yet another rant about time signature automation

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:36 am

kooki415 wrote:... but doing that would totally screw up the whole concept of warp markers.

well, just like those of you who don't use time signature changes, some of us wish there was an option to turn warp markers off completely, not just 'unwarped one-shot' or whatever it's called, that still warps clips. sometimes i use warping but, for the most part, it's just one more thing i end up having to turn off. because even if you don't change the tempo, warping STILL affects clips. that blows my mind.

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:41 am

leedsquietman wrote:I think the point the original poster was making was that in Cubase, Logic, Protools, etc you can go to the tempo track and automate the metering with like one mouse click, which then automatically divides those sections up into blocks of 5/4, 7/8 whatever timing and this is less hassle than workarounds and is particulalry useful for syncing to vid.

Now that Ableton want to play in the big boys league of DAW World, maybe they should implement some features that are common among the competition, and that would also include more video features on the next release, including SMPTE, exporting video to quicktime or avi files etc. and with those video features, meter change flexibility is more important. I read 2 articles recently on audio for video production and both mentioned multi audio cross fading and meter changes as prominent tools. And the DJs will finally be able to put their 4 on the floor beats to their 'epic' home videos shot in some dingy dive on a Sony Handycam for cheap music videos to boot...

i think the people who claim live is primarily a 'dj tool' forget that live is also advertised as a fully functioning daw. in order for live to compete with the logics and the pro tools, cross fading between clips in arrangement mode is needed, tempo automation is needed, group tracks and track folders are needed, better midi implimentation for arragement mode is needed (it would be so much easier to do things if you clicked on a midi clip and it showed you the bar numbers in the song, not the bar numbers of the clip), the ability to zoom in on waveforms without having to make the track as big as the screen is needed, the option to turn warping completely off is needed, exporting of audio and video is needed, the ability to separate video from its audio track is needed, that's stuff i can think up off the top of my head. needless to say, stuff like this is what's holding live back from truly competing with logic and protools

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:24 am

snowtires wrote:stuff like this is what's holding live back from truly competing with logic and protools

I hope what you just said, will become a funny phrase one day.

But then we'll be talking about a max patch thats running natively from Live

One can only dream

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:49 pm

snowtires wrote:because even if you don't change the tempo, warping STILL affects clips.

Still bullshit.

.lm.

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:04 pm

I think the arguments should continue because that means the thread stays near the top of the list - therefore more people see the lack of this feature, including the developers hopefully.

I emailled them last week about lack of time signature changes and they replied within about 30 seconds saying "they're working on it".

Of course there are some workarounds but they are far from ideal (the metronome virtually becomes redundant, and I want to use it), especially if Live wants to be taken seriously as a DAW and quick compositional tool for people who aren't 4-to-the-floor.

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:49 pm

Thanks for the reply, snowtires.

I can see your point about "tidiness" in the Arrangement view. I certainly don't see it as a show-stopper, but it is a valid complaint. And no matter how an apologist might try to spin it, the Arrangement view is a DAW.

I don't quite follow the issues about clips and session view, though. Maybe that's just a matter of my own ignorance re: warping etc, but in session view the metronome serves a single purpose - to impart tempo - and I'm never really thinking in terms of the (computer's) beat number or bar. There's simply no need. I mix time sigs freely in session view and never think twice about it, and have never had the slightest problem. Once printed to Arrangement view, I imagine my measure numbers are a mess, yeah. I tend to ignore them anyway since I never found them all that intuitive, even in 4/4. I just scrub through and fly by what I hear. I guess that's a little inefficient... then again, Live does have a marker set/recall system, doesn't it?

I just hope when Abe addresses this (and it sounds like they almost definitely will in v7) they don't muck things up with unnecessary complexity. IMO an "event list" sounds like a terrible idea (ugh, shades of Sonar) unless I can fully ignore it and see no change in functionality or performance. Maybe an optional property on a pop-up associated with an arrangement-view timeline marker, indicating time-sig, would suffice?

I've long advocated a scene property page like the clip property page to provide a proper home for scene tempo. Similarly, I guess there could be a field on a clip property tab for time sig. But again, outside the arrangement I barely understand what difference it would make.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:56 pm

yeah, what he said.

.lm.

thelocalhost · Post by **thelocalhost** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:45 pm

mbenigni wrote: I don't quite follow the issues about clips and session view, though. Maybe that's just a matter of my own ignorance re: warping etc, but in session view the metronome serves a single purpose - to impart tempo - and I'm never really thinking in terms of the (computer's) beat number or bar. There's simply no need. I mix time sigs freely in session view and never think twice about it, and have never had the slightest problem.

In session view with the 'global' meter set to 4/4, Try triggering back and forth between a 4/4 clip, 11/8 and 15/16 clip. Does it change properly? If you have quantization launch set to '1 bar', does it work as expected?

chis · Post by **chis** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:49 pm

mbenigni wrote:IMO an "event list" sounds like a terrible idea (ugh, shades of Sonar)

Yes, that was my idea, thanks for reminding me. I've seen my fair share of these in Cubase, Sonar etc. And yes, they are a mess. But perhaps you purposely skipped over my suggestion to display only the song position, tempo in BPM and time sig in an editable list. That's all I want. Have it down the side, but hideable, like sample management.

What is so terrible about that? Where would YOU put it, considering that Ableton have done their best to make Live a "one window" application?

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:11 pm

Sorry, didn't mean to put you on the defensive, Chis. I just don't like the idea of another window representing the flow of time in a way that's detached from the timeline in the arrangement view. I think this would become unintuitive. That's why I recommended the idea of arrangement view timeline markers having a corresponding time sig and tempo in addition to a name.

Now to be honest... I can't even recall whether there are arrangement view markers in Live - but that's the Sonar paradigm I would leverage.

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:18 pm

In session view with the 'global' meter set to 4/4, Try triggering back and forth between a 4/4 clip, 11/8 and 15/16 clip. Does it change properly? If you have quantization launch set to '1 bar', does it work as expected?

The very first time I found myself waiting on a clip to start, I dropped quantization down to 1/4 note and left it there. I guess if you absolutely need 1-bar quantize on clip launch this might be a problem... but why would you? And how would you address ambiguities eg. 1-bar quantization where 2 clips are playing simultaneously in 2 different time sigs. etc?

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:22 pm

actually, in the unlikely scenerio he presents, you need to set quantize (global or just for the 15/16 clip) to a 16th note.

.lm.

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:25 pm

actually, in the unlikely scenerio he presents, you need to set quantize (global or just for the 15/16 clip) to a 16th note.

Right right - didn't read his time sigs closely enough.

I don't know... it's an academic debate at this point. Could it be improved? Yes. Is improvement necessary? Hmm... Not to me, but as long as nothing gets broken in the process, I'm indifferent.

dootdoot · Post by **dootdoot** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:31 pm

I'm glad to see this thread becoming constructive again. I was working on a remix of a tune that could be construed as 3/4 or 6/4, and I found 6/4 made things easier as far as editing along with the grid. I started with a blank 6/4 set, and then set all of my new audio clips to 6/4 in the clip properties. Warp kept moving the clip end to the 3rd beat for some reason, but otherwise I was able to warp and tempo sync, etc...

What I would expect to be able to do in a time sig switch is be able to keep the same tempo, and get the proper metronome, grid, triplets, quant... and have warp adapt to the new time sig when editing. I've got a project going now where I will be trying to load a scene with clips in a different signature and see what happens.

While I get the point of the folks saying "work in 1/4" or "don't quantize"... It means throwing away a lot of Live's functionality. I certainly don't think that time signature changes are "esy" in the context of Live's workflow, but at least I laid out a few possible paths to implement it back a few pages ago.

Meanwhile, I'll keep enjoying working in Live and working around any bumps in the road... Just like we all do with any piece of software... or hardware for that matter.

thelocalhost · Post by **thelocalhost** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:49 pm

mbenigni wrote:
actually, in the unlikely scenerio he presents, you need to set quantize (global or just for the 15/16 clip) to a 16th note.
Right right - didn't read his time sigs closely enough.

I don't know... it's an academic debate at this point. Could it be improved? Yes. Is improvement necessary? Hmm... Not to me, but as long as nothing gets broken in the process, I'm indifferent.

I specifically chose the 4/4, 11/8 to 15/16 example to show that 1/16 note is the only way to 'properly' change time signatures.

Set the tempo of the 4/4 to 15/16 to be 90 bpm, then tell me if '1 bar' is unnecessary. At some tempo, it become tricky to nail that 1/16 note.

If you're a guitar player, or drummer that is trigger clips via midi, it's imperative to have the clips change on the proper '1' of their own meter. Especially on changes, you are probably playing a fill in that measure, you shouldn't have to worry about hitting that 1/16 note to make Live change clips correctly.