The other way to really see how a groove is changing your clip is to use the Commit button: In the case of a MIDI clip, this will simply move the notes in your clip to the locations specified by the groove, much the way Live’s Quantize function moves notes to conform to a grid. […]
INSIDE THE GROOVE
To get deeper into understanding Live’s groove engine, you have to be clear on what’s inside the groove files in the Library. Fortunately, that’s really easy. Just grab a groove out of the browser, drag it into the Session view and drop it into a MIDI track. Yup. It’s just a MIDI clip. Take a […]
ADJUSTING GROOVE TIMING
Even though Live offers a whole bunch of different swing feels in the groove library, I generally don’t mess with them. Instead, I mostly use the one called Swing 16-99 – not because it’s the feel that I use in my tracks, but because it’s the most flexible. Allow me to explain. When applied to […]
UNDERSTANDING SWING
A simple and very common use of the groove engine is to apply a shuffle or swing feel to a clip. Above are several variations of a 1/16 note swing. Before getting into using it, let’s define what that means. If you apply 1/16 note swing to a clip, you are delaying every other 1/16 […]
USING GROOVE TO QUANTIZE
The groove engine can do two things: change the timing and dynamics of your clips. The more familiar you are with manually playing with timing and volume variations, the more sense the groove engine will make to you. In this tip, we’ll look at using the groove engine to do the simplest timing change: quantization. […]
PARTIAL QUANTIZATION
OK, I’ve decided that before we get into the nitty gritty of groove, I want to talk a little more about quantization. You’ll see why in a minute. After that, we’ll plunge right into the groove pool. (This will also give you a chance to get into your Speedo. Or bikini. Whatever.) An often overlooked […]
APPLYING GROOVE
OK, I think it’s time to move on from warping for a while. Today, we’ll pick up where we left off, though and discuss another automatic technique for changing the timing of a loop: the groove engine. In this tip, we’ll cover the basics. To apply a groove to a clip, hit the hot-swap button […]
WARPING 101: USING AUTO-WRECK
Most of my favorite groove-tweaking is done manually, but there are a number of automated techniques that are worth knowing as well. It’s easy to overlook the fact that as of Live 8, audio can be quantized just like MIDI. The quantize commands are under the Edit menu. If they are grayed out, click on […]
WARPING 101: WRECK THE GROOVE
It’s all very well and good to warp with the minimum number of warp markers in order to preserve the original timing of a sample, but there are times when that just won’t do. Sometimes you have to subtly (or radically) alter the timing of a piece of audio to get it to sit right […]
WARPING 101: SIZE MATTERS
Sometimes when attempting to warp multiple clips, you’ll see this in the clip view: This is telling you is the main caveat of warping multiple clips simultaneously: they all have to be exactly the same length. The solution is (not surprisingly) to make both clips the same length. This is easy to do, provided that […]
