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Blocs Wave: how do you add rests?

Or in Lauchpad?

I wouldn’t call myself a seasoned beat maker, I’m not sure about the lingo, but in my mind there’s generally two types of sample based beats: 1) Looped samples, 2) one shots with rests.
1. Continuous phrase or chopped phrase with no rests that loops onto itself.
2. Either a longer loop or a chop or whatever that plays then repeats at a regular interval after a set number of bars of rest. (Unless it’s a nonmelodic vocal quote drop or something like that doesn’t have to be in rhythm and can be triggered manually in performance).

A lot of samples loop nicely, but are too repetitive to be played without rests before repeating. Then there’s sound effects or chops that aren’t even melodic but still need to be in regular rhythm.
How do you do this in Blocs Wave? I don’t need a lot of features, but it’s not the kind of feature that would make sense to do in a separate app. It’s a very basic function—you wouldn’t want to trigger those one hits manually in Lauchpad, especially if you’re layering at all.

Does this make sense?

Comments

  • @SealTeamSick said:
    Or in Lauchpad?

    I wouldn’t call myself a seasoned beat maker, I’m not sure about the lingo, but in my mind there’s generally two types of sample based beats: 1) Looped samples, 2) one shots with rests.
    1. Continuous phrase or chopped phrase with no rests that loops onto itself.
    2. Either a longer loop or a chop or whatever that plays then repeats at a regular interval after a set number of bars of rest. (Unless it’s a nonmelodic vocal quote drop or something like that doesn’t have to be in rhythm and can be triggered manually in performance).

    A lot of samples loop nicely, but are too repetitive to be played without rests before repeating. Then there’s sound effects or chops that aren’t even melodic but still need to be in regular rhythm.
    How do you do this in Blocs Wave? I don’t need a lot of features, but it’s not the kind of feature that would make sense to do in a separate app. It’s a very basic function—you wouldn’t want to trigger those one hits manually in Lauchpad, especially if you’re layering at all.

    Does this make sense?

    Yup it does make sense.
    Nope, you can't do that with Blocs Waves except in real-time
    and it's more of a playback arranging app rather than a sampler.

    Sounds like what you need is a dedicated sampler and a sequencer.

  • @SealTeamSick : you could consider using Perforator after Blocs wave in your signal chain to totally block out some sections in a rhythmic way, and record the new loop in AUM, using the Quantum setting to easily create a perfect loop, but you’d either have to do that per instrument on successive iterations, or accept that the whole Blocs Wave mix gets chopped. Or use a sampler/sequencer instead, as @Gravitas suggests.

  • @Svetlovska said:
    @SealTeamSick : you could consider using Perforator after Blocs wave in your signal chain to totally block out some sections in a rhythmic way, and record the new loop in AUM, using the Quantum setting to easily create a perfect loop, but you’d either have to do that per instrument on successive iterations, or accept that the whole Blocs Wave mix gets chopped. Or use a sampler/sequencer instead, as @Gravitas suggests.

    Alright, thanks for the tip! I understand that what I’m talking about is sequencing and that’s not what Blocs does.
    But that’s a very time consuming workaround, you get my point that this would be a dead simple feature to add and would be a game changer.

    Just that one thing: add a setting for the number of beats of rest after the selection audio. Then you move the play head around to position it in the mix relative to other such instances. It would be huge to be able to just do that.

    I guess I could email them.

  • The problem wouldn‘t exist if they left the stretching and add silence instead.
    (the sample isn‘t defined by bpm but by number or divisions of bars)
    If you set it from 1 bar to 2 bars, a bar of silence is added - that would be cool indeed and make me use Blocs much more. The GUI is really nice and efficient.

  • You can go into slice mode and switch on velocity. When you might want a space or two tap it at the lowest possible velocity setting (at the bottom) and a silent gap will appear. You then need to flatten it or your gap will vanish if you are planning to randomise.
    You can now jam along hitting the random button and your gaps along with the rest of your clip will hop around in a variety of ways.

  • edited September 2020

    Yep the slicer is very versatile.

  • I like Perforator, but I wouldn't recommend it for this. Its gates way too short for making arrangements.

  • @robosardine said:
    You can go into slice mode and switch on velocity. When you might want a space or two tap it at the lowest possible velocity setting (at the bottom) and a silent gap will appear. You then need to flatten it or your gap will vanish if you are planning to randomise.
    You can now jam along hitting the random button and your gaps along with the rest of your clip will hop around in a variety of ways.

    Slicer is pretty much the way to do it
    That’s the best it can do

  • I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

  • Once you have loops sliced and have your main parts down in Blocs you can export to Launchpad which give you the whole arrangement on one screen which you can perform with. You can set each pad to retrigger, loop or one-shot and can swipe a column to trigger all the loops in that column.

    You can also choose pads from different columns to play so you’re not limited in the same way you are in BW.

    You can use the edit in BW command to go back to BlocsWave to change things and return to the launchpad arrangement.

    And when all that’s done and you’ve got a good idea for an arrangement, that’s when it’s best to export the whole caboodle and stick all your tracks in a proper DAW for mixing.

    I love BW and use it all the time for arrangement ideas. I use it because it’s so quick to launch and simple to use that there aren’t any distractions in playing with ideas.

    Once I get the idea rolling it’s off to Logic for completion.

  • Don’t forget you can also ‘play’ the rests/ mutes by switching them on and off at the top. They are very responsive.

  • @Telefunky said:
    The problem wouldn‘t exist if they left the stretching and add silence instead.
    (the sample isn‘t defined by bpm but by number or divisions of bars)
    If you set it from 1 bar to 2 bars, a bar of silence is added - that would be cool indeed and make me use Blocs much more. The GUI is really nice and efficient.

    Exactly. I know you can do this with a loop in GarageBand.

  • @robosardine said:
    Don’t forget you can also ‘play’ the rests/ mutes by switching them on and off at the top. They are very responsive.

    Do you mean switching scenes at the very top? Because “switching off” samples is actually another weird thing you can’t do. You can solo a sample instead. Seemingly a lot less useful than muting.
    Sure you can make a scene missing the samples you want to rest. And switch back and forth. (Except that you’re using up valuable scene space). Not a bad way to do it. Much better than doing it in Launchpad because Launchpad doesn’t switch seamlessly between scenes at the play head at any time! I wish it would!

  • @klownshed said:
    Once you have loops sliced and have your main parts down in Blocs you can export to Launchpad which give you the whole arrangement on one screen which you can perform with. You can set each pad to retrigger, loop or one-shot and can swipe a column to trigger all the loops in that column.

    You can also choose pads from different columns to play so you’re not limited in the same way you are in BW.

    I do use Launchpad but I’m surprised at how little it adds to the workflow. I like some of the effects, but I like even more that blocs is essentially playing all scenes at once, so when you switch between them you get this seamless switching at the playhead. Launchpad doesn’t do this. Choosing any/more pads is not as important as I would have thought, the way I’m using it.

    It’s great that you can finish in a DAW, but I’m kinda grooving on the fact that this workflow is dawless and so damn fast. Loop diggin on Blocs is a revelation.

  • @robosardine said:
    You can go into slice mode and switch on velocity. When you might want a space or two tap it at the lowest possible velocity setting (at the bottom) and a silent gap will appear. You then need to flatten it or your gap will vanish if you are planning to randomise.
    You can now jam along hitting the random button and your gaps along with the rest of your clip will hop around in a variety of ways.

    Thank you! You know, I’m dumb, I didn’t even realize that you can drag your finger over the four slicer section for a total of 16 beats of continuous slice rec. This was fucking me up. With that, I don’t even see the need for velocity. As long as the sample is 8 beats or less, you get an even rest after—if you let go of the first chop when it’s done playing.

    This is big!! Now, if they let you have more than 4 Slice rec sections, that would pretty much sew up this issue!

    Would also be cool if there was a button to add silence/erase in real-time while the slices are playing back. Kinda like Figure.

  • @SealTeamSick said:

    Do you mean switching scenes at the very top? Because “switching off” samples is actually another weird thing you can’t do. You can solo a sample instead. Seemingly a lot less useful than muting.

    Swipe down on any sample to mute it. Swipe down again to unmute.

  • edited September 2020

    @SealTeamSick said:

    I do use Launchpad but I’m surprised at how little it adds to the workflow. I like some of the effects, but I like even more that blocs is essentially playing all scenes at once, so when you switch between them you get this seamless switching at the playhead. Launchpad doesn’t do this. Choosing any/more pads is not as important as I would have thought, the way I’m using it.

    >

    If you swipe any column it will queue all the samples in that column. Similar to playing the pattern in BlocsWave but queued to whatever you have the sync set to.

    This makes it easier to queue the next section than in BW as it syncs the next part to the next bar rather than playing it straight away. It gives you a choice.

    I kind of think of launchpad as another screen to BW.

    The good thing about launchpad is being able to swap out one or more parts for parts from different columns.

    If you have similar parts playing variations you can swap out the various parts or play additional parts easily. So you could use just the drums from column three with the melody parts from column 1 then add a percussion part from column 5.

    Only one part from any row can play at once so it’s easy to queue up the new part to replace the old. You don’t need to stop one part first, just queue up the next part.

    It’s very simple but it’s cool having all your parts accessible and fully synced in one grid.

    I like it. I use it to try out arrangement.

  • edited September 2020

    .

  • @klownshed said:

    Swipe down on any sample to mute it. Swipe down again to unmute.

    Damn. I did not know that lol. Thanks.

  • @klownshed said:
    >

    If you swipe any column it plays all the samples just like in BW.

    The good thing about launchpad is being able to swap out one or more parts for parts from different columns.

    If you have similar parts playing variations you can swap out the various parts or play additional parts easily. So you could use just the drums from column three with the melody parts from column 1 then add a percussion part from column 5.

    Only one part from any row can play at once so it’s easy to queue up the new part to replace the old. You don’t need to stop one part first, just queue up the next part.

    It’s very simple but it’s cool having all your parts accessible and fully synced in one grid.

    I like it. I use it to try out arrangement.

    No, yeah, you’re right. I should have said, I do do this. Even for a simple hiphop beat I tend to chop too many loops and Launchpad is great for trying out arranging as you say. Then you edit it down to less parts. Also, if you have more than a handful of samples, you need that whole grid to work it all out. You can add a bunch of more loops that way.

    I’m just thinking that for most of the stuff I’ve done, I could have limited myself to arranging for those 5 scenes in Blocs and just do the performance in there using muting and flipping between scenes. Rec out to AUM. You could get different results than Launchpad doing that. It’s an idea.

  • edited September 2020

    In Launchpad remember to make use of the ‘pad sync’ options in pad edit. They are set on a per pad basis.

  • @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

  • edited September 2020

    @Intrepolicious said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

    Glad you asked. I made a video showing my Blocs Wave workflow (including using Groovebox, Launchpad, and other apps). Around the 30 min mark of this video, I go into Koala Sampler, and even Animoog.

    ">

    The general idea is to use an app like Audiobus (or AUM, but I prefer Audiobus since I have the side panel controls) to send the input from Koala into Blocs Wave. This combined with Ableton Link, the fact you can use Koala Sampler in slide over view has tremendous potential.

    For example, I can
    1. Trigger simple samples into Blocs Wave
    2. Record complex sequences using the sampler/perform feature of Koala
    3. Trigger multiple loops in the SAMPLE portion of Koala (i believe about 64), arrange them via the SEQUENCE menu, and PERFORM them with all the effects (STRAWBERRY/VANILA) effects which gets directly recorded into Blocs Wave

    Hope this helps.

  • @seonnthaproducer said:

    @Intrepolicious said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

    Glad you asked. I made a video showing my Blocs Wave workflow (including using Groovebox, Launchpad, and other apps). Around the 30 min mark of this video, I go into Koala Sampler, and even Animoog.

    ">

    The general idea is to use an app like Audiobus (or AUM, but I prefer Audiobus since I have the side panel controls) to send the input from Koala into Blocs Wave. This combined with Ableton Link, the fact you can use Koala Sampler in slide over view has tremendous potential.

    For example, I can
    1. Trigger simple samples into Blocs Wave
    2. Record complex sequences using the sampler/perform feature of Koala
    3. Trigger multiple loops in the SAMPLE portion of Koala (i believe about 64), arrange them via the SEQUENCE menu, and PERFORM them with all the effects (STRAWBERRY/VANILA) effects which gets directly recorded into Blocs Wave

    Hope this helps.

    That’s a great video you have made 😃

  • @robosardine said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:

    @Intrepolicious said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

    Glad you asked. I made a video showing my Blocs Wave workflow (including using Groovebox, Launchpad, and other apps). Around the 30 min mark of this video, I go into Koala Sampler, and even Animoog.

    ">

    The general idea is to use an app like Audiobus (or AUM, but I prefer Audiobus since I have the side panel controls) to send the input from Koala into Blocs Wave. This combined with Ableton Link, the fact you can use Koala Sampler in slide over view has tremendous potential.

    For example, I can
    1. Trigger simple samples into Blocs Wave
    2. Record complex sequences using the sampler/perform feature of Koala
    3. Trigger multiple loops in the SAMPLE portion of Koala (i believe about 64), arrange them via the SEQUENCE menu, and PERFORM them with all the effects (STRAWBERRY/VANILA) effects which gets directly recorded into Blocs Wave

    Hope this helps.

    That’s a great video you have made 😃

    Thanks. Appreciate it.

  • @seonnthaproducer said:

    @robosardine said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:

    @Intrepolicious said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

    Glad you asked. I made a video showing my Blocs Wave workflow (including using Groovebox, Launchpad, and other apps). Around the 30 min mark of this video, I go into Koala Sampler, and even Animoog.

    ">

    The general idea is to use an app like Audiobus (or AUM, but I prefer Audiobus since I have the side panel controls) to send the input from Koala into Blocs Wave. This combined with Ableton Link, the fact you can use Koala Sampler in slide over view has tremendous potential.

    For example, I can
    1. Trigger simple samples into Blocs Wave
    2. Record complex sequences using the sampler/perform feature of Koala
    3. Trigger multiple loops in the SAMPLE portion of Koala (i believe about 64), arrange them via the SEQUENCE menu, and PERFORM them with all the effects (STRAWBERRY/VANILA) effects which gets directly recorded into Blocs Wave

    Hope this helps.

    That’s a great video you have made 😃

    Thanks. Appreciate it.

    Thanks!
    It's funny that neither AudioShare nor TwistedWave support drag & drop in slide-over view.
    Auditor does though.
    Documents remains an indispensable tool, even for us musicians.

  • @seonnthaproducer said:

    @Intrepolicious said:

    @seonnthaproducer said:
    I recommend Koala Sampler. Plus, Koala into Blocs Wave is an insane combination.

    Could you explain this workflow please? I have both apps, and I’m curious.

    Glad you asked. I made a video showing my Blocs Wave workflow (including using Groovebox, Launchpad, and other apps). Around the 30 min mark of this video, I go into Koala Sampler, and even Animoog.

    ">

    The general idea is to use an app like Audiobus (or AUM, but I prefer Audiobus since I have the side panel controls) to send the input from Koala into Blocs Wave. This combined with Ableton Link, the fact you can use Koala Sampler in slide over view has tremendous potential.

    For example, I can
    1. Trigger simple samples into Blocs Wave
    2. Record complex sequences using the sampler/perform feature of Koala
    3. Trigger multiple loops in the SAMPLE portion of Koala (i believe about 64), arrange them via the SEQUENCE menu, and PERFORM them with all the effects (STRAWBERRY/VANILA) effects which gets directly recorded into Blocs Wave

    Hope this helps.

    Interesting! Thank you for posting your video. I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing yet (been at work all night), but I will!

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