Demix Clips by Pitch

Split Midi clips with many pitches into clips with one pitch per track.

Why you want this

1. Demix drum patterns for further edits
2. Demix melodic patterns to send different pitches to different instruments

How to use the device to demix drum patterns

• Select a Midi Track. The button will become active and say "Demix to n tracks" ("n" being the number of Midi pitches detected in all clips on the track).
• Click the button to create "n" new Midi tracks with all notes of one pitch each. Each new track will have the same name as the source track appended by the Midi pitch.
• Select all new tracks and route the output to the source track
• On the source track set Monitoring to "In".
• Play the Live set.

How to use the device to send different pitches to different instruments:

• Select a Midi Track. The button will become active and say "Demix to n tracks" ("n" being the number of Midi pitches detected in all clips on the track).
• Click the button to create "n" new Midi tracks with all notes of one pitch each and no devices. Each new track will have the same name as the source track appended by its Midi pitch.
• Select all single-pitch tracks you want to send to the same instrument track and set the routing to the instrument track. Set the Monitoring of the instrument track to "In".

The Live set included in the download shows both use cases.

Option "Demix pitches outside the clip boarders"

When active notes outside the clip boarders are considered and demixed. This can result in tracks with clips that seem to be empty while they are not. All notes are just outside the clip boarders. This feature is still experimental. Please contact us if you experience problems.

Processing Time

Please be patient while the clips are being demixed. Depending on the computer, the number of devices on the source track, the number of pitches in all clips (defining how many new tracks are created), and the number of notes in all clips the process can take between a few seconds and a few minutes. To illustrate here are results from tests we ran on a 2,4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 Macbook from 2019:

1. One Drum Rack, five pitches, all clips together 30 seconds: 13 seconds

1. Many devices, 16 pitches, many notes, all clips 5 mins length: 2.20 minutes

Have a look into the header for demo videos.

There are plans to improve and speed up the demixing process in a future update.

After downloading the device:

You can load Max For Live devices into Ableton Live from anywhere on your computer. We recommend to be more strict to avoid possible confusion:

• Add a folder to your User Library and call it "Max For Live Devices" (In Ableton Live go to the Browser, select the User Folder, right-click into the second column and select "New Folder")
• Inside this folder add another folder "Discrete Devices"
• Move "Demix Clips.amxd" inside the "Discrete Devices" folder. (Drop it from the Finder onto the folder in the Live Browser.)

Why do this?

You might want to add "Demix Clips.amxd" to a Template Live set. If your .amxd is not inside your User Library when saving a Live set as template the device will be copied into your User Library without notifying you creating confusion with duplicates.

While you can drop the device on any track we recommend to put it onto the Master Track.

A note for curious users: Currently, if you click the Edit button of the device it opens in Max and will be "frozen" meaning you cannot see the content. When you click the "unfreeze" button you are creating a folder called "Demix Clips Project" in ~/Documents/Max 8/Max for Live Devices/. It is good behaviour to delete this folder after you closed the device (without saving the changes!). If you save the device even without changing anything and it doesn't work as before any more it is best to download it again (and delete the edited version).

Needs Live 11.0
Not compatible with Live 10 or older
Developed and tested on macOS. Might or might not work properly on Windows.