User Manual

CHAPTER 17. INSTRUMENT, DRUM AND EFFECT RACKS 245
17.6.2 Slicing
Although Live automatically warps audio les to match your Set's tempo, you can get even
more exibility out of your loops via a process called slicing. Slicing involves dividing the
audio into small chunks and assigning each chunk to a single MIDI note, leaving your original
audio le unaffected. The Drum Rack provides an ideal environment for working with sliced
les, and most of the setup happens automatically.
To get started, select an audio clip from within your Set or the Browser, click (PC) /
Ctrl
(Mac) to open the clip's context menu, and select the Slice to New MIDI Track
command:
The Slicing Dialog.
The Slicing dialog offers a list of slicing divisions, as well as a chooser to select the Slicing
Preset. The top chooser allows you to slice at a variety of beat resolutions or according to
the clip's transients or Warp Markers. Since a Rack can contain a maximum of 128 chains,
Live won't let you proceed if your choice would result in more than 128 slices. You can x
this by either setting a lower slice resolution or by selecting a smaller region of the clip to
slice. If your audio le is in REX format, the slicing will be based on the le's internal timing
information and you won't see this chooser.
The Slicing Preset chooser contains a few Ableton-supplied slicing templates, as well as any
of your own that you may have placed in your Library's default presets folder.
Once you've made your slicing choices and clicked OK, a number of things will happen:
1. A new MIDI track will be created, containing a MIDI clip. The clip will contain
one note for each slice, arranged in a chromatic sequence.
2. A Drum Rack will be added to the newly created track, containing one chain per
slice. Each chain will be triggered by one of the notes from the clip, and will
contain a Simpler with the corresponding audio slice loaded.