Does anyone actually use Ableton's groove templates?

[Kinh]

This is one of the few things in Ableton that makes no sense to me. It's pretty much hit or miss and dependent on what notes it's swinging. Every time I use it I get shitty random results.
Try this:
Play something simple in 8th and 16th notes, quantize it the normal way, then use a swing template to change the timing. The start points of the notes will not change, just the length. Yes, I understand it's only meant to change notes that aren't quantized but that's the concept that makes no sense to me because how can it swing notes if the templates aren't designed for specific grooves. How do you match your groove? You know what I mean?

It should work the same way an arpgegiator swing works; it shifts the notes forward or back slightly from their quantized starting point!

Why cant we just have swing grids and lock the quantizing to them??
Shit!

[jonljacobi]

I use it all that time because I suck at drumming. Works perfectly fine for me and it does change the timing even after quantizing to exactly on the markers. Is this with MIDI or audio? I never quantize audio as my guitar playing is that good...

Not sure what the problem might be for you.

[Gyu]

The start points do change, but you can see the change unless you press 'commit'
I love the groove templates in Live, and I love the fact that you can extract the groove from any audio clip.
Hope that helps

[jonljacobi]

Yeah, the extracting is great. I've gathered grooves from a lot of famous drummers. It's actually an amazing feature if you're looking for realistic MIDI beats. Not as good as a great performance from a great drummer, but I can't afford that.

[jonljacobi]

Also, I lied. Or forgot actually. I do use grooves sometimes on audio to double parts rather than record another. Usually just using the random parameter rather than an actual groove. Now that I think about it, I might try creating a random groove for that.

[mgw38]

Use it constantly for everything. But only in a subtle way to humanize quantized midi.

[mjudge55]

I extracted grooves from TR-909 shuffled midi patterns so I could have better sounding swing when sequencing 909 samples. Worked pretty good.

I have noticed that many of the stock grooves only work in the right context with the right sounds. Obviously a hip hop groove extracted from an 80 bpm drum break might sound stupid applied to a techno rhythm at 135 bpm... or it might sound great. Like most things you have to mess with it, play around with the amount of groove applied, whether it affects note velocity too. Question becomes whether you can get better results more quickly just shifting notes around or playing them by hand and not fully quantizing. Multiple ways to get results.

[Kinh]

I figured it out. The MPC and standard swing ones tend to be the most consistent

[Obsolete236871]

Yeah, the extracting is great. I've gathered grooves from a lot of famous drummers. It's actually an amazing feature if you're looking for realistic MIDI beats. Not as good as a great performance from a great drummer, but I can't afford that.

Would you be willing to share some of those grooves?

[Forgotten]

Use it constantly for everything. But only in a subtle way to humanize quantized midi.

Yep, that’s exactly how I use them, especially if I use anything that generates MIDI, as I rarely want anything that’s rigidly quantized.

[pottering]

You can use the reverse way too, using it to quantize a loose performance. One advantage over the "ctrl+U/ctrl+shift+U" quantize options is that you can can tweak real-time non-destructively (instead of undo/make a change/undo/...).

Also you can drag the Grooves into a MIDI track, they will show as a MIDI Clip, may make it easier to understand what is the underlying "source" timing.