so - I have played some synths into ableton, and recorded midi notes along with them in a separate track, and now wish to play the midi notes to the Automat, and record the motors playing along to those notes, and re-sync the subsequent recording of motors to the original synth parts… I tried this for the first time just now, and it seems that the timing is off a bit, and I wonder if there are any tricks to syncing such material?
I will try starting with a very pronounced note that also plays a motor, so as to provide ample signal with which to sync, but need to start from scratch with this in mind, and my girlfriend is taking a nap in the bedroom/studio right now, so thought I’d seek advice here as well as I bide my time!
I will also try with a very straightforward beat, as the first thing I was trying this with is already pretty abstract - a little hard to tell where things are supposed to fit in!
Maybe better to attempt a simultaneous recording of all the material in the first place, I wonder, though that would mean I’m trying to play all the synths and the motors all at once, and both need a little attention over the course of a track.
the recorded track (without any acoustic recording) that I’m trying this with is here:
redid my attempt with a different take, better results, but still a little uncertain whats going on - I think there’s some latency from my trigger to midi box (Casio DZ1) and maybe then again from ableton to the motors? I shuffled my acoustic recording around after until it sounded good, but would like to make the process less trial and error going forward
stuck it at the end of this album of random tracks, just a rough take - you can hear my roomates in the background and maybe our cats racing down the hall… no big deal, I wanted to get some open air flavor, and I got it in spades!
I can’t find my example ableton set right now.
But i think you basically have to shift the audio tracks / give them a offset as the mechanical things take longer > here it is as well a difference if you have a solenoid hitting something directly or with the mallet for example.
As i am working on a new software update for the automat right now this will include some kind hardware latency control as well.
Here is a pure data patch to measure the round trip time / latency: http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/patches/patch/92
