Is Live 12 the future of MIDI?

Ableton Live 12 has new MIDI tools that are pretty awesome! Let's explore together what's possible.

Content:
0:00 Ableton Live 12 MIDI tools
1:03 Humanise your MIDI
3:17 Time warp is the GOAT
4:19 Transform your MIDI
6:04 Harmonic transformations
7:16 Techno acid riff generators
8:22 Rhythm generators
11:47 Stacks are chords FYI
13:35 Time warp everything
14:12 A sneeze of notes
16:43 What's my take?

[remperem]

Place a vocal on an audio track and slice it to a new MIDI track using any preferred setting, such as 1/16 notes. Once that's done, delete all the notes that were automatically created for you. Go to the "seed" function and select the slices you made earlier. Set the note length to match the slice size from your audio track (in this example, 1/16 notes). Then, hit "generate" to create some cool vocal chops. You can adjust the generated MIDI to fit your song, which can be helpful if you're stuck and need fresh ideas.

[joechapman]

3:00 Reversing midi is great for recording audio of the sequence (mostly likely with effects that create extended trails: reverb is the obvious candidate, but it could be delays or other granular effects) and then reversing the recorded audio again. This gives you the intended melody but with a reversed envelope and a ghostly effect where each note rushes in.

Invert is useful in multiple ways, too. You might like the gist of a melody and love the rhythm, and just decide to flip it to see if it's better. It's also useful when making harmonies.

[kraeter]

Shape is my favourite, being able to draw in the rough movement of pitches and randomly generating off that gives me so many ideas when I have a block, especially for basslines

[DielectricFailure]

No matter what you’re given, you have a gift to make it sound good.

[marcellkovacs]

3:02 sounds pretty good to me. Reversing can be also used just to get inspired. I wrote one of my favourite melodies by reversing the top note of the voicing and laying it atop of the harmony.

[laurentgaumer]

oh !! This is crazy why we can do now with midi ! Thanks Oscar

[godned]

3:00 reverse or invert works well if you have a solid melody that consists of good tick duration integers like playing a chord progression for 2 bars consisting of 4 chords one after another, lets say e minor for 3/8 notes d major 3/8 notes c major 7/8 notes long and d major 3/8th notes long in that order in other words em, DM, CM, DM, for 3/8, 3/8, 7/8, 3/8 sounds good and if reversed to 3/8, 7/8, 3/8, 3, 8 also sounds good. And most of the time when you reverse its not to play it back to back with the clip you just reversed from but would be used to add to the end of the second time around the rhythm or something like this. And there are plenty more melody's like this but auto generators have to much clutter in their logic to find them but they may find some after several clicks.

[iambadd]

Oscar reverses MIDI at 3:00
Me: Ohh I like that.
Oscar: I hate it.
Me: :(

[huntingghosts]

i was very amazed at first but so far I haven't used it much. probably takes a while to adopt and I might depend on more creative people than me to show me how to actually implement the stuff in tracks in a meaningful way

[guildem]

That's great to see Ableton catching up Bitwig on midi, lots of interesting improvements !

[JimJohnMarks]

While these new MIDI tools are interesting & almost certainly useful, it does feel very much like Ableton has created Live 12 to expand their user pool to include aspiring producers with zero musical background rather than focusing on new feature sets (like Atmos support, or being able to have different tempos on different channels) which would allow their existing, experienced producers who need some of these things to remain relevant in a rapidly changing industry.

We are a long way from the DAW which was birthed to make live, real time electronic music production & performance a reality.

[turbochargedfilms]

Another banger from Underdog! I absolutely agree with your criticisms about some of the new features, the Stacks chord are more confusing than helpful and would've made me not even consider using it if it weren't for the written chord qualities and degrees that show up when you hover over it. The only thing I personally disagree with is Seed; its results definitely end up feeling more like the generative riffs they are rather than actual songwriting, but I've already seen it put to great use for not just ostinato-heavy techno, but pop, trap and similar genres that rely on cyclical, diatonic melodies; it is kinda crazy how good Seed's outputs can sound if you let it generate fairly long pieces and then slice chunks out of it for verses, bridges, choruses. That being said, it is definitely a very particular and peculiar tool, both in terms of use and output, but I do very much appreciate it being added to Ableton, just like the rest of 12's updates.

[shawnmcandrew]

The reverse midi is great for flipping patterns that the random generators create also forgetting experimental

[WaveRiderMusic]

I still miss the midi manipulation of the old midi programs like KCS, soundscape, bars n pipes et others... still unmatched

[ned_interrobang]

reverse midi, bounce to audio, reverse audio (making it forward again) = forward melody, reversed voice

[Der_Meister.Official]

If you please feel like it, would really appreciate an example video on the time wrap idea in ableton 11. If there even is an easier way (maybe you know a plug-in that does this too). If not, then handmade it is 🤓

[PavanMS]

The midi tools generate some stuff, yeah. Im wondering how i can use them for specific genres like Tech House ? Please advise

[gianluigidautilia]

I love ableton, i quite liked your analysis. I have a question, surely you also
Use and know the reason 12 counterpart of Ai generators (called by propellerhead “players”) i have now checked both. Whats your take on reason compared? To me their players seems i admit more usable, in terms of interface, and they provided more guidance to direct you obtaining musical oriented results. Live12 seems more complex to understand still how and what you can do with them. It opens possibilities but interface and results leave me a bit perplexed. So far scanning the web and youtube i only hear random generated progressions, which are becoming quite boring.

[tangente]

These are kind of like Reasons player devices.

[boger]

Excuse me, sir. Are you that Underdog, who made remixes for Massive Attack?