WAVE EDITOR / RECORDER

Claw Machine Tool

The Claw Machine works on a tempo-sliced sample removing beats, adding beats and/or shifting beats to create interesting new rhythms. The Claw Machine is particularly effective at speeding up the tempo of a song (by extracting beats) without creating time-stretch/pitch-shift artifacts. The Claw Machine is also a great tool for working on starting scores with regular rhythms, although experimentation will be rewarded.

NOTE: An alternative is to use the Piano roll Claw tool with loops in Slicex.

To Open the Claw Machine Tool

To open click on the Claw Tool button or press (Alt+W) inside the Editor, or use the Tools > Time > Claw option. NOTE: The sample must have a tempo (or beatmarkers) set before the Claw Machine option will become available, due to the fact that the Claw Machine slices the audio according to the time-grid and relies on the sample being aligned to the grid in a meaningful way:

Aligning the grid to the sample tempo

Prior to claw processing make sure the sample has the correct tempo and beats are aligned to the Sample Window grid.

  • Manual tempo setting - The manual tempo detection technique is to highlight a part of the audio that you know to be an exact number of beats, then the sample properties (F2) will show 'Selection (beats)' instead of 'Length (beats)'. If 4 beats were highlighted (for example), enter 4, and the tempo of the song should be detected.
  • Manual grid alignment - Right-Ctrl + Right-Shift + Click on the location in the sample where the first downbeat marker is to be set, hold and drag horizontally to fine-tune the position if needed. Then, release the mouse button and click again with the Right-Ctrl + Right-Shift keys still held (drag left/right) to adjust the grid spacing to align the grid to the beat.

Options

Block extraction

  • Period - The period over which the 'claw' process repeats.
  • Trash every - Removes beats every (X) units of the Period.
  • Snap to markers - Slices snap to beat/region markers.

Compensation stretching

Stretches sliced samples to fill gaps left by 'clawed' slices.

Action buttons

  • Reset - Reset to default.
  • Preview - Audition the current settings without applying them.
  • Accept - Process and replace the original selection with the processed audio.