Alias / Linked / Shared / Pooled Clips - are you using them?

[Eclectrophonic]

It's the only way the clips (patterns) behave in FL Studio.

It's not the only way in FL - you can "make unique" and remove the clip from pool

I was telling a colleague at college 8 years ago, it would make a cool feature in Reason (explaining that it would be great if you changed something in one clip and it automatically changed in all duplicated clips), not realising other daw's already did it at the time. It's one of my top 5 most wanted features for Reason along with linked automation, midi chase, track folders and time markers.

Blocks mode already does that (for a vertical slice, mind) and it was introduced 10 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6UFCdD4Lyk

Yeah but that's if you wanna use Blocks mode. Haven't extensively used it. I was talking about linked clips. Also, can you include automation in Blocks? In Reaper you can link the automation and item (clip) together so the automation that is also part of that part is also linked.

[xbitz]

at least Bitwig opens clips inside the same track at the top/bottom of each other (normal/drum editor view)

together with clip looping, it's better than nothing (unfortunately it doesn't work with automation clips but who uses clip-based automation in BWS anyway ... )

[antic604]

...but who uses clip-based automation in BWS anyway

I do. Especially the additive or multiplicative kind.

[rockguycris]

I built a replacement to Alias Clips that does the same thing, but its simply based on Clip names, with a handy floating window for autonaming. The basics are:

Link?! This sounds amazing. Are you offering this to the public? Let me know. I'd also be down to test it for you and catch any bugs

[antic604]

I built a replacement to Alias Clips that does the same thing, but its simply based on Clip names, with a handy floating window for autonaming. The basics are:

Link?! This sounds amazing. Are you offering this to the public? Let me know. I'd also be down to test it for you and catch any bugs

Here's one: http://jgarcia.hungry.jp/project/alias-clips/

[inkwarp]

I've been after something like this for ages !
Has anyone tested this? I'd happily pay $10 as long as it works : )

[apoclypse]

I really like Alias clips but I can see why maybe Ableton and Bitwig don't do that. It can get confusing sometimes in their particular workflow. An example is Maschine which pretty much only worked with Alias patterns until they added a clip feature. You would have to duplicate patterns to get any variety and especially in the early days this would be annoying if you forgot and overwrote something you actually liked. I would do this all the time by mistake. They mitigated that issue some with the Unique function in 2.x but imo that just made the workflow even more complicated.

[antic604]

I really like Alias clips but I can see why maybe Ableton and Bitwig don't do that. It can get confusing sometimes in their particular workflow. An example is Maschine which pretty much only worked with Alias patterns until they added a clip feature. You would have to duplicate patterns to get any variety and especially in the early days this would be annoying if you forgot and overwrote something you actually liked. I would do this all the time by mistake. They mitigated that issue some with the Unique function in 2.x but imo that just made the workflow even more complicated.

It's not confusing when alias is an alternative you can use and not a default. So basically the opposite of Maschine or FL Studio.

[xbitz]

^^^ and S1 have variations too

which is per pattern clip instance based https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... rn-editing

[Dalle]

For my workflow I don’t see a situation where creating and managing alias clips would be more efficient than just copying and pasting when needed (which isn’t often).

[rockguycris]

I built a replacement to Alias Clips that does the same thing, but its simply based on Clip names, with a handy floating window for autonaming. The basics are:

Link?! This sounds amazing. Are you offering this to the public? Let me know. I'd also be down to test it for you and catch any bugs

Here's one: http://jgarcia.hungry.jp/project/alias-clips/

The UI looks different than the one shown by @eclipxe. I also knew about this one, but I think the maker sais it doesn't work in Live 11 and that he's not planning on supporting it anymore.

[Biscotto]

In BWS you can at least Ctrl Click the Duplicate Clips you need (MIDI in this case) anywhere in the Arranger (from multiple tracks) and then in Editing Layer Mode make that changes you need to see in all those Clips (they overlap perfectly) and if you need, change their color as well.

Not ideal but for small projects/Sketches it's no bad. It's not that tedious....

In Ableton it's not as easy as above.

[antic604]

In BWS you can at least Ctrl Click the Duplicate Clips you need (MIDI in this case) anywhere in the Arranger (from multiple tracks) and then in Editing Layer Mode make that changes you need to see in all those Clips (they overlap perfectly) and if you need, change their color as well.

Not ideal but for small projects/Sketches it's no bad. It's not that tedious...

I hope devs don't read it and think that this is a valid workaround

The whole point of alias clips is NOT having to select all of them to alter them

[Biscotto]

In BWS you can at least Ctrl Click the Duplicate Clips you need (MIDI in this case) anywhere in the Arranger (from multiple tracks) and then in Editing Layer Mode make that changes you need to see in all those Clips (they overlap perfectly) and if you need, change their color as well.

Not ideal but for small projects/Sketches it's no bad. It's not that tedious...

I hope devs don't read it and think that this is a valid workaround

The whole point of alias clips is NOT having to select all of them to alter them

I use them (Alias) quite rarely for my type of music, but it seems to be a desperate call from BW and Live users.
The above it's not a workaround but Band-Aid for users like me that need that feature during concept creation.

I wonder if this is a call for lack of Water since the faucet was closed but no one was thirsty before that moment...

[apoclypse]

I really like Alias clips but I can see why maybe Ableton and Bitwig don't do that. It can get confusing sometimes in their particular workflow. An example is Maschine which pretty much only worked with Alias patterns until they added a clip feature. You would have to duplicate patterns to get any variety and especially in the early days this would be annoying if you forgot and overwrote something you actually liked. I would do this all the time by mistake. They mitigated that issue some with the Unique function in 2.x but imo that just made the workflow even more complicated.

It's not confusing when alias is an alternative you can use and not a default. So basically the opposite of Maschine or FL Studio.

Right but the problem is a design one. I'm not saying Alias clips wouldn't be useful I'm saying that it can be confusing if not implemented well. Logic has alias clips and a clip launcher, yet they chose not to support alias clips in the clip launcher. So there has to be a reason for these decisions. You can't just add things without thinking what the workflow may be for users and I gave an example of where imo that can fail or break a workflow.

If Scenes in Ableton-like DAWs worked like they do in hardware it would make more sense. Maschine's Ideas view or the MC707/101s sequencer is probably closer to what I mean. Scenes in Ableton-like DAWs are a collection of clips. Scenes in the MC707/101 is a collection of references to clips. There is a difference there. For example in Ableton Scene 1 would consist of all the clips I want to play on that scene. If I have clips that I want Scene 1 to launch I have to copy those clips to the scene 1 area. In Maschine Ideas view or the MC, its actually, scene 1: plays pattern 3 on track 1, pattern 5 on track 2, pattern 4 on track 3 etc. Any Scene can play any pattern in a track without me having to copy that clip to the Scene. It's referencing the pattern.

Now if all you are talking about is Alias clips in the arrange view then sure I 100% agree it should be there (like I said Logic has that), however I'm sure what people want is Alias clips in the session view as well the arrange view and given almost all Ableton like DAWs work the same I'm wondering if there is a limitation somewhere that we don't know about.