What Are Grooves?
Today, we'd like to explore an awesome and unique Ableton Live feature called Grooves. Grooves are an amazingly powerful feature in Ableton Live that can help you add interesting rhythm and humanization to your tracks in a snap. Without grooves in your production, you've likely been making your beats locked to the grid. Working like this produces a very straight-sounding song, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's your aim. Straight, grooveless tunes easily create a driving pulse that is still satisfying to listen to. However, a lot of the time, you want to make a beat that has a strong rhythmic 'feel' to it. This rhythmic push/pull feel is the result of variations in both note velocity and note placement that is slightly off the grid and can grant audio a more human feel. Some people refer to this as 'swing' or 'shuffle'.
Groove Browser
Groove files are found in their designated folder in the Ableton Live library. Groove files can be previewed if you click them while Ableton's clock is playing, similar to previewing samples. When a groove is previewed, it sounds similar to a click track or metronome, making it apparent that grooves are just simple audio files that contain rhythmic and velocity information. The notes of grooves are not exactly on the grid, and there's also some velocity information to describe notes that are quieter and louder. The combination of notes being off the grid and dynamic velocity information can create a nuanced and unique rhythmic feel to a piece of audio.
The Groove Pool
The Ableton Live Groove Pool is an element of the Ableton Live interface available in the Suite version of the software. The Groove Pool contains a list of active groove template files that can be applied to any clip or channel in your song. When grooves are applied to clips within the set, they are automatically added to the Groove Pool's list. The Groove Pool also allows customization and tweaking of the individual parameters of a groove using the options for Base, Quantize, Timing, Random, and Velocity
Alternatively, grooves can also be viewed and swapped out in their designated area of a clip's options panel. From here, Grooves already found in the Groove Pool can be swapped using the Groove dropdown menu. Above the dropdown is also a hot swap button which can be used to load in other grooves from the library.
Understanding Groove Naming Conventions
A lot of grooves in the browser have numbers in their titles. These numbers reflect a few different important parameters within a groove file.
The amount of swing or shuffle that a particular groove will impart to a clip appears as a two-digit number between 50 and 75. A number closer to 50 will sound more straight while a number closer to 75 will contain more shuffle or swing.
The notation of '8ths' or '16ths' tells us the 'resolution' of a groove. A groove measured in 16th notes will modify the notes of the applied clip to correspond with the closest 16th note of the groove. While a groove with 8ths will anchor the nearest 8th notes. Grooves focusing on 16ths will impart more points of articulation to change the audio when it is applied to a clip, but if the audio doesn't have a lot of individual 16th notes, there isn't audio present to modify and the change may be less noticeable.
And finally, a BPM number informs us of the original BPM of the audio the grooves were extracted from. If the groove file's BPM matches the tempo of the project, variations in the timeline will happen seamlessly. However, if the groove file's BPM is very different from your project's tempo, Ableton Live will automatically time-stretch the groove to fit the project's tempo.
Groove Pool Options and Settings
Clips within the Groove Pool have several parameters that can be edited so that individual grooves sound more complementary in the context of the song.
Base - Determines the resolution of timing that the groove will apply to affected audio clips
Quantize - Adjusts the baseline quantization that occurs before the groove is applied. IE - how locked to the grid will the notes be before the groove is applied?
Timing - How much change will the groove apply to the timing of the notes played?
Random - How much randomization and 'jitter' should be applied with the groove? Low levels add a pleasant humanized feel.
Velocity - How much change will the groove apply to the velocity of played notes? High values mean that the groove will dictate the velocity of the played audio.
Extracting Grooves
Grooves don't aren't just extracted from drum tracks, your own grooves can be extracted from any rhythmic audio. If you have an idea for a groove try playing it on a keyboard, a guitar, with your hands, or beatboxing - the possibilities are endless. Once you have audio clips or MIDI clips you'd like to draw a groove out of, right-click on the clip and "Extract Groove". The extracted groove will automatically appear in the Groove Pool. Using your own grooves is a great way to create an original sound that cannot be easily replicated.
