Ableton Forum

Is there any way to apply different swing settings to individual notes within one clip? For example, I play in a drum part on Push 2 with kick snare and hat, which all show up as different midi notes within one clip. If I do this in Pro Tools I can select just the snare and quantize with no swing, then select just the kicks and quantize with swing, then select just the hats and quantize to 8th note quintuplets with 10% MPC swing. In Pro Tools this can all be done within one midi clip without separating the notes to different tracks. Is this possible in Live?

This what grooves are for. Grooves are not "swing", even though some of the groove files coming with Live may only be one bar long — most are longer I think — and affect every second note. As grooves can have many bars you can have the displacement happen in just one bar as well. Just make your own groove file or re-use one of the existing ones by dragging it to a MIDI track and edit it and re-save under a new name.

Stromkraft wrote:This what grooves are for. Grooves are not "swing", even though some of the groove files coming with Live may only be one bar long — most are longer I think — and affect every second note. As grooves can have many bars you can have the displacement happen in just one bar as well. Just make your own groove file or re-use one of the existing ones by dragging it to a MIDI track and edit it and re-save under a new name.

Thanks, but I think you misunderstood the question. I am asking how to apply DIFFERENT swing or grooves, to DIFFERENT midi notes within one clip so the hat has different swing settings than the kick and snare. In Pro Tools this is possible within one midi clip since the swing settings are linked to the quantize function. In Ableton it seems like you are supposed to use the grooves for swing, but you can only drag one groove onto each midi clip.

schaeffertone wrote:Is there any way to apply different swing settings to individual notes within one clip? For example, I play in a drum part on Push 2 with kick snare and hat, which all show up as different midi notes within one clip. If I do this in Pro Tools I can select just the snare and quantize with no swing, then select just the kicks and quantize with swing, then select just the hats and quantize to 8th note quintuplets with 10% MPC swing. In Pro Tools this can all be done within one midi clip without separating the notes to different tracks. Is this possible in Live?

I don't think Ableton has anything like this.

You can achieve this by giving each drumpart his own track. Then apply swing or quantise the tracks you wish to......

miyaru wrote:You can achieve this by giving each drumpart his own track. Then apply swing or quantise the tracks you wish to......

Thanks man, I know you can achieve this by splitting the tracks. I am asking if there is a way to do this within 1 clip like you can in Pro Tools, Logic, and Digital Performer.

schaeffertone wrote: …I know you can achieve this by splitting the tracks. I am asking if there is a way to do this within 1 clip like you can in Pro Tools, Logic, and Digital Performer.

There isn't and I very much would have liked to have this. What you could do is to use an MFL sequencer, like for instance Instant House that have such important capabilities, though you likely can't use the groove files unless the device reads these specifically, only built-in swing if any.
I'm sorry that I misunderstood your initial question. Thanks for clarifying.

I can create a groove with 16th note group swing and 8th note master swing in Maschine, then export the midi file to Live and extract the groove as a work around. But Ableton needs to add that possibility, because sometimes you do need to swing both,16ths and 8ths !

I am resurrecting this from the grave, to give an easier solution.

You can actually apply the groove to the MIDI notes themselves, by clicking the Apply button (or the pointing right arrow button in 11) in the groove section of the clip. The groove will then go away and the notes on the piano roll will snap to where the groove put them. This will allow you to add swing to the notes you want in the groove. After that, apply the groove to the notes and then add the non-swung notes.

You can go into a different clip on the same track, add a different groove, apply that, then copy the notes to the original clip part. I hope that helps.

I know this thread is old, but it is because I was searching for a way to do this same thing as a new Ableton user and while I appreciate the time taken to give the previous answers... coming from FL Studio, Cubase, and a few other DAWs, having to make entirely new groove files and MIDI tracks is cumbersome for such a task. Again, I hope this helps.

Have a blessed day.

I actually registered to reply to this and thank you. I've literally known how to do this for a long time, but I just never considered it until you expanded my mind!

I found an addition to this:

Do like its says above, apply the groove with the arrow button.
But then just copy any individual instrument's MIDI events you want.
Then an Undo command to bring the groove back to unapplied.
Then change groove to none, so you are not hearing it previewed.
Replace the instrument MIDI events with the copied events from when the groove was applied. I say replace instead of just paste as when I pasted them it combined them with the un-swung notes. So first I deleted them and then did the paste.

Hey guys,

There's an easy way to quantize only selected notes in a clip:

Just download this handy M4L device, works like a charm!

https://maxforlive.com/library/device/11025/swing

Make sure you read the instructions and have fun with it!

One little thing to be aware of is that the swing settings of the device don't match up with Push swing settings. So if for example you swing sixteenth notes by 33% with the device, then swing another set of notes with Push 3 by 33%, the timing doesn't match up at all. I already mentioned it in the comments and he said he might take a look at it.