Proper GROOVE features and intelligent quantising.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:47 pm

Is it too much to ask of a 2004 midi sequencer to have features that were taken for granted in cubase v1 on the Atari nearly 15 years ago?

It's INSANELY difficult to get groove going in a lot of the new type of sequencers, especially Live's new midi. No iterative quantise, no simple percentage adjustment, no groove templates, no match quantise, no ability to actually SEE this quantising in the piano roll.

If you fluff a couple of notes of your perfect(?) playing, the ONLY option is to quantise it dead straight, or turn the snap off and do it the hard way! It's the only way I actually do it. What's that shuffle (sorry, groove) thing all about?

I don't get it, has groove been forgotten about? Is this why most modern electronic music sounds so wooden and dull at the moment? Is this the reason that heavy metal is suddenly cool?

Stay tuned for the next episode of "The hunt for missing groove"

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:30 pm

I find the quantising counter productive too.

jah · Post by **jah** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 8:03 am

I'll second that. I love Live, but the groove functions in Live 4 are not that good. The fact that record quantization is on in the default live set is a sign that something is wrong! I thought this program was made for musicians, not programmers!

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 7:33 am

I know! Why can't we have that as a preference instead of default? It catches me out time and time again. Who on earth EVER quantises ANYTHING straight?

This really needs addressing, I'm doing midi stuff in live4 but finding it infuriatingly difficult. i think I'm going to use energy xt for midi from now on, it would be most handy if that midi could then be outputted into one of Live's midi tracks, but at the moment you cant do that either. Importing as a midi file is the only option.

Ableton, if you are reading this, please get this quantise thing sorted out. We NEED pro standard midi editing features, these don't cut it at all, unless you are a robot!

I know it's probably a lot of work, but unless the midi side matches or betters the 15 year old standard features found in all good sequencers, Live 4 will get really slagged by the critics!

This cannot be described as a DAW yet, it's just not finished.

paradiddle · Post by **paradiddle** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 8:03 pm

I know! Why can't we have that as a preference instead of default? It catches me out time and time again. Who on earth EVER quantises ANYTHING straight?

Yeah I got cought on that also and couldn't ondo it but then I remembered that live has a function to save a liveset has a default template. Take the record quantize off and save it has a template. Works good.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 8:09 pm

Blimey! Your right

I was sure I'd tried that. Cheers for kindly pointing it out.

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 4:55 pm

2nd that too.

Bring on the grooves!

SHould b as easy as selecting a MIDI clip and clicking on 'create groove', like Cubase.

Oh and rename 'groove' to shuffle or swing!

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 4:59 pm

elemental wrote:2nd that too.

Bring on the grooves!

SHould b as easy as selecting a MIDI clip and clicking on 'create groove', like Cubase.

Oh and rename 'groove' to shuffle or swing!

or even better: select an audio clip and click "get groove" from the audio material......

this together with percentage quantise would be very cool

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 5:43 pm

I suppose that's what you get whenyou let techno artists develop your software!

(J/K)

-Paws

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:28 pm

noisetonepause wrote:I suppose that's what you get whenyou let techno artists develop your software!

(J/K)

-Paws

Good techno should groove like a bastard! Trouble is, there's not much good techno produced nowadays otherwise I'd probably still be into it. Dance music used to be totally about groove, now it just seems to be about power, or maybe it's just that people are using modern software instead of using Ataris, complete with all the old groove features.

Dunno, but I really miss being able to store templates of favourite grooves that were the result of a lot of hard work.

tfl309 · Post by **tfl309** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 9:37 pm

I'm sorry, but what started off as a great thread has turned into Ableton bashing???!!! HOW DARE YOU?

HOW DARE YOU?

The whole letting tech artists develop your software thing? THEN DON'T USE IT.

While techno (and we're talking true "techno" here, right?: Regis, Surgeon, Oliver Ho, Mills, Atkins, May, etc.) might be in a slump, techno without a doubt, as previously stated, at its best grooves SO hard - subtle, sophisticated, yet funky as can be.

Can we get back to the issue at hand please?

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 8:21 pm

I'm personally not bashing Ableton at all! Believe me, I'm one of their biggest fans. I wasn't one of those people who really wanted midi in Live, I was pretty satisfied with it as an audio sequencer, my wish for flexible channel routing was granted and the midi was just an added bonus. However, after using the new midi features I find it odd that Ableton left out some pretty vital things, all stuff you take for granted when programming such an established standard as midi is.
I'm a huge fan of groove, and am also a huge fan of techno, when it's good.
I guess all I was trying to say was that it's very hard work to program groove in Live4, it's in the wishlist because I wish that Ableton would consider augmenting the midi side to make groove programming just as revolutionary as the rest of the prog.

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:30 am

I could be really harsh here but ...
You can idividually quantise a note or sequence of notes to any resolution.
Add swing to any set range of notes also.
The randomise and scale functions with the Follow A/B functions also work really well.
Now i don't do techno and have no problems pulling very organic grooves out of Live 4.
Simple things like triplet hats against 4th kicks with the odd dotted sixteenth ,32nd and eight note snares will give you pleanty of groove IMHO.
Playing things like bass lines unquantise around those notes will loosen and funk a beat up no end end also.
I myself have been rather impressed with how fluid a rythmic structure I can get out of Live 4 .
I also will throw in the odd organic (real drummer loop) with deliberately sloppy timing work to loosen things up.
I'd hardly say this sequencer was designed for straight up techno.
Dig in a bit there's some great polyrythmic work outs to be had trust me.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:38 am

Maybe its just a case of we're not being creative enough. Our beats don't need to all come out of one clip, our samples don't all need to come from an impulse.

I'm feeling inspired now. Thanks Fax.

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 7:01 am

Oh yeah and one more tip ....
Use one simpler for snares only.
Import the snare samples into a smaple editor of choice .
Keep a template of a sample of "air" as I call it.
And splice the air sample ie: BLANK SAMPLE DATA at the snares start point on a few of the snares just a few milliseconds here and there at the beginning of a few of them.
Then render in the audio editor as a single sample.
Import them back into IMPULSE.
Then program you're snare parts . the odd variation of these dead air snare hits will produce the same effect as millisecond based timing lags that a real drum would excute.
Use 32nd or 64 note grid resolution for very lowe velocity ghosting snares around those main hits.
And don't forget that clever use of ping pong and filter delay with the right wet/dry balance can really animate those hits when modulated via clip envelopes.