Live7 b -Slicing with warp markers SUCKS - true or false?

[b0unce]

Greetings fellow Live7 beta abletonians,

Anyone else think slicing via the warp markers is stupid ?

My experience so far....
I go through some jazz, thinking "hip-hop ya dont stop", pick something out, get the bar (or two) lined up nicely and then I hope to slice it up and snaggle the groove.

BUT
using warp markers to select the slices is doing my head in....it sounds messed up, fucking with the pitch - speeding up - slowing down. I find it hard to slice by ear in many cases because it might be pitched up and thus play faster, when I hear the finished slice in the new midi track I'm getting nasty artifacts because I didnt hear the start clearly enough by making slices with warp markers.

Y'get what I'm saying ? ....what in god's holy name is the point of using warp markers to define slice points ? Maybe there's a situation where it's useful, but I hope the abletons will introduce an additional SLICE MARKER system instead of hijacking warp markers to be used as slice markers. It's just not practical for me, like I said - I certainly cant do it by ear now because it's prone to mistakes with all the pitch/speed shifting.


anyone else feeling me on this ? or have I missed something obvious ?

[R.J.Dubya]

What? The slices get pitch shifted? Why/how?

[siliconarc]

no pitch shifting here. works great. maybe you're slicing using a previously made Default preset, where you messed with the macros? make sure you slice using 'built-in' preset. or maybe you're still playing the track you used to slice from? dunno. could you post a beat clip as an example for us to slice and see what you mean?

[keeko]

I've done a bit of testing in this area but I'm not quite sure what you mean on this one either.

You are only using the Audio as a source, so the warping process itself should not be an issue (not that I've heard any kind of pitch shifting of the warped sample).

You say you didn't hear the start clearly enough to set the start point of individual sample? It's not very musical but have you tried zooming in more and doing it by eye instead? The alternative (or the one used by programs like Propellerheads Recycle) is transient detection - there's no guarantee that this will be more accurate than doing it by eye, some tweaking may still be necessary.

A final point, none of this is destructive - the slicing process is just creating Simplers/Samplers with different start point for the original sample. If you had a warp marker set wrong you can just go in to the Simpler and change the start point for the slice in question.

I'm not an expert - I need to learn more about the way Ableton have implemented slicing myself - I'm going to try to recreate the pitch shifting effect you describe - for my music this could be a useful sound effect

[longjohns]

You just have to keep in mind that the sliced sample will sound nothing like the warped version which created it.

I guess I've not yet even done any slicing while _listening_ to the warped sample - only visual

The warp markers define the slicing, but the timing remains unchanged

[longjohns]

Maybe it is not out of the realm of possibility to have a separate slice marker.

See: rex files, which display with lines at the "slice" points, which are not warp markers.

[mike holiday]

i agree

when i'm trying to slice up obscure stuff with extensive warping, it gets funky on me
warp -> complex helps but not quite

[siliconarc]

Maybe it is not out of the realm of possibility to have a separate slice marker.

See: rex files, which display with lines at the "slice" points, which are not warp markers.

...which, in the context of slicing, are not warp markers, but "slice" points

[forge]

Greetings fellow Live7 beta abletonians,

Anyone else think slicing via the warp markers is stupid ?

My experience so far....
I go through some jazz, thinking "hip-hop ya dont stop", pick something out, get the bar (or two) lined up nicely and then I hope to slice it up and snaggle the groove.

BUT
using warp markers to select the slices is doing my head in....it sounds messed up, fucking with the pitch - speeding up - slowing down. I find it hard to slice by ear in many cases because it might be pitched up and thus play faster, when I hear the finished slice in the new midi track I'm getting nasty artifacts because I didnt hear the start clearly enough by making slices with warp markers.

Y'get what I'm saying ? ....what in god's holy name is the point of using warp markers to define slice points ? Maybe there's a situation where it's useful, but I hope the abletons will introduce an additional SLICE MARKER system instead of hijacking warp markers to be used as slice markers. It's just not practical for me, like I said - I certainly cant do it by ear now because it's prone to mistakes with all the pitch/speed shifting.


anyone else feeling me on this ? or have I missed something obvious ?

you have to forget the groove while warping - forget all about the way you want it to sound and just put the warp markers on the beats - then when it's sliced the midi notes will keep the groove

[b0unce]

Thanks for the input,
I usually listen to my audio as I tamper with it, and slicing up a loop with warp markers is weird to me. As for slicing visually without playing the audio - well...that's not so easy when there is alot of stuff going on in the track, the transients are not so obvious visually....but a combination of listening and following the transport line as it moves through your audio makes it possible to spot the beats you want to slice. But using warp markers fucks with this process because its changing the audio drastically...making it really awkward and messy to zone in on the beats and so my slices [after exporting to a new midi track] are messy....

Sorry if I'm not explaining myself well, but you probably get what I'm saying or you dont


edit: using the warp markers as slice points seems really lazy to me, it's like lifting the groove by killing the groove - blindfolded. Crazy that some folks don't know what I'm talking about....I wonder what you're slicing ?

[longjohns]

I just had another idea -

what if disabling warp didn't make the warp markers disappear altogether, but just greyed them out -

so you could place markers with warp off

[b0unce]

I just had another idea -

what if disabling warp didn't make the warp markers disappear altogether, but just greyed them out -

so you could place markers with warp off

ya, that might help. They should just introduce slice markers instead. So you can mark slices without simultaniously warping audio.


I was really hoping someone was going to chime in to indicate why it might be useful to use warp markers as slice markers....

[hoffman2k]

So say the loop isn't warped...

If you're trying to slice using slice markers or whatever while maintaining the original groove.. How would you hear any difference at all?
Regardless of where the slice markers are, a 138 bpm loop played at 138 bpm will sound like a loop played at 138 bpm.

I do agree using the warp markers is a dumb solution. But at the moment, its pretty much the only available method.

My preffered method would be using "Locators" that can be triggered independently. Like on the arrangement side. At least that would give you the ability to preview a single slice.
But if you look back into the feature wishlist, you'll notice that this has been requested for many other things such as dj'ing for example.
Thats where the problem lies. Even though we consider some things to be half-assed, the reality is that we don't have any clue what Ableton considers as a solution or as a temp solution.

[peeddrroo]

you can set the markers roughly (just keeping in mind how many slices you actually want) and then adjust the sample start points within si/ampler.
with the inline mixer, you can achieve that pretty quickly.

[STRATEGY_510]

What? The slices get pitch shifted? Why/how?

I coulds see this potentially happening in re-pitch mode

Like when I warp a song with live drummer and tempo drift, ill get to sections of the song where the pitch jumps.

STRATEGY