Removing all MIDI notes for a pad while live looping

So I'm getting gaslit by AI again, so figured I'd ask real humans.

Here's the use case: I'm live looping, so I can't stop playback. I've just built a pattern featuring, say kick and hats. I duplicate the pattern in real time. I need to drop out the hats and record something else. I can't wait a full loop while holding the ERASE button and the pads (the hats in this case) I want to remove MIDI events for. I don't have time to pop into EVENTS, SELECT the pads and delete them. I need a quick way to just delete those pads in about 1-2 beats so I can immediately start recording something new.

Maybe the feature I want doesn't exist. For you live loopers out there, what do you do when you know you want to drop out something like in bar 4 and then immediately start recording a new thing without having to wait for the full loop to complete?

I hope my explanation makes sense. It does to me, but maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong.

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Tom Auger

Here's my current fastest approach:

Make sure both PATTERN and EVENT mode are set to ephemeral - ie: they are not pinned,m so you have to keep those buttons pressed down to access the screens
Press PATTERN + the 4th button (DUPLICATE - NOT the DUPLICATE button it's too slow)
Press EVENTS, and make sure SELECT is enabled. Now quickly press the pads you want to clear - all MIDI events for those pads are selected across the whole track
With EVENTS still pressed: SHIFT+ pad 9 (CLEAR)
Let go of everything. If Rec is still on, have at it.

It's going to take a little practice to get fast but this is manageable.

Anything faster?

D-One

Given your example scenario:

I'm live looping, so I can't stop playback. I've just built a pattern featuring, say kick and hats. I duplicate the pattern in real time. I need to drop out the hats and record something else.

I would do it like this:

Make a pattern with just the Kick first, then dupe it 2x
Quickly move to the 1st dupe and record hat-pattern-1.
Quickly move to the 2nd dupe and record hat-pattern-2.

It's better to switch to a Pattern without the content you want to re-record then trying to delete all events in that Pad, I think. There might be a fast way to select all Pad-MIDI and delete in Step Mode, but I dont have my controller with rn to confirm.

Or:

If recording the Hats was the last thing you did, just use the Undo shortcut.
Just have the Kick on a separate Group, this is the fastest with the most amount of flexibility (if I made 4/4 steadybeat music this would 100% be my approach).
Have the Hi-Hat in more than one Pad and you just Mute the 1st before recording the 2nd (this wastes a Pad)

There's probably a couple more ways to do it. For example, if this is with a controller not M+ in standalone I would use an external macro SW to map a keyboard button to perhaps click the Pad + hit CMD+A to select all events and hit the delete key.

LostInFoundation

All wonderful suggestions by D-One.

The way I do it is his the first method he suggested (multiple duplicates of a pattern), but also all the others could work

D-One

Ok so I have my M+ with me now. Here's another way:

Before starting, make sure Select is enabled in the Events Menu.
Record Kick + HH or whatever else.
Go to back Events (and since Select is already active) you can just press the HH Pad to select all notes and do Shift+Pad-9 to clear it.

Step #1 saves just one action, but it might make a difference.

So, say your HH is in Pad-5 you can just do this combo: While holding down Events: Pad-5; Shift+Pad-9, there, the MIDI is cleared. With practice, you can do it really fast but never as fast as Undo or the dupe Pattern way.

Tom Auger

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/254515#Comment_254515

Hey thanks for all the answers. The key absolutely is having SELECT already active. With that in place, it's pretty easy to do it. The other thing I've realized is that having PATTERNS and EVENTS unpinned is really critical for making that workflow faster.

Really appreciate everyone's support!

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