One, it’s a perfect antidote to sets that get boring because you have clips looping endlessly. We feature this technique in the CDM Winter Guide for two reasons. It integrates with all the clips you have sitting around your session, can map to those warp markers, and gives you virtual drum machines with live controller mappings and the ability to insert effects (including third-party plug-ins) on each pad. But in the context of Live, slicing takes on a different quality. It’s not so much that this is something other tools can’t do – even some hardware drum machines have a similar feature. You’ll need Live 7 as it’s a new feature, but you can use the free trial to try it out the trial is still unlimited time-wise and now even saves for the first 14 days. Naturally, this works nicely for drum loops, but if you apply to vocals or weird found sounds or other material, you can get all kinds of results. (You can see what I mean as Bjorn plays around with the feature in the video.) Grab an audio clip (or record your own), hit Slice to New MIDI Track, apply a preset, and you get a new Drum Rack instance with slices mapped to pads, effects, and live controls.
FREE ABLETON LIVE PACKS INSTALL
Instead, install this pack and you get a whole mess of slicing presents for use with Ableton Live’s Slice to New MIDI Track feature.
The “Slice of Winter” sound pack created by Covert Operators for CDM doesn’t have a single sound in it – not one you bring your own.
Hate soundware and generic downloaded samples? You’ll love this. Slice of Winter from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.