Ableton Forum

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

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!!!

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.

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?

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

Nice tip pitchblack!

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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?)

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?

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.