You’ve waited for this: the recording, the warping, the editing. What’s it all for? In this chapter we are going to look at how to use Live like an alchemist, manipulating elements to change clips—bending them to your every whim! Now that you have the tools to tighten up performances, let’s look at the techniques!
A Word of Caution
There are lots of ways to improve a recording. Sometimes it’s the quality of the recording itself that is lacking. It can be the quality of the instrument, or the quality of the equipment used to record it. Problems can lie in the recording techniques, but oftentimes they can be a result of the arrangement itself. Certainly, many recordings have been compromised by a wrong note (we used to call them clams) or by a vocalist who’s pitch may waver.
But few things can compare with the havoc unleashed by poor timing. As a young musician, I used to have a teacher who told me “You can play almost any note you want, so long as you play it in time”. It may be hard to believe, but I’ve found a lot of truth in those words.
When it comes to understanding the anatomy of a well-finessed performance, another surprising component is dynamics. In fact, it is the interplay between well timed notes and the force with which those notes are played that often creates magic.
When we talk about a well timed note it’s important to consider both ends of the spectrum. On one side, an out-of-time note can be disastrous. But equally devastating (although not as glaringly obvious) are notes that are too metronomic. Such robotic sounding performances are often perceived as being lifeless. We want to be in the sweet spot. That’s where our timing and dynamic inflection is consistent, purposeful, and human. There is a word for it: musical.
Quantization
On one side of the equation is quantization. Don’t let our earlier comments scare you. Quantization may be robotic at times, but it is definitely useful. If you recall, we met quantizing in Recording Basics and Recording: Punching, Overdubs, and Looping. Quantizing moves notes so that they fall precisely on beat (or sub-divisions of beats). Quantizing is the spellchecking and grammar checking of timing. You could think of it as Autotune ™ for rhythm.
Any selected note or group of notes can be nudged so that they land on beats by invoking the quantize function from the Edit menu or by right-clicking the notes in question. If this value is set to coarsely, the notes will be lumped together and essential rhythmic detail will be lost and notes superimposed on top of one another. If it’s set to finely, notes risk being misinterpreted; rather than ending up precisely where intended, they’ll be moved halfway between where they started and where they should go.
Quantizing notes is as simple as selecting a group of notes and choosing Quantize from either the contextual menu (right-click) or from Live’s Edit menu. This will immediately apply the most recent quantization settings. Alternatively, choose Quantize Settings from either of these menus and choose your preferred settings from the dialogue box that follows.
Animated demonstration of quantizing MIDI notes — selecting and applying quantization to snap them to grid positions.
In case you were wondering, quantizing works for both MIDI and audio (as long as warp is engaged).
Animated demonstration of quantizing audio clips (with warp engaged), snapping transients to grid positions.
Quantize To
This is the main quantization setting. It is responsible for setting the resolution value for quantizing notes. Setting this value properly is essential. From a musical standpoint, you might consider tapping out whole measures, then half measures, followed by quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, etc. until you reach the point where none of your target notes fall in the cracks between your tapping. That’s the resolution you are going to want. A sixteenth note is probably a good place to start.
Adjust Notes
This setting allows you to change both the note start (arguably, this is the more important setting by far) as well as the note’s end.
Amount
This is a very useful setting. At 100%, this will move the note all the way to the specified resolution defined in the Quantize To field. But at lower values, it will only push the note part of the way there. This is an effective way to retain some of the feel of the original performance.
One drawback to quantizing in the manner described above is that once it is done, you must undo *⌘ + Z* should you change your mind. This makes it sort of destructive. You may remember the technique we taught you in Recording: Punching, Overdubs, and Looping, in which we enabled Record Quantization for newly recorded material. Thinking back to that behavior, you will remark that this created an additional undo step: undoing the quantization and then undoing the recording itself. This should make more sense now.
But if you were to quantize a clip and then return to undo that quantization after having worked for several minutes, you’d quickly discover that ship had sailed. Not to worry.
Meet Grooves!
Grooves
As with quantizing, grooves allow you to adjust the timing of MIDI and audio clips. But unlike quantization, grooves can be applied, removed, and changed at any time. Perhaps more importantly, grooves open up a infinitely more nuanced range of rhythmic adjustment. This is primarily because grooves are generated from pre-existing musical content that has been analyzed for both its subtle timing fingerprint as well as the velocity emphasis of each and every beat.
You can create your own grooves from anything you have imported or recorded, or you can use Live’s impressive range of grooves, found in the Browser under the Packs/Core Library/Swing and Groove category.
In addition to vanilla Quantize flavors such as 4, 8, 16, and T (triplet) variations, Live’s grooves include drum loops, imbued with musical mojo as well as grooves imported from all sorts of classic drum machines and even from other DAWs. This is also where you will go to apply swing and shuffle feels if needed.
Using a groove is as simple as dragging it into the Groove Pool where it becomes available to any clip in your Set.
Animated demonstration of dragging a groove template into the Groove Pool and applying it to a clip.
Grooves can be applied to clips by dragging them from the groove pool on to the clip itself. But once loaded into the groove pool, they can also be selected (or hot-swapped) from the groove menu in the clip detail.
Animated demonstration of adjusting groove parameters and hot-swapping grooves from the clip detail view.
Groove Settings
Base
This simply chooses the resolution that the groove works with. Everything from a 1/4 to 1/32 of a bar can be used here. Most people will be happy using 1/16, and this setting works best with drum patterns. Saying that, every situation is different so experiment with them all.
Quantize
Regardless of which groove you are using this value will apply quantization to your part based on the resolution you are using. So if you are set to 1/16th this will apply quantization to this value. Using this is a great way to tidy up your part before you apply any groove.
Timing
This is the parameter that actually applies the groove specific data and will have a different effect depending on which groove template you have loaded.
Random
This will introduce some random movements to the notes in your sequence, this is really useful for humanizing very static or rigid performances.
Velocity
Turning this value up will introduce alterations to the velocities of your notes and this will be synced with the specific groove. So pushed or pulled notes will either be louder or quieter.
Commit
Once applied to a clip, grooves may be adjusted with even finer detail than available in the quantize menu. All this happens non-destructively and can be removed at any time. Should you wish to bake-in the timing, writing it to the file, you may commit it. In the case of audio however, this is still only semi-permeant as the warping can still be removed.
Rolling Your Own Grooves
This is similarly easy. Just drag a clip into the groove pool and it will be analyzed and available for other clips. You may also do this by right-clicking a clip and selecting Extract Groove… Either way the new groove will show up, ready to be renamed, shared, used, and abused!
More Than Just Timing… Velocity!
One lovely feature of grooves in Live is that grooves also impart velocity information onto clips. That’s sort of a big deal. As we mentioned, much of the finesse of a musical performance lies not only in the timing, but in the articulation and emphasis of each beat. Live’s ability to impart the feel of one clip onto another is made far more compelling because it also includes this emphasis. Note that this is independently adjustable from within the groove velocity slider. It can even be set to negative values (meaning that it applies the opposite — loud becomes soft, etc.).
This is also a time to mention that fine-tuning the velocity component of a clip is an extremely effective way of giving it that extra little something that makes a good loop into a great one!
Handy Velocity Editing Shortcuts
Animated demonstration of velocity editing shortcuts — Cmd-drawing ramps, evening out velocities, and Cmd-dragging notes to adjust velocity.
- By holding
⌘, you can draw a velocity ramp for selected notes in the velocity editor. - While holding
⌘, drag to the top value to make everything even. ⌘dragging a note up and down (directly — not in the velocity editor) allows you to adjust its velocity from the piano roll.
Search This Guide
This Course
- Welcome!
- Workflow and Glossary
- 1. An Overview of Live
- 2. Topology and Navigation Basics
- 3. Getting Stuff In There
- 4. Playback: Session, Scenes, and Arrangement
- 5. Recording Basics
- 6. Recording: Punching, Overdubs, and Looping
- 7. Clip Editing: The Basics
- 8. Warping
- 9. Quantize and Groove: Finessing Performances
- 10. Housekeeping
- 11. Instrument Basics
- 12. Synthesis
- 13. Sampling
- 14. Plug-in Basics
- 15. Racks and Chains
- 16. Audio to MIDI
- 17. Slicing Samples
- 18. Working With Effects
- 19. Effects: Specialized
- 20. MIDI Mapping, Key-Mapping, and Controllers
- 21. Automation and Advanced Arrangement Concepts
- 22. Advanced Session
- 23. MIDI Effects
- 24. Live Performance
- 27. Sources and Further Reading
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