Ableton Forum

I've just been experimenting with the the new Live 7 Slicer. I've used Recycle before so it's great to see Ableton implementing this feature.

But I'm confused.

I take my loop - lets say, a live breakbeat with a nice groove. I place a warp marker on every individual drum hit. By warping a loop in this way, I have effectively killed the groove in the original loop as now, each drum hit will play to the nearest grid marker.

So now I slice the loop using the "Slice to New Midi Track" command, the loop gets sliced and the hits mapped to a Drum Rack and a midi clip gets created to trigger each hit. BUT the midi clip is not quantised - ie the original groove appears to be preserved. (I still need to do some more tests on this, with a funkier loop!)

I think there's some clever stuff going on here - perhaps the midi notes are created with lengths according to the original (unwarped) sample.

Can anyone confirm?




[incidentally, the Live slicer must raise the importance of introducing Groove quantise to Live, imagine how useful it would be to apply the grooves of your sliced loops to your other song parts, create a library of grooves to use in other projects and so on... Something for the next release, perhaps?]

keeko wrote:I've just been experimenting with the the new Live 7 Slicer. I've used Recycle before so it's great to see Ableton implementing this feature.

But I'm confused.

I take my loop - lets say, a live breakbeat with a nice groove. I place a warp marker on every individual drum hit. By warping a loop in this way, I have effectively killed the groove in the original loop as now, each drum hit will play to the nearest grid marker.

So now I slice the loop using the "Slice to New Midi Track" command, the loop gets sliced and the hits mapped to a Drum Rack and a midi clip gets created to trigger each hit. BUT the midi clip is not quantised - ie the original groove appears to be preserved. (I still need to do some more tests on this, with a funkier loop!)

I think there's some clever stuff going on here - perhaps the midi notes are created with lengths according to the original (unwarped) sample.

Can anyone confirm?




[incidentally, the Live slicer must raise the importance of introducing Groove quantise to Live, imagine how useful it would be to apply the grooves of your sliced loops to your other song parts, create a library of grooves to use in other projects and so on... Something for the next release, perhaps?]

I'm not sure what you're asking

but for the last comment - you can of course re-use the un-quantised MIDI clips

I totally see what you're asking, and I'm curious too. That's excellent that it retains the original groove, I was curious about that.

It is strange that it used warp markers to slice (which usually removed any sort of swing/shuffle and set it to the grid), but then keeps the timing. I guess it must remember how much you've offset the warp markers from their original positions, and offset the midi notes by that much? I dunno, something like that. But that's great anyways.

Now we just need transient detection! (With a sensitivity parameter of course) But I guess that will come in Live 8 after it becomes the new most requested feature.

Question: Does it always slice into equal length segments? Or can you for example have it slice in 16th's, but then for a small section of the loop, have it slice 32'nds. This is extremely important, and is something every other slicer out there can do (because of transient detection), so I hope live's slicer gives this flexibility too.

Cheers,

I don't understand why the creation of groove templates, or quantization to groove templates is absent from Live.

PT added a really nice feature in 7.4

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=5402

R.J.Dubya wrote: Question: Does it always slice into equal length segments? Or can you for example have it slice in 16th's, but then for a small section of the loop, have it slice 32'nds. This is extremely important, and is something every other slicer out there can do (because of transient detection), so I hope live's slicer gives this flexibility too.

Cheers,

it can if you use warp mode - you dont have to move the warp markers to the beats, you can just double click them and leave them where they are then add more in the beats you want 32nd

i noticed yesterday that the sliced midi keeps the groove...

i think basically it just takes their position as you see it, not as you hear it

now if only we could apply the timing of a midi clip to another one

or even better use the midi clip timing to set audio warp markers, then you can go

open audio clip
move warp markers
slice to midi
store midi timing as groove template
right click any clip (audio or midi) and 'apply timing from groove template'

i'll keep dreaming...

mdk wrote:i noticed yesterday that the sliced midi keeps the groove...

i think basically it just takes their position as you see it, not as you hear it

now if only we could apply the timing of a midi clip to another one

or even better use the midi clip timing to set audio warp markers, then you can go

open audio clip
move warp markers
slice to midi
store midi timing as groove template
right click any clip (audio or midi) and 'apply timing from groove template'

i'll keep dreaming...

it's nowhere near the same thing, but something fun you might want to try is using the sidechain on the gate plug-in - I've been having loads of fun using the groove from something else to change the rhythm of an audio file

and also, sticking an arpeggiator in front of a sliced drum rack and playing about with the gate in the Arp and the loop settings on the drum rack - that;s another interesting way of messing up the rhythm

like I said, not what you're talking about, just made me think of it

I know it's less than a month, and I might still get in the beta pool, but
damn! I hate you guys....

mdk wrote: open audio clip
move warp markers
slice to midi
store midi timing as groove template
right click any clip (audio or midi) and 'apply timing from groove template'

i'll keep dreaming...

Well,,
just helping to keep the dream alive, i would love to see this feature added.
In fact, i keep thinking it's going to be in the next beta,, then the next,, and so on,,
I used to be of the opinion that the quantized functions of live where a bit lacking,, but if you combine the functions that live does offer, with it's other ability to double, triple or half the tempo of individual clips,,, and it actually becomes quite versatile,, add into that the ability to use "Groove templates" and 7's added slicing abilities and,, well,,,
Dreams,,, dreams,, dreams,,,

Well it's not quite what you guys are asking for,

but if you slice up two drum loops - both with for example 16 slices but on their individual grooves, not on even 1/16ths....

then use the MIDI clip from one to play the drum rack of the other.

There, you're applying the groove to another sample.

Well it's not quite what you guys are asking for,

but if you slice up two drum loops - both with for example 16 slices but on their individual grooves, not on even 1/16ths....

then use the MIDI clip from one to play the drum rack of the other.

There, you're applying the groove to another sample.

Sort of yes, but only if your two drum-clips are similar and drum hits on one loop map nicely to hits on the other. As, you say not quite the same as having a groove template, basically a quantise grid with the markers at unevenly spaced intervals.

But here we are talking about what's missing in Live 7 and it's not even out yet, so we can wait a bit longer for this, can't we? No?... [ducks]

Yeah, they'd have to be pretty similar in that case

I should stay out of this anyways - this is not something I've ever really done

Acutally my suggestion above is pretty crap.

Better to warp the first sample, then replace the sample file with the second sample...

Better yet was a thread I started at some point which I'll probably never find - to have a second "virtual clip" associated with a clip - in effect telling Live to "force THESE warp markers to be jammed into THESE OTHER warp markers"

A clip whose settings tell the other clip how to play

Then you can just drag any clip into that slot in the clip view

another possible workaround is to use a scale plug-in or two - that way you can use the clip's rhythm to play different notes