Lemon wiki

Time-stretching

Time-stretching changes how long a sample lasts. You’d use it to fit a loop to your song’s tempo, or to make a sound longer or shorter without changing its pitch. It works on samples in Lemon Sampler and on audio clips in the arranger.

Fit a loop to the tempo

Drop the loop into the arranger, then double-click the clip to open its window.
Find the Time stretching panel, and set Mode to Auto or Stretch.
Right-click TIME and choose its length: 1 beat to 4 bars, or Autodetect… to work it out.
Play it. The loop now lasts that many beats at any tempo.

Turn MUL to scale that length, and PITCH to shift the pitch.

The stretch methods

Mode offers a list of methods:

Resample does no stretching. Speed and pitch change together, the way a tape does when it runs faster or slower.
Auto picks a method for you, and shows which one under the box.
Stretch and Stretch fine stretch as the sample plays. The note you play and PITCH change only the pitch, not the length.
Prerender, Prerender mono, Stretch slices, Map slices and the Older methods stretch the sample once, before it plays.

Every method but Resample uses the same stretcher for now, so they differ less in sound than their names suggest. Try another if you hear artefacts.

How samples and clips follow the tempo

An audio clip always takes its length from its sample at the current tempo. Change the tempo, the sample’s TIME, MUL or its instrument’s pitch, and every clip of it gets a new length and redraws its waveform.
A sample with a TIME stays that many beats long, even while the tempo is automated.
A WAV file that says how many beats it holds fits itself when you load it, while Read sample tempo information is ticked in General settings.

Restretch all (Ctrl+Alt+R) in the instrument rack’s menu fits every stretched sample and audio clip to the tempo at once. You rarely need it, since they follow by themselves.

Stretch by dragging

In the arranger, press Shift+M or click the button after the tools to turn on stretch mode. It’s lit while on.

Now dragging either end of an audio clip stretches it instead of trimming it. In Resample the pitch moves too, and in the other methods it stays. The setting belongs to the sample’s instrument, so every clip of that sample follows. It’s one undo step.

Change many at once

TOOLS ▸ Set all audio clip channels to and Switch selected audio clip channels to set one method on many audio clips. They’re in the rack’s menu too. Each asks first, and some clips may need their TIME set again afterwards.

Good to know

Stretch and Stretch fine keep the sample in memory, even with Keep on disk on.
For a one-off edit with a preview, Tesla has Time stretch / pitch shift… (Alt+T) and a drum loop stretch that moves slices apart or together.