Ableton live has a swing function, but its effect is limited to midi notes and warped audio clips. A recent post over at Wire to the Ear talks about how to use Live's swing capability. But if you're like me you have lots of separate, unwarped audio clips on your timeline, little 'monosyllabic' sounds. And if you want these to swing, Live won't help you.
If you need a simple swing for your audio clips, here's a quick and rough way to fake it.
Open a new set. Using audio clips, lay out a skeleton drum beat with a hihat line on every 16th. Open the song tempo automation lane on the master channel. Zoom in so that you're seeing a grid line on every 16th division, and use the pencil tool to draw this step on the first two 16th notes.
Select the first two 16ths of the master channel automation lane and duplicate them (apple+D) until the first bar is filled. Play through the pattern and experiment with different timings until you have a feel that your satisfied with. The greater the size between the tempo steps, the more extreme the swing will be. To make sure the automation steps always repeat the same two values, use the duplicate to copy them to the rest of the bar whenever you want to try a new feel.
Once you're happy with the feel, duplicate the automation pattern until it extends further than you expect your track to be long.
As with the groove quantize hack, the same gotchas apply:
- If you need to change tempo during a track this method isn't suitable.
- Be careful that you disable warp on single-hit clips that you place on the timeline, unless you want them smeared as the master tempo changes!
- Currently, Live only 'notices' the song tempo automation at the beginning of each 16th measure, so you may find in order to transfer a groove at an acceptable 'resolution' it may be necessary to double the song tempo before beginning this process.
- If you're using tempo synchronised effects (eg. a delay), these will behave unpredictably if your master tempo is fluctuating rapidly.
