Every clip has envelopes, and most people use them to draw a filter sweep. There is a switch that turns them into something far more interesting: unlink the envelope from the clip.
What unlinking does
Normally a clip envelope is the same length as its clip and loops with it. Unlinked, the envelope has its own length — and it does not have to match.
A one-bar drum loop with a seven-bar unlinked filter envelope will not repeat itself for seven bars. Make the envelope five bars against a two-bar loop and the pattern takes ten bars to come back round. This is how you get long, evolving material out of almost nothing, and it costs no CPU and no extra clips.
Three things to do with it
- Long loops from short loops. One-bar loop, envelopes of three, five and seven bars on filter, pan and volume. Nothing repeats for 105 bars.
- Rhythm patterns onto samples. Draw a stepped volume envelope over a sustained pad and it becomes a gated rhythm. Draw it over a vocal and you get a stutter that follows the beat.
- Clip envelopes as LFOs. Draw a smooth shape over a few bars, unlink it, and it is a tempo-synced LFO with a shape you drew — which is more control than most LFOs give you.
Also worth knowing
Clip envelopes are non-destructive and they can target more than volume and pan. Point one at a device parameter and you have automation that belongs to the clip rather than the arrangement, so it travels with the clip when you drag it somewhere else.
Pitch envelopes on audio clips work per-note: draw a transposition envelope over a bassline and you have rewritten it without touching the sample. Each horizontal line is a semitone.
Do this now
- Take a one-bar drum loop in Session View.
- Open the Envelopes tab, choose Clip > Transposition, and unlink it.
- Set the envelope length to 3 bars and draw a few steps.
- Add a second envelope on the filter of a device, unlinked, 5 bars.
- Let it run for a minute.
One clip, no automation, and it has not repeated itself yet.