Ableton Forum

Okay, I'm not sure exactly how to word my question here, so I didn't find anything in searches/Google.

Here's what I'm facing: I record drum patterns played on a V-Drums set into a MIDI track in Live 8. I often get close to the original grid tempo but not exactly spot on. How do I adjust the MIDI drum pattern's underlying tempo (stretching/shrinking the grid) underneath the pattern without changing the pattern itself?

In other words, let's say I have my tempo originally set at 120bpm. I press record, it counts me in with the click track, and I end up recording at 121bpm. If I look at the pattern afterwards, the beats don't line up with the grid. They are very slightly off. I try to change the Original Tempo, but this changes the pattern itself instead of just the grid.

What I want to do is change/stretch/shrink the grid so that it lines up with the pattern as recorded, then proceed from there to make the pattern fit into the song's tempo.

How do I do this? Yes, I could go in and drag the little MIDI beat markers to fit the grid, but I play some very complicated drum patterns sometimes, and this is simply too labor intensive an approach. Also, with this method, much of the human "feel" of the original recording is lost.

I just need to slide the grid around under the existing pattern, OR shrink/stretch the pattern to fit the grid (either way is fine by me, as long as I keep the feel of the original pattern).

Please help! Many thanks in advance!

Apparently, I'm not the only one with this problem. Here are several other threads on exactly the same problem:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... di#p940200

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... i&start=30

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... +grid+midi

I think a solution may be in this one:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... +grid+midi

But it would still be nice to stretch the grid and not the actual MIDI pattern itself.

Well, stretching the notes turned out to be nightmare. I'm using the Carbon drumkit, and there appears to be some sort of built in delay with the hi hat or snare. If I stretch the notes, the delay gets all out of whack.

So I absolutely must be able to pull the notes exactly as they are and shift the underlying grid.

Any suggestions?

Hello,

I'm no expert but quantize is your friend.

How about extracting the "groove" and then quantize/edit your drum tracks.

Then apply the "groove". Does this make sense?

I'm sure you'll get some more concise help from the "experts" on this forum.

Z.

it sure would be easier if you could just freeze and flatten the drum clip

then, set it as master, and place warp markers

now your recorded feel is preserved and everything else follows it

Thanks for all the great suggestions. We tried most of them and found that the select all and stretch works reasonably well if we first cut it down to just a few bars that we want to loop.

And by predetermining a tempo and running the metronome on all the time before laying down the track, I can then go back in and clean up the beats with stretching fairly easily.