Lunch Money's BeatSlicing Tutorial [HERE]

[haydxn]

THIS POST IS ACTUALLY BY LUNCH MONEY!

Notes to follow, and an audio file in OGG format pinned to the bottom of this post!

On a recent KvR thread, I gave some advice on using Tracktion as a beatslicer. To be honest, I hadn't done it myself, but I figured that since everything I wrote was a function or 'fact' of Tracktion use, that it would work. BUT... there's nothing like practical experience, so I decided to give it a go and see if it was truly as 'easy' as I thought it would be.

A few points before I get into the description and play-by-play:

- Ultimately, I wasn't trying to prove that you don't 'need' ACID-like functionality, but rather that it wasn't the end of the world to not have it.

- It WAS a pretty quick process. The first time I tried it, I clocked 8:58 from the moment of importing the loop (which would be something you'd need to do in ANY program, so it was moot) to the moment I pressed "play" on the sliced version and heard successful results.

- The second attempt, which is documented below, actually took a bit longer, coming in at 12:08. I did stop the watch for screenshots, so that's not factored in and I can't use it as an excuse. So, it's pretty safe to say that you should be able to construct a 1-measure beat in around 10 minutes, even if you're not familiar with the tools used. I wasn't, after all! Like many things in Tracktion, it was just intuition.

- Related to the above: 10 minutes for a simple one-measure is really too much if you're planning on just using the unaltered beats (ie. not re-arranging). In the time it took me to slice a simple one-measure beat (simple as in not very complex), I have arranged entire drum tracks.

- On the other hand, you simply don't always have the right loops. The precise control of the loops you DO have is pretty cool.


[edit: I've added a brief couple notes on how to do it with only Audio. Since it's actually just stopping part-way through and not going on to the Sampler, it wasn't too tricky. Should've done it the first time, but I had the 'sampler method' on the brain. I DO prefer the sampler method, but the 'remap clips' function is something that many people overlook, including myself!]

OK, continuing on... hrm... I'll do it in a separate post to ease my personal sense of organization and for no other reason--


Download example .ogg file

[haydxn]

THIS POST IS ALSO ACTUALLY FROM LUNCH MONEY

Method 1: Using only Audio

I chose a simple drum file because I just wanted, well, simplicity. I'm aware that the 'manual' method of slicing would take longer with a more complex beat, and that the results might not turn out as well. On the other hand, there's nothing inherently more difficult about it. The results would still be very similar to what you'd get from Acid or Rex. Here's the starting file, visually:



I actually found that zooming in TOO closely made me truncate samples, so I stayed zoomed out a bit to finish'er off. In Tracktion, all you do is line up your cursor, make sure your clip is selected and press '/' (the SLASH key, pretty clever, eh?). Soon, I had this:



So far, so good, I'm thinking! However, I ran into my first snag-- I wanted to preview each slice to make sure that they weren't popping and clicking or truncating. You can 'play' an individual slice by double-clicking inside of it... but how do you start right at the beginning? There must be a key, but I didn't know it, so I just did the best I could with a different technique:

With 'audible scrubbing' enabled, I just dragged the ends of my 'slices' back and forth to locate the right spots. Once I had the ends and beginnings of two side-by-side clips 'fixed', I put a quick little fade on each with the built-in drag-handles:



I could have spent more time getting them 'exactly' right, but it's hard to say if the return on investment would have been worth it. In any case, a quick bit of scrubbing and fading produced this (or something like it... I can't remember what order these screenshots are in now!):



Done! In the "Timecode" sub-menu (on the bottom left) there is an option (which is enabled by default) to "Remap clip positions with tempo change." Now, when you change the edit's tempo, your sliced audio will move in appropriate increments to match your edit. To move these groups of clips, you have 2 options:

1. Hold down the ALT key, and then click+drag a "lassoo" around the clips that you want to select, and move them all as one 'chunk'. Since the first sample is snapped to the first tick of the measure, this group will move to a new measure with no problem.

2. Render your new group as audio. This makes it 'static' again, though, so further tempo changes won't work.

It's a good method and has its uses, but I prefer the extra elegance and 'end product' simplicity of moving on to method 2:


Method 2: Mapping Slices to the Sampler

With the intention of mapping to the sampler, my next step was to ensure that my MIDI notes would end up corresponding to the slices. Now THIS was a slightly fiddly process, I have to admit. It wasn't difficult, but there felt like too many keystrokes compared to how Tracktion normally feels. Here's what I did:

1. Select one of the audio slices
2. Position the cursor so that it's somewhere in the middle of the clip
3. Press "home" to send the cursor to the beginning. This ensures exact placement of the cursor
4. Select the empty TRACK beneath by clicking its name or in the filter area
5. Press "G" to insert new MIDI clip (can also use menu if you prefer)
6. Resize clip.

Now, it SHOULD have been easier, but it didn't work the way I expected. I thought I'd be able to select the audio slice, press "M" to auto-set in and out markers, and then insert a MIDI clip, but the MIDI clip didn't want to be confined to the markers. Weird, or at least non-Tracktionesque!

In any event, before long I had this:



Then, it was a simple matter of pencilling in notes (starting at C3 which I already know is the sampler default) and snapping them to the beginning of their respective clips:



Then, select all clips in the track, which in this case are all MIDI, and use the "merge MIDI" function to change it into a solitary MIDI sequence:



Next, I highlighted all the AUDIO clips in the track above, and pressed "CTRL+C" for copy. I put an instance of Tracktion's sampler on the MIDI track, and with it still opened/in focus, I pressed "CTRL+V" to paste the set of samples into its file list. They were all named "Beat", so I quickly used the rename function to simply label them by their appearance in the chain. I discovered the first time I attempted this that my copied and pasted clips appeared in the sampler in reverse order, so that's why they seem backward.

Now comes the really fiddly part-- they're ALL rooted in C3 with an octave below and an octave above of range. Yuk. I'm going to request a 'one-shot' paste mode. For each slice, I had to:

1. Move the root note

2. Bring the range in to the same note as the root, thus making it a 'one-shot' and only making it available with that one key. If you 'miss' when you're only off by a semitone, it's annoying at first to try to grab the arrow; however, you soon realize that there's LOTS of free space and you just need to look at the 'hand' icon. It doesn't need to actually 'look' like it's grabbing the arrow, it will be.

3. Press the "ignore release" button to make the sample play all the way through.

Here's the sampler:



Done! Shrink the 'source track' away, and make sure it's muted, but with the method I used, those clips NEED to still be somewhere in the edit. Consider it an audio 'pool'. Now that your beat is in MIDI format, it is pretty much impervious to the effects of making it go faster. Making it go slower is another matter.

Alternatively to the 'highlight, copy, and paste' method of loading the audio into the sampler, you could take the time to render each slice to its own .wav or .ogg file, and then load THOSE into the sampler. In some ways a more elegant solution, but also more time-consuming.

Check out the audio file in the above post for comparisons and a few further notes.

[Scooner]

Thanks very much for that LunchMoney, you obviously put a lot of effort into that post - thanks for sharing!

[duncanparsons]

..so Greg, how come you're haydn today??

DSP

[IIRs]

THIS POST IS ACTUALLY BY LUNCH MONEY!

THIS IDEA IS ACTUALLY BY IIRs!!!

[Lunch Money]

Aw, shucks. Yeah, it took a little bit of work, but not as much as one might expect. I enjoyed the process and I enjoy working with documents so it was actually not so bad. I was going to just make a .pdf out of it, but I wasn't sure how useful that would be.

Thanks for re-posting, haydizzle... er... IIRzOrZ... er... or both of you!

Greg

[djsubject]

Thanks for re-posting, haydizzle... er... IIRzOrZ... er... or both of you!

Greg

what about pHz & me for starting the tutorail trend?

well maby not me

only joking by the way

it remindes me of making your own beat in acid 1 before the days of all thease soft samplers



Subz

[rpc9943]

how about writing a tute on how to switch around a drum loop with microdicer so that I can make drums on my own with midi notes .... it confuses me

ROnC

[Lunch Money]

Hook me up with a copy of Microdicer and I'll sort you out.

JK, here it comes:

Microdicer does the manual slicing part for you, and then allows you to drag'n'drop (supposedly, it wasn't working perfectly when I tried the beta version, but the full release might work!) or export a corresponding MIDI file, which is just the re-creation of what I did when I manually lined up my MIDI notes.

So, Microdicer gives you (for example) 8 slices, and then a MIDI note to correspond with each slice. The thing is, since MIDI contains no audio information, the sliced-up sample MUST still be loaded in order for the MIDI to trigger it! You can't just export the MIDI file and then close Microdicer or change to a different sample... in fact, even if you slice it up with more sensitivity or at even 16ths, your MIDI file is rendered useless again. It has the be the same audio sample, sliced up the same way.

That said, it's hella fun to take a sample, slice it up in spots that are NOT the transients, and then use, for example, a Groove Monkey MIDI drum loop to trigger it.

Greg

[pHz]

THIS POST IS ACTUALLY BUY NOW PAY LATER !!!

excellent work greg !!!

... a couple of other hints ...

... as an alternative (and thanks to T2s transparent clips IMHO slightly easier) way of getting your MIDI file for the sampler to play you can do the following BEFORE you slice your audio loop ...

(make sure snapping is OFF first though)










... also ... remember ... colour coding clips is your friend when manually slicing / rearranging audio loops (here ive coded kick / snare / closed hat / open hat) ...





... looks pretty too ...




slainte rob

[ModuLR]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... layering midi clips over audio is one if T's most excellent features! I find it indespensible!

[Lunch Money]

Cheers, pHz, I was going to add that myself, but you beat me to it. Saves me another 15 minutes of work.

Greg

[Jeremy_NSL]

Wow, impressive effort Greg. Looks like an unbelievable amount of work though. I'll stick with vsti slicers I think

[Lunch Money]

Well, that's everyone's prerogative. The point WAS that you should try it for yourself, realize that it's NOT a lot of work, and THEN stick with your VSTi slicers.

Sides, some people either don't have one, OR are unhappy with the way theirs works. My only one is in eXT and it's far too fiddly to adjust individual slices to remove pops, clicks, or other anomalies.

BUT,

I'm not offended if anybody sticks to VSTi, I'm well-chuffed enough that anyone would read the tutorial, so that's thanks enough-- and as someone else mentioned, there might be a feature or two in there that you otherwise wouldn't have noticed. Heck, I've always been the market for a proper slicer and (more importantly) timeline-based Acid (or Acid-like) support.

It was a cool exercise, it was NOT particularly time-consuming.

I need DJsubject's video-making thingy and I can show you how quickly it can be done in realtime. An important thing to remember, too, is that I had never done that kind of 'beatslicing' in Tracktion (or any other host) before, and it turned out to be pretty easy and intuitive. I didn't 'practice up' and then try to beef up my time. In fact, my first attempt was the quicker of the two, at only 8:58 and having NEVER had any practice. Imagine how quick sticking to audio and simply slicing would be. Literally less than a minute.

Greg

[pHz]

agreed ... that loop i used for my screengrabs took me about 2 minutes total (not counting screengrab time) to assign the MIDI to and slice up / fade ...

... quick-n-dirty processes RULE !!!

slainte rob