OT: Basic Ableton Live Question

Lady_App_titude

I know this is OT, but there must be some Ableton users out there...

I have a 4-bar drum loop that is 95 bpm. But when I drag it into Ableton I can't seem to get it to recognize that it is 4 bars. I have Ableton set to 95 bpm and 4 bars, thus:

But it seems to only recognize 1-bar loops.

The only way I can get things to work is to first chop up the 4-bar loop into 1-bar segments before importing it into Ableton.

How can I get Ableton to see it as a 4-bar loop?

I'm sure this is super basic. But this is the first time in years I've opened up Ableton.

Thanks!

michael_m

Turn off warping for the clip and manually stretch it to the correct length. You can then consolidate the clip if you want it to stay fixed at that length.

tyslothrop1

I think the label that says 4 bars is the length of a count in, when recording. Just put your loop in one of the cells and double-click it. If it's cleanly cut and live doesn't recognize it's 4 barsu se the X2 or :2 buttons to get there.

Tarekith

That 4 bars setting is for the launch quantization of clips, you probably want that at one bar.

Set a warp marker at the beginning of the very first beat, then right click on it and choose Warp From Here Straight. Does that work?

Lady_App_titude

Is there a way to set the number of bars for a clip cell?

tyslothrop1

That would be the Startmarker and the loop brackets over the waveform, once you doubleclicked the cell. If the length is not, what you had in mind and your loop is cut nicely, it should be either an even division or multiple. In that case you can use the little buttons left of the waveform, that say :2 and x2, to double or half the length.

cokomairena

@Lady_App_titude said:
Is there a way to set the number of bars for a clip cell?

is automatic, see a video on warping to understand or read the help is super useful!

cokomairena

@tyslothrop1 said:
That would be the Startmarker and the loop brackets over the waveform, once you doubleclicked the cell. If the length is not, what you had in mind and your loop is cut nicely, it should be either an even division or multiple. In that case you can use the little buttons left of the waveform, that say :2 and x2, to double or half the length.

Tarekith

Strizbiz

The length of clips are in this edit window

Lady_App_titude

OK, so it seems the answer lies here in this "Seg. bpm" setting. Setting this to 95 bpm fixed everything. I don't know why but for some reason Live did not correctly pick up 95 bpm automatically and had it set to something like 63.4 bpm. Once I manually changed it to 95, all was well. The other option would be to turn off Warping, but that would leave less flexibility.

Thanks everyone!

Lady_App_titude

,

Strizbiz

@Lady_App_titude said:

@Strizbiz said:

The length of clips are in this edit window

Thanks. How does one show that window?

Click on the clip you want to edit and it will show it in the bottom edit window

Lady_App_titude

@Strizbiz said:

Click on the clip you want to edit and it will show it in the bottom edit window

Thanks! I had already figured it out, but this forum apparently won't allow you to delete comments, only edit them.

Ha! Sorry. I use Ableton so seldom that I have to relearn it all over every time I need to do some basic thing!

Strizbiz

@Lady_App_titude said:

@Strizbiz said:

Click on the clip you want to edit and it will show it in the bottom edit window

Thanks! I had already figured it out, but this forum apparently won't allow you to delete comments, only edit them.

Ha! Sorry. I use Ableton so seldom that I have to relearn it all over every time I need to do some basic thing!

Cool, glad you worked it out, I’m no stranger to having to relearn things lol, luckily with Ableton I did buy a Push 2 so it makes life easier with a lot of stuff

McD

The universe just shifted on its axis… @Lady_App_titude has opened a new DAW. “All Things Must Pass”.
I hope this leads to more music in the true Babz voice of quality.

This really is a safe place for questions because of the community.

Lady_App_titude

@McD said:
The universe just shifted on its axis… @Lady_App_titude has opened a new DAW. “All Things Must Pass”.
I hope this leads to more music in the true Babz voice of quality.

This really is a safe place for questions because of the community.

Ha! I've actually had a copy of Ableton Live Suite for at least 5 years. Also have Reason on my machine (but mainly just use it for the instruments.) AND I even have an ancient copy of Cubase that I have running on a Win 7 Dell PC that I dumpster-dived out of a church parking lot. I have dabbled in many a DAW for various reasons over the years. In this case, I fired up Ableton because it has an excellent command that allows you to turn a stereo audio Drum Loop into MIDI. It automagically detects kick, snare, hi hat, etc. from the stereo audio and assigns them to separate MIDI notes. Even detects the velocity. Then I just export it as a MIDI file for use with a drum instrument in DP. I've done this several times over the years. I don't know of an app that does this particular thing better. Even Melodyne can't do this.

McD

@Lady_App_titude said:

@McD said:
The universe just shifted on its axis… @Lady_App_titude has opened a new DAW. “All Things Must Pass”.
I hope this leads to more music in the true Babz voice of quality.

This really is a safe place for questions because of the community.

Ha! I've actually had Ableton for at least 5 years.

I’m glad you detected some well intended humor in my comment. I’ve heard of the magical potions that can be conjured with
Ableton.

I recall that you used to write about musical technology for magazines so you know how to climb that hill called the learning curve to unearth value.

We seem to be at the stage of IOS development where we have all the requisite tools and are only left with excuses for not producing great works. Could be time for me to switch to the visual arts.