Ableton Forum

I have an audio track of guitar( real guitar, not a midi instrument) , and I want to change the adsr envelope of the sound. Is it possible to do that?

It makes no sense, since ADSR is a terminology that applies to sound synthesis.
That said, you could maybe achieve what you want with the use of a Compressor, or a Multiband Compressor.

chapelier fou wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 9:53 am

It makes no sense, since ADSR is a terminology that applies to sound synthesis.
That said, you could maybe achieve what you want with the use of a Compressor, or a Multiband Compressor.

Thank you. OK, now I know ADSR is an abstract notion just for a synthesis sound.
But a compressor, to my understanding, just boosts the soft sound and weakens the too-loud sound.
What I want is actually to shorten a long resonant sound ( like a vibrating guitar string legato) to a staccato sound.

perhaps you need a transient shaper like in the
Creative Extention pack > Re-Enveloper
or Transient Machines by Surreal Machines
both are M4L

zzm88 wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:01 pm

But a compressor, to my understanding, just boosts the soft sound and weakens the too-loud sound.

A compressor set with a slow attack can be used to soften the “attack” of a sound. Though that’s not applicable to what you want to do of course.

zzm88 wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:01 pm

What I want is actually to shorten a long resonant sound ( like a vibrating guitar string legato) to a staccato sound.

As well as transient shapers (there are third party ones which don’t need M4L) one way is to manually create a volume envelope that cuts the sound to silence where you don’t want it, though that can be a lot of work. If the guitar notes have regular timing a tremolo effect might do the job. A noise gate which allows the gate to be set open for a fixed time rather than relying on the decay of the note’s volume to shut the gate might also be worth trying.

And it has to be said that sometimes the quickest and easiest way to do things like this is to re-record the audio and play the instrument how you now want it to sound.

I would have thought using volume automation in the recorded audio clip would be the easiest way to silence/ shorten the sound.

Yeah, a volume pedal, or volume automation on the recording is the way to go.
I've tried patching M4L devices, and many stuff with compressors, envelopers and so on to get a somewhat automatic guitar volume shaper, but there's just no solution to adapt to the dynamics of a guitar satisfyingly.
A volume pedal works really great.

I don’t know if this would get you any closer, but I’d try using the Ableton Live “Gate” audio effect. Anything below a certain threshold is silent... or reduced to a particular volume. Maybe even filter the source with sidechain to find some spikes in a frequency range that mostly only occur at the onset of a note being triggered.