recommendations for beat slicing

hey there. im rather new at making electronic music. i use ableton. so theres this old school "break" i want to slice up and rearrange and all that. its in rx2 format, so that should be helpful. now, as you can see, this beats in the break are not exactly in time, as indicated by the red arrows. this is the timing i want to keep. as you can see by the blue bars, not every individual beat is on time or of the same length of time

so, as the break is in rx2, i was able inside of live to "slice to new midi track". and so the below image is the result i get from doing that. the individual beats in the break have been successfully shopped in proper locations, as indicated by the green arrows. my problem is when im trying to rearrange some of these beats (the pink arrows), ableton keeps wanting to nudge the beats im sliding around into proper timing, which isnt what i want it to do. if i really try hard, and very carefully and slowly slide the beats around, i can maintain the off timing of the original break, but its takes forever, and is really counter-intuitive. theres definetly no work flow.

years ago i trying messing around with Native Instruments' Kontact. i think i tried out a few of these. i really couldnt figure it out and kind of just gave up. i guess my question is, are these dedicated beat slicing softwares like Kontact, the fastest and most intuitive way to slice up breaks, or is there something in ableton im missing? what do you guys do?

any input here is really appreciated

thanks

i personally think slicing programs are completely useless. just rearrange the wave directly, if youre just creating a new break by moving a couple pieces then slicing it will take more time than if you were to do it yourself in the arrange view.

Just use renoise like you usually do Jody! lol

  On 10/2/2013 at 4:15 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

i personally think slicing programs are completely useless. just rearrange the wave directly, if youre just creating a new break by moving a couple pieces then slicing it will take more time than if you were to do it yourself in the arrange view.

sorry, can you please re-phrase that?

  On 10/2/2013 at 4:35 AM, Jody Dark said:

 

  On 10/2/2013 at 4:15 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

i personally think slicing programs are completely useless. just rearrange the wave directly, if youre just creating a new break by moving a couple pieces then slicing it will take more time than if you were to do it yourself in the arrange view.

 

sorry, can you please re-phrase that?

 

I think what he means is to lay down your beat sample in wave form, then.. ... Like... you know how you can shorten your samples in ableton? You can slice your beats that way. Repeat certain sections, fx, etc...

seems weird. and what if i want to randomly scramble up the sample regions, or save some kind of pattern or what have you? theres got to be a decent plug out there for this. ive messed around with some of the midi effects in Max for live, and thats pretty sweet sometimes. so i wanna be able to do cool stuff like that as well as just rearrange sample regions

  On 10/2/2013 at 3:59 AM, Jody Dark said:

... my problem is when im trying to rearrange some of these beats (the pink arrows), ableton keeps wanting to nudge the beats im sliding around into proper timing, which isnt what i want it to do. if i really try hard, and very carefully and slowly slide the beats around, i can maintain the off timing of the original break, but its takes forever, and is really counter-intuitive. theres definetly no work flow

I don't know live, but aren't there quantization options you can turn on or off? Maybe better asking on the ableton forums.

yeah what you need is basically to turn the grid you're working on from being precisely rigid into agrid that matches the groove of the loop you have there, right?

i dunno, hasn't live9 a function to make groove templates from audio files? maybe you can use this feature for what you want.

You could use Beat Repeat which comes with Live.

  On 10/2/2013 at 6:48 AM, Jody Dark said:

seems weird. and what if i want to randomly scramble up the sample regions, or save some kind of pattern or what have you? theres got to be a decent plug out there for this. ive messed around with some of the midi effects in Max for live, and thats pretty sweet sometimes. so i wanna be able to do cool stuff like that as well as just rearrange sample regions

as part of your newbie training you should really spend a few dozen hours chopping breaks by hand in a DAW and even a wav editor. the break chopping software isn't good for newbs because you gotta learn without the training weels or your music can never truly fly like a free bird. if you don't have enough passion for music to spend some quality time chopping a break by hand then you are in the wrong sub forum buddy!

then if you still not satisfied, there are probably 10,000 tutorials for newbs on youtube on how to chop a break in ableton. this is one of those topics that falls under the "elbow grease" category don't over complicate it

Learn to use Ableton's Warp Markers -

ffwd to about 1:30

  On 10/2/2013 at 4:35 AM, Jody Dark said:

 

  On 10/2/2013 at 4:15 AM, Frankie5fingers said:

i personally think slicing programs are completely useless. just rearrange the wave directly, if youre just creating a new break by moving a couple pieces then slicing it will take more time than if you were to do it yourself in the arrange view.

 

sorry, can you please re-phrase that?

 

not the greatest but it explain what im talking about.

If you have the 9 suite you've got this max4live plugin that works a charm too -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tblZ3EqRE0

Fred solves this issue quite easily while at the same time making an awesome track.

Ableton is good for slicing breaks right in the arrangement window.

after all the automatic beat slicer/hit detectors I've used Recycle is still the most accurate one. Abelton's 'slice to midi' feature is not very good imo.

Turn off quantization or go use Renoise.

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php?/topic/29145-new-tool-27-28-slices-to-pattern/

  On 10/5/2013 at 5:12 AM, Oscar said:

Turn off quantization or go use Renoise.

 

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php?/topic/29145-new-tool-27-28-slices-to-pattern/

  On 10/5/2013 at 5:19 AM, Chris Toffer said:

 

  On 10/5/2013 at 5:12 AM, Oscar said:

Turn off quantization or go use Renoise.

 

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php?/topic/29145-new-tool-27-28-slices-to-pattern/

 

 

I think the threshold portion of the slicing algorithm could be tightened in Renoise, often you have to re-adjust the slices to line up closer to the transients. Though this is an easy job in the excellent sample editor.

I like the way transient detection is handled in Zero-X BeatQuantizer, old slicing software which lets you slice and align multiple waveforms at the same time.

Yeah, it could use some work. Though I still prefer to set the markers myself if I'm using the markers. Cutting along different parts of the transient can really shape the sound of a breakbeat instead of using something like a compressor for some punch, leaves some air in the break. Always gotta do it by hand. That doesn't excuse it, though.

I can't believe someone is posting this thread. Turn off quantization or follow Frankie5fingers advice. Ableton is the best for this type of shit.

Abelton is absolutely not the best for this type of shit, the transiet detection and 'slice to midi' function in Live is sub-par compared to other tools like recycle or this Zero-X beat quantizer. Unfortunately those arent implemented into any DAw. but frankly even Cubase and other DAws I've used have better slicing detection than abelton, they really need to bring that up to date, it's pretty useless imo. Every-time i use it the transient punch (like the most important part of a drum hit) gets diminished, which never happens when i slice a file with Recycle.


not to bash Live even ore but if live is the 'best' program you've used to chop up a break you are sorely missing out on far better, more fluid and functional interfaces for chopping up waveforms.

Live is convenient, easy, immediate but for surgical audio editing and good quality break chopping up I would recommend Cubase, Renoise over it easily