Upbeats!

Nora · Post by **Nora** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:17 am

Hi!

Tried to follow the workarounds for creating an upbeat in this thread, but I gave up. Is it really supposed to be that difficult?

I would like to be able to set an offset for the launch quantization. E.g. if the launch quantization is set to bar, then triggering a clip with a "launch quantization offset" of -1/8th would launch the clip 1/8th before the following bar. To make it usefull it would be necessary to be able to set a negative loop offset.

Adding this feature would make a great application even greater!

/Nora

B · Post by B » Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:30 am

If I understand you correctly, I think this is possible by moving the loop marker to whatever start position you want.

Nora · Post by **Nora** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 11:35 am

I might be missing something obvious, but I cannot get upbeats to work. The problem is that the launch quantization alone determines when a clip is launched. If it is set to bar, triggering a clip will launch the clip at the downbeat the following bar. If you have a 1/8th upbeat note in your composition, the only way to play it is to set the launch quantization to 1/8th and then be sure to trigger the clip between the 7th and the 8th 1/8th. Make sense? Also, in this case, if you want to loop the clip, you have to set the loop offset to 1/8th before the end of the clip and the loop needs to end with the upbeat! Phew!

Winterpark · Post by **Winterpark** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:05 pm

if i understand you right, you want the clip to start on the upbeat to the next bar yes?

why not automate a volume curve of one clip to start on the required "upbeat", and then a follow action to launch the full clip.

-am

Nora · Post by **Nora** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:04 pm

That is actually possible, but the session view gets pretty messed up if you have a lot of upbeats in your composition since you have to use two clip slots for each loop that starts with an upbeat. But you might get used to it. I do think, however, that my feature suggestion would make it a lot easier.
Regards
/N

Sharkcellar · Post by **Sharkcellar** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 5:09 pm

Nora,

I totally understand what you are saying. Your -1/8th suggestion is elegant in its simplicity. I've been wanting something like this for a while. Having to "write in" an anacrusis is more of a pain in the butt than it's worth. To add to your suggestion it would be cool to be able to define where the clip would loop from after the anacrusis is played so that you wouldn't have these wierd 1bar+1/8th clips screwing up the groove with some cacky polyrhythm. Not that I dislike polyrhythm, just only when I've order in.

Nora · Post by **Nora** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 11:10 am

Sharkcellar,

thanks for supporting my suggestion! With your addition it would be a wonderful feature. Hope someone from the Ableton team reads this thread!

Regards
/Nora

buttercup · Post by **buttercup** » Sat Sep 18, 2004 8:02 am

am wrote:why not automate a volume curve of one clip to start on the required "upbeat", and then a follow action to launch the full clip.

No need for drawing volume curves on anything as far as I can see.
Just have a generic empty clip with the follow action set to 0:3:0 (or to 0:3:2 for your 1/8th example). Then you can drag it in front of any clip that you want to be started on an upbeat.
The offset marker of that following clip must be set to an appropriate upbeat of course, but it doesn't have to be set to any odd loop value.

However, I second your wish for a more flexible option like e.g. a offset menu next to the global Quantisation Menu. The value there would not only make clips launch on the set upbeats but also launch them from the appropriate beat before their offset marker.

Other option would be to integrate that function as "dotted" values into the Quantisation Menu itself. problem with that implementation though would be that it wouldn't fit into that menu in a logical sense, since on all the other quantisation values the clips would be started at offset marker position, while on dotted the would be started on positions before the offset markers.

Zulu · Post by **Zulu** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 7:24 am

A lot of us have been asking for this for a long time... so once again, Abe's, please, this feature is really missing and should be a natural extension of Live rather than having to come up with workarounds (like using two clips). I'm not going to prescribe how to best do it, as I trust the Abe's would do a better job than me. Your attention would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.