Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/11 Simpler
- Simpler combines a basic sampler with classic synth controls: each voice plays a region of a sample through envelope, filter, LFO, volume and pitch.
- It can also warp, like audio clips: a warped sample plays at the Set's tempo whatever note you play. Clips dragged in keep their warp settings; see Ableton/Live/UG/09 Audio Clips Tempo and Warping.
- The Sample tab shows the waveform and the Controls tab the synth controls. A title bar button moves the sample view into Live's main window, leaving the Controls tab in the Device View.
- Drop samples from the browser, or clips from Session or Arrangement, which bring only their start/end or loop region. Replace a sample by dropping a new one or with the hot-swap button.
Cmd-scroll (Mac) / Ctrl-scroll (Win) zooms. - Garden notes: Ableton/Instrument/Simpler
- The mode switch, left of the Sample tab or along the bottom of the expanded view, sets how Simpler treats the sample:
- Classic (default) — pitched melodic and harmonic instruments, full ADSR, looping, polyphonic.
- One-Shot — monophonic drum hits or short phrases; simple envelope, no loop, plays the whole sample by default.
- Slicing — non-destructive slices played chromatically, set automatically or by hand; suited to drum breaks.
31.11.1.1 Classic Playback Mode
- The left and right flags bound the usable region. Start and Length are percentages of it; Length 50% plays half. Loop sets how much loops, when the Loop switch is on.
- Very short loops turn glitchy or granular, or pitched at audio rates, and can load the CPU heavily, especially in Complex warp modes.
- Snap puts markers on zero crossings of the left channel, so stereo samples can still click. Fade crossfades loop end into start, useful for long textures.
- Gain — sample level, separate from the final Volume after the filter.
- Voices — when exceeded, the oldest voices are stolen.
- Retrig — replaying a sounding note cuts it off; off lets copies overlap. Audible only with long releases and more than one voice.
31.11.1.2 One-Shot Playback Mode
- Flags set the region; no Loop, Length or Voices, and always monophonic.
- Trigger — plays on after note-off, so hold length doesn't matter. Gate — starts fading at note-off over the Fade Out time.
- Fade In — time to full volume; Fade Out — starts that long before the region end.
- Snap applies to the start and end flags only.
31.11.1.3 Slicing Playback Mode
- Slice By:
- Transient — at transients; Sensitivity sets how many, up to 64.
- Beat — at a beat Division.
- Region — a number of equal Regions.
- Manual — double-click to add slices.
- Playback — Mono plays one slice at a time; Poly plays several, with Voices and Retrig; Thru is monophonic but plays on to the end of the region.
- Trigger/Gate as in One-Shot. Fades span each slice in Mono and Poly, or from the triggered slice to the region end in Thru.
- Automatic slices are blue and manual ones white. Drag to move, double-click to delete; in Transient mode,
Option-click (Mac) / Alt-click (Win) toggles a slice between manual and automatic. Manual slices survive Sensitivity changes.
- Warp off plays the sample faster or slower with pitch, like a classic sampler. On, it follows the Set's tempo whatever the note, with the same Warp Modes as audio clips.
- Warp as… fits the sample to a number of bars or beats; ÷2 and ×2 fix a wrong guess.
- The same filter types and Cytomic circuits as Operator and Sampler (Clean, OSR, MS2, SMP, PRD); see Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/09 Operator/05 Filter Section.
- Frequency, Resonance, Drive (non-Clean low-, high- and band-pass) and Morph.
- The display switches between response curve and envelope; drag the curve to adjust. Cutoff follows Vel, Key, Envelope and the LFO's Filter slider.
- Three ADSR envelopes, for amplitude, filter and pitch, chosen with buttons and edited with knobs or handles. Filter and pitch have amount controls at the top right.
- The amplitude envelope can loop: Loop and Trigger restart from the start if the note outlasts Decay, taking Time to return; Beat and Sync restart after Rate.
- Sine, square, triangle, saw down, saw up and random, free from 0.01 to 30 Hz or synced. Runs per voice.
- Attack — time to full depth. R — reset to Offset on each note; Offset does nothing otherwise.
- Key — higher notes get faster LFOs; at zero all voices share a rate.
- Volume, Pitch, Pan, Filter — modulation depths.
- Pan, with Random > Pan and LFO modulation.
- Spread — two detuned voices per note panned apart, read at note-on, so some notes can be stereo and others mono.
- Volume and Velocity > Volume; LFO on volume gives tremolo.
- C3 plays the original pitch. Transpose ±48 semitones, Detune ±50 cents, pitch bend ±5 semitones; the pitch envelope suits percussive sounds.
- Glide (mono) or Portamento (poly) with Time.
- From the sample display or title bar:
- Use Constant Power Fade for Loops — off gives linear crossfades. Fade is unavailable while warping.
- Simpler -> Sampler — converts for multisample use; warping and slicing don't carry over, so such presets behave very differently.
- Manage Sample, Show in Browser, Show in Finder/Explorer (not for official Pack samples).
- Normalize Volumes — peak to full headroom.
- Crop and Reverse — non-destructive, working on a copy.
- In Slicing mode: Slice to Drum Rack replaces Simpler with a Ableton/Instrument/Drum Rack holding one slice per pad; Slice to New MIDI Track does it on a new track with a clip that plays the slices in order.
- Complex and Complex Pro warp modes cost much more CPU than the others.
- Turn the filter off if unused; 24 dB slopes cost more than 12 dB.
- Turning off the LFO helps a little.
- Stereo samples need about twice the processing of mono.
- Lower Voices, and set Spread to 0% if unused.
