Ableton Forum

DAMN! I was hoping no one would call me on that.

I'm more worried about my CPU reading, as you can see, I have 0 CPU power left to apply to the mixdown. My friend is bringing over his power generator though, so hopefully we can figure out some way to wire that to the laptop's battery to give me more power.

Why dont you use impulse and draw the drums in midi

>>> Because I don't like the way Impulse sounds. Also, I find arranging in MIDI more time-consuming, and I still use audio only things like misplaced warp markers to fake time-stretching, and reversing certain clips. Moot point anyway, as I've actually done it that way too, and the same thing happens. Once you start having tons of midi notes, Live slows down too. <<<

- sorry i just noticed youve arranged out your kicks and snares, hats etc - that must take you hours - unless you copy and past them as loops... what if you make a what happens if you want to make a global adjustmant to say the kicks attack or somthing - how do you handle that?!

>>> It does take a long time, but not super long. This loop is originally from my Machinedrum, so the core of it is only 2 bars long. I record each part as a seperate audio track, cut out the silence around the hits, then paste the 2 bars of every track for the whole length of the song. Then I go back and delete sections to "carve out" the song arrangement (I call it subtractive sequencing). The time consuming part starts when I go in and do all my drum fills every 4 or 8 bars (what I'm in the middle of in this screen shot actually). I need to zoom in/out and slice/copy/paste a LOT, which is why this graphical slow down is so annoying.

As for going back and changing things, I don't worry about. At some point you need to just make a decision whether something sounds good enough to go forward with or not anyway, so I just stick with my plan and keep on working. On the rare times I've had to go back and adjust something (say to layer another snare under the main one), then yes it's time comsuming to do. But this way offers me the most flexibility, and it's not a race, I'm in no hurry to finish my tracks. Been doing my drum this way for years now... I don't believe in leaving all decisions for the last minute. <<<

Tarekith wrote:

android wrote:Wrong, wrong... You are working Live like a traditional sequencer. The right way is not to copy/paste on Arrangement View to create many identical clips.

Gasp, the horror! To think this whole time I've been using Live the wrong way!

Anyone have any loops I can use? Apparently the 4 GB of drum hits I've been collecting over the last 10 years is not compatible with Live.

Sorry man, I didnt think you were so sensible
You are working of the worst way. Use a MIDI instrument, or render/freeze the track to make a new loop.
Remember, Live is a loop sequencer. Use it of that way.

Regards

The final, slowest version:

http://www.tarekith.com/images/Amethyst.jpg

This is a BIG image, so you can see details as I used a lot of small audio clips in this one. File size is only 1.5MB, but you'll need to scroll left and right to see it all.

Tarekith wrote:you'll need to scroll left and right

be careful. this is a family website.

android wrote:

Tarekith wrote:

android wrote:Wrong, wrong... You are working Live like a traditional sequencer. The right way is not to copy/paste on Arrangement View to create many identical clips.

Gasp, the horror! To think this whole time I've been using Live the wrong way!

Anyone have any loops I can use? Apparently the 4 GB of drum hits I've been collecting over the last 10 years is not compatible with Live.

Sorry man, I didnt think you were so sensible
You are working of the worst way. Use a MIDI instrument, or render/freeze the track to make a new loop.
Remember, Live is a loop sequencer. Use it of that way.

Regards

"Regards"? How can you end a post like that with "regards"? You're basically saying he's making his music in the wrong way. That's offensive as.

If Live was only a loop sequencer it wouldn't allow you to do those chops... and live is the best programme out there for doing these things.

I work in this exact same way and I don't understand how people can use MIDI instruments. You've got no control and you can't see properly what's going on. MIDI is just horrible. This is much more hands-on.

BTW, Tarekith, I'm puzzled. I've done sets with this on my old iBook G3 and never had issues... but I think my biggest ones were in Live 3, so that might be it.

-Paws

Sounds like their redraw algorithms don't scale linearly or are just basically slow. Something they'll have to optimize. It got better from 5->6 so maybe there's still room for improvement.

I know you don't want to do it but I'd probably consolidate clips as a workaround until then.

noisetonepause wrote: "Regards"? How can you end a post like that with "regards"? You're basically saying he's making his music in the wrong way. That's offensive as.

exactly what i was thinking how ignorant can you be to someone like Tarekith.

kuniklo wrote: I know you don't want to do it but I'd probably consolidate clips as a workaround until then.

Also, what about looping consecutive clips instead of copying and pasting them? Looking at the screenshot, there are lots of places where an audio clip was seemingly copied and pasted over and over, instead of just dragging it's right edge to loop it.

I'd be willing to bet that would speed things up dramatically. Say you have 10 identical audio clips in a row that have been copied and pasted. Even if they're all identical, Live still has to compute all their waveforms individually. However, if you just looped the first one 10 times Live only has to compute one waveform, and then repeat it graphically 9 times.

Just a guess on my part, form my limited programming experience.

The main issue with consolidate and looping, is that I don't know WHEN or WHERE I'm going to need to do edits later on. So it's MUCH more ime consuming later to go back and slice all the hits out for each fill. Especially as a lot of times the subtle timing from the Machinedrum means the hits aren't on even bars and beats.

Also, consolidate normalizes your audio, and while it's not HUGE deal by any means, i'm a stickler for sound quality and try to avoid unneccesary processes whenever possible.

Just to keep this in perspective, the slow downs I see aren't show stoppers by any means, it's a minor annoyance that's all. Live wants to be a DAW, and I'm just pointing out that other DAW's don't have this same issue and Ableton needs to look into it. Definitely better in version 6 than in 5 too.

Ummm, I'm a relative noob to Live, but im 99% sure that consolidate doesn't normalize your audio. In fact I just did a few tests with audio clips that had low levels, and there was no change to the level after consolidating a few instances of the clips.

Far be it form me to tell you how to work, but it seems there are large chunks of your song that I'd personally loop up. You know you can always Ctrl-E out a section later, right? But to each their own...

Ummm, I'm a relative noob to Live, but im 99% sure that consolidate doesn't normalize your audio. In fact I just did a few tests with audio clips that had low levels, and there was no change to the level after consolidating a few instances of the clips.

>>>Look at the new Clip volumes newb <<<

Far be it form me to tell you how to work, but it seems there are large chunks of your song that I'd personally loop up. You know you can always Ctrl-E out a section later, right? But to each their own...[/quote]

>>> Like I said, having to go back in every 4 or 8 bars and recut the hits is not working faster, especially as they aren't quantized to exact values, which means turning snap off and having to zoom way in for every single cut to make sure I get them all. I appreciate the tips, but I'm not looking for workarounds, or to work slower. If I honestly thought that just using loops was faster, I would do it. <<<

>>>Look at the new Clip volumes newb <<<

Strange! Why the ef would they do that?!

'Scuse me if this is a well worn topic...

At any rate, I stand corrected.

reax wrote:'Scuse me if this is a well worn topic...

Definitely well worn, do some searches here on "consolidate".

Tarekith wrote:

reax wrote:'Scuse me if this is a well worn topic...

Definitely well worn, do some searches here on "consolidate".

Yes, just found your post, quoting Robert's post, on why they do that. Makes sense now that I read it.

I agree with you though that it would be disturbing to me to have all your audio normalized, even if it turns out to be an irrational concern.

There an mp3 of your song somewhere? Just curious what an arrangement like that sounds like.