Step Copy - Ableton Live 12 Piano Roll Tool

Step Copy is an MIDI Transformation device for Ableton Live 12. Step Copy turns Live’s Piano Roll into a powerful step sequencer, with up to 256 steps. Any selected MIDI notes will be repeated according to the sequencer pattern.

Beyond this, Step Copy can be used on the “macro” scale as an arrangement tool, allowing you to repeat riffs and progressions over a number of bars with editable pitch, velocity, position and duration. 

Because this is a MIDI Transformation tool, you can quickly view the results on the piano roll, and every tweak is reflected in real-time while you listen along. Once you’re happy with the sequence, just click a blank spot on the piano roll to commit it. The sequence stays saved in Step Copy if you want to apply it again to any other selected notes, or you can export it for later. 

Features:

• 256 steps with adjustment over pitch, velocity, duration, and position
• Scale-aware
• Save/load all 16 pages at once
• Chain pages together to make longer patterns using “Song” mode
• “Loop” mode that repeats the selected Page until the end of the clip
• Time scale control for fast blips or slow drones
• Dice button for instantly generating patterns
• Use Live’s Legato button to add a legato effect that updates with any position shifts. The legato effect is applied until the sequence is committed to the piano roll.
• Also combines easily with other stock Live MIDI adjustments like Stretch, Humanize, Invert and Reverse.

Step Copy is “scale aware”, meaning it will adjust to the clip’s scale. It has not been tested with all possible scales but works fine with common scales and modes. With the scale mode activated, the transformed notes will conform to the current clip’s musical scale, and pitch shifts will be done in scale degrees rather than in semitones.

The Pos control for each step lets you “nudge” it forward or backwards in time. This means you can use Step Copy to create chords by stacking steps on top of each other with different pitches. With “1/16 Pos” mode enabled, this control is fixed to 1/16th notes, letting you create long sequences while retaining fine-tuning over the position of the repeat. With 256 steps total over 16 pages, you can create entire chord progressions with Step Copy.

There are 16 with 16 steps per page. This can act as a palette of riffs, drum patterns, chords, echoes, or you can chain the pages together as part of a "song". When you change the Apply mode to Song, you enter a series of numbers between 1 and 16, separated by spaces. This allows you to build more complex sequences that cycle through a range of variations, or create chord progressions and riffs that unfold over a number of bars.

Song mode also allows special commands for adjusting the pitch and position of the next Page in the sequence. Special characters like C, L, P and B are parsed by the song sequencer differently. For example, L layers two pages together, so a song sequence of “1 L 2” will layer the first two pages on top of each other. If you use C, the current page is used, which is updated dynamically in the song as you change pages. Using P followed by a number will shift the pitch either positively or negatively, so P3 will shift the next page up by a value of 3 (either semitones or scale degrees). B will change the bar length (so B6 will start the next Page after 6 steps).

You can also set the rate to “Sel” mode, meaning the length of the overall piano roll selection is used. This makes sure the repeats do not overlap, and it lets you build more complex patterns from a simple riff or chord progression. For example, by duplicating an entire measure with Seq rate in “Sel” mode, you can create several measures that vary in pitch, velocity, or duration. 

Save/Load

You can easily import/export sequences with the Save/Load buttons. To make things easier, you can also drag+drop preset files onto Step Copy, and the saved sequence will be instantly applied. All 16 pages are saved as a MIDI file…or rather a JSON object is saved with a .mid extension so that you can grab these presets from Live’s browser and drop them on to Step Copy. This means you can make whole banks of Pages including your favourite arpeggio patterns, hi-hat rhythms, chord progressions, or whatever “templates” you want to use for later.

Random

There is a random “dice” button that quickly cooks up a sequence for you. Rather than crudely randomising each parameter in the same way each time, Step Copy uses a slightly more sophisticated series of weighted “dice rolls” that lean towards more musical results (disclaimer: MGF Audio is not liable for non-musical results). If you hold shift while clicking the dice button, the existing sequence is modified slightly instead.

If you hold shift while pressing the Pitch menu button, a random chord will be chosen and applied in an arpeggio pattern that is either ascending, descending, or alternating.