Avid Protools joining the clip launching party with 2023.9 update!

[dellboy]

Can anyone explain to an ignoramus (me) what "clip launching" is exactly? Based on the video it just looks like a way to trigger samples? Is it just a fancy name for that or is there more to it? Thanks.

Personally, I never launch third party clips. All my clips are recorded live by my good self. So I will set up an instrument - lets say bass, press go and start playing - after 4 bars stop, and I have a 4 bar loop, or "clip". Go to the next track and select piano and hit play, and play along with the bass clip. The great thing about this way of working is that the bass will keep looping forever and the piano can be as many bars long as you like. You can go on like this building up a whole song with different instruments and varying amounts of bars for each track. Of course, you can do something similar in a linear DAW by duplicating and removing bars but this way is more spontaneous.

[whyterabbyt]

Personally, I never launch third party clips. All my clips are recorded live by my good self. S

That's a particularly useful point to make. There's a propensity for some to behave as though 'clips' is intrinsically synonymous with 'premade sample loops as a shortcut'.

[eerie_audio]

For me, electronic music isn't primarily about clip launching.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Presonus would implement it in Studio One soon. Maybe with Studio One 7.

Just bringing attention to the lack of usefulness of their Show Page in this day and age, instead of deciding to go with modern times and what's currently being used more often for electronic music.

[elxsound]

Can anyone explain to an ignoramus (me) what "clip launching" is exactly? Based on the video it just looks like a way to trigger samples? Is it just a fancy name for that or is there more to it? Thanks.

It really depends on the implementation, but in Live, for example, there's quite a bit more. Its a wee bit more 'metasample' maybe because you could be triggering samplers.
So, clips can be audio or MIDI, looped or oneshots, tempo-matched and sync'd to the project or not, quantized or not, they can include a sort of sequencing control over what clip gets triggered next (aka 'Follow Actions'), and can be triggered individually or as entire 'rows' of clips together.
Also, in Live, the 'clip' launching ('Session View') is actually independent of and exclusive from the timeline ('Arrangement View'); its the same set of tracks but each is either in clip mode or linear timeline mode (and you can switch them, of course), though you can record your 'performance' of clips into the timeline, or drag stuff from the timeline in as clips.

The main point, is performance of those clips. Its not baked into a timeline and fixed,(though you can record the results into the timeline) You can have interactive live control over dropping in or out lines or percussion or whatever, but also your whole intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. You can build sequences of clips to play with randomisation in them, then improvise the playing of others.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/launching-clips/

And yes, some of that you could do with a sampler. Its sort of an evolution of a kind of phrase sampling approach into a full method of construction/composition. But the seamlessness of it as DAW functionality makes it more than that. Cliche is that its only for very tempo-drive, repetitive stuff, but that's kind of a superficial view, so personally I think its actually quite useful on the other extreme, too. Quite simply, the notion is 'DAW as an instrument'

(I'd also say that I think its an interesting basis for 'composing' any interactive or live audio, including things like games, (where looped and layered triggered clips are used for effects and music, being that that kind of audio playback is baked into the game engine/middleware functionality) or even theatre audio. )

Not sure how I missed the Midi/instrument part. I pretty much work completely out of Live and if I didn’t use it this way, maybe I shouldn’t have bought an expensive Push 3!

Thanks whyterabbyt

I need to work on getting more sleep, or discover the joys of coffee or drugs.

[seangm]

Can anyone explain to an ignoramus (me) what "clip launching" is exactly? Based on the video it just looks like a way to trigger samples? Is it just a fancy name for that or is there more to it? Thanks.

It really depends on the implementation, but in Live, for example, there's quite a bit more. Its a wee bit more 'metasample' maybe because you could be triggering samplers.
So, clips can be audio or MIDI, looped or oneshots, tempo-matched and sync'd to the project or not, quantized or not, they can include a sort of sequencing control over what clip gets triggered next (aka 'Follow Actions'), and can be triggered individually or as entire 'rows' of clips together.
Also, in Live, the 'clip' launching ('Session View') is actually independent of and exclusive from the timeline ('Arrangement View'); its the same set of tracks but each is either in clip mode or linear timeline mode (and you can switch them, of course), though you can record your 'performance' of clips into the timeline, or drag stuff from the timeline in as clips.

The main point, is performance of those clips. Its not baked into a timeline and fixed,(though you can record the results into the timeline) You can have interactive live control over dropping in or out lines or percussion or whatever, but also your whole intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc. You can build sequences of clips to play with randomisation in them, then improvise the playing of others.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/launching-clips/

And yes, some of that you could do with a sampler. Its sort of an evolution of a kind of phrase sampling approach into a full method of construction/composition. But the seamlessness of it as DAW functionality makes it more than that. Cliche is that its only for very tempo-drive, repetitive stuff, but that's kind of a superficial view, so personally I think its actually quite useful on the other extreme, too. Quite simply, the notion is 'DAW as an instrument'

(I'd also say that I think its an interesting basis for 'composing' any interactive or live audio, including things like games, (where looped and layered triggered clips are used for effects and music, being that that kind of audio playback is baked into the game engine/middleware functionality) or even theatre audio. )

Thanks. The live playing thing makes sense, you can take out or add in different loops on the fly.

[replicant X]

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