Ableton Forum

There is no warping in Midi Clips is there?

I see that there is no beat warping in the Midi clips. I’d like to be able to play my beats in freely and aftwards be able to reconsolidate, take the tempo information and remap through warp marks the midi phrase. Afterwards I’d be able to retempo and as with midi there is no time stretching artifacts it would give a lot more latitude in rewriting and arranging.

I should elaborate. I’m trying out the Live 4 demo. I have Live 3, Reason, ProTools on a Mac G4 currently. I have a technique where I record an audio track as I just play freely a phrase or a drum beat into the recording naturally as I feel it using no click or any other audio as reference. Afterwards I can ANALYZE what the Tempo BPM it is after the fact by this particular technique.

For example. If I played a part originally while the tempo was set to 120 BPM but not listening to a click or any audio after I am done recording my phrase. I can make a loop of the phrase / beat in the arrange view. Then I CONSOLIDATE that and make a clip of it. Say actually as audio it was a 1 measure loop. In the sample view I can put beatmarkers at the beginning and end with the Loop and warp button engaged. Marking it with a one at the beginning and 2 at the end. After I click out of that view and then click back into that view of the clip it will tell me what the real BPM of that clip actually is. Afterwards in the arrange view in the Master Tempo track I can write the BPM in for the part.

I’ve found this to be very useful as it’s much more intuitive for me to play a phrase freely then trying to chase playing something to a click. Which quite often the accent of a click is completely wrong for the real feel of the part. I end up chasing my tail trying to get the right Tempo and feel.

On analysis of a beat I’ve recorded in freely. Midi Controller to Reason to recording in Live as audio for example. I can see exactly how much certain notes lag behind the beat while other catch up right on to the beat with an accent for example on a beat that has the right feel and is accurate.

The above technique is important for analyzing the proper Tempo/BPM for a drum beat. Of course all this is importance if you want to edit and arrange (rearrange) according to Bars and measures when writing and arranging songs.

So once I have the proper information for the part and Tempo. I can now play it again with this proper information. You’re probably thinking I could have guessed and played it against the proper tempo in the first place. I’ve just found the nuances of slight tempo and meter variations to preclude easy accuracy. Especially if it has great complexity. In a sentence “it throws me”.

The next point. Underlying what I do is the need to play to the correct generic beat for the part in the song. A generic beat that is correct for the part is very easy to play to. The most important thing to get the right feel is to get that right beat (not just any beat will do). I find this true that for a lot of musicians playing to a click is problematic. Also for editing purposes the ability to play to the correct beat just enables more accuracy for cutting and rearranging in the songwriting / arranging process then a click I've found.


The important part.

To sum up being able to Warp in Midi Clips would allow me to play freely into a Midi track and then retempo (reinform tempo) the beat. WIth midi I could still yet change sounds and tempo without artifacts and save a bunch of steps in the writing / arranging / orchestrating process.

Now I have to use audio but it would be better to do it with Midi also.

Am I missing something here?

Live as a songwriting tool.....

I second that. MIDI warping would be great. Also a Drum Editor would be nice - but not really that important. Would be nice if Ctrl-dragging velocity on the note (not in the controller lane) would display the value in a little highlight box.

MIDI warping and of course plugin functionality in ReWire mode!!!! This would be the two big things for me.

meantown wrote: To sum up being able to Warp in Midi Clips would allow me to play freely into a Midi track and then retempo (reinform tempo) the beat. WIth midi I could still yet change sounds and tempo without artifacts and save a bunch of steps in the writing / arranging / orchestrating process.

Am I missing something here?

i'm totally with you here. Live4 has got me all excited, i ordered the upgrade and am hoping for the key to arrive today, but if this 'midi warping' is not included in some revision sooner or later, it would be my biggest bummer...

ever tried to move the notes?
There's not alot you could do with midi warping
Try resampling, and then warp the audio

hoffman2k wrote:ever tried to move the notes?

yeah, that was my first reaction when some time ago another soul asked for midi warping... some thinking, and me too was hoping for this feature. it's totally different from 'dragging notes' or warping audio...

if you record a very nice 'live midi session' and need to adapt the tempo, it would be so cool to do the warp stuff on midi... dragging individual notes is not the same as warping, so the notes keep their relative dinstances. warping the audio is not the way to go if you have this 'randomly recorded' midi clip at 130bpm and you need to bring it down to a two measure loop at 89bpm... i like to resample/render as late as possible in the project, unless i want the 'warp' sound.

Update. I’ve solved my question. Seems if you do the analysis of the audio and it gives you the answer to the BPM you can just go back to the midi and plug in the anwer BPM into the original BPM box of the midi clip. Drag the loop boundaries in the arrange view of the midi clip to fit the size and reconsolidate the clip and their you go. Also change master tempo or map on Master Tempo arrange track.
I’m running the demo. I have noticed when I zoom all the way in the arrange view, looking at my Midi track I crash the demo. Also I seem to have a latency of around 7 milliseconds in the midi. Maybe less I’m not zooming and crashing the demo another time to find out right now.

Still all and all. Live 4 looks pretty cool and being able to reinform my tempo after the fact should help me get my drum beats faster. Now if I wasn’t so freaking broke today I could afford the update. Live 3’s being pretty stable for me. I like the Midi thing being integrated though. Oh well, so more learning curve.

I've been trying to change my moniker from Meantown. Actually a name in honor of Meantown Blues by Johnny Winter. I can't seem to change it in my profile.
I'm starting to want to use my actual name.
David Ballenger

It seems if you record without metronome in midi, all you need to know is visually where the end of a particular bar is.

Say you record 4 bars - when you're done, just line up the first downbeat with 1 in the clip arrange.

Then just click and drag in the tempo box and the grid will resize dynamically. Just stop when you see the grid lines lining up with all the other downbeats, for example the 3rd one on "3", etc...

Isn't that it?

Yes. Excellent Tick Tock. That seems to be true. Saves the step of analyzing the bpm from the audio.

A few possible approaches seem to come up with how to realistically deal with it.

I’ll just leave one here for any that haven’t gotten this far in repayment for the help. This technique ends up with a clean beat with no pointers just actual used information.

In this example the part is played in freely and it doesn’t necessarily start in the arrange view on a downbeat.

Record midi beat with click off and Quantize off (in Edit menu).
Record playing of part and set to playback.
Turn off snap in arrange view.
Loop Area of beat you want in arrange view.
Make it a new clip.
Consolidate clip.
Turn grid snap back on in arrangement view.
Click on clip and drag to a proper down beat in Arrange view.
(This example uses a 4 measure clip as the goal). Starting on for instance on measure 7 now pull the length resize bar of the clip to 11.
Set the Loop for the clip in Arrange view.
In clip view. Set the length box to 4. 0 . 0 (4 measures)
Start playback.
In clip view. Should click the fold button so you see what information you need.
Drag the tempo in the tempo box and see and hear how it relates to the 5 which is the loop around point. Also how the notes relate to the other beat markers for visual cueing.
Once that sounds correct and is done make note of what the BPM reads.
To make a nice clean beat. Consolidate it.
Set the tempo in the Arrange tempo or write it into the Master Tempo track.

P.S. I tried doing it all in the clip view originally but I was not able to get the looping as tightly as I could from doing it in the arrange view. Seemed to always round it off more in dragging the loop points in clip view.
Also at several steps you could opt out of not consolidating so that you would be able to use the up / down arrow keys in clip view to move the loop points for more variations, etc. I like this clean method and couldn't this all eventually be scripted where you could hit a command and it would do it all.

Good luck.
David Ballenger