Ableton Forum

Hello -
I recently recorded a bunch of drum beats for sampling purposes. I really like using the whole Slice to MIDI/Drum Rack thing, but a lot of the time I can't get it to work properly. I've searched multiple forums/Google/YouTube/etc and can't seem to find any answers...

When I try to slice up a break, even after I've warped all the transients and Consolidated the clip, the MIDI slices will be all over the place, start- and -end-wise. When I try to quantize the MIDI notes, the beat just starts sounding all choppy. My goal is to keep the beats sounding more or less like a live drummer, so this is (obviously) very undesirable.

When I try to slice a beat to the beat, i.e. 1/4 note, 1/16th note, etc, I'll still get the above effects. Basically I'm mainly trying to rearrange portions of a drum loop so that they still sound fluid, not all drum-machine-y.

Keep in mind I've experimented with Warp tempos/Global tempos, Consolidating, Freezing/Flattening... Any insight would be much appreciated. Thanks

Also - It seems that I can chop a beat into 1/4 notes just fine, but when I try to go for 1/8 or 1/16 notes, I get a blippy/choppy/weird sound that sort of sounds like a bad MP3 rip.

??

how does it sound when you slice to transients rather than bar sub units?

Sometimes it sounds fine, especially if I have the project BPM set higher than the original audio file, but sometimes it also sounds all choppy and gross.

However, aside from how it sounds, why, when the audio gets sliced to MIDI by transients, are the MIDI notes not quantized? And when I quantize them, it starts to sound all shitty. It seems like rearranging parts of the beat will be really damn hard if the original notes aren't sitting on the beats (why???).

Here are two photos of 1) audio and 2) the resulting MIDI clip:

lookwhaticando wrote:However, aside from how it sounds, why, when the audio gets sliced to MIDI by transients, are the MIDI notes not quantized? And when I quantize them, it starts to sound all shitty.

Because the break was played by a real drummer, who will never be 100% quantised. Try slicing to midi, not quantising the break at all, then using it as a groove template. The original funk of the break will be intact and can be applied to the rest of your track:

Tutorial = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcDaWRXlvIE (disclaimer - I've only flicked through this video)

A lot of the old jungle guys sliced breaks into chunks rather than individual hits and rearranged these, keeping the funk of the original break. Hope this helps.

maybee the problem lies in the simpler or sampler, some times a little play with the ADSR can do wonders for the sound your getting.

wascal wrote:

lookwhaticando wrote:However, aside from how it sounds, why, when the audio gets sliced to MIDI by transients, are the MIDI notes not quantized? And when I quantize them, it starts to sound all shitty.

Because the break was played by a real drummer, who will never be 100% quantised.

Notice that all the transient/potential warp markers are fixed on the 1/16th note grid. This happens both when I slice at transients and when I slice at Warp markers. That's why I'm confused that the MIDI clip doesn't come out quantized.

sorry im really lazy atm, but i have an idea. i also have issues with slicing sometimes... but in this case regarding transients...
maybe your transients are not 100% at the grid... so even when you quantised and flaten your audio, the recalculation from the transients after that is only 99% on the grid?

and another note, i delete a lot of transients when i slice, most of the time there are too much transients so you don't get nice parts from the loop.


regarding rearranging, it's no problem if they are not quantised, just drag the midi notes in the midi editor, the offset from the midi note to the grid is also a "grid point" in the editor.

You can put the audio file in a track, scroll thru the swing function (SP 1200/hip hop/MPC) and it warps and maps for you. Break it down in to bars (1/2/3/4/whatever) and select the slice function...

hope this helps

Good 'ole venerable Recycle has a transient shaper built in and I think this can be really helpful. Sometimes it can help to attenuate either the attacks or releases and fill in the spaces. A break has full audio info so your slices probably have a little bit of hi hat or ride in them and re-arranging is not going to sound seamless. You're really interrupting a fairly seamless audio file.

this helps for me...or Logic's Enveloper:

http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=18

Slicing breakbeats and getting it tight in live is pretty much all i do.
But recycle really is a lot better.Especially as it looks like you got yourself some long breaks there.

There is no crossfade/stretch function in live, so loose breakbeats sometimes go all choppy when quantized and slowed down (even by not much).This is caused by the slice ending abruptly/too early.

Slice only by placing transients and auditioning between each marker to check for clicks. This is cumbersome, but very necessary.

It is best to slice to Samplers by transient. If you get some chopped slices, try putting a ping pong loop on the end of slices that end too early.

Check your adsr attack is at zero,a bit of release is good for smoothing it out.

When quantizing, it helps to legato the notes too.

Get Phatmatik Pro by Izotope.

It does exactly the same thing......without the glitches.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/phatmatik/

What you can do is first extract the groove from the audio clip.
After that you slice the audio to midi.
Then quantize the midi clip and add the groove you've extracted from the audio clip

Now your midi loop should sound the same as the original audio loop, and you have your midiclip quantized fo easy rearranging.

Not to resurrect an old thread, but if anyone is having this problem, I realized what I was doing wrong -

After warping/adjusting/doing your "thang" to the audio clip that is to be sliced, CONSOLIDATE. This kinda bugs me, because I think this is an unnecessary step, but I realized that this has to be done when I was wondering why I couldn't transpose audio, then slice it to MIDI with the pitch-shiftedness intact.

Consolidate the region before slicing.