[REQUEST] Improve Patched Phrase Quality / Real Time Time St

***UPDATE***
Explination of Patched Phrase technology below. I mistook it for a form of RTTS. RTTS can not be implemented. My apologies for the confusion.


Original Post:

Algorithm improvement. This the only thing keeping me tied to a computer. Improving the timestretch quality would allow me the freedom and flexibility to turn the computer off. Maybe even lose $700 of deaf weight.

This would be a big move toward extending the relevance and lifecycle of the MPC. Think along the lines of ableton. When I think of real time pitch change im thinking enhance the patched phrase to give the quality of say an Ableton Live. The flexibility would be nice as well but the sound quality is very important.

Increasing/Extending the MPC usefulness is good for everyone.

do you use auto chop or do you chop by number?? this makes a huge difference and believe if you have not used autochop (better transient recognition) then it aint as good doing it manually and with say the usual 16 or what ever chops. Also patched phrases have there limits obviously but i get very decent ones even over large tempo changes.

bliprock wrote:do you use auto chop or do you chop by number?? this makes a huge difference and believe if you have not used autochop (better transient recognition) then it aint as good doing it manually and with say the usual 16 or what ever chops. Also patched phrases have there limits obviously but i get very decent ones even over large tempo changes.

Chop by numbers. My technique requires this. Its actually a pretty involved process at times, requiring manual calcuation of tempo (for accuracy). I dont really use loops, howver my chops many times have to follow a certain tempo to make sense within the arrangement (but I may or may not want to alter the pitch).

When I used Acid back in the day, the things I could do on the fly with timestretch/pitch changed the way I approached music. The quality for patched phrase is probably cool for loops on a certain level, but beyond that it sounds pretty horrible. A lot of people I know, do not use it because the sound is so unacceptable, that they cant see beyond that to the possibilites this tech creates.

To be honest, if this was enhanced to give a quality similar to Acid / Live, MPC chopping could be taken to a whole new level. More interesting compositions would evolve from this.

Using the MPC just for drums, is not always the route I want to take.

Well IMO the main reason people find patched phrases sound bad is because they chop by number, not by transients. So of course it will sound worse.

jrides wrote:My technique requires this. Its actually a pretty involved process at times, requiring manual calcuation of tempo (for accuracy). I dont really use loops, howver my chops many times have to follow a certain tempo to make sense within the arrangement (but I may or may not want to alter the pitch).

huh/?
if it is chopped, then surely it is in sequence right, so what has tempo got to do with it?? or are chops more than one hit then, thats what it seems you are doing, so more chops.
Your workflow sounds pretty over the top and round about just to fit a break or loop or what ever. You sure you need to calculate your tempo?? why ? its a loop first before you chop it right. or are you just chopping random stuff?? I can chop, rearrange, patch phrase anything no probs. dont need tempo unless its a patched phrase for reference. so I do not see what your problem is and why you calcualte the tempo so exactly. cos you do not need to to get it tight, you just have to make sure the sample length is correct before you chop, then chop it the right way. So i suggest you should just ignore BPM, then make sample perfect loop by ear, yes by ear, ignore BPM then chop by transients in auto chop, use up to 32, then patchphrase it and see if it is better. But I know you said your not using loops so to me its like you have not chopped enough and have more than one hit per chop? or is it more like bass lines ? you can do single hit patched phrases on each pad, that can work to. most of my music as breaks chopped up in it, and i can change tempo no worries, sure rolls and such wont instantly do it, but thats because you aint chopped it enough or made a patched phrase.
heres is a chopped break, no tempo change in it though.

I don't work with drum breaks or loops. One shot drums (which are not relavant to my topic) and chopped samples are what I use. More than just stabs are used often. Fractions of bars that are long enough to make tempo relevant, but not long enough to loop. Jazz records often leave me with fragments due to the free form nature and abrupt tempo changes. Some non jazz records only give you so much before the singing/tempo change starts. You don't always have a loop to work with

The mpc was originally designed to automate drum programming, and replace the drummer in situations where one was not available. We hip hop folk used it outside of its intended purpose and an artform was born.
PP was designed for what you do. Acid and Live showed me that another approach to chopping was easily attainable, with on the fly timestretch. It changed how I used samples. (I used to loop then chopped stabs eventually and now....)

The foundation is there to do this on the mpc but the implementation needs work. Thus my request. Think melodies and vocals not drums. A high quality PP is needed to handle more complex frequencies. Drums are pretty cut and dry in comparison frequency wise.

yeah cool, i see what you mean, its not the best I agree. you could PP all the little bits? I find in this case I time stretch it to tempo of sequence to get around that kinda thing. ITs ok till you tempo change though as you know

I'd be interested in hearing some of your stuff jrides.

mp3 wrote:I'd be interested in hearing some of your stuff jrides.

Its possible that you alredy have.

I also want to make sure people who read my posts understand that im not saying looping is bad or wack. I can easily think of loop based music that I enjoy. I just became a different type of thinker once I began to understand the possibilites of the new technology. I grab sections, that I normally wouldn't in the past. It wouldn't even have occured to me to put chops together the way I do now. I hear music in places that I didn't before.

Oh that's what's up. Link me up bro. I think I understand your approach, and I just want to hear how it turns out in your music. Certainly sounds interesting.

I sample incomplete (as in not a whole bar loop) phrases all the time. In fact, I can't recall the last time I actually sampled a complete loop. I've always been fond of doing stuff like sampling around the vocal phrases, and patching various snippets from throughout the song together. Overall, however, I tend to let the sample dictate what I do with it. Tempo, fills, chops, swing, etc. all those are things that I let the sample lead the way. I can see the value in the way you view patched phrase, because actually when I sample in Ableton (which itself is rare), I do it that way (using the session view track as the sampler, clips as the samples, and the warping facilities in place of patched phrase).

I do, however, prefer the unpredictability of not timestretching/compressing samples. I don't really start with an endpoint in mind, I kinda just go where the sample tells me to go, so in that sense, it just feels like timestretching is me imposing too much of my will on the sample. I tend to alt loop or crossfade loop if I do need to bend a sample to fit where I'm going with it.

Patched Phrase is not timestretching of any kind, not by the strict definition of the term. It just locates transients and slices between them, then opens or closes the gap between the slices as you change the tempo. If it was timestretch, you would not hear the silent gaps opening up between the phrase chops when you decrease the tempo on playback. That's because real TS doesn't just change the length and pitch, it actually generates new samples by analizing the original and splicing them in between the gaps that are opened when the entire sample is extended.

You basically seem to be requesting a real-time timestretch function. If so, the request is not new as people were asking about this the day the box dropped. The answer has always been no because the 1k/2.5k has nowhere near the processing ability to do this, even badly. Actually, there has never been an MPC that can do this, as it is very processor intensive and that's why you only see the function on DAWs or stand-alone devices that were designed to do it as part of the original spec, such as the Roland MV series, Yamaha RS7000, and the newer dedcated loopers.

elektrik_muz wrote:Patched Phrase is not timestretching of any kind, not by the strict definition of the term.

Got it. Thanks!
This explains why it sounds horrible on things other than drums.

Yes, exactly. It sounds horrible because you're expecting to hear timestretch where there isn't any.

This feature has caused a lot of missunderstanding both here and on youtube and one reason why Patched Phrase is often frowned on in this forum is because it's seen as a deliberate attempt by Akai to confuse people into thinking they are getting a box with RTTS capability when in fact it's just a cheap tempo automated slice/spacing routine on a device that couldn't handle a real RTTS algorithm even if Akai had one.

They surely fooled me. I have to admit that. I didn't lpok into the feature extensively, to understand why it didn't work well for my purposes. I just ended up using something else.

elektrik_muz wrote:it is very processor intensive and that's why you only see the function on DAWs or stand-alone devices that were designed to do it as part of the original spec, such as the Roland MV series, Yamaha RS7000, and the newer dedcated loopers.

Bingo. A lot of number crunching is involved to achieve even half-decent quality real-time time stretching.