Ableton Forum

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/herse/

Has anybody tried this out yet? It looks interesting, although I'm not sure if there's that much between it and Buffer Shuffler.

I've bought it, i'll come back here when ive had a chance to test!

Cheers
D

I have it, and your comparison to Buffer Shuffler is well-founded. The presets and racks are excellent and eye opening, although for the price I think more of the presets could afford to have had the morph feature written in with evolved settings.

There are some additional lanes, like the envelope shaper, which is a saturater to my ears, the am which is maybe a ring modulator, and the envelope for amplitude curves-this later effect has some nice choppy results, but it is not as dial-in as the new beat tweaker by izotope. Still, the workflow in having Herse as an audio effect is much better than accommodating the Tweaker. The roll works better in buffer shuffler 2 or mono sequencer, as the percentage meter on Herse coupled with the amount parameter will not correspond to a articulate beat division until your ears dial it in.

The latest video on k-devices hails the low processing load of the Herse, and for me one instance of Herse on a 16g RAM Macbook pro Summer 2013 will hit my CPU meter at around 3% just to load into a track, maybe 5% for playback. That's ok, but for me that's definitely a decision going into a performance setting, rather than a slap-it-on, spur-of-the-moment effect.

I tried to isolate the measure and swing features today with a real rudimentary beat, and I had my better share of clicks, even with the x-fade at the highest setting, particularly with the Roll turned on or drunkwalk.

Then I did the same tests with combinations of odd metered clips, odd metered steps, odd numbers of steps, triplets, and 66% swing. My immediate results were not very groovy, but maybe you'll have better luck.

I would love it if the different effects had their own step-rates, but the sound does vary enough, [strike]and you could accomplish a similar result by keeping certain effects on, rather than bypass, and dropping out steps completely on dry/wet 0%[/strike] (actually that would just loop in the same pattern as well.)

I'll try it again, but so far I suspect this effect will work better with more complex material, completed tracks or sub mixes. Maybe sustained tones. Anything too stark won't fill out the jaggedness left behind.

Outstanding. Thanks for taking the time to post this. I'd been hoping that this would serve as a useful and inexpensive alternative to the new Twisted Tools plug-in, but perhaps I'm better off sticking with the combination of Buffer Shuffler + time + elbow grease. The low price of this does appeal, but I've probably spent enough money on software and devices in the past few months.

I'd be interested to hear if you have further impressions in the coming weeks. Happy tweaking!

You bet, Yorick
I'm definitely getting better results with completed tracks (in 4/4). And one way to get effects to come in unpredictably is to use isometrics with your number of steps. This can get really interesting when the probability of each step alters between two note divisions. Even when the playback buffer is in order, this results in a tension (or remainder?) between the effects also continuing in order and jumping back to the absolute time position of the transport. This is something worth measuring out first so you know what Herse is doing (I can only hint at understanding how everything's divided up).

Still, as I mentioned the effects will be sequenced in the same, joint timeline. Another thing to point out is that these effects are in series, rather than running parallel to each other, which is in part why there's a volume lane: to correct for steps that jump out at you.

The dry/wet is a great way to reach for this effect with a frequency sweep, for example, and then have it drop out. Probably easier to pull off than, say, timing a dual-pole envelope to return to it's center position. And as for other effects, just appreciate that Herse is going to sound more like Beat Repeat in mix output (there's no insert nor gate with the steps).

Fantastic device!!
I absolutely fell in love with it the very first second I started using it.

However twice today it has frozen Live completely, one time when I duplicated a track containing Herse... Sound keeps rolling but everything else is frozen...
After force quit, and Live has recovered the file (yes, I forgot to save) all settings in Herse is scrambled. Some remains as before the freeze but som are just random. Don't know if it's the recovery function that messes everything up so that one I can live with. Just need to save more often
But the freezing whenever I duplicate a track is a bit annoying..

Have anyone else encountered this?

I have now tried this for a couple of days. And it crashes almost every time. And worse is.. Most of the time the song is destroyed and I cannot reload it.. It keeps "buffering samples" forever. So now I have totally ruined over 4 song I'm currently working on.
It starts loading them but Live then halts at 98% while buffering samples..
VERY annoying!!

I found the Herse to be Awesome!!, Love it and haven't had any issues with it yet.. here is an example of 3x Herse being used in a track...the main arp/melodic sounding synth is actually a simple Grand piano midi clip going through the Herse....Enjoy..

https://soundcloud.com/frood/tech-for-peace

Can you use herse on midi tracks?

roesenthaller wrote:Can you use herse on midi tracks?

Yes. You can use any type of device (MIDI Effects, Instruments and Audio Effects) in a MIDI Track.

And Herse is an Audio Effect so it loads everywhere (Audio Tracks, MIDI Tracks, Return Tracks and Master).