Ableton Forum

Hi all,

Does anyone know if it's possible to play a sample in either of the sampler instruments, so that after I trigger the sample via eg C3, playing it from the start, when the second MIDI note eg D3 is registered, the sample triggers from the current playback position, rather than from the beginning of the sample?

In this way I could 'play' different notes while a longer sample is playing, or while a shorter one is looping.

Is this a simple thing to do? I currently only have Simpler but might buy Sampler if it's my only option.

If it's not doable I can think of two workarounds off the top of my head:

(1) I could set up a bunch of midi clips on another channel which send pitch changes to the simpler channel, and assign these to the keyboard to trigger pitch changes after the sample has started playing

(2) I could assign an encoder to the sample start and move it to match the playback position, but it's not really practical for live performance.


Thanks,
Dan

Legato mode does this, if im reading you correctly, but im guessing that only works with straight audio not being triggered through a sampler by MIDI.

Have you you played around with Legato mode at all? Or does that just not fit your needs?

I was told this wasn't possible, but your workarounds sound pretty good - if you get either of these to work could I trouble you to drop me a line?

Ah yes, thanks Donnie - Legato mode was what I was after, I was just looking in the wrong place.

So Legato mode works with audio clips - but it does mean that you have to (pre)map your keyboard to that clip, which limits your control options on other (eg midi channels), unless your controller can have different scenes setup or whatever. Should be simple on my new padkontrol

Interesting to note that midi clips also have the legato mode, but that it doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe it's for drums?

@ TrierMusic - I'm going to leave this for now as it's too much of a distraction. After using the audio clip Legato mode, I think that the pitch bend workaround is the next best option - it worked fine for me but I think it would take a bit of tweaking to get the pitch bends set up to match a musical scale, and you're probably limited by how far up/down you can pitch?

Cheers,
Dan

Oh wow you're right there is legato mode for MIDI too. That's pretty sweet, I guess I just haven't had to use it on MIDI clips yet so I never noticed.

You said you couldn't get it working on MIDI clips though? I just tried and it was working fine...so you may want to give it a shot again!

Hi Donnie,

I tried inserting a blank midi clip, turning legato on, then recording some notes into the clip.

The legato didn't work for me - ie each new note retriggered the sample from the Sample Start, rather than from the position where the last midi note ended.

Then I played back the clip to see if playback would be different from recording, but still no luck.

I'm using Simpler (in Live 7.09 on Windows XP). Which instrument are you using on your midi channel, to get this to work?

Thanks,
Dan

Hi Dan,

For triggering the same clip at different start positions I would use the slice clip to drumrack-feature.

For pitch changes on a playing clip you can use an old forgotten feature of liveclips: Instead of assigning on single note to trigger the clip you can assign a full range of midi-notes to it: Go to midi-assign-mode, click on the clip, press a midi note on you midi-keyboard, and while you still hold it press another one below and/or above this note. Now you can trigger the clip in different pitches. If you set the clip to "legato" you are able to change the pitch of your clip while its playing, without retriggering it.

my first thought was:

1) audioclip with your sample looping all the time
2) midi clip with simple operator

assign your keyboard to play the operator and change the pitch of the audioclip. put a sidechained (by the operator) gate on your audioloop.

Hi pepezabala,

The slice-to-drumrack feature is cool, but it requires preparation - you must first cut up (or add markers to) the sample and then assign the triggers. This is not ideal, because then you are forced to trigger the sample at certain predefined Sample Start offsets. While that may be good for avoiding mistakes, it stops you from getting a little bit crazy on the keyboard and playing something unplanned (unplanned stuff is often the best stuff!).

The legato audio clip triggering via a midi note range (as opposed to a single midi note) works fine for me, and this is what I have been doing since Donnie suggested using legato mode. The only limitation of this is that, again, you need to prepare beforehand, by pre-assigning the note range to that sample. Sure you can do that on the fly, but it's faster to focus a monitoring midi channel and just start playing. But, yes, the audio clip legato is a solution to my problem, if not my ideal solution.

Thanks,
Dan

Hi honsey,

Assuming I did it right, your solution succeeded in playing snippets of the sound when I played Operator (actually I used a VST polysynth as I don't have Operator, being more of a sampler guy).

It was a cool effect, but not exactly what I'm after, as the pitch of the synth didn't affect the pitch of the audio clip. Maybe it works better with Operator? But given that the sidechained gate is controlling how the synth affects the audio clip, I doubt it.

I also tried mapping a range of midi notes notes to the audio clip, then just playing the synth through Monitor In, but the audio clip seemed to 'steal' those midi notes - which is another reason I don't like premapping note ranges to samples, you never know what you're going to hear when you hit a note.

Cheers
Dan

Panoramica wrote:Hi Donnie,

I tried inserting a blank midi clip, turning legato on, then recording some notes into the clip.

The legato didn't work for me - ie each new note retriggered the sample from the Sample Start, rather than from the position where the last midi note ended.

Then I played back the clip to see if playback would be different from recording, but still no luck.

I'm using Simpler (in Live 7.09 on Windows XP). Which instrument are you using on your midi channel, to get this to work?

Thanks,
Dan

Ahh I see, legato will maintain the position in the MIDI track (just like it does with audio) but if the MIDI is triggering a sample then that sample will still start at its start point. Hmmm...not sure there is a way around that.