Beatslicing for non-electronica/dance/hip hop/etc.

[Todd24]

OT question. How do you do screen grabs? Ive got Windows XP.

[jens]

OT question. How do you do screen grabs? Ive got Windows XP.

crtl+print

then you only have to paste it into any graphics-software (MS Paint which is included in XP)

[clueless]

or just "Print Screen" then paste

or alt+Print Screen to copy only the active window

[IIRs]

Any tips for taking an 80 bpm loop and going up to 120? I tried this last night and the clips overlapped quite a bit

Overlapping with fades:



Joined together:



Enveloped in various ways:







Heres a cool one I only just thought of: shorten the slices dramaticaly and use the looping feature for a granular type effect:



You can also use looping to create machine-gun snare rolls:



..and of course you can mess with the pitch (even of a selection of slices) or replace slices with single hits etc..

Heres how it all sounds:

Original 105 BPM

170 BPM, various versions

[ModuLR]

Tho not automatic, this kinda stuff has always been something easily accomplished in Tracktion and once you've spent a few minutes slicing... you can just render you new loop and use it as audio.. or load it up in the sampler. You can overlay a midi clip right over the audio.. draw out your groove. Just tons of cool stuff. Another wonderful thing that isn't really permited with a slicer, is that you can slip the audio within the slice which is very cool stuff for rearranging audio without necessarily being bound to the slice... allowing much more freedom... and of course leaving the snap on while slipping will slip to snap.. so you can rearrange parts without ever moving them.

[warp x]

nice stuff guys, looks like I'll be going back to Tracktion for the weekend

[chardin]

platinumears, this has been some good schooling. The pictures really helped. I did some homework tonight with good results. Now, for more questions...

1. Is there an easy way to get the sliced clips to alternate colors? That looks very handy to see the boundaries of overlapping clips.

2. How did you get the sliced clips to be named in sequential numbers? All of mine ended up being called blurfl over and over. (Not really blurfl, but you get the idea.)

3. Is there an easy way to get all the fade in/out curves to be the same for all the clips? I tried using the "select clips" button but then the "fade curves" buttons went away.

There is some serious power in this beat slicing business. Your 170 bpm example was wild! I want to try this "effect" on a guitar riff and see what happens.

Many thanks again to all the contributors. Are there any other gems like this thread? The adbe.org tutorials look promising but are offline for a while.

[Breakpete]

As an alternative to Tracktions manual slicing, I think Recycle has a "fill gaps" option. Possibly Zero-X BeatCreator too, but I'm not sure.

I have to say though, I think manual slicing is good fun. It feels like I'm putting my own stamp on a loop that I didn't make in the first place.

I've sometimes created breaks from scratch in tracktion by importing single shot audio clips and arranging them into a loop. E.g. hats in one track, kick and snare in another. Then I just select the tracks and render to a file.

edit: spelling.

[IIRs]

1. Is there an easy way to get the sliced clips to alternate colors? That looks very handy to see the boundaries of overlapping clips.

<CNTRL> click every other slice (to select them all) and change their colours in one go.

2. How did you get the sliced clips to be named in sequential numbers?

I named them manually I'm afraid. Probably wouldn't have bothered if I wasn't taking screenshots..

3. Is there an easy way to get all the fade in/out curves to be the same for all the clips?

Don't think so.. would be handy though!

[birrbits]

As an alternative to Tracktions manual slicing, I think Recycle has a "fill gaps" option. Possibly Zero-X BeatCreator too, but I'm not sure.

Yep it does, BC calls it 'generate tail'

[rockstar_not]

One step that I'm not getting - is how to group the individual clips, after shifting the tempo, to copy that group of loops as a groove to be repeated over x number of bars. Is there a way to consolidate clips into a grouping without going through a render procedure? If so, do you just treat that group like a single clip and tell T to loop it x times?

Chardin posted a question about how to quickly cross-fade overlapping loops.

I saw this recently in a ProTools demo done by Digidesign. It was quite cool - put this little cross fade window over the overlapping section, pick your fade type (linear, log, exponential, etc.) and presto, crossfade completed. The funny thing about the demo was that it started about 45 minutes late. The dude's MAC took a crap right there; I mean a full-on dump with no light on, and he had to borrow a MAC from the Sweetwater music rep and load his whole demo with all of his plugs, etc. onto the Sweetwater rep's computer.

To those who say Macs never fail. I saw it live and in person to one of the Digidesign gurus. It happened at the Holiday Inn in Southfield, MI on November 22, 2004. It was like that Apple commercial from the mid 90's that was directly by Ridley Scott - you know, the one where a guy is giving a presentation on a PC, then it dumps and he gets all the tips for how to fix it from the audience (press ctrl-alt-delete, etc.) Except this was happening to a Digidesign geek on a Mac, no less.

-Scott

[IIRs]

One step that I'm not getting - is how to group the individual clips, after shifting the tempo, to copy that group of loops as a groove to be repeated over x number of bars. Is there a way to consolidate clips into a grouping without going through a render procedure?

You've found the major weakness! This is one of the things I think needs to be in T2 much more than better time-stretch!

A workaround is to render the loop to a new clip, but keep the sliced version on a muted track for future use.

If you have the patience, you could manually line up MIDI notes with the slices, and then drop them into a sampler.. if you export the MIDI and save the sampler patch you could build up a library of loops ready sliced to add to any future edits..

But you are right, the non-destructive clip linking feature is much needed, not just for beatslicing: I did some classical recording recently, and I really missed having some way to "lock" edits after I got them right. Working from the start of a piece to the end was ok, but editing into the middle of a piece that already had edits later on was a real pain as I had to keep zooming out to select all the later clips, before zooming back in to make tiny edits..

[clueless]

would merge not do?

i suppose the problem there is not being able to un-merge. otherwise it'd effectively be the same as group/un-group

[luka2807]

great suggestions!

but how do you know till which transient level clip should be sliced? basicaly, this is how sensitivity slider in phatmatik pro works. If you move it more to the right then it will slice the softer transients and thus make more slices as well.

this still looks like too much of a manual work. I know Jules can do it much more elegant.

cheers

[chardin]

would merge not do?

What is this "merge" you speak of? Please tell me more.