Ableton Forum

Hello, I have a quick question :

I'm using live to control an external drum machine. this machine has its own step sequencer so I'm only using live to trigger the machine. I did, however recorded a midi track of it but it wasn't much useful except to demonstrate my problem.

The problem I have is the beat (tempo) won't be steady in Live. As if Live had a setting to simulate how real drummers will sometimes be out of beat, so it would sound more natural.

The problem is : I'm making electronic music... And this makes things worse. It make all my music sound crappy.

I hope I was able to explain clearly my problem.

I fairly new to live so any help is appreciated. I've been looking into the manual and the forum all yesterday night, but found nothing to fix the problem.

Thanks

P.

I've had this problem too. But the opposite way round.

With an Akai MPC5000 hooked up and Live using that as the midi clock, the tempo in Live fluctuates where on the MPC it stays constant. Plays havock with short samples.

I kept on looking but I didn't find a solution yet. Anyone has an Idea?

I was kind of thinking that this would be an easy issue to fix... like an option of some sort to click or unclick...

Maybe If I give details about my hardware :

the drum machine I want to control via midi is a Korg Electribe RMKII.
sound/midi card is : M-Audio Firewire 410
computer : mac pro

any help is much appreciated.

thanks

P.

I had the same with my nord g2. But with Live as master and nord as slave.
Trying to sync a sequenced patch to live made the nord drift the tempo around the chosen bpm, never steady.
My workaround this problem was using two midi interfaces.
I use the midi In from my soundcard, and an amt-8 for midi Out which sends out the midi clock.

Live doesnt play well. The tempos arent exactly the same. You could either record the drum machine into Live or trigger the hits from the drum machine with Live.

Hi,

PHY6, that is exactly the problem, you've described it precisely. It may not have been too clear in my original post, but I too wanted to use Live as the master and the Korg Electribe as a slave.

Now, you say this is a problem you get with a synth. I haven't been testing with my JP-8000 yet. Chances are I might have the same problem with it. One thing though is that with a drum machine, the problem is pretty obvious due to the rhythm.

I'm sorry, I'm a newbie so I was wondering if you could you explain again your workaround solution? You suggest that I get a second midi-usb interface and use different out and in? I'm not sure I understand.

It is in my plans to buy a new midi-usb interface but not for now... so far the midi protocol is like hieroglyphs to me and I'm slowly learning.

Thanks for your help

p.

It seems hard to believe that a software like LIVE would have such an obvious and tremendous flaw. Isn't this the basis of working with external midi instruments? How a thing like this is even possible baffles me?

To be honest, I was testing LIVE with the demo version. And this problem is even making me consider buying another DAW.

This problem with LIVE is unacceptable and since so very few people had a solution to offer. It lead me to think that there isn't a solution and that this a a flaw with the software itself...

PHY6's solution would not work because I don't need to record the midi info of the drum machine. I just want LIVE to trigger the play of the machine and play steadily. So I'm only using the midi out of my soundcard and the midi in of my drum machine. LIVE is set as the master and the drum machine as the slave...

This is so simple... And this not working is very frustrating...

'nuff said

the solution most people offers is this; never use live with external hardware.
funny that.

i've experience the same myself, btw.
so has everyone.
whine at ableton and perhaps they will fi it at some point in time (yeah right).
probably add it as a feature, rather then a bugfix so they can demand upgrade money for it.
heh.

Yesterday, I contacted Ableton's technical support concerning this issue. I'm awaiting an answer on their part...

This is a kind of problem that will eventually lead me to choose another DAW... It's that simple...

The workaround solutions are absurd. This should work and moreover it should be easy to make it work. I can't imagine a sequencer that works like LIVE does at the moment... And I think LIVE is plain useless until this problem is fixed (by an update or upgrade)

Anyone know any other DAW for the MAC?

I don't know if the electribe supports MTC but if it does you should try to sync with MTC instead of midi clock.

I also had the same problems trying to sync my mpc 1000 to Live if I use midi clock. When I use MTC they sync very good. You must set Live as master. It doesnt support MTC slave.

When using MTC the tempo isn't synced. You have to manually set the tempo on the electribe and in Live ( ofcourse they should match). After that when you press play in live the MTC slave device will start automatic and in sync (only a little drift the first seconds).

1/ Record the pattern from the Electribe as audio.
2/ Warp and loop the audio in Live

Job done.

Or trigger the individual Electribe sounds from Live using MIDI.

No DAW is perfect, no matter how much you pay, but there are usually other ways to do what you need.

Unfortunately, the Korg Electribe RMKII does not support MTC... Could have been a good idea. Thanks...

This is the moment when the Ableton staff chimes & admits that their MIDI time code is fUkT UP.

Well well well...

It turns out that the driver of my sound/midi card may be the culprit here...

I just spoke with a friend of mine who works in a local music store and he's using the same interface as I and he also experienced the same problem. But with Apple's Logic.

He said that the problem might be the update for the OS 10.6 driver of my M-audio Fire wire 410 sound/midi card. He thinks that this driver is screwed up...

So I will do some more tests with another midi/usb interface and I'll come back here to post the results...

Wouldn't it be nice if that was the problem and just using another interface could fix it!!!

We'll see...

New tests with another midi/usb interface showed no problem with LIVE.

So the culprit is definitely my M-Audio FW410. Or just the driver... or something... but fortunately nothing to do with LIVE.

With the new interface, my Electribe plays perfectly.

Sorry for all the fuss...