Bending notes

[smallclone]

Hi

I'm using an ambient sound in Live 8 and would like to know what is the best way of bending notes into one another?

I've tried changing the pitch in reverbs and resonators on a single note, but the notes are clearly defined when the pitch gets shifted. I'd rather a smooth blended in note bend.

Any advice?

Thanks

[Limeforadime]

Hi

I'm using an ambient sound in Live 8 and would like to know what is the best way of bending notes into one another?

I've tried changing the pitch in reverbs and resonators on a single note, but the notes are clearly defined when the pitch gets shifted. I'd rather a smooth blended in note bend.

Any advice?

Thanks

Hmm.
There are a few ways to accomplish this, as far as I know. One way is to turn on the "glide" option in the instrument you are playing, and set the max voices to 1. After that, when you play a note and then add a note after, while still holding the first, you should hear the sound shift smoothly into the new note (the speed of the slide depends on the time you set for glide).

Another way is to add a pitch bend envelope in the Envelope window of the midi note grid view. Have your clip open (if it is a midi clip) and click on the little "E" in the small circle at the bottom of the view, which will display the envelope view for the midi clip. You will see three frequently used modulations: Volume, Panning, and Pitch, though you can select a myriad of different ones in the nearby white pull-down boxes. Click on Pitch, and you will see a pink line and box superimposed over your notes that you can drag up and down. Double click the line in a few different areas a couple times to create some break points. From there, drag the breakpoints to the part of your midi clip you want to hear pitch bent and create a ramp with the pink line over the notes to bend them. You can also do this with a pitch-bend knob on a midi controller, if you own one. Experiment with these two methods and see if they work out for you. I personally prefer the former method; you can get some nice sounds with that.

Hope that helps!

[smallclone]

Hi

I'm using an ambient sound in Live 8 and would like to know what is the best way of bending notes into one another?

I've tried changing the pitch in reverbs and resonators on a single note, but the notes are clearly defined when the pitch gets shifted. I'd rather a smooth blended in note bend.

Any advice?

Thanks

Hmm.
There are a few ways to accomplish this, as far as I know. One way is to turn on the "glide" option in the instrument you are playing, and set the max voices to 1. After that, when you play a note and then add a note after, while still holding the first, you should hear the sound shift smoothly into the new note (the speed of the slide depends on the time you set for glide).

Another way is to add a pitch bend envelope in the Envelope window of the midi note grid view. Have your clip open (if it is a midi clip) and click on the little "E" in the small circle at the bottom of the view, which will display the envelope view for the midi clip. You will see three frequently used modulations: Volume, Panning, and Pitch, though you can select a myriad of different ones in the nearby white pull-down boxes. Click on Pitch, and you will see a pink line and box superimposed over your notes that you can drag up and down. Double click the line in a few different areas a couple times to create some break points. From there, drag the breakpoints to the part of your midi clip you want to hear pitch bent and create a ramp with the pink line over the notes to bend them. You can also do this with a pitch-bend knob on a midi controller, if you own one. Experiment with these two methods and see if they work out for you. I personally prefer the former method; you can get some nice sounds with that.

Hope that helps!

Thats a massive help. thank you so much.

I couldn't find the glide option (where is it again? I'm using ambient soudns mostly in the instrument rack), so went for the pitch bend which seems to do what i want.

Thanks.

[Limeforadime]

Cool glad that worked out.

Lets see, the glide for the instruments from the instrument rack, I'll have to check.

Ah here we go. For most of the instruments in the instrument rack (if not all), typically they will present themselves as a macro control box at the bottom of the screen with 8 different knobs, with the title of the instrument at the top of the box. This box of knobs actually holds several other instruments and effects, and the knobs control various parameters of these devices. I won't get into the details of macro mapping, but I will tell you how to change the glide. So first have open the instrument you're using (I'm assuming the ambient sounding one from the instrument rack) and at the top left of the box you will see three black circles, with the first one (with the spinning arrow) filled in yellow. You're going to need to click on the bottom little black circle, the one with the little frame looking thing, which will open up the instrument to show you the various other devices that make it up. Immediately to the right of the first box with 8 knobs, you will see the "chains" that are played when you play the instrument, which can each hold their own sounds and effects. You may see 1 chain or several, but essentially they make up the sound you hear as a whole with the instrument you play. So to pitch bend them with glide, you're going to want to click one of the rows of chains, the first one for example, which will unfold the various components making up that chain. More than likely the actual sound will be coming from the "simpler" instrument, which looks like a big rectangle, split into three parts horizontally -- the top part being a blank rectangle that holds samples, and the two rows below it are filled with various knobs. At the bottom right of this "Simpler" device, you should see a "Glide" toggle, with "Time" underneath. You can choose Portamento or Glide, but I recommend Glide because it is smoother. The "time" parameter will affect how long it will take to bend from one note to another, when a new note is pressed while holding the first. To get the glide pitch bend to work you need to change the maximum voices, that is, the total number of tracks that can play at one time from the instrument, to 1. This may reduce the big, ambient sound of your instrument since it restricts the number of polyphonic tracks playing at the same time, but it will give the pitch bend. And since the entire instrument is made up of several chains anyway it should sound fine. Oh speaking of which, you will need to choose which chains you want to have "glide" enabled on, and will have to set each one individually. you can solo an individual chain by clicking the "S" in the chain view to hear what a single track sounds like. If this doesn't work exactly how you want it to then I'd recommend sticking to changing the pitch through midi envelopes like you have been doing. But just experiment -- we both know Live is great for that, and see what works out best.

[smallclone]

Thanks for that. But I don't get glide anywhere!

I can only find portamento! And have no idea what to do with that.

Any ideas?

cheers

[zalo]

Thanks for that. But I don't get glide anywhere!

I can only find portamento! And have no idea what to do with that.

Any ideas?

cheers

its the next option in simpler/sampler

[smallclone]

Thanks for that. But I don't get glide anywhere!

I can only find portamento! And have no idea what to do with that.

Any ideas?

cheers

its the next option in simpler/sampler

Ok I just don't see it.

I am in the Nylon Guitar sound. I go to the Tension effect, then the Global/Filter tab, and I see:

UNISON

and

PORTAMENTO

But I do not see GLIDE naywhere.

[zalo]

i dont have tension so i have no idea

if you start using sampler then you can select glide

[emef]

portamento and glide are essentially the same thing

[zalo]

portamento and glide are essentially the same thing

glide is only mono and in mono mode portamento kills the previous note

[smallclone]

Ok.

So I think I now understand that bending notes via glide can only be done in simpler and sampler. But what about instruments that are in the instrument rack? Like ambient pad-fall and strings?

They don't have a glide option, and the pitch bend mentioned above is really not the sound I'm after.

There must eb a way to bend notes in instruments surely?