Chopping On Beat

Hi, I've been trying to chop my 2 bar, 4 bar, and sometimes 8 bar loops so that when I change the BPM, the loop remains on beat, but I've been having some difficulty. Sometimes there are pauses between the chops when I change the BPM, other times it remains on beat. Does anyone have an idea of why this is?

Any help is appreciated.

 

Essentially, I'm trying to time stretch by slicing. I usually use grid slicing. I also usually apply the slices to a new group unless my sample has more than 16 slices, in which case I'll just press apply.

This is what I'm trying to do (but on an MK3):



Except, as I said, sometimes when I do this, it doesn't keep the tempo I change it to, and there's pauses between the slices, even though the sample I'm slicing is a perfect loop.

Is it a matter of where I'm applying the slices? Or the amount of slices I have? Or a mode or setting (polyphony, one-shot, choke group, etc.)

I don't think I'm doing anything different, but my results indicate that I must be. Any ideas?

 

Once you have the chops sequenced to your liking you can do a pattern export to another group as an audio loop. Click and hold the little wave icon at the top right corner of the pattern screen. Once it’s finished exporting drag it to a new group and it should show up as an audio loop. From there you can change the tempo and it will stretch automatically.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I actually don't want to use an audio plug-in. I'm trying to do this in the sampler through slicing the loop i already have into pieces, but not rearranging it. I want to preserve the loop that I already have, but slice it so that when I change the tempo up or down, it stays on beat without pauses between the slices, like in the video above. In this instance, I'm not chopping to create a new sequence, I'm chopping to allow me to change the BPM freely in the Sampler.

 

If you slow the tempo down, there will be gaps. There are two main things you can do to prevent the gaps- pitch the slices down so that they're longer or timestretch the individual slices to your new tempo. If you don't change the beat you might as well use the Audio plugin because it's doing the same thing but requires less work. Speeding things up tends to be less of a problem because the important part of drums is the attack transient- pitching up can help the beats sit better, but it might be out of tune relative to the rest of your track.

Another alternative is adding loop sections to ends of the hits, so the hits continue to sound out when you reduce the tempo, which fills the gaps. Unfortunately, Maschine's sampler doesn't have a ping pong loop- it only loops forward which is not ideal, so you have to use another sampler to achieve this. Kontakt and Redux can do it and probably most other samplers.

Here's a good tutorial on chopping beats which mentions the looping trick. It's in Ableton but the principle applies to any sampler that has ping pong looping.

 

What Nikal Might said. Change your tempo, or change the pitch of your chops. If you want them to not "gap", pitch them down. That's probably the best solution, if you are locked into your tempo and don't want to do a different one.

 

Watching the video you posted shows that the guy is slicing EVERY transient... which helps for slower tempos, as every single drum sound is sliced (including quiet ones). So, if you keep the original sliced pattern (that writes to the Group, when you Apply), it should do what you want, but bear in mind... slower tempo will cause gaps, so you have to compensate by selecting every single pad among the Group, and pitch them down, together. Hope that helps.

 

Thank you for tip and the video, I found it useful.

I appreciate the reply. Yes, I'm trying to maintain the original sliced pattern, but also the pitch as well. I knew that I could pitch it down but I want to preserve the original. The slicing of every transient is interesting and I'll be trying that later today. Thank you.

 

The first two things i determine about a project are the key and the tempo, I don't guess or hop around until I determine, it's usually something i don't think about. Because i know these two things right off the bat, it's usually the first thing i do to the sample i plan to us. I have found that preparing the sample first goes a long way to helping it sit just right in the song, but my method is a bit of a process: I create a duplicate of the entire sample, then mute it - this is the master that i will nevert back to if i mess up pitching, or want to rep itch later. I take the first duplicate and pitch it to the desired key, entirely. I duplicate that sample to another pad, then i find the portions of the song that are faster or slower that my desired tempo and stretch those so the whole song is the same tempo. I duplicate this pattern one last time - this is the sample i will revert back to if i mess up my chop, or want to chop a different way - to another group and then I chop the sample. and it always fits.

I also like to apply any effects directly to the main sample so that i do not have to replicate the settings across multple pads/samples.

 

In the past on hardware samplers ive also faked this with reverb and or delay on the sliced, and layering them with un-effected slices to keep it punchy enough for the transients.

 

This is very similar to what I sometimes do, and the process is indeed a bit intensive. It's nice to know that I'm in good company. Thank you for the reply.

I find this quite compelling, and I remember doing this kind of thing a few times with success (but completely by accident). I'm going to try this (on purpose) with some samples I've had some difficulty with and see what happens.





I'm discovering that one size does not fit all, when it comes to samples. And that different samples may require different methods and workarounds. Then again, I don't always necessarily know what I'm doing; indeed, I rarely do.

I appreciate all replies thus far and look forward to some more. As a sample-based beatmaker, I think that this topic is an important one and I believe that there's always something new to learn and implement.