live looping midi and quantizing issues

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
alyerpal
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Post by alyerpal » Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:26 am

I think we've gone a bit off the point here. It's about being able to play with whatever "feel" feels right to you, depending on what the backing tracks you're play to are doing. Sometimes this means you're going to play a hair before the beat, sometimes right on the beat, and sometimes a hair after the beat.

Vdrum's suggestions make perfect sense, but they only address trying to play exactly on the beat, which doesn't address every musical situation, as G-Buddha points out. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing Vdrum's suggestions at all. I think they're very valuable and I actually do everything he lays out in his post. I work on my "on the beat" timing with a drum machine as part of my practice routine everyday.

From a musical standpoint I think the point is that if you're looping audio, you can play behind the beat, on the beat, and ahead of the beat with no problem - all your audio will loop & play back properly.

If you loop MIDI, though, you can play behind the beat & on the beat, but if you play ahead of the beat (which may be your musical choice & what is called for & what fits perfectly with what you're playing to) every bit of your MIDI loop will play *except* the very first thing you play, which has been how MIDI sequencers have worked since their inception. We're suggesting that Ableton add an option to change this so that MIDI looping will now behave exactly like audio looping, that's all.

I hope that makes sense. What I'm saying is that yes, we all should continue to work on our timing *AND* it would be nice to have this feature. Best of both worlds.

vdrum
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Post by vdrum » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:53 am

Amen, Brother!
eDrummer: Roland Vdrum kit Live 8/ MacBookPro 2.5 mhz & 2gb. Motu Ultralite.. Homemade midi-triggering pad for LIVE's filters , clips , & record buttons. Hopelessly hooked on live looping.

Johnisfaster
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Post by Johnisfaster » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:09 am

vdrum wrote:Again, 1 bar quant.
I meant recording quantize not trigger quantize. big difference.
It was as if someone shook up a 6 foot can of blood soda and suddenly popped the top.

Johnisfaster
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Post by Johnisfaster » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:11 am

alyerpal wrote:I think we've gone a bit off the point here. It's about being able to play with whatever "feel" feels right to you, depending on what the backing tracks you're play to are doing. Sometimes this means you're going to play a hair before the beat, sometimes right on the beat, and sometimes a hair after the beat.

Vdrum's suggestions make perfect sense, but they only address trying to play exactly on the beat, which doesn't address every musical situation, as G-Buddha points out. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing Vdrum's suggestions at all. I think they're very valuable and I actually do everything he lays out in his post. I work on my "on the beat" timing with a drum machine as part of my practice routine everyday.

From a musical standpoint I think the point is that if you're looping audio, you can play behind the beat, on the beat, and ahead of the beat with no problem - all your audio will loop & play back properly.

If you loop MIDI, though, you can play behind the beat & on the beat, but if you play ahead of the beat (which may be your musical choice & what is called for & what fits perfectly with what you're playing to) every bit of your MIDI loop will play *except* the very first thing you play, which has been how MIDI sequencers have worked since their inception. We're suggesting that Ableton add an option to change this so that MIDI looping will now behave exactly like audio looping, that's all.

I hope that makes sense. What I'm saying is that yes, we all should continue to work on our timing *AND* it would be nice to have this feature. Best of both worlds.
perfectly put, thats what I've been trying to say
It was as if someone shook up a 6 foot can of blood soda and suddenly popped the top.

alyerpal
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Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:49 am

Post by alyerpal » Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:46 pm

Cool. I'd like to encapsulate these ideas and post a suggestion for a "Play early MIDI notes from 1.1.0" option to the Feature Wishlist forum.

Question for you guys - Since V6 is set to come out in Sept I would think that all the Abes resources are focused on that. Do you think I should wait until after 6 comes out to post this, so it possibly doesn't get lost in the shuffle, or do you guys think this doesn't matter at all and I should just post it now?

Comments appreciated...

vdrum
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Post by vdrum » Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:44 pm

I spoke with Christian (Ableton/Germany)2 days ago about the release date for ver. 6. He said its tough to nail down the date, because "things are still in development."

Id post it now AND send the link to support@ableton.com also.
eDrummer: Roland Vdrum kit Live 8/ MacBookPro 2.5 mhz & 2gb. Motu Ultralite.. Homemade midi-triggering pad for LIVE's filters , clips , & record buttons. Hopelessly hooked on live looping.

alyerpal
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Post by alyerpal » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:12 pm

O.K., I've posted this feature request to the Feature Wishlist forum, but I haven't sent the link to support@ableton.com yet.

If everyone who believes in this and would like to see this option added would check out the post and post their support, I'm thinking it would be better to wait to send the link to them until they can see that there are a lot of us who would really like to see this implemented.

So if you have a sec, please "sign the guest list" as it were, by going to the post and chiming in!

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=325843

Thanks, and lets hope they can add this soon!!!

Tom B. Good
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Post by Tom B. Good » Tue Aug 29, 2006 6:35 pm

alyerpal, have you emailed the abes, yet? It'd be great if we could get this into v6!

jeremywen
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Post by jeremywen » Tue Aug 29, 2006 11:47 pm

What if they had an option to start recording as soon as it gets the first midi note on message? That would help. Or with audio, it could start as soon as it gets sound over a certain threshhold.

glitchrock-buddha
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Post by glitchrock-buddha » Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:37 am

jeremywen wrote:What if they had an option to start recording as soon as it gets the first midi note on message? That would help. Or with audio, it could start as soon as it gets sound over a certain threshhold.
aha! Now there's an idea!

For midi, the recording could start when the first note is struck, then, it ends and loops exactly after a set number of bars, measured from the first note strike, rather than by the grid.

So, for example, if the recording length is set to four bars, when a note is struck early on the first downbeat, it begins recording there, and loops back that much earlier than the end of the fourth bar, staying in time. This achieves the same effect as what I had in mind earlier, which was moving the early note to the end of the recorded loop.

This way timing is preserved. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be forced to play on a grid as if it were quantized. I want the note to fall where I felt like playing it!
Professional Shark Jumper.

alyerpal
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Post by alyerpal » Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:13 pm

I just emailed the link to Ableton, asking politely for their consideration, and I added that last suggestion by jeremywen to the Feature Wishlist post for them to see.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=325843

Here's hopin'!!!

DIgiDennis
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Post by DIgiDennis » Wed Aug 30, 2006 6:38 pm

i dunno if understand it correctly. Perhaps a more intelligent midi recording 'engine' would do the trick.

What i mean is that perhaps you could play for ie. 4 bars and not before the end is reached (the clip has recived input for 4 bars) the notes are input to the clip buffer. This way the program is able to make some 'decisions' regarding the played piece.

Notes played just before the loop endpoint and sustained x ms over it could be moved to 1 bar etc etc.

i would also like som play quant. not just record quant. Infact if you had some sort of quant as the first thing in the pipeline, moving everything to next 1/32 1/64 or whatever could do the trick with lost notes. Just as an option of course

mooncaine
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midiStroke is what you need for OSX, I think

Post by mooncaine » Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:47 am

If you're looking for something like MIDI Translator for OSX, then http://www.charlie-roberts.com/midiStroke/ is what you need for OSX, I think. I haven't got started with it because I have to figure out what to type into its very tiny number boxes. Once I figure out what my FCB is really sending, I'll be able to test midiSTROKE in Live.

alyerpal
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Post by alyerpal » Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:52 pm

Hey guys,

Amaury from Ableton responed to me, saying that he's read this enitre thread and the entire wishlist thread, and that they've already been discussing this internally. He says it's on the list, which is long, so there's no saying when they'll find a solution, and that the most important thing is that they come up with an elegant solution that addresses this but would not mess things up for folks in other possible situations, so they really have to think things out.

That's the latest update. Sounds promising - hopefully it's just a question of when...

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