What happened to swing?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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Scaper7
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:58 pm

What happened to swing?

Post by Scaper7 » Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:18 pm

It seems it's now only possible to adjust swing by calling up presets. Swing presets are only available in 15/25/25/45 (etc). Any fine tuning of swing percentage is no longer possible.

For all the complexity of the groove pool system, it has become practically unusable to anyone who needs to simply adjust global swing by percentage. This was a beautiful feature of L7 ... it simply worked and grooved like a swing control should. Now it's been replaced by a complex, illogical and bloated setup that no one can clearly explain the purpose of.

'Swing by presets' sucks so bad. Am I the only one missing the simple functionality of the old swing system?
Last edited by Scaper7 on Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Warrior Bob
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Re: What happened to swing?

Post by Warrior Bob » Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:30 pm

Load up your favorite Swing groove and adjust the "Amount" slider. The effect is, as far as I know, the same. By no means do you have to rely on just presets :)

Asymmetricalmusic
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Re: What happened to swing?

Post by Asymmetricalmusic » Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:08 pm

Live 7 user here

It's still the main thing I use. This was a huge reason why. To me it's easier for swing to be sync'd on the whole project. with L8 and up you have to first sample the original swing and apply it to the whole project. That's way more pain in the ass.

I got L9 for Push but most all my work starts in L7.

Scaper7
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:58 pm

Re: What happened to swing?

Post by Scaper7 » Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:36 pm

Warrior Bob wrote:Load up your favorite Swing groove and adjust the "Amount" slider. The effect is, as far as I know, the same. By no means do you have to rely on just presets :)
The effect is not quite the same. Yes it effects the amount of swing but only does so in ratio to the preset you've loaded. So which preset do you load to get the full spectrum of swing from straight to strong swing? Perhaps some kind of workaround like this could still work, but my point is this; Why do we need such a clumsy workaround to simply dial in a global swing amount? This used to be a basic, simple and working feature of Live. Why has it been ditched? Where is the advantage? .... Imagine if we had to load tempos from a list of presets at 10 BPM increments then adjust the 'amount'.
Asymmetricalmusic wrote:Live 7 user here
It's still the main thing I use. This was a huge reason why. To me it's easier for swing to be sync'd on the whole project. with L8 and up you have to first sample the original swing and apply it to the whole project. That's way more pain in the ass.
I got L9 for Push but most all my work starts in L7.
Same story here. I run L8/L9 on laptops but only L7 is installed in my main studio desktop expressly because of it's swing features. I often have to program drums/clicktracks for acoustic/live musicians. L7 global swing makes matching their groove very easy. The same job is a complete PITA using L8/L9.
All I try to do with the new L8/L9 groove pool system is get it to imitate the L7 system. I'd love the option to revert to L7 swing system on L9 and ditch the groove pool altogether.

jlgrimes
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Re: What happened to swing?

Post by jlgrimes » Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:58 pm

The effect is not quite the same. Yes it effects the amount of swing but only does so in ratio to the preset you've loaded. So which preset do you load to get the full spectrum of swing from straight to strong swing? Perhaps some kind of workaround like this could still work, but my point is this; Why do we need such a clumsy workaround to simply dial in a global swing amount? This used to be a basic, simple and working feature of Live. Why has it been ditched? Where is the advantage?
Ableton's old method while great for many cases was probably too basic for some users. I hated that they had only global swing. On my mpc I would swing different tracks at different settings.

I like Reasons way of handling swing they still give you individual swing control but they still have global swing as well to satisfy both crowds.

Scaper7
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:58 pm

Re: What happened to swing?

Post by Scaper7 » Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:54 am

jlgrimes wrote:I like Reasons way of handling swing they still give you individual swing control but they still have global swing as well to satisfy both crowds.
Yes, I remember playing around with it. Seemed to work well. Ideally I'd prefer a global swing control with offsets for individual elements where required.
Warrior Bob wrote:Load up your favorite Swing groove and adjust the "Amount" slider. The effect is, as far as I know, the same. By no means do you have to rely on just presets :)
For now I've found that loading the 'Swing16-99' preset makes the 'global amount' work like L7s' 'global groove'. I've loaded and saved it into my template settings. I have 'global amount' hooked up to an external encoder with range set 0%-100%. It seems to work OK. I can live with it.

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