slice problems

<delurk>

Ok, I have just spent the whole day working on this, and I'm stuck.

I want to record a one-bar loop of a bass synthesizer riff. I want to slice it into eight chunks, and play those chunks in a sequence, using eighth notes, as though it was the one-bar riff. Seems easy enough, hey? Isn't that what sample slicing is all about?

When I do it, I get really nasty artifacting between each chunk, and I don't understand why.

Here's a couple of audio samples of what I'm talking about:

ORIGINAL loop
SCREWED loop

WTF?!?

I'm using one of the indy-outs to do this, so I don't think the master effects section applies... still, I've turned off every effect on the MPC just to make sure. As I understand it, a "patched phrase" should be cutting the samples pretty much on a sample-accurate level, so where is this nasty envelope noise coming from?!?

Am I just being stupid, and this is just how this feature works, and everyone else but me knows it? God, I hope not, I've been looking forward to this 'split' feature ever since it was announced...

I've read the manual about fifteen times now looking for something to tip me off, but no luck! What am I doing wrong here?!?

did you patch phrase it or just zone???

if you patch phrased it you gotta chop at the beginning of each individual note. if you didnt then its going to come out choppy sounding. but i have no idea just what i do when i patch phrase

i just read your post.


try patch phrase instead

look at the RELEASE value when you export your sliced sample to a new programme. Set the release to 0 if you want to avoid any articfact in the new chopped samples. Also make wsure that you edit yourself the start/end point of each slice: the MPC1000 just chops at equal intervals, it has no 'recycle-like' function to identrify by itself peaks and valleys and chop to the individual notes.

patch phrase will not give you the ability to play each note individually, so it may not be what you're after.

yeah, what he said^^^

if you want to play each slice individually, you have to create sliced samples not patch phrase.

if you want to play each slice individually, you have to create sliced samples not patch phrase.

sliced samples are better anyway heh...tons more control/options for innovation.

basically, if you chop your samples and then rewrite your original loop w/ them, you have created a patched phrase - except one where you can control individual pitches, attacks, decays, effects even...all types of nice tricks. i been doing that shit since os 1.07, WAY back in the day[/quote]

*nod*, ok - I only learned about patched phrases yesterday, and that's not really what I want to do. Well, it's close, and it does the first step (ie, play back the bassline exactly as it was recorded), but it doesn't do the second step (ie, play it back in new and different directions).

In my many experiments yesterday, I tried using a release of 0, and I tried using a release of 40 or so, but I still get that artifacting - it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I use patched phrases or sliced samples and map them by hand.

Now, one thing to consider - I'm making these loops in Ableton Live, which says it's running at 138bpm, selecting a bar in the Arrange view, using "render as loop", and then dropping the WAV onto the MPC... however, when I try to detect the BPM on the MPC, it says it's like 136 or 137 bpm...

*sigh*. This is really frustrating. I've just recently made a lot of changes to my live rig, where each change offers a bunch of new possibilities... I guess now I have the months ahead of me discovering the quirks of each of those new possibilities.

ok first, the detect tempo doesn't always work. (refer to manual to find out why) next, is the tempo to the original sample 138? if so, what is the desired tempo you want it to be after you bring it to the mpc and slice it?

i will try to see what's up when i get home. but if i am to attempt to reproduce this, i need for you to be as descriptive as possible.

ok, sorry

Yes, that's what I'm saying - when I create the loop in Live, I create it at 138bpm. On the MPC, I want it to play back at 138bpm, so I slice it into 16 chunks, map the samples to 16 pads, create a 1-bar loop, go into step edit mode, quantize to 16ths, hit all sixteen pads in order, and play it back, and I get the noise you can hear in my audio samples above. I get the same popping on every slice regardless whether I use 32 slices, 16 slices, 8 slices or 4 slices.

In the program edit page, I go into the volume entry bit, hit 'window', and I get the envelopes screen. By default, there is a decay of 5 - I've tried setting this to 0, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

So far, the best I've come up with is to adjust the attack and decay envelopes until there's no popping on notes that sustain longer than the slice.

I'm wondering now, what Freezerman said - perhaps the fix is to go through and fix every slice so that it's cut on a 0-crossing? Fcuk, I hope not, I've got well over 100 one-bar basslines to load into the MPC for my livepa set, and at 16 slices each that's like 1600 slices to fix!!! Wasn't this supposed to *save* me time?

What sucks is that the basslines currently sound awesome in Ableton Live, I'd just rather be using my MPC live, like I have for the last few years...

yo, is your program set to global 'mono' or 'poly'?

does it make a difference if you change it?

also how about turning the decay up instead of down?

mux wrote:ok, sorry

What sucks is that the basslines currently sound awesome in Ableton Live, I'd just rather be using my MPC live, like I have for the last few years...

why don't you sample your 8 bars note by note, then just record the midi track to the mpc to play it back. It should work better, especially since you may not need to sample each and every note.
Of course this will not you save time...
But (all irony set aside) if you want to save time you should bring your laptop to your gig. Isn't Ableton a live-geared product?

sleepersriddle wrote:yo, is your program set to global 'mono' or 'poly'?

does it make a difference if you change it?

Good question, I'll try this tonight. I did try with more decay, but then the volume of the sound seems to warble... trying with more release made the sound have further weird artifacting, like as though the samples were each lasting twice as long as expected - the decay doesn't sound smooth.

FWIW, I am definitely using MONO samples.

freezerman wrote:why don't you sample your 8 bars note by note, then just record the midi track to the mpc to play it back. It should work better, especially since you may not need to sample each and every note.
Of course this will not you save time...

Well, a bunch of my basslines aren't so much seperate notes as a single note with a huge pile of MIDI CC's and aftertouch and pitchbending shaping it into a big, rolling bassline. That's pretty much the main reason I want to play around with cutting up that bassline into eight chunks and rearranging them...

freezerman wrote:But (all irony set aside) if you want to save time you should bring your laptop to your gig. Isn't Ableton a live-geared product?

*sigh*. It's starting to seem more and more like laptops have finally superceded hardware in the live realm... it's certainly easier to setup and tear down, that's for sure. I just have a real problem watching laptop jocks throw down the techno, y'know? It's so... impersonal. I don't want to watch someone checking their email!

I just have a real problem watching laptop jocks throw down the techno, y'know? It's so... impersonal. I don't want to watch someone checking their email!

so true! i've been saying that for the past few years about the 'email checking'. i've seen worse though.... like a few cats just using soundforge and just hitting the play button and pretending their actually doing something by fronting with a few fake mouse movements.

y do u chop it up so much if its just one bar! u should chop it up into four. that what i do when i have a bar sample.

----bump----


did you get it working mux?

evil wrote:y do u chop it up so much if its just one bar! u should chop it up into four. that what i do when i have a bar sample.

Because the MPC1000 will not quantize to quarter notes (I have no idea why this is the case). Programming a sequence with eighth notes in the step sequence window is simple - just turn on eighth note time correction, then hit the eight pads in sequence.

To do the same thing with quarter notes, you must turn on eighth note time correction, hit the first pad, hit up, scroll back once, then right, then scroll forward one click, then hit the pad. Then hit back, roll back, over once, roll forward two clicks, then hit the pad. Then hit back, over once, roll forward three clicks, then hit the pad. It's infuriating, really - the new OS really broke step sequencing! The "step forward/step back" buttons (shift+forward, shift+back) no longer do anything in step sequence mode.

Rough'n'Ready wrote:did you get it working mux?

Actually, last night I came home from the office at 6pm, crashed on the couch with a beer, and woke up around midnight.

I'm seriously debating calling in sick today...