Please Bring Back playback head scrubbing!

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 1:40 pm

This is spillover from a post in the general forums I made shortly after getting the 5 beta, trying to confirm or deny the fact that one of my favorite live features was taken away. This would be the ability to use the mouse to fluidly move the playback start marker in the clip view with the mouse, resulting in fun audio-mangling and unexpected goodness. They took away a feature they used to brag about in the manuals, and one that is especially useful in taking monophonic and/or melodic instrumental clips and totally freaking them out, to achieve some great rythmic effects and stutters. An excerpt from a live show my duo did starts with an example of this technique on a bass loop I made on-the-fly. Later in the tune, you can hear the normal bass loop sans-playhead manipulation:

http://quandry.em411.com/download/release/3140

I agree that the new nudge features could be handy for many, esp. DJ's, and in some ways are more precise than the way 3 handles it. That said, nothing in an hour or so of testing all sorts or midi controller assignments, quantization setting etc, has gotten anywhere near the sounds I can get from doing the playback head mouse manipulation in 3. I can see the nudge stuff being more useful for straight up beats, but it is certainly nowhere near as fluid and smooth sounding as the 3 behaviour.

I hate to whine, cause they really did some great stuff in 5, but completely removing this feature, especially when many of us clearly use the hell out of it, is harsh. I know myself and at least a few others were sure that this time around, 5 would allow us to map a midi encoder to the playback start position marker in clip view, and be able to do what we did before only with benefitial option of simply using a rotary encoder, thus allow one to theoretically hang out on one note indefinitely by continuing to spin the encoder backwords (not unlike the trackball "hint" in previous Ableton manuals in reference to this technique). This seemed the awesome and obvious route to take, it is a shame they just scrapped the feature as we know it. I am writing all of this in hopes to have more and more people sign on in agreement, as Ableton does listen. For example, those of us using Live 3 as a DAW were bummed when the I/O portion of the arrangerview was taken away from us in 4. Ableton listened to our well-founded complaints and brought it back in 5. I hope that this feature removal will be rectified in 6, cause til then I'm stuck still using 3.

Take a look at the simple FL Scratcher in FL Studio--this has some features (including midi mappable playback head) that Ableton should incorporate into the clip view. It "emulates" a turntable with acccelaration and speed settings, as well as sensitivity settings which determine how much or how little the movement of a midi controller (or mouse) does in terms of scratchin (i.e. a little knob tweak can be set to just barely speed up the record, or to scratch ahead a few bars or whatever). Beyond these settings, Live already has the other settings, already has the waveform shown and playback position shown. All they really need to do is give us midi control of the playback head, and maybe some acceleration and sensitivity settings to get more nuanced control over the scratching, and I for one would be super-stoked. I know in the past when people have begged for midi control over the playback start marker, Ableton said it was very difficult. But if lil ol FL Scratcher can do it and do it well, I gotta think our boys at Ableton can do it. PLEASE!

Ryan

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:02 am

try assigning a midi controller to Playpos in the beta.

search beta forum for more info.

supster · Post by **supster** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:10 pm

sweetjesus wrote:try assigning a midi controller to Playpos in the beta.

search beta forum for more info.

doesnt work the same: not nearly as precise, lack of control, lack of predictability. it jumps uncontrollably and is "sticky".

this was a mistake on thier part, it was basic to the application and really needs to come back somehow

i totally agree with him
.

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:16 pm

Thanks for backing me up, Supster. Sweetjesus--I've read every applicable part of the 5 manual numerous times, and tried EVERY manner of mouse clicking, midi assigning to nudge buttons, etc.--is not even close to what it was before in terms of fluidity and the ability to have very musical happy accidents. The new functionality is much different--for some it may be good, esp. DJ's matching/mixing different tracks of different tempos, but for musical mangling, 5 has nothing on 3 as far as I'm concerned.

Ryan

telekom · Post by **telekom** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 3:51 pm

Are you guys kidding? You can't do this in Live 5? You mean they actually REMOVED this feature? That is so utterly crazy. It's one of the very hands-on and active ways of mangling sound that makes Live so unique. It's got to be brought back. Bump, I'm with you both.

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 5:08 pm

100% Bump, don't take this away, I use it all the time to create variations on drum loops.

supster · Post by **supster** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 5:33 pm

smart1123 wrote:100% Bump, don't take this away, I use it all the time to create variations on drum loops.

exactly.
.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:28 pm

supster wrote:
sweetjesus wrote:try assigning a midi controller to Playpos in the beta.

search beta forum for more info.

doesnt work the same: not nearly as precise, lack of control, lack of predictability. it jumps uncontrollably and is "sticky".

this was a mistake on thier part, it was basic to the application and really needs to come back somehow

i totally agree with him
.

you just have to learn how to use it. the way it works is, it will jump to the section you move the locator to, only after you have completed your move, as opposed to following your moves.

they have the way that the playpos should behave correctly workin in the scrubbing of the arrangement view, but they have made the playpos a bit retarded.

they have stated officially that the 'playhead' you are referring to wont come back in that form due to the decoupling of the loop points from play position, so the best bet is to get them to pust some more fluid control into the Playpos controller.

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:32 pm

looks like Live 4 will be here for a while then for me at least

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:37 pm

It is a shame,

I was creating a wavemangler before Live5 was announced - with scratch and scrub ability, but stopped working on it when I saw that Live5 was to get midi assign over all clip atributes.

It looks like I should start again!

Surely this was one of the major reasons ALL of us started using live!

that immediate messing with the sound was the most "instrumental" thing - all we wanted was to midi assign the play head instead of relying on the mouse.

It might be me but is seems like DJ and DAW objectives have forced out one of the old "sequencing instrument" features instead of enhancing it!

BTW - when I say "I was creating" I mean "I was blundering around getting compile errors"

supster · Post by **supster** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 9:00 pm

sweetjesus wrote:the best bet is to get them to pust some more fluid control into the Playpos controller.

i know the design philosophy is not to overburden with too many options ... they want to avoid the bloat of cubase and logic, and thats admirable when the solutions are flexible and innovative enough

however i really think the best bet in this case is to have "immediate playpos feedback" or whatever you want ot call it back in as a basic option

not arguing the point with you sj - but some of us really feel strongly about this because theyve swung the pendulum too far toward DJ control of the play position. we need both.

.

logman · Post by **logman** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:16 pm

How is this different to the feature described on pg100, 101 of the manual?

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:25 pm

logman wrote:How is this different to the feature described on pg100, 101 of the manual?

haven't checked the manual, but in L5, by tweaking the playpos and having the (i think global) quantize setting to 16ths, you can do similar stuff. The difference is you cant constantly rotate the knobs backards and forwards, you have to do this: <adjust><pause><adjust><pause>

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 1:33 am

I agree, this is one of THE features.

Can we have it back (or functionality-wise re-created) please?

This is a killer....

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 3:48 am

Pitch Black know's what I'm sayin'. . .. . ... .I have pretty much stopped playing with 5 because its a tease, I use that feature almost every song in performances, so 5 won't be doing me much good out there. Playing with the new effects and track widths is SUCH a tease... argh. please bring it back somehow, hopefully with midi rotary encoder assingability of loop offset point and fluid stutter-free sound like 3

Ryan

Please Bring Back playback head scrubbing!

Please Bring Back playback head scrubbing!

SCrubs

Re: SCrubs