Slice to Midi - MPC Style by Saving Presets in Ableton Live Tutorial

Todays tutorial will be covering a GREAT little technique I recently learned on how to have MPC style sample slicing of any sample by using slice to midi. What we will be doing is saving macro settings from simpler within a drum rack which can be used and saved to your ableton defaults. This is great for having the ability to cut up anything into a drum rack, and then alter the basic sampling parameters like START, END, TRANSPOSE, VOLUME, etc. Without doing this, you would have to map each one individually. This is also nice to making random sounds for your pads to then reuse in production. You could even, just JAM away on a synth, record it, slice it all up to midi, and then slice it more with your presets...and get some awesome stab sounds. Anyway, lets begin.

The first thing we are going to want to do is put in a new midi track with a drum rack in it. After that, open up the device chain, and within it, you want to put a SIMPLER. Make sure to open up the simpler SAMPLE view also. It should look like this -


Now, what we are going to want to do, is map some of the options within the simpler to the macros on the left by clicking the MAPMODE (green) button. You can put anything you want, but if you would like a more mpc style control, I would recommend these -

Start
Length
Attack
Release
Transpose
Spread
(your choice)
Volume

The reason I leave a YOUR CHOICE in there, is because sometimes...you will want to use something based off of what you are making. Like controlling a LFO, or LFO frequency. Its nice to still have a free button to work with instead of using them all up. Mine looks like this -



Also, if you would like the 2nd sample to shut off when you start the next one, you should probably put a CHOKE on this. So go to the IN/OUT icon on the left side of the drum rack, and then under choke, select 1. -


Now, the trick to this is WHERE YOU SAVE IT. You cannot just SAVE IT ANYWHERE. There is a special location it must be saved. Go up to your browser, and click ANYof the file icons (1,2,3). Then, select your ableton library -


After that, select "defaults" and then "slicing". You will want to drag your drum rack into this folder and then name it. Mine is named MPC for Slicing -


Now you can go ahead and DELETE that midi track. We dont need it anymore.

Now, you want to select a file that you would like to slice to midi. In the example, I have a short synth sample I layered and sequenced, and I am eager to see what stabs I can make out of it. Make sure you have your start and stop points where you want them to be within that sample. Also realize that if your sample is long, you cannot use the 1/16 or 1/32 options because your drum pad simply does not have enough spaces to put your sliced samples. So, crop your MAIN sample first before you do this. My sample is just within an audio track in my ableton set like this -


Now, you are going to want to RIGHT CLICK your sample and select "slice to new midi track" -


Next, the little box will show up asking you WHERE you want to make your slices. In my case in the following picture, I chose 16th notes. You can choose the transients, or whatever you would like. What is nice about this method, is that since you already made the preset to be able to control the start and length of the sample...its ok to choose larger sizes like 1/4 notes because you can shape the sample anyway once it is within your drum kit.

Now, in the second drop down box, you should see the preset that we just made. Again, mine is called MPC for Slicing -


After you have selected that, click ok. This will now slice your sample into your drum kit preset. Mine looks like this -


Now, all you need to do is MAP OUT your macros to a controller that you like, and you are good to go. I use my trigger finger for this, which conveniently has 8 knobs that match the macros section, which is really nice. You can control the parameters of each macro by clicking the green "MAP MODE" button, and editing them. One that I usually do is the "transpose"...because it goes from -48st - +48st....which is usually too much (unless I am getting crazy).

Anyway, using this method, you will have a much more HANDS ON approach to slicing your samples. By then SAVING your drum racks when you finished, you can save whole racks of crazy sounds that can be used in production later. This is where randomization comes into music a little. You can just rock out anything on a few synths, make a small beatless songs....slice it up, and then have your own set of 128 different stabs to use....or whatever you want to create!

I hope this helped! Keep making tunes!

Peace!

FroBot

Using Midipipe to have better control over clip transpose (or any parameters) in Ableton

There are a few options within ableton that just seem stupid in my opinion. One of them being the fact that you cannot define the parameters of the transpose button within clip view, nor can you individually map different buttons to different clip transpose buttons. When trying to make music more quickly and efficiently, it is essential to be able to change a clips KEY to match the rest of the music. Not only your melodies and basses, but its also important to tune all of your drums too. Now, if you want to mouse over the transpose and do it every time, that is fine...and this tutorial will be of no use to you. But for those of you improving, or wanting to save a little bit of time when dealing with many samples, this method will help you.

There are 2 problems with the transpose. One being that you can only GENERALLY assign a knob to CLIP VIEW transpose, and not each clip. There is nothing you can do about this. But what is nice, is that if you have another button that highlights tracks for you...like clip view (i have one on each channel of my VCM 600)...you can then control the transpose of that particular clip. 2 buttons instead of one. You may ask, "Why do you need midipipe then?" That brings me to problem 2. For some reason, when you MAP OUT the transpose, you have no control over the distance variable of the transpose (like you do with most options within ableton). Dont ask me why, but that is how it is.

So what I have done is determined the parameters of the transpose within midipipe, and then my knob correlates with it.

Since moving a sample too far from its original state using BEATS warping mode (maintaining its key but speed only changed) sounds bad, I like my parameters to go -6, +6....because within a whole octave of sound...there are 12 notes. 0 being the middle, -6 is a half octave down, + 6 is a half octave up. This way, you can always find match the key of a sample, yet it doesnt go as far as +48 - 48 like normally set in ableton. This is VERY VERY handy, and I use my transpose button on EVERY sample when improv jamming.

So how to do it. Well open up midi pipe, and make sure you have your ins and outs all set up correctly (look at my tutorial about mapping the VCM 600 w/ Launchpad to get more info, and omit the channel routing part, that will explain how to set up midipipe). Once you have that set up, toss in a CONTROL SPLIT. Now you need to know what midi channel and CC value the knob you are going to use for your transpose is. Just go into ableton, jump into map mode, map it to the transpose button, and remember the channel and cc value.

In the control splits SOURCE menu, select the CC value of the knob you are using. In my case, is is CC #20. Looks like this -



After that, click the box that says scale, and define the distance as MIN 55, MAX 71. That will send it at -6, +6. If you want a larger distance, just change the parameters to lower and greater distances correspondingly. Its some weird math, 127/48 or some shit like that. Best approach is to just change it, then move the knob within ableton to see how far it moves.

Anyway, after that, then click the bottom box that says "ONLY SPLIT ON CHANNEL"...and then set the channel of the knob that you are using. In my case, since its on the right side of the VCM 600...channel 13. Yours will be different.

You should be good to go. You can use this method to change the parameters of any midi knob within ableton if you like, although ableton does do a pretty good job at making most of them easily editable within their own mapping system. This is just one they either forgot, or figured people are all using a mouse...and omitted. I dont like to use the mouse for this, and think its one of the most important buttons when improving. Hope this helped!

Peace!

FroBot