I’d really like to be able to do a few things in the definition mode of the Sample Editor. I’d like your opinions so that I can figure out if I’m doing things efficiently/correctly. Or, maybe I misunderstand some of it. Or, do we have some useful FRs to pass along.
Grid … please, please, please, please … allow all grid settings (ie, 64, dot and trip etc). Display all sub-tick units in the grid bar. And, default the sample editor to the main bars/beats settings from the project windows when opened.
2)I’d like to be able to insert and delete my own warp bars in manual mode. Then have auto “refigure”. I realize you have attempted to find a tempo and sig in auto mode. Let me adjust that please. I have a clip where an 8th is being seen as a 16th. So, I have a dropped last note according to the Auto System. I can’t insert the correct warp bar. However, I can slide all 460 existing bars down 1 beat manually… but who the hell wants to do that.
The Hitpoint detector from the Hitpoints section does a better job of dialing in the transients. Is there some reason you can’t implement that type of detector in the Definition window instead of the Auto “can’t” Adjust? Again, I know the detector has to figure out a time/sig map… but can’t you do that AFTER hit point detection is complete?
Give us the ability to anchor beat lines. So that when we stretch/shrink the grid we can control what segment of the sample we are trying to adjust. I have a track where the Auto Adjust did a great job early, but messed up the middle. If you just stretch the beat bars over a range, that would rock. But, it adjusts for the entire sample even though it’s already perfect for the first 20 or so measures. (am I missing something here?)
Lastly, show the beat bars on the part in the project window. Let me make minor adjustments to individual beats in context of the project. It would echo the SET BEAT POSITION function in the Sample Editor.
Well, I wasn’t trying to get the definition process turned into something it isn’t. I don’t have a great deal of knowledge with Ableton, but I don’t remember them having a facility to deal with a long free tempo audio files with multiple time sigs. I’d like to avoid going off the rails about things that “might” be, and concentrate on how the utility actually works. Which, is actually really well under certain circumstances.
What I’m dealing with are full song length media recordings with complex content. There are multiple tempo’s and multiple key sig changes. You can’t slice because the content is continuous and non-transient in many cases. But, I can easily define my beat points to the map.
The Definition process works well if you have good transients throughout. But, if it misses a data point, it is difficult to fix. So, I’m looking for solutions to that situation.
Again, I’m just trying to focus on the tool I have.
I have 3, 4 minute tracks guitar/piano/flute. It goes from 4/4 to 3/4 to 2/4 back to 3/4 then finishes in 4/4. It starts at about 85bpm, gets as high as 95 and finishes back at 85 but as a rapid 2 measure deceleration. I have extracted a tempo map from the piano. Which worked very well, though not perfect. I corrected the tempo map though and it is now pretty much dead on.
I’d like to fix the guitar and flute in relation to the map I extracted from the piano.
The Auto Adjust did a relatively good job on the guitar. But again, not perfect. It also has quit a few triplet passages that I don’t know how I would be able to fix without being able to use warp. But free warp won’t work to the map very well (at least I can’t figure out how so far). But, I digress.
Auto Adjust found the vast majority of the 1/8th note positions. However, it missed one very early on. It does see it as a 1/16th if I set the detector at that resolution. But, now I have no way to adjust just the one beat in relation to the other 8th notes without pulling each beat one to the left (again many hundreds to do that to). At least I don’t see a way to do it.
I tried to flatten the file resulting file that was close, and then use free warp on it. but that didn’t work at all. Hopefully what I am trying to do is making sense!
The guitar is actually mapped very close to the piano tempo now. 97ish% tagged up great to the extracted tempo map. However, I don’t see how to fix the last 3% and it is basically useless without that last 3%. (that would be the triplet passages and the missed 8th note).
So, obviously the answer is to have the guitarist and the flautist play together with the piano. But, that isn’t the point of the exercise. I am using these tracks that were recorded independently to learn how to utilize this editing capability effectively.
This sort of work unfortunately does require a lot of editing.
If long it may mean roughly working out your tempo / time signature setup and chopping the part into shorter pieces plus grouping anything that can be grouped and applying a cut to the whole group when needed. This means you can apply time-stretch to a particular group and move it all at once to a rough position and then fine tweak it to time where any individual portions within that time-stretched group don’t play ball. Hope that makes sense. Just that way might reduce the number of ops you need to do to get everything into time but it does require sometimes complex forward planning.
Does the part sound “right” without applying time-correction? I have had occasions where I’ve corrected time and when done the musical integrity has been badly affected.
I’m sorry but it’s a long post and I tend to forget some details but is your end purpose to apply some midi instruments on top of this performance?
The purpose is to be able to use the beat markers to map freeform playing to a project tempo map. It may have MIDI, it may not. I want to improve the editing capability of that process, or understand it better.
One good example is guitar players doing repetitive picking patterns. Maybe they got slightly off beat in spots and I just want to clean up the rhythm. I can’t slice because the content is fairly complex. But, the definition process would be perfect and tremendously fast for this with the adjustments I suggested.
The problem is that if Auto detect misses even a single beat marker, it seems you are fairly well screwed.
