Proper GROOVE features and intelligent quantising.

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:07 pm

This needs a bump.
A must have feature although for starters midi groove on midi parts would do fine. This is what I dont understand about you Ableton. I know you can implemenet groove quantise for midi to allow the user to choose different quantise settings on different parts. I suspect the audio side is holding back development here. If so consider at least adding groove for midi.
Your up to version six in the year 2006. I first used groove quantise on an atari in 1984. Thats 22 years ago!

I repeat 22 years ago probably more years than 70% of your users here. I say again 22 whole spanky years!

roughly 8000 days ago equalling 22 lovely years. Thats two more years than 20 years and three years away from a QUARTER OF A CENTURY.
And you call yourselves innovative

M. Bréqs · Post by **M. Bréqs** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:36 pm

heh.

I've been using the 6 Beta, and the master control in the arrange page is definitely a step forward. I think that since now the background computations exist (it works, so it's obviously possible), it's just a matter of time before they perfect a GUI to do the same thing outside of the arrange page.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:38 pm

mercyplease wrote: 22 whole spanky years!

is that 22 years of infinite monkeys writing hamlet?

1999-2006 to conceive, build and develop a program that started from the opposite end of the spectrum to those MIDI ataris (which by the way were probably graced by far more than 70% of the users of Live) with all audio clips in a session clip view which was the core concept of it, then MIDI evolved into it in version 4, 2 years ago, while simultaneously all the other concepts of Live continued to evolve still

then there's the number of people working at Ableton and physical man hours to actually make all this happen

and the group track thing has been a bone of contention for a long time, do a search and you'll find millions of threads about it

did you not notice there is now warpable midi BTW?

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:56 pm

forge wrote:
mercyplease wrote: 22 whole spanky years!
is that 22 years of infinite monkeys writing hamlet?

1999-2006 to conceive, build and develop a program that started from the opposite end of the spectrum to those MIDI ataris (which by the way were probably graced by far more than 70% of the users of Live) with all audio clips in a session clip view which was the core concept of it, then MIDI evolved into it in version 4, 2 years ago, while simultaneously all the other concepts of Live continued to evolve still

then there's the number of people working at Ableton and physical man hours to actually make all this happen

and the group track thing has been a bone of contention for a long time, do a search and you'll find millions of threads about it

did you not notice there is now warpable midi BTW?

Selective and creative Q is totally used by the pros on every track they produce. To be honest Im tired of trying to educate people here to the value and creative uses of groove Q.
if you dont get it then you never will.

mercyplease · Post by **mercyplease** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 10:02 pm

M. Bréqs wrote:heh.

I've been using the 6 Beta, and the master control in the arrange page is definitely a step forward. I think that since now the background computations exist (it works, so it's obviously possible), it's just a matter of time before they perfect a GUI to do the same thing outside of the arrange page.

A step forward has a smell of another live workaround so whats new!

I move notes manually all the time, and I use the track delay feature but what I need as well as those options is bog standard groove quantise. whats the problem people, stop kissing ableton arse over this issue. Forge said they have only been going for so many years so we really have to be cool about this. I say the fact this feature has been around much longer than Live means it should have been in there by version four especially for the midi.

Midi Q wouldnt have been a problem I think. Even if they had made a temporary midi plugin although I dont like that option much at least it would have been something. They built a transpose and chord midi plugin so why not a groove Q one like Steinberg have. How hard would that have been?

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:18 pm

mercyplease wrote: Forge said they have only been going for so many years so we really have to be cool about this. I say the fact this feature has been around much longer than Live means it should have been in there by version four especially for the midi.

Midi Q wouldnt have been a problem I think. Even if they had made a temporary midi plugin although I dont like that option much at least it would have been something. They built a transpose and chord midi plugin so why not a groove Q one like Steinberg have. How hard would that have been?

well, maybe - but the point I was making was more that Live wasnt originally a midi program and never was until v4 - that all came pretty recently

steinberg/emagic/digidesign etc have been going for a VERY long time, and have had a long time to perfect these technologies and develop their own standards - you seem to be saying because they already do things that Live should automatically - so how do you mean? reverse engineer and steal the code from them? License it from them? make it up from scratch? Which are the most important bits to put in? who decides? for all the things you want someone else doesnt - who gets their wish? answer is Ableton, then it's up to us whether we like their approach and feel the things we dont like are a bigger deal than the things we do

it seems to me from alot of the stuff you say that you are really after Logic, pro-tools or cubase because you seem pretty unhappy with Live

but what you call workarounds could be just a different approach to some, and if you're not after that and want to stick with your 22 year old things, then carry on, no one's stopping you, but if you do like some things about live, then use it rewired with Logic or whatever - you'll be able to have your cake and eat it until all the things you want are in there, which they will be eventually

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 11:47 am

The fact that this thread keeps getting bumped so much means that its an important issue for more than a few people.

I recon it must be pretty high on the list by now, I hope so anyway.

phased · Post by **phased** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:16 am

I'm very new to Live, and I just got a padKontrol as well. The first real beat I tried making was a grooooovy one. But since I'm new at this pad drumming, I'm not quite good enough to pull it off without a million takes, or extensive editing. So right away I was looking for a function in Live, that I found out didn't exist--groove quantizing.

I did take a look at the swing control. Got something similar to my idea going, but quantized. I had to 1) de-groove/de-swing the part in my head (becuase AFAIK even with global swing control on, quantize still quantizes to a straight grid!!!

), 2) record myself playing it, 3) quantize it, then 4) apply the global swing. However, part of my groovy beat idea had a straight triplet fill that was wrecked after the global swing... I couldn't play a part that ends up being straight triplets after applying the global swing!? So, AFAIK I'd have to make a complete other 'straight' clip just for any straight fill.

I tried the master clip... kinda neat, maybe as a proof-of-concept sort of thing. But I don't want to control the master tempo! That should be completely separate from the groove. What if I want a groovy feel and the chorus to speed up... I definitely love the idea of master tempo control (I can tap out the tempo of the whole song). But groove control should be separate! Not global, but clip-specific.

If Live had groove templates and quantizing, I could have selectively applied it to my recording, leaving the straight triplet fill untouched. I could have also selectively applied straight triplet quantizing to clean up the just the small fill. And I wouldn't have to muck with global swing settings or any of that... something which affects everything else in my project! Also the process would be quick. The whole point of groove is the feel, something very in-the-moment.

All in all, my first shot at Live was a frustrating first experience, especially since groove quantizing & templates exist in many other programs, and have been around for some time now. But I can see enormous potential with Live... I hope they see it too. Quickly previewing different grooves on clips (both midi & audio) would be awesome. Also, a killer implementation of groove quantizing/templates would be able to adjust both 1) beats recorded straight, and 2) beats already recorded to a groove. The first method looks for notes near the straight grid AND moves them to the groove grid... the 2nd method looks for notes near the groove grid.

p.s. I LOVE the session view composing, it's the whole reason I recently took the Live plunge. Also I am planning on practicing the padKontrol a lot more! I can hear the beats in my head, will my fingers obey me?

M. Bréqs · Post by **M. Bréqs** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:33 pm

Cool, glad you're enjoying Live (sort of).

Live's internal workings are perfectly capable of what you've asked for, they just haven't given us as users an interface to do so.

The fact that you can manipulate the tempo from the arrange page off of a clip tells me that you can manipulate other timing from a clip in the session view - it's just a matter of giving us a visual object in the interface to do so.

Keep these feature requests coming! They've made great progress, but they're only 80% of the way there...

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:47 pm

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:59 am

great to see you being persistant martyn! this is a crucial feature thats been in sequencers for ages!

zeepster · Post by **zeepster** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:34 pm

Yes grooves please!

Bump for all the above

jlgrimes · Post by **jlgrimes** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 8:16 pm

This is one of my biggest feature requests of Live, but mainly I would be happy with non-global swing percentages by having swing sliders on every track.

orgul · Post by **orgul** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:31 pm

keep this "classic alive" !

+ 1 for inteligent quant. (see mpc 5000)

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 5:51 pm

I've already posted this link in another thread but it probably should have gone in here, didn't notice it'd been bumped recently.

http://www.numericalsound.com/documents ... manual.pdf

It's the best explaination of groove I've ever read.

Very interesting reading if you've ever used groove templates/quantize in the past or have never experienced them and are wondering what the fuck I'm on about.

It's made me even more exasperated at the lack of attention this essential musical tool has received lately.

Proper GROOVE features and intelligent quantising.

new Live user learns the hard way (long post)