Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:12 pm
only a mug would.
check this (originally posted here: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... c&start=60
montrealbreaks wrote:OK, this is how I see it.
There should be a feature where you can push a "groove master" button on one of your channels, and the currently playing clip's groove is applied to each of the other three. This button could be similar in footprint to the mute or solo buttons... Or it could be at the top of the channels, where the names are. You'll also need a "groove slave" button on each channel.
So, let's say that we have a swingin set of drums in audio mode. If I warp marker them so they're totally straight, no swing and in perfect quantization, shouldn't Live be able to interpret, by means of its timestretching, where the original transients were?
Here's an unwarped clip full of funk:
Note the late snare drum at 1.2 and the late hi-hats before 1.4.
Here's one that's had the funk quantized right out of it:
You notice how the time ruler at the BOTTOM of the clip hasn't changed? Live still knows the absolute values of the orignal clip despite warp markers!
So let's say you play this quantized clip in the currently selected "master groove" track. Because you did your warping dillligently, Live already has all the information it needs to know how to "unwarp" this clip and reverse engineer the groove.
Then, with the "master groove" button on in that track (like a solo button, or "radio style" button where only one can be on at a time) it would apply it's groove to all other tracks selected with the "groove slave" button. Your MIDI could be 100% quantized, but it would fall into place with the original warped track.
If you hit the "groove master" button on another, it should immediately apply its groove to all channels with the "groove slave" button turned on (like a cue button, more than one channel should be able to be designated groove slaves).
Naturally, all the clips in your slave tracks would have to be quantized 100%, or they would end up outta whack. No prob, cause if you want that groove back, you just designate those clips as the master groove channel! Imagine the groove possibilities of this! (by the way, this would incorporate seamlessly with .rx2 files, but that's another story).
For using a midi clip as "groove master", it would have to be UNQUANTIZED. If you quantized it, you would lose all your groove data. However, using it as the master is an even simpler proposition, since there's no reverse engineering of the warp markers to do!!!
When you switch a midi clip to a "groove slave" state, a temporary and user-invisible quantize should be applied so everything is straight. The user shouldn't even see this process. However, there should be a menu in the preferences for setting the resolution of this, be it 8th, 16th, 32nd or 64th notes (or even triplets or whatever). Then, the groove template from the "groove master" channel (be it midi or warped audio) is applied to the straight track, re-funkifying it. This invisible pre-quantizing would ensure you didn't screw up your groove by applying timing changes to stuff that's already got wonky timing.
What it might look like is this:
Imagine you have four clips, in four channels. One and Two are audio, three and four are midi.
In this case, Track 1 is the master (purple radio button), track 2 and 3 are the slaves (green toggle buttons), and track 4 doesn't have a groove applied. Also, I think that since the "S" character is already used for solo, some other letter or graphic would have to be used for the groove slaves...
Anyways, Abes - c'mon, this'll work! You already have the data, technology and know-how to do this!
