![]() This is how you import MP3s using the technique: You cannot use this method to import MP3 files into other instruments, plug-ins and sample editors, but it still has its utility. It only works in the arrangement view and on audio tracks. This technique is more protracted than simply dragging and dropping. Simply open your instrument, and drag and drop the file. You can also drag and drop MP3 files into sample editors or the drum rack. Give it a try (see But even without such extras Live, of course, has more than enough options to keep us happy and productive, and converting audio to MIDI is one of the most exciting of those options.Recommended Read: Bitcrusher and Dithering Options in Ableton There are hardware options as well, like the Sonuus products mentioned in our little sidebox and I also mentioned Melodyne at the top of this story, which is the king of audio manipulation – converting audio to MIDI is only part of what it does. ![]() Live has the commands I’m talking about here. If you’re seriously interested in audio-to-MIDI conversion there’s no reason why you couldn’t use it as the basis for all of your sound design. Much as I like to work with MIDI parts for the original programming, I still put everything into audio tracks for live use – it’s just more robust and portable. I included the Freeze and Flatten commands in the walkthrough because they complete the circle – you can use them to bounce your MIDI clips back into a purely audio format, for yet more processing, or for re-use in other live sets. ![]() If necessary you can use Live’s MIDI effect devices to squeeze the notes back into some kind of semi-organised timing and pitch. If you’re the sort of person who likes to use their own sources for everything, but also favours MIDI programming over plain sample manipulation, then why not snag a few recordings using your iPhone or other recorder, and create an album’s worth of songs using MIDI conversion to create all of the parts?įurthermore, it’s really unpredictable and exciting to take one original audio recording and apply all of the conversion options to it in turn, creating a beat, melody, and chords, from that single sample. ![]() I’ve also provided a voice sample, but you can also use any sound. So as not to make things too easy, the piano clips in the example set include distortion, delay, and reverb so you can see and hear how they affect conversion. This is harder for software to decipher, but Live does a good job as long as it’s presented with a clean-ish recording. In this context, ‘Harmony’ refers to any audio sample with more than one instrument note playing at the same time: piano, guitar, synthesiser and so on. Bass guitar can be harder to process because there’s variation in dynamics and clarity, as well as finger/fret noise. Bass is typically easy to convert with the ‘Convert Melody to MIDI’ command, because for the most part, bass tracks are monophonic, and reasonably clean. It’s not dissimilar to Slice to New MIDI Track except that command keeps the original sample sliced across different chains in a rack, while this discards the original sound altogether. You might have to tidy the notes afterwards but the idea is this can still be faster than programming the part from scratch. If there’s a lot of sounds playing at once, audio effects in use or other influences like audience noise – anything else in the background – of course it’s going to be harder to get a clean clip. The conversion process can work very well, but it’s dependent on the quality and character of the source recording. With Live it’s all about immediacy and creativity with these tools you’ll get results you wouldn’t have dreamed of – never a bad thing. Some complain that Live’s MIDI conversion tools aren’t as accurate or sophisticated as those in Melodyne, for example, but that’s missing the point. For more conservative uses, it’s typically drums or bass sounds, but it doesn’t take long to get into more left-field territory by converting field recordings, miscellaneous noise, and speech samples into rhythmic or melodic MIDI parts. The source material can be, well, anything. We can even venture far deeper into substituting different instrument sounds and applying MIDI effects. These handy commands let us transform an audio sample or recording into an editable form, without having to do any programming we can create a MIDI track from an original recording or we can create parts to play in parallel with the original part. Used with the ‘Slice to New MIDI Track’ and Freeze/Flatten commands, you can get amazing results. Introduced in Live 9, ‘Convert…to MIDI’ gives us new ways of disrespecting samples and creating new sounds. We’re looking at audio-to-MIDI conversion, which is one of the most fun activities in the Ableton World.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |