CHAPTER 9. TEMPO CONTROL AND WARPING
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The Transient Envelope slider applies a volume fade to each segment of audio. At 100,
there is no fade. At 0, each segment decays very quickly. Long envelope times can help
to smooth clicks at the end of segments, while short times can be used to apply rhythmic
gating effects.
9.3.2
Tones Mode
Tones Mode serves well for stretching material with a more or less clear pitch structure, such
as vocals, monophonic instruments and basslines.
Grain Size
provides rough control over the average grain size used. The actual grain size is
determined in a signal-dependent manner. For signals with a clear sense of pitch contour,
a small grain size works best. Larger grain sizes help avoid artifacts that can occur when the
pitch contour is unclear, but the tradeoff can be audible repetitions.
9.3.3
Texture Mode
Texture Mode works well for sound textures with an ambiguous pitch contour (e.g., poly-
phonic orchestral music, noise, atmospheric pads, etc.). It also offers rich potential for
manipulating all kinds of sounds in a creative way.
The
Grain Size
control determines the grain size used, but unlike in Tones Mode, this is a
setting that Live will use unaltered, without considering the signal's characteristics.
Fluctuation
introduces randomness into the process. Larger values give more randomness.
9.3.4
Re-Pitch Mode
In Re-Pitch Mode, Live doesn't really time-stretch or compress the music; instead, it adjusts
the playback rate to create the desired amount of stretching. In other words, to speed
up playback by a factor of 2, it's transposed up an octave. This is like the DJ stretching
method of using variable-speed turntables to sync two records, or what happens to samples
in samplers when they're transposed.
The Transpose and Detune controls have no effect in Re-Pitch Mode.
