Ableton Forum

I've seen a lot of producers rave about what an inspiring / liberating feeling it is to produce in double time. What does this mean really - what's all the fuzz about?

I guess it would allow them to quantise or draw in notes at smaller intervals (if you're quantising to 64, then at double time you'd be able to do it to 128), but conversely it would mean any tempo-synched delays you use would not be able to go up to as high a setting (for instance the Simple Delay in Live goes up to 16 bars, which at double time would only give you 8 bars).

I can't really understand it being that big a deal though - personally if I was going into that much tiny detail I'd just turn quanitse off entirely. Certainly not something to set as a hard-and-fast rule. I wonder if anyone else has any more ideas why it might be useful?

isn't double time when you double your original bpm?

it works great for tempo synced stuff

I seen examples of people writing at 480bpm, so a bar at 120 becomes a beat at 480. Resolution is alot higher so you can get more detail with note position.

well its something like pseudo-analog/infinite then.

Quick tip. Instead of winding up the tempo to 480 work at 120 and then set the Orig BPM parameter to 30. Adjust clip length to suit.

.....for what i know i doesent make sense to speed up the tempo? In the old days people did that to get a better timing but todays computers are much more accurate so it dont mean sense, or does it?

you save half of the time waiting during count in

Saxer wrote:you save half of the time waiting during count in

Sometimes I produce in double time. I wouldn't say that it gives me a liberating feeling but I originally started doing it when I wanted to create a slower tempo song that still had an energetic and uptempo bounce. This can be done at the original tempo but the faster metronome, time-based effects, and modulation all help me get to where I want to go a little faster when starting from a blank canvas.

Yep, this trick has been around in one form or another for a long time. Being able to work in smaller note intervals is a lot of fun, especially when you write music with lots of little note slurs, glitches, etc.