Having trouble creating a simple groove clip

[mark skinner]

Hello ,  I'm laying out a new song and trying to record 4 "audio" kick drum hits . I'm using a Yamaha drum pad with just the mono line out going into my interface. I've cut the 4 hits and aligned them to the timeline. Bounce to clips and save. When I right click the clip and enable "groove clipping" I get the message about discarded sections. Enable groove clipping and the lower ends of the clip get their transverse line as normal and the clip "stretches" to about twice it's original length. I don't know what I'm doing wrong ..  This has happened before and I normally end up just copying and pasting. This should be pretty straight forward and a quick way to put in some drum "place holders" to be replaced later.     Thanks for any insight.   mark

[rsinger]

It analyzed the loop wrong. Number of beats or BPM or something. Go in and set those values manually.

[HOOK]

Yeah.  The only time I fight that is if I actually cut a clip anywhere but on 1/4, 1/2 or a Whole note.  That's when the loop shrinks or grows to the nearest 1/4 note.

Edited December 7, 2023 by HOOK

[David Baay]

As rsinger said, you need to manually correct the "Beats in Clip" value in the Groove Clip section of Clip Properties tab in the Track Inspector. But this may not recover the "discarded" audio; you might need to start over and make sure the clip boundaries are precisely on measure boundaries before you enable Groove-Clip Looping.

[mark skinner]

1 hour ago, rsinger said:

Go in and set those values manually.

??     Would I have to go into clip properties ?

 

1 hour ago, HOOK said:

The only time I fight that is if I actually cut a clip anywhere but on 1/4, 1/2 or a Whole note.

So ..  If I'm playing it in real time , I need to play so far out of time I can actually cut the clip at major timeline markers ? I'm only having to move the notes about 1/128 or so .  I want them dead on to use instead of using the metronome. This doesn't sound very efficient but I'll try it. I think I've been using the highest point in the waveform to line up , but should be using the Very start of the hits. ? I still feel like something else is wrong.

  @David Baay I was typing as you responded. When I'm done editing , both ends of the clip are dead on boundaries. I'll look at the track inspector clip properties.          Thanks guys..   mark

[David Baay]

4 minutes ago, mark skinner said:

I'm only having to move the notes about 1/128 or so .  I want them dead on to use instead of using the metronome. This doesn't sound very efficient but I'll try it. I think I've been using the highest point in the waveform to line up , but should be using the Very start of the hits. ? I still feel like something else is wrong.

Yes, you should make sure the Audiosnap markes are at the very beginning of the transient before moving the transient. Otherwise the attack may get unevenly stretched and sound like a flam or otherwise distorted.

Does the Yamaha not have a "brain" module that you can drive with MIDI to use it in real time or at least record your audio clip using quantized MIDI so you don't have to quantize the audio?

[rsinger]

18 minutes ago, mark skinner said:

??     Would I have to go into clip properties ?

I double click the clip so it opens up. Normally the problem is obvious, at least when I've run into a problem.

[mark skinner]

2 hours ago, David Baay said:

Does the Yamaha not have a "brain" module that you can drive with MIDI

Yes , it's actually an old drum computer (per the name on the unit) that i haven't used in years. I actually Like the audio sample it is outputting , and I haven't found a Vsti that outdoes the sample needed for the song. I know I said it would only be a place keeper,  but I would like to keep the internal audio sound it's producing.

2 hours ago, rsinger said:

I double click the clip so it opens up. Normally the problem is obvious

I'll try that. I've run into problems locating the settings for beats per clip etc ..  Only found the up and down arrows for changing it , but don't see the current values. I thought it was my modified "basic" work space settings. I changed to "advanced" with the same results.   I'll get back on it in the morning.  Thanks ..  mark

[David Baay]

19 hours ago, mark skinner said:

Only found the up and down arrows for changing it , but don't see the current values.

Sounds like the clip was not selected. Opening clip properties by double-clicking will do that automatically, but if you navigate to clip properties with nothing explicitly selected, it will be blank.

[mark skinner]

I'm finding the settings in "loop construction" view. It wasn't available in my modified basic workspace. I'm still playing with it and reading the documentation and watching Cake videos.  Slowly getting results. Thanks ..  mark

[mark skinner]

OK , I just took 1 bar with only 2 drum hits in it. I used the audio snap pallet to get the hits right. Bounced to clip. Enabled groove clipping . The clip stretched twice it's length. Opened loop construction view and changed the note duration . The clip stayed the same length ,  but was if it had been dragged 1 more measure . Got out of loop construction and the clip can be dragged further out (or back) to 1 bar working as a groove clip should.

I still haven't figured out why I cant just double click the clip and get to where I can change the settings. I'll play with it further but I can deal with this and get more familiar with audio snap and looping.  On my laptop I can just enable groove clip and it seems to work fine. ??    Thanks for the help.   I can at least make a groove clip now.      mark

[John Vere]

If you like that sound create a sample and play it from a sample player. I use Session Drummer for this but any sample player will work. Next has one built right in. I have a feeling it is going to be included with Sonar (I hope. ) 

Session Drummer is perfect for what you are doing as you can build a complete custom kit using anything even a cardboard box. It has a mixer and can output I think 10 tracks. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by John Vere

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, mark skinner said:

I still haven't figured out why I cant just double click the clip and get to where I can change the settings.

See Track VIew Options > Click Behavior > Double Click > Audio Clips

The default used to be Loop Construction, but is now Clip Properties in the Track Inspector, and can also be "Nothing".

I didn't fully understand your last post. Maybe share a copy of the raw 4-beat audio clip here and we can check it out.

[bvideo]

21 hours ago, mark skinner said:

OK , I just took 1 bar with only 2 drum hits in it. I used the audio snap pallet to get the hits right. Bounced to clip. Enabled groove clipping . The clip stretched twice it's length. Opened loop construction view and changed the note duration . The clip stayed the same length ,  but was if it had been dragged 1 more measure . Got out of loop construction and the clip can be dragged further out (or back) to 1 bar working as a groove clip should.

...

This is the exact symptom of how Cakewalk and Sonar have frequently misjudged the number of beats when promoting an audio clip to a loop, as rsinger said in the first reply.

[sjoens]

Just started using Groove-Clip Looping and ran into this clip shrinking "bug" today.  It shrinks to half the length when Groove-clipping it, so...

1) Slip-stretch clip 200%
2) Create groove clip loop, which shrinks it back to original size
3) Slip-stretch clip to desired length
4) Bounce to clips and hope there's little quality degradation

Tried the Loop Construction suggestions but found it to be quite buggy as well.

[mark skinner]

Sjoens , so .. yours is going to half it's length and mine is going to twice it's length. Seems it should be pretty straight forward detecting only 4 beats in a measure. Weve both got something set wrong. I haven't tried doing it again since starting this thread , but I'm sure the time is coming soon.    Get back to me if you figure out why the detection isn't working properly.                  mark

[sjoens]

Seems like a long standing issue from Sonar days, so probably never figure it out.

Edited January 20 by sjoens

[Glenn Stanton]

i don't really use groove clipping very often any more but in the past, i would set my loop recording to record however many measures i wanted, and then perform against that loop until i had the timing and performance right. then select that loop and groove clip it, then tweak beats if needed. using the looping record and making the effect to get clean performance on the beats (etc), gave me pretty decent groove clip results. 

one option is to use a MIDI clip of the beat trigger a sampler which you carefully have collected the sounds from your kit. sitara etc. will do the trick when you need an audio sample from something you own (and cannot directly trigger it with MIDI or control voltage simulating the pad strike into the controller)

[David Baay]

In my experience, clips that are exactly 2 beats long or a multiple of 4 beats with strong beats on quarter notes get looped properly with no intervention. If they are some other whole number of beats long or have a lower or higher-frequency of strong transients (e.g.  a slow kick/bass pattern or a fast arpeggio or percussion pattern) you generally just have to correct mis-guessed Beats in Clip value. The only time I see things really get screwed up is if the clip isn't trimmed to a whole number of beats and/or the timing of clip is radically out of sync with the project tempo to begin with.

I'd be interested in seeing examples of clips that don't Groove correctly and aren't readily corrected by trimming and adjusting the Beats in Clip value.

[sjoens]

Makes sense.

4 hours ago, sjoens said:

Seems like a long standing issue from Sonar days, so probably never figure it out.

But I did.  I'm an idiot!

Project tempo is 170 bpm.  Clip is a 4 beat ride cymbal struck every 1/2 beat - that's why it shrank 1/2 size.  When tempo is set to 85 bpm, G-CL maintains length as it should.  So 100% my fault.  For some reason I thought G-CL honored a clip's length regardless of content. 

As you were...