EP: Yoked to the Sun

EP: The Abandoned Body

Vikriti Patterns in Ableton Live 9

Vikriti (“crooked”) patterns are used in classical Indian music to rearrange syllables in chanted text. I have been using them as a way of composing with samples in Ableton Live 9. I load a sample into an audio track and then use slice to MIDI to create a new MIDI track. This track has a drum rack with the sample slices loaded into chains and a new MIDI track that contains one note for each slice. Replace this MIDI track with a vikriti track (shown below).

The simplest method is to slice the sample by beat (e.g., 1/8ths or 1/16ths) and then use the MIDI editor to create one of the vikriti patterns by copying and pasting the basic pattern. For example, the krama pattern is 1-2, 2-1, 2-3, 3-2, … In the MIDI editor it looks like this

Another pattern is ghana, which looks like this in the editor

It is also possible to slice by transients or warp markers and then draw the vikriti pattern by hand in the MIDI editor. This respects the musical patterns of the underlying sample but is more time consuming to create. An example of a hand-drawn ghana pattern is shown below

Here are some examples of vikriti-sliced samples. The first is an orchestral sample that has been sliced by beats and rearranged with the krama pattern. The sample comes from the Zero G Deepest India library.

The second is a sarod sample that was sliced by transients and rearranged with the krama pattern. The sample comes from the Earth Moments Indian Emotions library.

You can learn more about slice to MIDI on the Abelton site and more about vikriti patterns in Ruckert’s Music in North India.