Freezing/flattening MIDI clips for juggling beats.

[phonographiq]

Say guyz,
I've been trying to figure this one out for quite some time now. Could use yr help.

I've been chopping samples in Ableton for quite some time now and have had a lot of success, a lot of unexpected sounds with rearranging clips with the follow clip function. In fact, there's nothing I'd recommend more than to find inspiration with remixing. To put in context: I'll take a clip and divide it into 8 equal slices and then set all the clips to trigger with the follow action which matches the duration of each bit, thus giving me a MLR-like ability to juggle samples. Comes in especially fine when you're rocking these on a grid controller, such as the Launchpad or PadKontrol. A lot of cats might see where I'm going with this if you're familiar with Daedelus' bitbox routine with his live sets. This is, stripped down, the same idea. However, implementing the same concept with the range and flex of Ableton's effects and sends made me abandon the idea of playing out with MLRV, like, why bother when there's so much more to this concept?

Problem is I'm having trouble taking this idea to the next level. While I'm thrilled with the release of MLRV2 and all, I want to keep the concept in Ableton, for I wish to employ these techniques with a Launchpad, while sequencing everything else as a whole on the APC40. The easiest way I could see managing this would be to slice-to-midi a clip into my 8 and use those clips in a separate channel. Thing is, I can't seem to find a way to convert those new MIDI slices into audio. Can't freeze them, can't just drag them to an audio clip, nothing. Not to mention that the MIDI clip in Session view is just a drum rack with the slices all playing together. What I'm after is extracting those slices from the rack and throwing them, all 8 of them in this case, into an audio track.

Am I missing something here? I've worked with this system of pain-stakingly slicing each clip I wanna play with, but it seems a bit backwards with Slice-to-MIDI. It's just a matter of freezing and flattening those MIDI chunks. It seems remarkably simple but I just can't fish it out.

Any help would be much obliged. It took me days to work out my login errors and had to re-register my account on Ableton's site just to get this up here. Thanks y'all, and not just for the help.

[dutcher]

I had a similar issue and ended up just having to throw the original sample into Sampler and chop it that way. Hopefully someone knows of an easier way.

[siliconarc]

there's no way to slice to a new track with follow actions at the moment, but it is on the wishlist
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=142357

but if you have Sampler, you can use the slice preset 'Slice to Single Sampler', open its zone editor and select all slices, then right-click > 'Crop Samples'.
that will give you the actual sliced audio files in a 'Cropped' folder inside your project folder.
just drag them into a track and set up your follow actions.

or...
i made a Sampler rack a while back called VeloSlice (needs Sampler).
drop any loop onto it and it's automatically spread across 8 keys/pads in 8 equal slices, the start of which can be tweaked with the rack's macros.
if you set the Sampler to 'loop' and the adsr mode to Trigger with a 60s decay time, it will work like a chopped beat with follow actions. try it out.
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... =VeloSlice

[phonographiq]

Damn, Gary. Good work. I never thought of that. This'll help me a bit.

[mothergarage]

Why not do this with midi?

Just create a "Follow Action Template", where each step triggers the next slice and drag it to your library. Now if you slice a loop, just drag the follow action group back in the sliced track.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wbvo716h80r4130

[phonographiq]

Why not do this with midi?

Just create a "Follow Action Template", where each step triggers the next slice and drag it to your library. Now if you slice a loop, just drag the follow action group back in the sliced track.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wbvo716h80r4130

thanks for the upload, I appreciate it but I need the slices in audio so I have the seperate slices to trigger on the Launchpad. The concept would give me visual feedback on the buttons. Using MIDI would chop everything but wouldn't let me grab those 1/8th bits.

[siliconarc]

phonographiq, use mothergarage's '8 follow actions' clips as triggers for your already-sliced loop.

drag the clips onto a track containing your sliced loop (in place of the existing midi clip) and it will play them in order (each clip has a midi note from C1 upwards).
easier than cropping and dragging in each file.

drag the track '8 follow actions' into your browser (library/templates) for future use,
and you can then drag it over the top of any sliced midi file. handy.

[phonographiq]

OH.
Holy hell, bravo.

Drinks on me guyz

[mooncaine]

Why not do this with midi?

Just create a "Follow Action Template", where each step triggers the next slice and drag it to your library. Now if you slice a loop, just drag the follow action group back in the sliced track.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wbvo716h80r4130

Mother, that's frikn awesome. Thanks for that!

[mothergarage]

Thanks for the drinks

Now, I made a more detailed blog entry for this.

[Warrior Bob]

Just posting to say thanks for these ideas - I'd never really thought about it before and now I learned something.

[phonographiq]

I'm as high as Snoop right now, juggling Django Reinhardt with this, loving life, jus' sayin.