Ableton Forum

Hello, i use an mpd 24 for djing, and i've been having problems with tempo, i'm not really sure how to change them and still keep the metronome going on beats 1,2,3,4, with the music.
i do mostly dubstep tunes which i put at about 140 sometimes changing it around, but never in one live set...
assume i want to transition from a dubstep tune to a hip hop or funk tune?
how would i proceed in doing this? should i even use the metronome at the top?

you can use midi to control the tempo. Ive changed my master and cue level on my APC to control course and fine tempo respectivley.

You can also change tempo and time signature with launching scenes. Not sure if this is just live 8 or not? Right click on your scene and see if it says it has an option for tempo there.

Failing that, another option wouild be to run a midi channel that sends messages out of live and back in again. You can do this with a midi cable if you have midi interface on your soundcard, or IAC driver for MAC, or Download the Midi Yoke app for PC. Enable remote control for the input and assing a given CC to tempo - Then you could launch midi clips to modulate your bpm.

flippo wrote:you can use midi to control the tempo. Ive changed my master and cue level on my APC to control course and fine tempo respectivley.

Do you mean set a midi knob to the tempo and turn it quick to the tempo i want?
that sounds tolerable...but maybe annoying. il'l try it out....

could you explain more about the third way? ableton 7 doesn't seem to have that tempo option.

well its good if you want gradual tempo cahnges. If you want to just snap from one to the other instantly might be annoying.

I can probably explain the other way a little better. need to know first.

are you on PC or mac?

and

Do you have midi in and out on your soundcard and a spare midi cable?

(You don't need the midi ports and cable to do it, it's more stable for me though compared to using software to do it and easier for me to explain)

flippo's second option might work out kind of well for you. by labelling a scene on the far right with a tempo followed by bpm. say "140bpm", it will change Live's tempo to that when the scene is triggered. You could have several scenes at the bottom of your set that have all the stop buttons deactivated. And then either assign individual pads to those scenes or assign an 'up, down, and trigger' button. This would allow you to have multiple tempos to choose from.

For the most part though, it just comes down to having some ingenuity on how you let your tracks/fx/samples play out. Finding things that when needed, allow for that tempo transition you need to do.

totally. A nice long reverb swell with some high feedback delay on the master channel at the end of one song, slowly wind down your tempo knob and then bang into the next track.

Another option if you need instant, probiding you are near your keyboard on stage, is typing in the tempo. It wont activate untill you issue your next command (or press enter).

Otherwise, happy to explain the midi routing option if you want.

About tempo and time signature...why on earth is there no division possibility for 3 and 12 etc...it's just 4/8/16 so any polyrithmicle stuff would not work?
Maybe I'll open a new topiv on this...

Andreas

Ableton Live is about the most flexable tempo adjusting machine in the world.
Research deeper into the settings, warp markers and such, and you'll soon have it.

You don't know how lucky you are - in 1995? there was NO live tempo stretching whatsoever.
(except perhaps ReCycle could be considered such.)

doppio wrote:About tempo and time signature...why on earth is there no division possibility for 3 and 12 etc...it's just 4/8/16 so any polyrithmicle stuff would not work?
Maybe I'll open a new topiv on this...

Andreas

I think there is, in there somewhere.

Alternately, you can do what I used to do - put 3/4 beats into a loop that Live deals with as 4/4.

"you can use midi to control the tempo. Ive changed my master and cue level on my APC to control course and fine tempo respectivley."

Can you explain this further? I've mapped the cue level to change the tempo, but it changes by .157 bpm or something ridiculous like that. Can you tell me how can I change it to increments of 0.1 bpm?

Well there are two available tempo midi mapping options, song tempo and song tempo(fine).

when you click midi map mode, if you press the tempo display before the decimal point that will assign the normal song tempo. You need to set the minimum and maximum to suit the resolution and range you need. I set my master level slider to this with a range of 80-180.

If in midi map mode you press the tempo display after the decimal point this will assign song tempo(fine). There is no ability to adjust the range or resolution of this. When I assign the apc40 que level encoder to this it goes up by .01 increments. It works quite well if you want to smoothly adjust by a just a couple of bpm here or there.- I'm not sure if this might be different depending on what control you assign to it? It works quite well if you want to smoothly adjust by a just a couple of bpm here or there.

par example

Thanks!