Dear all
the arp of A.N.A. 2 has a swing-knob. The value of it goes from 50% - 72%.
In my project I set the swing to 25%… but how does this translate to the A.N.A. 2 swing knob?
If somebody has an explanation or knows where to find the answer, I’d be very happy for a feedback.
Hi there @Speaker
The swing function & amount is really related to ANA 2 's Arp sequences events inside the arpeggio screen, like the gate parameter, it allows you to give a nice shuffle to your arp sequence programmed inside ANA 2 arpeggio.
If you enable the “Sync” feature, then the arpeggio tempo will synchronize & follow your Host (DAW) tempo, so if you’re using a 25% swing in your host, it’s affecting first any Midi notes you would have in Midi regions on ANA 2 track and then those notes are gonna be triggered and modify by ANA 2 arpeggio and it’s own swing & gate settings.
So you could combine the 2 to get very creative & cool shuffle if you’re using midi clips on the track and passing them through ANA 2 arpeggio, but the swing feature in your DAW and the Swing knob in ANA 2 arpeggio are not directly linked.
You’ll get more information about the Arp features inside ANA 2 starting from page 44 of the manual which is accessible from ANA 2’s MENU.
Stephane, I’m not sure your response answers the question correctly as I’m trying to find the answer to the OP too.
The Swing knob ranges from 50% to 75%. 50% of what? I want to make sure that the ARP is swinging exactly the same as other tracks within Ableton. I am using swing on individual tracks within Ableton at Swing 16-25. All my midi tracks have this groove applied. What % matches Swing 16-25 on the ANA2 swing knob so my 16’s hi-hat and my 16’s ANA2 ARP are swinging exactly the same?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Damian
Hi there @damoski
To my understanding the Swing 50 to 72 percentage amount is related to the Arp Tempo. If you use “SYNC” the Arp Tempo is synced to the Host Tempo, it will then follow your DAW Tempo. If you disengaged “SYNC” then the Arp Tempo will synced to any value that you manually enter in the “Tempo” box.
So let’s say you have your DAW Tempo set to 120 BPM, if you play an Arp sequence from ANA 2 with “SYNC” engaged it will follow the Host BPM. With “SYNC” on and the “SWING” knob turn down to 50% there’s no swing happening. Now if you disengage the “SYNC” button and manually set the “TEMPO” value to 120 inside ANA 2 and keep the same 50% setting for the “SWING” it will result in the same playback & no swing being applied to the Arp.
Same goes for the Max 72% “Swing” value of course, whether you use the manual “Tempo” value set at 120 or engage the “SYNC” button with your DAW Tempo set at 120 BPM, you’ll get the same Arp playback if the “Swing” knob is turned full right at the max 72% value.
Now to be honest, I also find those 50% & 72% values confusing, for me it means more “No Swing” or “Max Swing” amount, maybe @phil_johnston could explain more about this.
What I was trying to explain in my previous post is that the swing or groove that you can also apply in Ableton is not related to the Arp swing amount value inside ANA 2 and if someone was to apply a groove on the Midi clip triggering ANA 2’s Arp, it will first affect the Midi events before reaching the Arp module and therefore result in a playback offset/delay. While this could be used to get something more creative, the only way to stay in sync when you want/need to apply Ableton groove/swing to your tracks would be to render the audio out of ANA 2 and then apply Ableton’s groove to the sequence. But again, just to mention that Ableton’s groove/swing and ANA 2 Arp swing are not related, only the host tempo is taken into account when “Sync” is engaged inside ANA 2.
Thanks for the quick reply Stephane.
I don’t feel as though I am any nearer to being able to accurately match Swing on the Arp with other elements of my project in Ableton that use a basic groove such as 16/25
So how do I ensure the swing that I am adding to the ARP (50% = none 72% = max) would be the same as 16/25? The only way I’ve been able to get close is guess work, by slowing the tempo of the DAW right down to hear if the notes that the ARP are playing when swung plays at the exact same time as a Drum Rack hi-hat with a groove of 16/25 applied.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to add any groove to the MIDI track that is controlling the ARP as I know that is not how this works, It’s just that Swing (50% to 72%) has no actual value that can be related to anything musical. At least nothing that I have seen published anywhere.
It should be possible to accurately match the 16’s played in a drum rack with 16’s playing in the ARP to get the same swing across the whole project.
Yeah, as mentioned before I’m also confused by those numbers TBH and I agree that it’s more about guessing it by ears ( unless there’s something we didn’t get right about those numbers of course ). Now to get some more visual help on the results, you could record the Midi Out from ANA 2 to a new Midi Track to check how the “Swing” amount affects the resulting midi events. While doing this, you could also experiment to apply this Ableton’s 16/25 groove/swing to the Midi clip triggering ANA 2 and compare the results.
If on MacOS just make sure to use the VST plugin version of ANA 2 in order to get Midi out, it wasn’t implemented in AU since the feature was not available in AU2 at the time, then it’s just a matter of setting the new Midi track inputs to “ANA 2” and monitoring “IN” and arming the track for recording.
Ah, good suggestion. I’ll give that a go next time I get 10 mins. Thanks again for your help.
Just to add to this a little…
Swing refers to the offset of every 2nd value, so 16th swing affects every second 16th note played. In a standard rhythmic pattern with no swing, the 2nd 16th note is always half way ie 50% between the 1st and 3rd. You add swing by moving it closer to the 3rd, and I’m guessing the 72 refers to 72% of the way towards the 3rd note.
Swing in the synth and swing in the DAW are not related, except that if you trigger an ARP with swing AND retrig on, using a note in the 2nd (‘swung’) position, it will sound out of time because the Arp will start with a long 1st note. Take re-trig off if you find this!
To match the swing in your synth to the host swing, you need to record eg a closed hat playing the full bar with DAW swing, and compare the waveform BY EYE against your synth ARP output. Turn ANA swing up if the synth notes are triggering before the hats, and down if vice versa. You have to tune it by eye!! However, tiny variations in swing timing vs DAW can make it sound quite groovy 
Hope this helps!