Hi,
What I want to do is tighten a heavily compressed break. I’ve tried automating a Gainer at a really high bpm but it’s still not fast enough. Is there a workaround or a vst that I could use to achieve this? I don’t want to chop because it’s destructive and prevents me from going back and changing things.
Cheers 
liveslice? 
… honestly dude… how could 800bpm speed 1 not be fast enough?
Might I add, that at 800bpm speed 1, each row will play for 31.25 milliseconds… that means you will need 320 rows to fill one second.
Well I suppose 800 speed 1 could be fast enough, it’s just awkward. What I’m trying to do is tighten a break that has cymbals, so I need to fade it back in really quickly. How would I go about calculating 171bpm speed 6 to work at speed 1 and a much higher tempo?
Something I like to do is use the LFO device’s custom mode to create an envelope which you can easily retrigger whenever you need it. Link the LFO to a Gainer device, set it up so that the max LFO value is mapped to 0dB in the Gainer, and the minimum value is mapped to silence, then you have a working volume envelope. By playing around with the LFO’s LPC setting and the number of points in the envelope, you can create either a very relaxed/loose envelope, or a very fast/tight one. Then I simply retrigger the envelope on the drum hits in my loop to simulate the effect you are talking about.
For example:
http://illformed.org/temp/lfo_volume_automation.xrns
Maybe you can do something similar to this?
cool will check it out
If I were you, I’d honestly chop the break into individual hits, and envelope each hit… then just resequence the break.
That’s a great idea, nice one. Seems like a smart way to avoid the huge bpm workaround.
Cheers, but I don’t want to do that because I will have to rechop each time I want to go back a level and change something.
Exactly. I find it very useful for doing volume cuts and other stuff faster than the pattern structure allows (without resorting to ridiculous bpm/speed settings). You can also do things like run the LFO in 3/4 time while your pattern is 4/4, which is nice for doing interesting gating effects. The LFO device really has a lot of potential in this respect… I only wish the damn envelope editor on it was bigger!! 
maybe ask the developers to make it bigger??
I agree with you from the depth of my heart! There have been times that I’ve desisted using LFO and used codes instead because of this.
Hehe, you just made me realize that is it possible to paste from the normal, big automation window, into the small LFO envelope.
Try it !!! Simply do your editing in the main automation window, select a range, rightclick the timeline and “copy”. Next, go into the the LFO device, and paste the envelope
Yep. I do this all the time myself. But still… I’d love the ability to enlarge the LFO envelope somehow, instead of using this awkward workaround.
You lazy bastard 
cool glad i could help hehe
Word!
i was pretty damn impressed when i saw that little handle in the lfo device that leads to the automation of it!
now seeing it’s possible to do this with the other automations, Wow! 
This could be used to automate very fast compression settings on an instrument and therefore work as a sidechaining solution…
I am going to work on this tonight and see what I can come up with.
OK, I have come up with something.
It is not perfect for a number of reasons, but gives the required result!
The problems are thus;
-You have to cross reference between the Kick Drum (or whatever you want to act as the sidechain trigger) and the track you wish to sidechain to. The compressor is not following the Kick Drum at all. The only reason the track pumps with the Kick Drum is because I have told it to! If you change Kick Drum positioning, you will have to change the 2600 command on the thing you want to dip with the Kick Drum, so that it works at the same time as the new Kick Drum position. If that makes any sense!
-It isnt real sidechaining, but a ghetto version which doesnt actually use any sends.
-All I am doing really is automating the threshold on the compressor with the LFO device.
Now, this is entirely possible with normal automation, so why did I decide to use the LFO device to automate the compressor…
Well the answer is, when you use standard automation to program your pseudo-sidechain, you are kind of locking yourself down to what ever pattern you program in the automation window, and changing the automation is time consuming (also, if you chose to do it using instrument envelopes, you have to instigate the note each time, so you cant have the pump working across a long sample as in my example .xrns)
My way, all you have to do is stick in a 2600 on the effect column and it works. This has a load of advantages which I am sure you can figure out.
Well, if anyone can fine tune this, do so and post up what you get!