Ableton Forum

I am a professional musician, I need help interpreting the rhythms that already exist in the long line of existing recordings.
Eg.. a sax player plays a melodic idea or a drummer plays a beat... if I want to write down that melodic idea, how can I be sure that my interpretation of his rhythmic choices is reasonably adequate? What is stopping me from eg confusing a triplet with a dotted sixteenth?
This is the age of computers.. in spite of the fact that a recording is not played with a click track, nevertheless, the music is very valid. Are you going to tell me eg James Brown did not make very energetic ground breaking exciting grooves? Of course not.
The program that would interpret real non click music ( the vast majority of music ) must be designed to understand the inherent issues and must be flexible it should show a number of possible interpretations including a very literal interpretation filled with all manner of 64 note tied rests and other very difficult to read rhythms! This is partly why we have quantization, of course.

Can Ableton interpret a short piece of music and translate it to rhythms a musician could read or at least understand ( meaning not the over kill of tied 128th note rests etc ! )

That's what good music teachers do (personal, online, or offline). If you don't have a good music teacher, you have to teach yourself....

I remember when I was starting out in Flamenco, there was practically no easily available material except for a few records, and we spent hours scraping music off of lp's.... Then got blown away when we went to Spain...

(There was one infamous example of a jazz (I think) musician trying to transcribe Sabicas' "Flamenco Puro" lp in the 1960's (Hansen Publications). The problem was, Sabicas was using a capo, and the jazz guitarist hadn't even heard of one. The transcription was a huge joke in Flamenco circles; of course the music was off, and the fingering was just ridiculous....

Nevertheless, I bought it and studied it before I knew better....

Hmm - in instruments that don't have a hard precise attack in the sound, then IMHO rhythm is something you just have to feel rather than interpret, especially with something like a sax, or bowed instruments etc. Its different with something like a piano or plucked guitar where they can reasonably land right on a specific rhythm and groove.

About all that live can do is detect the initial transients and generate single note midi of the resulting groove. I guess you could export that into a dedicated notation application to get drum rhythm sheet music. Odd post for a drummer - most decent drummers ive met just seem to instinctively feel the rhythm in everything.

Chuckling- Yes "odd" but I am not a drummer, though I play very rhythmically- bass, keyboards.
I am speaking about very short phrases. and only with attacks like a bass or bass drum, or hi hat or ride cymbal. Hard attacks, hard transients.

I was additionally fantasizing about copping the groove ( template?? ) of some famous groove masters ( esp drummers ) and seeing what their grooves look like under an analytical eye.
Grooves, are a mystery I have been struggling as a pro musician with, for a long time.
If a famous groove ( James Brown comes to mind ) could be studied, it could possibly be reproduced... sacrilege I suppose. But I am just living in a crazy world, that has put quantization, and metronomic time with a click track, OVER human grooves!
I started recording in the NYC session world back in early 70's, just before click tracks were introduced. So I am not a beginner at this!
Thanks

May as well go hunting for sonic equivalent of 'golden ratios' in the rhythms