Play a clip an exact, non-random number of times?

[dchang0]

Hi, everyone!

Now, we're total noobs to Live, so I apologize in advance if our questions seem lame. I have tried searching but don't really know what to search for.

Our basic goal is to take a bunch of short looping clips and use them to build a complete song structure, including verse, chorus, etc. (ABAB, that type of stuff).

So, we're trying to get say, a short two-bar clip to loop exactly four times, then play another clip, which will itself be looped exactly four times. All this would be "automated" and recorded into the arrangement. Ideally, we could program out the whole song from start to finish including all major sections without any randomization whatsoever. This would allow us to go back and then improvise other instruments on top of a predictable foundation.

So far, we've been looking at Follow Actions, but the randomization part is totally messing us up. We don't know how to get it to Play Again exactly four times then move on to another clip.

And we've tried low-tech ways such as simply cutting and pasting the clip multiple times into the arrangement view, but this seems too "low tech" and tedious. It seems like we're trying to "use a gun as a club," so to speak.

How should we go about this in Live 8? It seems like we're just looking in the wrong places at the wrong features and that this should be ridiculously simple to do...

Any and all help is much appreciated!

[Tone Deft]

follow actions, no random, use NEXT.

[dchang0]

Sorry for our ignorance, but could you be more specific or point us to a tutorial/example of how to actually set up the Follow Action pane to do this? We can find the Next choice in the drop-down selector, but what numbers do we type into the other fields to turn off the randomness and specify the number of times (four) that we want the clip to play?

[Tone Deft]

leave those boxes to 1 and 0, left and right boxes, respectively.

those boxes are the chance of which type of follow action will happen next. set them to 1 and 0 and only the action under the 1 will be applied. set them to 1 and 2 (or 10 and 20 or 100 and 200 or 3 and 6 etc), the action on the right is twice as likely to be applied.

read up in the manual, it's a short section IIRC. follow actions rock, I love that feature and it's exactly what you're looking for.

tip - when you record into arrange view, bump the bpm way up to shorten the recording process.

another tip - if you have your clips laid you you can ctrl-a to select them all, hit tab to go into arrange view, then hit ctrl-v to paste them into arrange view. (be sure to have the timeline set to 1.1.1 so it drops at the beginning.

[dchang0]

Cool, cool. How do we set it so that it plays the clip exactly four times?

To be sure, we didn't really understand what's in the manual. I wish there were more examples in that section.

Thanks for your continued help!

[Tone Deft]

check the length of the clip and enter four times that value in the top box.

page 159 of the Live 8 manual explains it nicely.

[dchang0]

You rock! I will go back and re-read that page...

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Um, page 159 isn't the right page, but I think you explained it well enough for us to figure out now. Thanks!

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Yup, you nailed it. We got it working right away. It makes sense now--thanks!