Ableton - Moldoveresque Beatjuggling.....
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  1. #1
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    Default Ableton - Moldoveresque Beatjuggling.....

    Hi Guys,

    Thought i'd share this with you here as i know a few of you are on Ableton, the project below has taken me a while to get my head round and to be honest has stopped me getting into Bento's smart mixer so thats next on my list....

    Anyway, with testing the Beta of Live 8 my reaktor ensemble started crashing my sets so i started to look at how i could recreate the effects within CLists Beatlookup with the native effects of Ableton. I use a Korg PAdKontrol that's switched into native mode and configured by an application for the Mac called Farmpad however this isn't essential to getting the setup working.

    Within Beatlookup i'd modified things so that whilst the buffer constantly records audio i could press a single button and grab just two bars of it, then with the 16 pads of my Padkontrol i could play from any 16th of the sample i'd recorded giving me some wicked glitchy type stuff when playing fidget style house, the triggering from the pads was also quantized so that the audio sounded clean and in addition if i left the pad held down it would play up a beats worth of audio......

    So to get this working in Ableton is a little complex but after test driving it this weekend IMHO the results are worth it!

    Right then..... First you'll need bomes or equivalent keystroke convertor, then a midi patchbay type affair, and finally an IAC bus (someone fill me in on what PC users will need to have to replace this for Windows)

    Done this step by step so sorry if it's a little basic...

    1. Create four Audio Tracks like so... Route the signal in from whatever you want your source material to be.....



    2. Map a Key to the Arm and Speaker on Buttons...




    3. Midi Map across the Tracks corresponding to the pads on your controller....



    4 Add a Midi Track and place an Exterbnal Instrument Plug into it setting the output to an IAC bus.....



    5 Using Midi Patchbay merge the IAC BUs with the standard output of your Midi Controller (in my case my padKontrol is already routed into Farmpad as i use it in native mode with a heavily modified config file)



    6 Record two clips that are two bars long (this is as long as i've done so far but it's easy enough to make it as long or short as you want....


  2. #2
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    7 Now comes the fiddly bit, in the first clip you'll need to select the envelope for the midi message that corresponds to the midi mapping you gave to clip number 1, in my case that was Control 60 on channel 5....



    8 Then move along the clip and fire the second clip after an 1/8th of a beat, i tried originally on half beats but you get a much better result as each row of pads on the padkontrol correspond to a whole beats so you can easily work out patterns when mashing it up!



    9, 10, 11..... Continue doing this until your record clip is firing off the bank of 8 clips mapped into your Audio Tracks......

    12 I have then mapped my Knob 1 assign button to Launch my Record clip and at the same time i have a Bomes script which firstly changes the global launch to 16ths and then keystroke translator firing out "A" which turns on the speakers of the tracks and arms them.....

    13 You'll see in the Midi track (Looper Control) screenshot that i have no input from any Midi device, as i now launch my Record clip Ableton will cycle through the 8 clip slots recording effectively 1 beat of audio into each slot... This should leave things looking like....



    14 If your happy just recording the two bars and then mashing things up then great, i wanted my recorded loop to take over things so i have a follow action on the record clip to launch the Loop clip below after two bars, the Loop clip is virtually identical to the Record clip, it differs in that the Midi envelopes are only open for an 8th of a beat so there is no build up of clips playing on top of each other....



    15 My recorded clips monitors are set to off but output to an Audio channel set to in this channel simply sums together all the outputs, i tried running the four channels as a group in the Beta of 8 but i just didn't get the Midi response times that i got when i ran them as seperate channels in their own right.....

    16 I placed a gate on the original source channel and sidechained it's input from the output of my Recorded Clips Tracks...



    Now when your jamming firing clips it cuts out the original source signal leaving it sounding clean, of course if you want the original source to come back in over your mashing then simply midi map a knob to the attenuation of the gate, when it's turned up to 0.00db then the gate is bypassed.....


    I'll cover off how to delete the clips with one button in a nother post if anyones interested, it's simply the same trick as above but instead you fire a midi message toturn off the speaker and unarm the track, then in a cycle you need to send a midi message which launches the clip as before but whilst it's still playing send another message that correspond to the midi mapping you gave to the track status display, this will then change the view to that of the clips audio. With this in focus your third midi message fires and is converted by bomes to a keystroke in deleting the clip, i run the cycle three times as sometimes the odd clip isn't deleted.......

    The below should make it easier for midi patchbay....

    http://notahat.com/midi_patchbay

    I forgot to say that you'll need to go into Abletons preferences and set the launch option for all new clips to gate, otherwise as each clip is created as a loop, triggering it will just see it run round and round and conflict with other clips as you launch them......

    Once you've figured the above the next thing to do is to create 16 individual Midi Clips that solely launch a single midi clip for a 16th of a bar, place them below each other in order through one to 16 and place follow actions so that they cycle through.....

    Set all of these clips launch action to repeat and the quantize option to global...... Then map a seperate scene on your controller to trigger these clips..... Voila to the best of my knowledge Monome stylee stuff????

    A third bank of pads on my padkontrol is dedicated to four tracks of Dummy Clips, the audio from my masher passes through each of the four tracks and allow me to trigger some nasty filter sweeps whilst beat repeating stutter like amongst other things...... As time goes by i'll probably add more and more clips so that i dont end up having the same effects each time, plus i can see some follow on action business going on to randomize them as well...

    Cheers
    D



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    This sounds pretty cool, had to skim the article, will definitely check this out when I am getting on my flight later today. Maybe a quick list of advantages (over just using cue's in traktor) ie. gate control of orig. source and disadvantages would be helpful at the top of this post. It would also help to organize what works and what doesn't work well with this system, so as to pave the road for potential improvements.

    Oh and Bento smart mixer ftw!
    Last edited by mpetersen3; 03-11-2009 at 10:07 AM.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by mpetersen3 View Post
    This sounds pretty cool, had to skim the article, will definitely check this out when I am getting on my flight later today. Maybe a quick list of advantages (over just using cue's in traktor) ie. gate control of orig. source would be helpful at the top of this post.
    Sorry this post assumes that you've already seen the advantages of using Ableton over Traktor..... I'm not saying that one is better than the other just that Ableton would be your preference, in fact the above allows you to record up to 16 cues at any point in the song and recall them at will.....

    Cheers
    D

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    Nice posts dude You should provide the ableton live file too so people can have a look at whats going on. Im sure people would love to hear a walkthough of how your also deleting clips.

    Edit: Oh for pc go get Midi Yoke Junction emulated midi drivers - http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm
    Last edited by BentoSan; 03-11-2009 at 10:27 AM.

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    is it just me who cant read someof the text in this as its gone off the edge of teh page?

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    Quote Originally Posted by S4racen View Post
    Sorry this post assumes that you've already seen the advantages of using Ableton over Traktor..... I'm not saying that one is better than the other just that Ableton would be your preference, in fact the above allows you to record up to 16 cues at any point in the song and recall them at will.....

    Cheers
    D
    See my edited post above I meant theoretical disadvantages/advantages of the system (your theoretical system) not your Ableton vs. Traktor's cue juggling. My thinking on that comment was that it would be helpful to list advantages/disadvantages of the system from a perspective of refining it, see the post you quoted again for best clarification of what I mean. Sorry if I am being a bit confusing, just always pressed for time typing posts at work. Also thanks alot for sharing your setup, really appreciate it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterMoleyMole View Post
    is it just me who cant read someof the text in this as its gone off the edge of teh page?
    Pretty sure that is due to the pics in the text of the orig post exceeding the width and changing the margins, highlight the text and you can see it ok.

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    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mpetersen3 View Post
    Pretty sure that is due to the pics in the text of the orig post exceeding the width and changing the margins, highlight the text and you can see it ok.
    Yup we are going to apply to a hack to the forum templates that auto resizes the picture so its impossible to do this in the future.

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by mpetersen3 View Post
    Pretty sure that is due to the pics in the text of the orig post exceeding the width and changing the margins, highlight the text and you can see it ok.
    Good Caaall

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