Breakbeat Mania

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Pitch Black
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Breakbeat Mania

Post by Pitch Black » Thu Feb 20, 2003 12:21 pm

I'm a frustrated percussion player (keys aren't PHYSICAL enuff!) so here's a breakbeat scheme thats fun to jam with.

1 Take a drum loop or percussion loop. (A minimum of 2 - 4 bars works best for me, hey we're not limited by RAM anymore.) Assign this to a slot with quantisation set to 1 bar.

2 Copy this loop 3 or 4 times to the slots directly below it. Set the quantisation of these to one16th. Now move the start and end markers of these lower loops so that they are all three 16ths long. Move the loop region to different points in the sample - sone starting with a sound (e.g. a snare) and some starting on off beats or ghost notes.

3 assign the clips to neighbouring keys on your MIDI keyboard. I like to have the "Master loop" on C and its cut ups on the white keys moving up the octave.

Now you can trigger the "master loop" and when you want to do a drum fill or a whole breakbeat solo, hit the "sub loop" keys as wildly as you like. You will sound like a polyrhythmic funky-ass mudderfarker. The cool thing is, no matter how outside or wild you go - hit the master loop and you will be back in on the "one" reliably.

And everybody loves a good back-in-on-the-one!

cheers

paddy
Last edited by Pitch Black on Tue Mar 09, 2004 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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dBit

Post by dBit » Fri Feb 21, 2003 7:12 am

i have been using this technique a lot, actually... it's 1/2 of the reason that i bought LIVE in the first place.... the other was the ability to time stretch so nicely!!!

m-laboratories.net
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not me.

Post by m-laboratories.net » Fri Feb 21, 2003 3:59 pm

i haven't been using this technique, but instead have been pulling my hair out with trying make decent beats via mouse.

Thanks for the tip, I'm a fellow frustrated percussionist.

-chris.

arar
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Post by arar » Mon Mar 03, 2003 12:32 pm

you can get some pretty good effects by altering the offset point of one beat sample against another in realtime..thought its usually to much for my lowly 650celeron and 188mb of 133 ram...wonder how this wouyld work on a higher spec machine?

Pitch Black
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Post by Pitch Black » Mon Mar 03, 2003 2:14 pm

Yes - I do this quite a bit. "Scrubbing" the offset marker in realtime. Its usually pretty smooth on my TiBook 500 if the clip is only a few bars long.

If you run Live in record as you do this you get the scrubbed result printed in the arrange window. Then you can render the best sections down into a single clip for further use :)

paddy
MBP M1Max | MacOS 12.7.2 | Live 11.3.20 | Babyface Pro FS | Push 3 (tethered) | a whole other bunch of controllers
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arar
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Post by arar » Tue Mar 04, 2003 10:50 am

Nice tip pitchblack!

Porpy
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Post by Porpy » Wed Mar 05, 2003 1:51 am

fantastic, this is so much fun

if you add to equation, different cuts pitched up and down, and different time stretch algos put on it, it gets really interesting

if only these aspects of the loop position and offset could be controlled by midi... Ableton?

regards

P

arar
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Post by arar » Wed Mar 05, 2003 10:07 am

Ping pong delay can add some good rythmic effects as well..

john jacobs

We want to twist sound lots :)

Post by john jacobs » Sun Apr 27, 2003 1:29 pm

I was interested to note a vote for midi controlled loop editing on this forum.
Just writing here hoping that Abelton coders are reading as this would be a killer feature.
I go to great lengths to aproximate the controls that AKAI had on the good old S612, then dumped them on their next sampler.
You could get it on the Roland MS1, but like Live only in sample edit mode.
So please Abeltonians let us attach midi controllers to every parameter.
And thanks for great software.

Amberience
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Post by Amberience » Thu Sep 25, 2003 6:46 am

Could i maybe make a suggestion....

Get Recycle 2!!

You can slice your loops, export the slices, and assign those to keys on your keyboard(s)

Then you can jam away as you like at any resolution!

Live is meant to be used as an instrument, and this is one good example i feel.

Per Boysen
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Post by Per Boysen » Thu Sep 25, 2003 7:18 pm

Porpy wrote:if only these aspects of the loop position and offset could be controlled by midi... Ableton?

regards

P
Oh yes, that would be awsome! I've been wishing this from samplers for a long time; the ability to midi control start point and loop point. Just think about controlling the looped slice from a midi expression pedal, record a long sample into a clip, set the looping slice to a 32d and then run the loop through the sample with the pedal, backwards and forwards. Especially cool with vocal samples since you get this robotic voice. Can we have that?
Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
http://www.perboysen.com

noisetonepause
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Post by noisetonepause » Thu Sep 25, 2003 9:30 pm

You can set that up in Reaktor in about 5 minutes if you know what you're doing ;)

cbit

Post by cbit » Fri Oct 10, 2003 10:29 pm

just want to add my vote again for midicontrollable loop size/start/end points. and quantize-able effect on/off buttons (none of this is in version 3 eh?)

0zilch0

RE live 3 and this thread

Post by 0zilch0 » Wed Oct 15, 2003 12:34 pm

in regards to Pith Blacks "scrubbing" offset trick. I have'nt messed w/ it yet but I believe that in live 3 you can capture a portion of a track in the arranger as a new clip, offset sequencing and all. So you wouldn't need to render, though it may be more processing intensive.

as far as quantize FX on off, couldn't you cover that w/ clip based FX automation. Can you make audioless clips for FX sequening on the send tracks?

beamsville
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Post by beamsville » Tue Sep 21, 2004 7:14 pm

I'm new to Live and computer music in general... I hope this isn't too stupid.

I think it should be possible to use a configuration as Pitch Black suggests, but instead use MIDI tracks, and the Simpler.

That would let you do the same breakbeat trick, but as well assign MIDI control to the loop length and start point.

I'll try this tonight and let you know if it works.

Either way, I have to say that the thing that most impresses me about Live is that there are usually several different ways to achieve things. In that way it is more like a general tool, and less like a product with some specific features. I'm sure people will do things with Live that Ableton never even thought about. That's something that should make the Ableton's most proud.

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