Posts: 7153
Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:02 am
Location: Menasha, Wisconsin
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Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by yur2die4 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:46 pm

I think a good exercise would be to use Beats and solo particular tracks. Then kinda nudge the tempo up or down a few bpm to see how it affects that particular kind of material.

If things sound fine right now, that’s a good sign. But the big thing is you have to know what to look for. If you don’t know what the artifacts or failure sound like, then you might miss it when it’s not happening as prominently. Additionally, this can help you tweak some of the material that doesn’t quite stretch as smoothly. (Like choosing transients vs grid, and different fade types in beats mode etc.)

I’d definitely look at pads and bass to start with.

But yeah. Your set should be plenty robust enough at this point that playing with this would not cause any issues.

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by kebabman » Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:27 pm

Thanks for this.

Yes soloing channels sounds a good idea.

You may potentially be using different warp modes for different tracks then...

Once you've decided on an appropriate warp mode for different sounds, do you then use copy and paste for the rest of that channel? Is there a quicker way of applying one loop's settings to the entire part in the arrangement?

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

yur2die4
Posts: 7153
Joined: Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:02 am
Location: Menasha, Wisconsin
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Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by yur2die4 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:46 pm

You can select several clips simultaneously. Either by dragging the mouse arrow to select some, or (on windows) hold Ctrl while doing a single click on each clip you want to select which adds more clips to the selection, not sure what key you hold on Mac.

If you already have Clip View visible at the bottom of the screen, you can then change that parameter and it’ll apply to all selected clips.

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: warp modes for when launching scenes live

Post by kebabman » Mon Jul 19, 2021 5:52 am

Thanks for this - invaluable help! I've been previously wasting time doing things individually then copy and paste.

thank you
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

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