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3. Changing the groove of sampled loops and beats in Live (continued)
7 Now, we'll apply the same principle to sampled beats as MIDI notes. Open a blank project at 130bpm and create a two-bar MIDI region. Drag KD 1.wav from the tutorials folder onto the kick drum (C1) pad of an empty Drum Rack and insert kick drum notes on beats 1.1.1, 1.2.4, 1.3.3 and 1.4.3. Bar 2 repeats this but adds another at 2.4.2.
8 Take SN 1.wav from the same folder and drag it to E1. Place a snare note on the 2 and 4 of each of the two bars, then add an extra snare beat at 2.3.4. Reduce the Velocity of this final beat down to around 80, and also reduce the velocity of the last two kicks in the pattern to 40 and 50 – this places more emphasis on the main, on-beat kicks.
9 To add swing in, open the groove preset pane of the file browser (Packs » Core Library » Swing & Grooves) and choose the Other » 2Steps1 130 preset. Drag it into the Groove Pool and you'll now be able to select it from the Clip View's Groove selector menu, imposing its timing on the sequence. The note positions don't change visibly, but the new feel is audible.
10 Turning to the Groove Pool controls, we set the Velocity to 0% and the Timing (which affects the strength of the swing) to around 57%. The Quantize parameter refers to the quantisation taken to straighten out the part before the swing is applied – our part has been stepprogrammed to a straight 16th-note grid, so we can leave this at 0%.
11 For the swung hats, we go with HH 5.wav from the folder, placing 16th notes on F#1 on beats at 1.1.3, 1.1.4, 1.2.1 and 1.2.3. Set their velocities to 70, 90, 105 and 80. Copy this 4-note group from 1.1.3 over to 1.3.3 and add an extra note prior to the copied group on 1.3.2, giving it a velocity of 90, then select and copy bar 1's hi-hat part into bar 2.
12 Once your groove has the right amount of bounce, you can make the groove quantise permanent. Click the Commit button, and you'll see all even-numbered 16th-notes shift to the right. Now you've applied grooves to both a sampled loop and beats, you can see what a powerful tool it is and you've created a classic garage beat to boot!