Ableton Forum

Hey, I'm new to ableton and wonder if the following is possible in session view (found one post regarding this, but that one seems to only work in arragement view).

I have an old jazz-funk song and want to play it unwarped. In the middle of the song the tempo decreases from 100 to 80 bpm.
Now I wanna play another clip in sync to the first one. It should use the "unapplied" warping info from the first clip to follow the small tempo/rhythmical variations and the huge tempo slowdown of the master clip. Then I'd like to switch the second clip to become the current tempo master...

Does live support something like this? Is this a job for the new groove features?

Thanks in advance
Akeem

Hi

Perhaps this may be helpful to you from the Live 7 manual.I do understand you are asking about session view and see you know about arrangement view.I am not sure if there is any relationship or they are distinctly separate. (I see no ability to use session clips as tempo master/slave)

9.2.1 Tempo Master/Slave

All warped clips in the Arrangement View have one further option: They can be defined as tempo masters by toggling their Master/Slave switches. Any number of clips can be set as tempo masters, but only one clip at a time can actually be the tempo master. This distinction is always granted to the bottom-most, currently playing clip in the Arrangement View.

The clip that is the current tempo master will play as if warping was off, but with one important difference the rest of the Live Set will be warped so that it plays in sync with the current tempo master.This is achieved by adding tempo automation to the Master track for the duration of the tempo master clip. You will notice that the Tempo field in Live’s Control Bar becomes disabled in this state; this is because all tempo control is handed over to the tempo masterclip.
When toggling a clip’s Master/Slave switch, or when deleting a clip that was set as tempo master, the Master track tempo automation is removed again, restoring the proper tempo to the region. If you wish instead to keep the generated tempo automation to continue working with it, then (PC) / Ctrl (Mac) on the Control Bar’s Tempo field, and choose the Unslave Tempo Automation command. All clips will then be set to Slave, but the tempo automation will remain in place.
Note that when Live’s EXT switch is enabled, the Master/Slave switch has no effect and appears disabled.

I'm not sure if this will solve your problem but looks like it is in the right direction as I have not needed to do this myself yet.

regards

thanks motion. that part of the manual was also quoted in the topic my search revealed. As far as I understand the relations between session and arrangement, it will not help in my case. But would love to be proven wrong.

grooveWhiz Akeem wrote:thanks motion. that part of the manual was also quoted in the topic my search revealed. As far as I understand the relations between session and arrangement, it will not help in my case. But would love to be proven wrong.

there is a workaround... ehm...
hint:search forum for 'dummy clips'...

or hold on for L8+MFL release...

Thanks for that 3dot....just googled this and see that the Coverts did these tutorials I think I'm seeing and understanding how this may be achieved in work around from the 2nd vid but its blowing my brains a bit and finding hard to grasp but I'm trying...I think with clip warp markers/dummy clips and jamming into arrangement/consolidate drag back you can match/line/sync clips up with the reworked material....see what you make of this grooveWhiz Akeem http://www.loveableton.com/archives/50

regards

Thank you 3dot... and Motion

3dot... wrote:there is a workaround... ehm...
hint:search forum for 'dummy clips'...

I did, also watched the dummy videos motion linked to, but can't imagine how it would help. As far as I understood, dummy clips would help for (triggering) effect automation, but how would this fit into my scenario? Please note that all this is supposed to happen in a "live" context, so needing to record into arrangement/consolidate drag back to session might not be possible.

If you find the time it would be great if you could post some more details about the possible workaround.

3dot... wrote:or hold on for L8+MFL release...

Hopefully the API will allow this, but I haven't read anything which would support that. The only thing I can imagine is running ~beat or any other onset detection on the incoming audio (in m4l) and sending the current timing back to live (if that wouldn't create some ind of infinite recursion).

... a dummy clip...
running parallel to the unwarped clip...
what I mean...
adjust min. and max. values for setting the bpm range...('master tempo' on the master track in the arrangement window...)
now...
automate the 'master clock' via dummy clips...
(make dummy clips for any tempo change in the song...or only one... that follows the song...)
the unwarped song will continue to play the same regardless of the master clock...
...
(by dummy clips I'm meaning ...sending midi to a virtual port in order to automate parmas in live......)

Have you thought about chopping up the clip and using the scene to change the tempo?

Moody wrote:Have you thought about chopping up the clip and using the scene to change the tempo?

ooppppssss...forgot about that,,,,

3dot... wrote:

Moody wrote:Have you thought about chopping up the clip and using the scene to change the tempo?

ooppppssss...forgot about that,,,,

because that would only work for tempo switches, not for slow changes, right?

About your suggestion 3dot ...
I'm still not 100% sure how to do this, but as far as I understand, this would still require to use the arrangement view (and also placing clips there). I see this to be a problem in a live/performance context, especially if I don't wanna use the mouse at all (and ideally also never have to look at the screen). But again, I hope to be wrong

grooveWhiz Akeem wrote:

3dot... wrote:

Moody wrote:Have you thought about chopping up the clip and using the scene to change the tempo?

ooppppssss...forgot about that,,,,

because that would only work for tempo switches, not for slow changes, right?

About your suggestion 3dot ...
I'm still not 100% sure how to do this, but as far as I understand, this would still require to use the arrangement view (and also placing clips there). I see this to be a problem in a live/performance context, especially if I don't wanna use the mouse at all (and ideally also never have to look at the screen). But again, I hope to be wrong

..only thing you need to do in arrangement is set the BPM min/max values...
the clips that change the tempo will be triggered in session view,,,

almost there ...

Let me put it into my own words. So the plan is to encode a clips tempo variations into MIDI and route this via a virtual midi driver back to the min/max tempo of live's master track, therefore setting live's master tempo to follow the tempo changes from the unwarped clip. right?

So far makes sense. But how to I extract the tempo variations from my original song and get it into midi so that I can route it to the master track?

The other problem: The second track (which is supposed to follow the tempo changes) needs to have warp on. But if I wanna switch over, i.e. fade out the first track and define the second one as the new master, I would need to turn warp off for the second song. But the warp on/off button doesn't seem to be MIDI-controllable.

Besides that, the second track would then jump back to it's original/native speed instead of the speed I'm currently at. Makes sense?

Thanks again for all your help!

you should only have to play the "master" groove clip in the arrangement view. everything else can be done in the session view. remove the stop buttons for the "groove" track on all scenes in session, if you want to trigger scenes.

longjohns wrote:you should only have to play the "master" groove clip in the arrangement view. everything else can be done in the session view. remove the stop buttons for the "groove" track on all scenes in session, if you want to trigger scenes.

but this master groove/tempo clip/song will also change every 3-5 minutes. So whenever I wanna switch those, I would need to go to Arrangement, place a clip from the browser and trigger it. I don't see a way to this live without a mouse. do you? thanks.

If you can pre-plan the changes, you could consolidate the whole set of grooves/songs into a single clip. Then set that as master in arrangement.