good tool for Slicing up loops

[Esperado]

I was inspired by the discussion in the "are loops cheating" thread and it made me wonder how its done. I think ableton might have a slice and map to midi function with its drum sampler, but im curious what other options there are for slicing up a drum loop and tweaking it.

[Skrypnyk]

fruity slicer

[timaeus222]

dBlue Glitch v1.3. Precursor to v2.0.2, but free. It doesn't even have to be for just drums. Tapestop, FM resynthesis, Retrigger, Shuffle, Reverse, Bitcrush, Gate, Delay, and Stretch. At first it may seem pretty recognizable when people use it, but you can easily personalize how it sounds with the knobs and parameters.

http://illformed.org/downloads/illformed_old_vst_plugins.zip

The other three are older than that, and Glitch v1.3 already has them implemented.

Edited November 20, 2013 by timaeus222

[Argle]

ReCycle is the quintessential loop slicer. I think Geist does slicing too.

[Hypnotikid]

try beat twist, its free but complex. its very expansive (lots to do on it), and perfect for an original rhythm.

[Nabeel Ansari]

FL Slicex is my jam.

[Esperado]

most of those are PC only, and you know me, im a glazed eyed apple feind the bright side is that i figured out that ableton has a built in beat slicer that so far, works pretty schnazzy. now i can go back to some remixes and spice up those overly repetative loops i used without compromizing the slick sound design by trying to imitate the loops with my own samples!

thanks for the help anyways though guys!

[timaeus222]

most of those are PC only, and you know me, im a glazed eyed apple feind the bright side is that i figured out that ableton has a built in beat slicer that so far, works pretty schnazzy. now i can go back to some remixes and spice up those overly repetative loops i used without compromizing the slick sound design by trying to imitate the loops with my own samples!

thanks for the help anyways though guys!

Luckily dBlue Glitch v2.0.2 is MAC/Windows. It'd be $60 but worth like $200.

[Esperado]

dblue does beat repeat/glitch stuff too right? Ive just used abletons built in beat repeat, but it only lets you do pretty basic stuff. you cant do complex patterns or do upwards pitch shifting( only downwards for some reason). I also have livecut, but livecut seems to be pretty random and the GUI doesnt make much sense to me. Ive heard effectrix is pretty nice too for fun glitchy stuff too

[timaeus222]

dblue does beat repeat/glitch stuff too right? Ive just used abletons built in beat repeat, but it only lets you do pretty basic stuff. you cant do complex patterns or do upwards pitch shifting( only downwards for some reason). I also have livecut, but livecut seems to be pretty random and the GUI doesnt make much sense to me. Ive heard effectrix is pretty nice too for fun glitchy stuff too

Yeah, it does those two things with retrigger. The FM modulator is pretty sweet too. Also, you can combine layers of effects and save presets that can be loaded onto any MIDI note, with each MIDI note capable of holding a set of differently modified effects.

Effectrix works well, but personally, I prefer dBlue.

Edited November 23, 2013 by timaeus222

[Argle]

Those are buffer effects, not tools to slice and rearrange loops. Just so the OP is clear.

[ectogemia]

SliceX works pretty well. Open it up, hit F1, and check out all the possibilities. It does a whole lot more than just slicing up audio.

[timaeus222]

Those are buffer effects, not tools to slice and rearrange loops. Just so the OP is clear.

True, but the end result is essentially the same with certain effects like gating and retrigger, of course. I assume you can use Ctrl+E to slice loops in Ableton, and that there's no real need to randomize where the DAW reads the loop (i.e. "shuffle" in Glitch v1.3) unless you're interested in granular synthesis I suppose.

Edited November 24, 2013 by timaeus222

[Esperado]

Those are buffer effects, not tools to slice and rearrange loops. Just so the OP is clear.

effectrix is?

i was just curious about dblue's glitch capabilities because i had head of it being used for that before, and was curious, while it was on topic.

I think ill probably give dblue a shot. slicex is only for FL and i havent yet learned how to use FL yet.

[Argle]

Effectrix is like Glitch, an fx sequencer. If you want in depth loop slicing, something Geist will fit the bill. My preference for sliced beats is Stylus, but you can't really import random audio in that.

[timaeus222]

[dannthr]

Geist is pretty good at this sort of thing--you can bring in multiple samples and slice them up and map them on a drum machine style sampler in like less than a minute.

[Esperado]

if im not mistaken, i believe the crystal method use geist for various things, despite the lack of material coming from them in the past few years.

what i meant to ask is that when you said "those are buffer effects" , you were referring to effectrix, dblue, and other glitch fx, right?

I think im gonna stick with abletons slice to midi function for drum samples for now though. It works well enough for now.

for future reference, between dblue and geist though, which would be more useful for the money? dblue is cheaper, but if geist is more powerful(?) then i may as well just save up and grab that one instead.

[Argle]

yeah that's what I was referring to Glitch and Effectrix.

Glitch and Geist are two completely different things. Geist is a drum sampler and loop slicer with MPC style pads. Glitch is an FX sequencer. They don't replace each other at all.

[timaeus222]

Basically, just think about whether you want something for just percussive (like bird-cussion™ --> halc) or drum loops (Geist), or just about anything (Glitch).

[Esperado]

oh ok! I thought for some reason that timaeus said that dblue did loop slicing too.

i was just looking for a loop slicer, but im glad i learned about some glitch fx vst's too.

[big giant circles]

Recycle is way overpriced and very outdated. I don't recommend it. I'm not sure how it's lasted as long as it has with anyone still calling it "the standard".

I don't even think it's been updated in several years. I'm too lazy to look right now, but last I checked it had not changed.

[timaeus222]

oh ok! I thought for some reason that timaeus said that dblue did loop slicing too.

i was just looking for a loop slicer, but im glad i learned about some glitch fx vst's too.

Nah, I just figured if you wanted a loop slicer, a tool that can do that and more would be of interest too (which doesn't mean I'm talking about Glitch in this sentence).

Though chopping and slicing are two different things. Chopping = gating, retrigger, shuffle, etc. Slicing = manual cutting up of an audio file.

Edited November 24, 2013 by timaeus222

[Nabeel Ansari]

I don't know why Glitch is mentioned here.

It doesn't have anything to do with slicing.

What you want is a program that cuts the audio file up by detecting transients and figuring those are the individual drum sounds. Then it maps each slice to a MIDI key so that you can play each drum sound in the loop separately, like a loaded drum kit.

Glitch has absolutely 0% relevant functionality to loop slicing. All it can do is repeat, which repeats the the last 16th note or so of audio feed and shuffle, which I still have no idea to this day how it works, but it is not controllable, and not really a slicer. Glitch doesn't process the audio to detect sound transients, it simply plays with incoming audio feed in rhythmic intervals that are synced to the DAW's tempo.

[Frederic Petitpas]

The new edit thing in Reason 7 is great, you don't need ReCycle anymore and you can just make loops on the fly with a tune, a no brainer.. ReCycle is a pain in the ass to work with. But those 2 are the only things I've tried for that matter.