If there’s something more ironic than a human being using a computer algorithm to “humanize” a rhythm, I’d like to hear about it. In music, us human beings are primarily valued for our inaccuracy these days. One way that computers try to copy our haphazard ways is with randomization. In the Groove Pool, you’ll notice […]
GROOVING A GROOVE
OK folks. A few more things about groove and then we’ll move on. Earlier I talked about using the Groove Pool to quantize clips, but that’s only a piece of the quantization puzzle. A big reason that the Quantize setting exists is to apply pre-quantization. That means forcing a clip to conform to a strict […]
A FUN FACT ABOUT GROOVE VELOCITY!
Here’s a Fun Fact about groove velocity: when you commit a groove to an audio clip, the groove’s velocity settings get applied to the clip via a volume envelope. So, a groove that looks like this: …will create a volume envelope that looks like this: Factual! Fun!
KNOW YOUR VELOCITY
Just like Timing, there’s also a control in the Groove Pool to determine how much of a groove’s velocity variations are applied to your clips. Remember that for MIDI clips, Velocity is just a standard MIDI parameter, so unless the instrument is configured to map velocity to volume (or some other parameter) messing with this […]
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 […]
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. […]
WARPING 101: TRICKY ACAPELLAS
The number one reason it can be tricky to get an acapella working right is that it has an odd amount of space at the beginning. You might have the overall tempo set correctly, but the vocals don’t land in the right place relative to the other clips you’re playing. Fixing this is similar to […]
WARPING 101: THE NEGATIVE BARS
Regardless of what warping method you use, I usually recommend that you get the Start Marker placed at the first clear downbeat of the audio before you start warping. This means that you’ll be leaving out any intro material from the clip. In order to have that material play back, once the clip is warped, […]
WARPING 101: THE SEG. BPM METHOD
When warping a bunch of audio that I know (or strongly suspect) to be steady-tempo, I’ll often skip dragging around transients and just go straight for the Seg. BPM box. Let’s say I’m warping a bunch of techno and electro. I’m gonna park Live’s master tempo at 128 because this within a couple BPM of […]
WARPING 101: CHECK YOUR WORK BY EAR
Whether you use Auto Warp or one of the other techniques for getting your audio warped, the most important part of the process is knowing how to check your work. In my opinion, the most important method is…by ear. This involves listening to your newly warped audio with Live’s metronome turned on: To check by […]
