Ableton Forum

Hi All,

Well I finally got my hands on Live 4. Been a DJ for years and have been dying to get into some basic loop sampling production have been reliably informaed Live 4 is the way to go.

My hardware is an Apple Powerbook 17" with an Novation X-Station 25 Midi/Synth and that's about it.

Essentially all I wanna do for now is bring samples from other songs into Live cut 'em up and put them over beats.

I bought Live yesterday and am a classic "can't read the manual" type. Not particularly technical either. I've just downloaded the Quicktime movies form the Live site but there doesn't seem to be much on grabbing samples and messing about with them.

Ideally I'd like to be able to get old disco loops, sequence them so they are in time properly and put beats on top...

When I've imported an audio file into Live it asks me what editor I want to use - I'm not sure I have one so should I be looking at another package to do this with?

Sorry if this is the most stupid question ever posted yet but I've only had the gear for 24 hours and am somewhat soaking behind the ears with all of this you could say.

If anyone has any pointers on what I should be reading from the on line manual around this it would be really appreciated.

Thanks!!!

Adam

bondi5000 wrote:.

Ideally I'd like to be able to get old disco loops, sequence them so they are in time properly and put beats on top...

When I've imported an audio file into Live it asks me what editor I want to use - I'm not sure I have one so should I be looking at another package to do this with?

I'm not sure how you're working, but it seems you're just importing a raw audio file into Live?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

You need to edit the file first into a loop ( cutting the tail and ends off, then making sure it s a "Loop").

You can use freeware Audacity to do this on OS X.

Peak LE is very cheap and EXCELLENT.

Let me know if this is what you're doing or what. Live should not be asking you what audio editor you are using upon sample import.

I hate to brake it to you but if you don't become a "can read the manual type" your gonna get nowhere fast.

- Make sure your disco song section / loop is a wav file

- bring it into Live Arrangement track

- warp the track to make sure beat divisions are falling on original tempo (basic Live DJing technique ... search these forums for Chris Cowie's exellent thread on how to do this well)

- once your loop / section is warped and saved properly. now you can drag it back to the session view ..

- In session view, use the Clip Loop brackets on the clip to isolate whatever sections you want. Copy the clip down the track as many times as you want to, and you can have as many varations as you want

If you set the clip to loop it will loop. If you dont loop it, you can use it as a one shot sample.

YOu can also drag these clips onto Simpler in a MIDI track and use your keyboard or MIDI clip to fire them

Thanks for the pointers guys! And yes, I know I gotta overcome my "can'treadthemanualitis" - maybe this is the time to start right??

Thanks again for the help!

Cheers,

Adam