Operation Manual

CHAPTER 18. CLIP ENVELOPES 226
18.2.3 Muting or Attenuating Notes in a Sample
Click on the Volume quick-chooser to access an audio clip's volume envelope. By drawing
steps in Draw Mode or creating shapes with breakpoints, you can impose an arbitrary volume
shape onto the sample.
Imposing a Volume
Envelope on a Sample.
The volume envelope's output is interpreted as a relative percentage of the clip volume
slider's current value. The result of the clip envelope's modulation can therefore never
exceed the absolute volume setting, but the clip envelope can drag the audible volume
down to silence.
18.2.4 Scrambling Beats
One very creative use of clip envelopes is to modulate the sample offset. Sample offset
modulation makes the most sense for rhythmical samples, and is only available for clips that
are set up to run in the Beats Warp Mode.
Try sample offset modulation with a one-bar drum loop: Make sure Beats Mode is chosen;
in the Envelopes box, choose Clip from the Device chooser and Sample Offset from
the Control chooser. The Envelope Editor appears with a vertical grid overlay. In envelope
Draw Mode, set steps to non-zero values to hear the loop scrambled. What is going on?
Imagine the audio is read out by a tape head, the position of which is modulated by the
envelope. The higher a value the envelope delivers, the farther away the tape head is from
its center position. Positive envelope values move the head towards the future, negative
values move it towards the past. Fortunately, Live performs the modulation in beats rather