Forcing Ableton's timeline to follow me...

[bigwayne56]

Hey all,

I have scoured the internet and these forums for many an hour and have yet to find a satisfactory answer to my main question.

I want Live to follow me and what I do. Hear me out....

I play a song on guitar and it has all the little timing nuances that I want. I know the groove is around 82 bpm but don't want to follow a strict timing of 82bpm. I want that old school, live, a little off timing feel to it. You know not so rigid and mechanical. (And yes I CAN play to a metronome before you ask....) In logic I can just setup beat mapping and drag little yellow lines to the audio transit I want and logic will automatically adjust the tempo map for me. So yes I can stay with logic and do what I am asking, but I really like the workflow of Live and would like to do something similar.

Any ideas??

Thanks in advance,

Wayne

[Valiumdupeuple]

In your guitar track, set warp markers to the beats.
Then set this clip to be the master tempo: under the warp button in the clip view, there's a "slave/master" toggle button.

[regretfullySaid]

This isn't the greatest thing, but it's a means to an end:
You could record your part regardless of the BPM.
Then after that, if you play it back with record on (but don't have anything armed) and click on the Tap tempo to the "beat", it will record the tempo changes. Or something like that.

[nathannn]

Hey all,

I have scoured the internet and these forums for many an hour and have yet to find a satisfactory answer to my main question.

I want Live to follow me and what I do. Hear me out....

I play a song on guitar and it has all the little timing nuances that I want. I know the groove is around 82 bpm but don't want to follow a strict timing of 82bpm. I want that old school, live, a little off timing feel to it. You know not so rigid and mechanical. (And yes I CAN play to a metronome before you ask....) In logic I can just setup beat mapping and drag little yellow lines to the audio transit I want and logic will automatically adjust the tempo map for me. So yes I can stay with logic and do what I am asking, but I really like the workflow of Live and would like to do something similar.

Any ideas??

Thanks in advance,

Wayne

My idea is ableton needs to pay attention to threads like this BECAUSE THEY POP UP ALL THE TIME!!!!!

This is a long long long standing feature request that they are just not grasping.
I even asked the guys at bitwig if this was going to be available and even they really didnt know what I was talking about which makes sense since they come from ableton.

Anyways there really is no good work around for this. Thats just the way it is right now.

[ChiefNugget]

In your guitar track, set warp markers to the beats.
Then set this clip to be the master tempo: under the warp button in the clip view, there's a "slave/master" toggle button.

Just did something similar to this the other day. It's the best workaround as far as I know. I think all the tempo changes need to be split into separate clips, one tempo per clip. Just "CTRL-E" to slit the track into clips. Another neat trick is that you can use empty dummy audio clips set to MASTER tempo to change tempo along the timeline.

There is a plugin/effect that is designed to track a live drummer's tempo while playing live in a band setting with Live. It may require Max4Live though. I haven't used it but I've seen it mentioned on the forum.

An elegant and effective way to address this feature request would be better than all the new Live 9 features combined IMO.

[siliconarc]

An elegant and effective way to address this feature request would be better than all the new Live 9 features combined IMO.

huh? what Valiumdupeuple said IS the way it's done. the feature already exists. has done for years.
warp the audio to grid manually (or straight quantize it) and set it to Master.
when set to Master, the audio doesn't play warped; everything else does in order to follow it.

[ChiefNugget]

when set to Master, the audio doesn't play warped; everything else does in order to follow it.

I did not realize this. I must have been going out of order for warping and changing the clips to Master. So, the correct order would be this...

1) Drop/record audio track without warping
2) Set that recorded clip to "Master" tempo
3) Add warp markers as necessary to capture tempo changes
4) Snap those warp markers to the appropriate beats on the time line. At this point, the tempo of the set will change to follow the Master-tempo clip rather than having that clip's tempo change to match the set.

Is that correct?

[siliconarc]

when set to Master, the audio doesn't play warped; everything else does in order to follow it.

I did not realize this. I must have been going out of order for warping and changing the clips to Master. So, the correct order would be this...

1) Drop/record audio track without warping
2) Set that recorded clip to "Master" tempo
3) Add warp markers as necessary to capture tempo changes
4) Snap those warp markers to the appropriate beats on the time line. At this point, the tempo of the set will change to follow the Master-tempo clip rather than having that clip's tempo change to match the set.

Is that correct?

1) Drop/record audio track without warping
2) turn on warp
3) quantize or manually adjust the markers straight to the grid
4) in arrange, click the clip's slave button to switch to master

you'll see the red dot appear in the tempo field top left, and tempo automation in the master track.

[nathannn]

An elegant and effective way to address this feature request would be better than all the new Live 9 features combined IMO.

huh? what Valiumdupeuple said IS the way it's done. the feature already exists. has done for years.
warp the audio to grid manually (or straight quantize it) and set it to Master.
when set to Master, the audio doesn't play warped; everything else does in order to follow it.

What do you do with multiple audio clips?
What about tempo mapping a track that isnt the master?
What do you do when a time signature change takes place?

That said, when you go to edit master tracks warp markers (you still need to do this because live doesn't always detect transients properly ) you still get the sound of warping even though warp is suppose to be off.

Setting the track as master is really only useful with one short clip.

also what do you do when a midi clip needs to be tempo mapped? (i know its not called tempo mapping when it comes to midi items but i cant think of the term right now).

[nathannn]

There is a plugin/effect that is designed to track a live drummer's tempo while playing live in a band setting with Live. It may require Max4Live though. I haven't used it but I've seen it mentioned on the forum.

Do you know the name or thread it was in?

[siliconarc]

An elegant and effective way to address this feature request would be better than all the new Live 9 features combined IMO.

huh? what Valiumdupeuple said IS the way it's done. the feature already exists. has done for years.
warp the audio to grid manually (or straight quantize it) and set it to Master.
when set to Master, the audio doesn't play warped; everything else does in order to follow it.

What do you do with multiple audio clips?
What about tempo mapping a track that isnt the master?
What do you do when a time signature change takes place?

That said, when you go to edit master tracks warp markers (you still need to do this because live doesn't always detect transients properly ) you still get the sound of warping even though warp is suppose to be off.

Setting the track as master is really only useful with one short clip.

also what do you do when a midi clip needs to be tempo mapped? (i know its not called tempo mapping when it comes to midi items but i cant think of the term right now).

not sure what you're asking re: multiple clips, but only one clip can be the master tempo at any one time, BUT you can have as many master tempo clips as you want (all in Arrange of course). if they occur on different tracks at the same time, the bottom-most one is the master. if they run consecutively, no problem either.

What about tempo mapping a track that isnt the master? no idea what you mean there, sorry.
As for time sig changes, as long as the clips warp straight to the grid, the time sig inside the clip becomes irrelevant - it's all taken care of in Arrange view above the loop brace area.

as for there being warped artifacts in master clips, yea i have seen that before, so its not a perfect system, but it is pretty good. you can always duplicate the master clip as an unwarped clip to run alongside it and mute the master clip.

i reckon Live fares better than cubase and logic at least. i've not tried studio one's tempo mapping features yet...

[Valiumdupeuple]

Do you know the name or thread it was in?

Here it is dude: http://www.b-keeper.org/
It's been around for quite a long time, and I've always felt surprise that this device never gets the recognition it deserves.

BTW, the OP is just saying that he wants to keep the natural feel of its guitar playing, not doing big tempo change.
I guess he could record his guitar track (which would define the master tempo/feeling of its tune) with a click, maybe not on every beat in order to still have a reference/guide but with enough liberty to free-jazzing its playing.

[ChiefNugget]

Do you know the name or thread it was in?

Here it is dude: http://www.b-keeper.org/
It's been around for quite a long time, and I've always felt surprise that this device never gets the recognition it deserves.

BTW, the OP is just saying that he wants to keep the natural feel of its guitar playing, not doing big tempo change.
I guess he could record his guitar track (which would define the master tempo/feeling of its tune) with a click, maybe not on every beat in order to still have a reference/guide but with enough liberty to free-jazzing its playing.

Yep, that's it. b-keeper.org

I understand the concern for natural feel, that's what had me confused about any suggestions that the "master" guitar track be quantized. I could understand using it to set the master tempo, which I assumed would drift naturally from bar to bar, maybe by 1-2 bpm.

If a whole track is already laid down, it could be possible to use Live's Groove extract on the whole track after placing warp markers on all the beats. Apply that groove to other tracks to some degree. Not as automated as it seems it could be.

[nathannn]

Do you know the name or thread it was in?

Here it is dude: http://www.b-keeper.org/
It's been around for quite a long time, and I've always felt surprise that this device never gets the recognition it deserves.

Does this work on your end? I downloaded it and tried to extract it but got multiple errors in the process.
It still extracts but when opening the file, the m4l device looks like its missing items when you compare it to the screen shot of the device on his website.

I wrote him, hopefully he will respond

I remember seeing something about this a long time ago but m4l wasnt out then and the max patch was only for mac os. I have been interested in this for a while now.

[distaudio]

Does this work on your end? I downloaded it and tried to extract it but got multiple errors in the process.
It still extracts but when opening the file, the m4l device looks like its missing items when you compare it to the screen shot of the device on his website.

There are a few extra components to it I think

http://www.b-keeper.org/faq.html