Ableton Live Tips and Tricks Part 5

Tips Tricks Tutorials

5

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MT Technique The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4

Ableton Live The Ultimate Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 4

Let’s make some bass

On the disc

Martin Delaney thinks it’s time to add some bass to our beats, doubled up with a little sub to make it bounce. Here’s his guide…

T

his month we’re adding a bass part, ideally one that somehow fits in with our beat from the last tutorial. Refer to the example set included with the issue – it’s called TUGTAL4. The set includes all the steps from the last tutorial as well as a couple of samples you’ll need to complete this one. Bass sounds change considerably across genres; you’ve got classic electric bass played with pick or fingers,

Resist the temptation to make a huge bass sound because we plan to add other instruments analogue and digital synths, and LFO-driven wobble sounds. They’re all good and they’re all readily available to us these days,through real or software instruments and Live Packs. We’re going to build our own bass sound and program our own part. This is because the Simpler instrument we use is included in every version of Live. If I was to do the tutorial using the Operator synth, you might not be able to follow the steps. You should try Operator, though – it’s my go-to synth for bass parts. I’ll move on to others only if I can’t find what I want in there. We’re spending more time working with instrument racks as this is a great way to build deep synth sounds that would otherwise require complex routing across several tracks. In many ways they’re similar to drum racks, which we’ve already encountered. We’re using two chains in our rack – that’s two instruments playing together – but you can have up to 128 chains in a rack. Impressive enough, but then bear in mind that you can have

Accompanying project file included on the DVD

128 racks inside another rack, so you can quickly end up with thousands of chains buried deep within your rack. When you connect a MIDI keyboard or use your computer keyboard to play those sounds, you’re going to get a massive sound because all of the chains will play at once. This can be a bit overbearing, but we’re only using two today, so we’ll deal with that issue another time, and there are various tactics we can use to specify which sounds play at what times. We’re using a transposed sine wave to create a sub bass – a low bass fundamental tone which fattens up the bottom end. It can be almost inaudible in the mix at certain times. For reasons of simplicity, we’re pairing it with our square wave sound, but there’s no reason why a sub couldn’t be on a track of its own and subject to a whole other round of editing and effect processing. After drawing in the notes in our bass clip, we went back to shorten the bass note in our sliced drum rack from last time to make sure it didn’t overlap with the new bass part. When you’re working with MIDI programming, a lot of mixing problems can be fixed at the programming stage. It’s the same reason we set the Simpler instruments to 1 voice each, to avoid overlaps that will affect the bass part.

Simpler sampler Simpler is a very powerful sampler, although it has a user-friendly interface. It makes it possible to build long, sustaining notes by loop and crossfading short samples, but on this occasion we don’t need those controls. Lucky us! Maybe we’ll come back and use them later. As I mention in the tutorial, it’s important to resist the temptation to make a huge bass sound right now. This is because we plan to add other instruments, and sonically there won’t be any room for them if we have a bass sound that’s riddled with effects and covering a huge frequency range. We use clip envelopes to create repetitive movement of the Auto Filter controls; it makes our



























The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4 Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step

Making some bass

01 Open our example set, which follows on from last time. Load

an empty Instrument Rack into a new MIDI track. Drag the clip ‘square’ ‘square’ into the rack and it’ll automatically appear inside a Simpler instrument.

Trans (transpose) value to 03 In the ‘sine’ Simpler instrument, set the Trans

-12 semi-tones, that’s one octave down. We’ll use this as our sub bass and the saw as our more immediately characteristic tone. tone.

05 Refer to the screen shot. It’s just E1 then D2 at 1.1.3 then E1 again

02 Arm the track and play your keyboard to audition the sound, in a

low-ish range. Drag the clip ‘sine’ into the rack’s drop area, creating another chain. Now you’ll be playing both sounds together. together.

04 You might want to rename the chains now, for visual reference –

Cmd-R. Good, now let’s draw in some notes. Double-click in an empty slot to create a new MIDI clip, as we’ve done before.

06 There’s a bass sample in the drum kit; our bass clip leaves room




























MT Step-by-Step

Making some bass… cont’d

we’re shortening, set the Sine’s Sustain to -7dB. This makes 07 While it shorter against the higher higher,, square sound; when you play the clip, it keeps the punchy low bass hit without cluttering up the mix.

simple bass part will be monophonic – only one note at a 09 Our time – so we can set the voices for each Simpler to 1. This means we can’t play or program any overlapping notes by mistake.

11 Let’s raise the sine volume inside Simpler to 0dB – Simpler and

we’re using short punchy notes for this, we don’t have to we’re 08 Because play with the other Simpler settings for loop/fade, release release time, and so on. Our samples sa mples are long enough that it won’t matter. matter.

could add effects to each chain and use the Spread control to 10 We make a monster bass sound, so und, but it doesn’t leave much room for other sounds in the song if the bass is too big.

Let’s s add Auto Filter for some nice filter sweeps. Drag it right after 12 Let’




























MT Step-by-Step

Making some bass… cont’d

time. Inside the MIDI note editor, editor, click the envelope arrow 13 Sweep and choose Auto Filter and Frequency from the pop-up choosers. Click the Link button and type a value of 4 bars next to that.

Resonance now, unlinking it again, anchor it, then draw 15 Choose an envelope that ends at 2.90. You’ll You’ll hear that as well. Look at the Auto Filter and you’ll see red dots marking the automated controls.

the left end of the red dotted line in the editor to anchor it. 14 Click Drag the right end upwards to 1.50 Hz (Cmd-Click-Drag for finer resolutions). Now the frequency changes as the clip plays.

sounds cool is if you create different length sweeps for 16 What different parts of the song. Once you’ve clicked that Link button, you can set envelopes to any a ny length, even with simple one-bar clips.



















































































































































































































































































































































MT Technique Subscriber gift tutorial special

Ableton Live Subscriber gift tutorial special

Getting started with the Novation Launch Control We’ve been offering a fantastic Novation Launch Control as a special gift to subscribe to MusicTech. If you have taken us up on the offer – or are tempted to! – here’s a special tutorial on using the Launch Control, written by our Ableton Live expert Martin Delaney…





























Subscriber gift tutoria tutoriall special Technique MT

MTStep-by-Step

Launching Launch Control

the Launch Control to your computer using the supplied 01 Connect USB cable. It’s one of Novation’s neat right-angled ones – but don’t fret if you lose it, any USB cable will do. No mains power required.

you’re running running short of USB ports, you can connect via a hub. 02 If I can tell you for sure the Launch Control works with Novation’s own Audiohub 2x4 – but then you’d expect it to.





























MT Technique Subscriber gift tutoria tutoriall special

MTStep-by-Step

Launching Launch Control… cont’d

We have two return tracks in our set. ‘A ‘A’ contains Ping Pong Delay, and ‘B’ hosts a Reverb. To access the sends, press the ‘down’ pad to control Sends A and B with the knobs.

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Live Intro has only two sends available, but the full version of Live has 12. You can access all of your sends by simply using those up and down buttons.

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Subscriber gift tutoria tutoriall special Technique MT

MTStep-by-Step

Launching Launch Control… cont’d

There’s no limit on how many tracks, scenes or devices in Live the Launch Control can access. Once you’ve used it for a while you’ll be skipping around the screen like a skippy ninja.

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There are eight factory templates ready to use – the others aren’t intended for Live specifically. They contain various combinations of MIDI control messages and notes, and you can view these in the editor software.

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MT Feature

A bluffer’s guide to acoustics

Although a purchased full package is the minimal fuss solution (such as the London 12 Room Kit pictured here from Primacoustic), your room may benefit from the more custom treatment when building your own solution. And, yes, we know there’s no door.

MT Feature

Music Technolog Technology y































A bluffer’s guide to acoustics Feature MT

putting it a little simply, but the point is that the sound you hear is dramatically affected by the environment it’s in. You’ve almost certainly experienced this: think of the last time you were at church, or a massive concert hall. There is a heavy reverb to the sound, which comes not only from the walls and floor and ceiling, but also from the distances between them. Likewise, step into a cupboard very quickly (go on, we’ll wait) and say a few words. Chances are, your voice will sound muffled and stripped of character. These are not ideal conditions for music making. It’s less important at the actual production stage, when sound quality and balance take a backseat to musical creativity. But when you’re starting to mix, you want as little

Tech terms SOUND WAVE: The way sound appears in the environment, as a pressure and displacement wave that travels through air, as well as solids and liquids. 



STANDING WAVE:





























MT Feature

A bluffer’s guide to acoustics

messing with your mix. You might think the way to solve this problem would be to blanket all flat surfaces in acoustic treatment, but if you did, you’d end up with a room that sounded completely ‘dead’. We don’t want that. What we want is something between the two, where some surfaces are covered. That will ensure that you don’t have too many reflections, while allowing your room to retain its acoustic character (and remain pleasant to work in). What we’re going to use to cover them is acoustic

MTM MT M Pro Technique

Studio ergonomics

The ergonomics of your studio is something to consider both for your comfort as well as its impact on your room acoustically. Naturally, it is important to ensure that all the equipment you use is well within your reach and doesn’t require stretching for, something that perhaps later results in injury. Ensure that your chair is up to the job and that you’re you’r e comfortable when you’re working. Your desk





























Feature MT A bluffer’s guide to acoustics acousticsFeature

bass has a nasty habit of accumulating in the corners, and letting it do so can really muddy your mix. To fix this, you’ll need to invest in bass traps, which are thick, chunky pieces of foam designed to fit right into the corners of a room. Again, please note that these are general principles. You don’t treat a live room as you would a vocal booth, and acoustics can be a detailed science that experts will charge a lot of money to get right. But as a general guide, this should get you going.

There are some products that are difficult to DIY. Vicoustic’s products are both elegant and highly effective, such as this WaveWood Bass Trap.





























Technique | Beat Loop Processing





























Beat Loop Processing | Technique

Layering Beats Together Some beats just work together, together, but most of them simply don’t, and sometimes you’ve got to apply some processing… INCLUDES VIDEO l

Here we’ll explore a few simple rules for



























































Beat Loop Processing | Technique

































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































> make music now / instant inspiration

10 workflow accelerators Try and comprehend the full music-making power, convenience and potential of the modern computer. Mind-bending, isn’t it? But with more options comes more choice, and an abundance of choice can be overwhelming. Too many variables and decisions to make can sap your creativity,, disrupt your studio low, and kill of your productivity. So, to creativity prevent prev ent you getting bogged down in technicalities, battling DAW DAW options, or generally doing things the hard way, we’ve put together ten key tips to help you release and realise your musical ideas quicker than ever.

01

MIX AS YOU GO

It can be productive to quickly throw your track elements together roughly at the composition stage, then address the mix later once your ideas are down. This does mean that the incomplete mix may lack the professional sheen of your favourite releases, which may cause you to lose heart. In this case, try the opposite approach and mix as you go, adding basic processing to each sound as you slot it in the track. Having pre-prepared pre-prepar ed plugin racks or channel strips are invaluable. Try both approaches and discover which works best for you.

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02

RTFM!

Getting stuck on a DAW feature or synth parameter is a worklow killer, so become a ninja at your chosen software by reading the manuals of your DAW and plugins. Also, follow software-speciic tutorials/guides such as our own How To Use… series. Time is limited for all o f us, so keep learning time to a minimum, and restrict yourself to only a handful of tool s you can learn inside out. Make your own notes if necessary – compile a list of useful features, menu functions etc. You can even print your ‘crib sheets’ out and keep them to hand if needed.

PREPARATION IS KEY

As the old saying goes, fail to prepare… and prepare to fail. So take heed and do as much of your plugin and DAW setup ahead of time as you can. Have a variety of template sessions and racks ready, catering for elements such as multi-out instruments, channel strips, creative plugin chains, mastering chains, and outboard gear.

Spend a little time organising your plugins list to your preference, so everything’s in easy reach later on

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CUSTOM PLUGIN LIST

If your DAW’s list of plugins is an endless mineield to navigate, speed up productivity by categorising them into relevant folders perhaps by processor type or ‘most-used’. See The CM Guide to Plugins in issue 217 for details on how to accomplish this in many major DAWs. To take this concept further, prepare prepare custom racks or devices for things that you do all the time – from basic workhorse gadgets l ike a ‘bass roll-of’ tool, to inspiring banks of sweeps/FX. You can even have your own pre-prepared ‘track inisher’ sample pack full of sweeps, crashes, noise textures, or useful ‘instant FX’ return efects loaded up for quick results.

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DISABLE DISTRACTION We’re all passionate about making We’re music, but external in luences



























instant inspiration / make music now <

06

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Sending your mouse pointer up to a ile menu every time you need a particular DAW command may seem quick, but these frequent movements all add up. While keyboard shortcuts aren’t sexy, they will accelerate your work low immensely and help you to inish tracks quicker, quicker, so try and memorise your most used keyboard shortcuts. Functions like quantising MIDI, slicing audio at the playhead point, looping sections and muting regions are just a small handful of commands you should know. Every time you reach into a menu for something, see if there’s a shortcut command for it, and use that instead next time. Furthermore, many DAWs DAWs allow you to create your own keyboard shortcuts – see Shortcuts to Success in 186 for more on this. Some DAW DAWss even let you make your own chain o f keyboard commands (‘macros’) and de ine custom processes to do things like muting all clips that are less than a bar in length, for example.

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SITTING COMFORTABLY?

Is your studio chair comfortable? Can you wear your headphones for hours at a time with no discomfort? Is everything within easy reach? Are your speakers positioned for the best sound? It’s easy to focus on what’s going on inside the computer to help speed up work low, but if your studio setup isn’t ergonomic, comfortable and set up for optimum playback, your work rate will su fer, and you may even develop long-term problems.

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TIME TO TIDY

Is your project getting out of hand? Too many tracks? Loads of ideas and alternative arrangements knocking around on the timeline? Bypassed plugins sitting around “just in case” you decide to revert to that old EQ setting? All of this can hold you back, making the project slow and confusing to navigate, and eating system resources. Work out a strategy to deal with it: save the project, then delete unused tracks, render parts to audio that you’re happy with, go through all those unused ideas and delete any you can’t see yourself using in this project. Now Save As to save this tidier project – most DAWs have some kind of ‘Collect All and Save’ function, which will save the whole project, samples and all; but don’t retain any l arge, unwanted takes of audio from the bloated project.

Compare your track to commercial releases releases early on – visual analysis tools can really help with this

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COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Ever got a track ‘inished’, only to ind that it doesn’t stack up next to your favourite commercial mixes? Start comparing it early on rather than right at the end, and then continue to do so with every vital change. Also, hitting Save each time will overwrite your previous stages; instead, when you’ve made a few signiicant tweaks, Save As, and create numbered versions. Render a mix out whenever you do this so you can easily compare to your current current version – sometimes, you might decide to revert to an earlier, better mix.

QUALITY SAMPLES

signature sound. The same goes for old,



























> make music now / instant inspiratio inspiration n

10

Easy Music Theory Tips Spruce up your chords chords and snazz up those scales with our ten simple methods Music theory has always had a slight whif of the uncool about it, conjuring up images of dry, dusty, bewigged baroque musicians from centuries past, the nightmare of childhood piano lessons, or baling overheard discussions in jazz clubs concerning the superiority of augmented 13ths over Neapolitan sixths or the joys of soloing in the Mixolydian Mixolydian mode. This bad rep is entirely unjusti ied however, since regardless of whether you’re a composer, songwriter,, producer or DJ, shoring up your songwriter musical knowledge with a smattering of grassroots theory can have a profound efect on the quality of your output.

everything we do when we’re creating a project. The idea is to think of theory as a framework to support and inspire your musical endeavours, rather than inhibit and rule them. The best part is that you don’t have to plumb the murky depths of the subject to be able to use it to your advantage. When a crippling loss of creativity strikes – and this can happen to any of us at any time, let’s face it – having a few tried, tested and theoretically proven techniques in your back pocket can be a lifesaver. Over the next few pages, then, we’re going to highlight ten of our favourite, most practical theory-based tips that can help to kickstart the




























01

Broken chords

Should your keyboard parts naturally tend towards the clunky side, things can be improved by employing a technique known as broken chords. This involves breaking chords up into their component notes and playing these as short arpeggios (runs of notes). The technique doesn’t just add rhythmic interest, but it can be a great way of coming up with ideas for cool melodies that work naturally with the chord progression, since the notes you pick out are taken from the chords themselves. In our illustration below, on the left, we have a four-bar progression progression of simple block chords. To the right, we have the same progression, but played using broken chords. Like inger-picking on an acoustic guitar, instead of playing all the notes on the same beat, each triad is split into individual notes. See 201’s Easy Guide to arpeggios for more.

02

Animating chords with inversions

Moving the order of notes around within a chord can take a progression in new directions without changing the actual chords. This is easily done by selecting notes and shifting them up and down an octave – most DAWs have a shortcut key for this, such  as Shift-Up/Down. Here we’ve taken taken a simple C, D, E , F progression and completely altered its shape by swapping the note order around in the second half. These ‘rearranged’ chords are known as inversions.

03 Chang Change e the bass bass note The notes a bass part plays can assume the role of root note for the chords played by parts above it. Sticking di ferent bass notes underneath can radically alter the sound of a static chord sequence.




























04

New flavours with modes

If you’ve never encountered modes before, this one tip could change your musical outlook forever.. Scales are a basic component of music forever theory – most people know one or two of the major scales, the most commonly known being C major (C D E F G A B). But what if we told you that you could unlock a secret world of evocative alternative scales simply by playing any scale from a diferent starting note? Try it by playing C major in the conventional fashion, from C to C on a MIDI keyboard. Now give your ears a few seconds’ rest to forget the sound of it, and play the same scale a gain, but without starting on C. Try going from D to D. Or F to F. Notice how they have a diferent quality to the major’s happy, kindergarten sound? What you’re playing are di ferent modes of the C major scale, and they sound di ferent because of the diferent sequence of intervals between the notes that happens when you start somewhere other than the root note of the scale. Underpinning each new mode with a bass note the same as your new starting note will reinforce the efect. That’s enough to get you started, but when you’re ready for more info on modes, check out 207’s Easy Guide on the subject.

05

Monotony rules

Melody-writing can be tough, but sometimes, if the Melody-writing rhythm is hooky enough, sticking religiously to one note is all you need for a melody. Try using a monotone melody in a verse part, and slowly add small variations through the bridge section to build to a chorus hook. This approach also gives you an opportunity to focus on rhythm and sonic variety, rather than just melody alone, for adding interest.

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Borrowed chords

Diatonic means “in key”, and diatonic chords are formed using only notes ta ken from a particular scale. So a C ma jor scale containing the notes C D E F G A B – the white notes on a keyboard – would give you the diatonic chords C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and Bdim, formed by stacking alternate notes onto each note within the scale. These a re the basic triads you may already be familiar with; however, however, a palette of only seven chords can be limiting, so why not borrow chords from other keys? Borrowed chords are most often taken






























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10

Layer chords together

Go pentatonic

For an exotic sound, try combining regular major or minor triads together to form polychords. For a classic polychord combo, let’s use C major as the irst chord (C EG). For the second, we need to ind the major chord that has its root a perfect ifth above the root of the irst chord. In this case, this happens to be G major (GBD). Play the two chords together and you get a Cmaj9 chord (CEGBD). If you’re stuck for which chords to combine, go for ones that already have a note or two in common. For an in-depth look at polychords, check out 219’s Easy Guide.

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Limiting yourself to notes from a pentatonic scale may give you a smaller choice, but it can give g ive rise to some memorable melodies.

Take some giant leaps

To give things a kick when putting together a melody, try making a dramatic leap up th e keyboard. A good interval to use for this is a minor or major sixth. You ind these intervals by using the scale degree numbering system outlined in Tip 10. With major scales, the distance between the root note and degree 6 of the scale is a major sixth, so in the case o f C, a major sixth above would be A. Jump up from C to A in the course of a melody, and it’ll take you up into a whole di ferent area of the keyboard.

09

Build an extension

Extending regular major or minor triads by adding extra notes can radically transform your track. For instance, in C major, a Cmaj7 is made by adding the seventh degree of the C major scale (B) to a C major triad (C EG). If we extend

1

the scale up the keyboard beyond the octave, we get into the extended range, where a ninth is essentially the scale’s second degree played up an octave. So an easy way to play a ninth chord is to play a root-position triad (for example C major – CEG) and add in th e second degree between the root and the third (C9 – C DEG). If you want to learn more, 200’s Easy Guide is focussed entirely on extended chords.

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While a conventional major or minor scale contains seven notes, a pentatonic scale only contains ive. Efectively, they’re regular scales with a couple of notes removed. If we look at a normal C major scale, we can see that it contains the notes C, D, E, F, G, A and B.

We can then give these d egrees numbers, from 1 to 7. To make the scale pentatonic, we need to remove degrees 4 and 7 – in this case, that ’s F and B, leaving us with C, D, E, G and A, the C major pentatonic scale.






























10 arrangement methods In our Creative Concepts articl articles, es, Features Editor Joe Rossitter has often discussed the notorious ‘loop land’ that all producers ind themselves in from time to time. It’s relatively easy to lay down a few decent ideas, but turning them into fully-ledged arrangements is, arguably,, the hardest part arguably par t of music production. If you’ve got a hard drive full of cool 16-bar loops l oops crying out to be assembled into songs, then read on for ten loop-busting arrangement approaches that you can put into practice right away. away.

01

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

While DAWs are thought of as strictly linear sequencers, most now o fer features geared towards arrangement experimentation. Ableton Live’ Live’ss non-linear Session View, Cubase’s Arranger track and Logic Pro X’s Arrangement markers allow you to concoct and ‘perform’ multiple arrangement ideas on the ly, the best of which can be printed onto the timeline at your leisure. Studio One 3’s new Scratch Pads o fers an extra timeline for trying out ideas independent from the main arrangement. Take time out to l earn these features and reap their rewards.

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02

TWO’S COMPANY

Many of your uninished track ideas probably consist of one concept or ‘theme’ (ie, a chorus), leaving you listening to the same sounds over and over. If you’re bored bored with the same old loop, try making a completely contrasting section, or even concentrate on making two sections work well together – for example, a verse leading into chorus, or a breakdown building up into a drop. Once you have two difering sections working well together, it’ll be easier to branch o f and make a third, fourth and ifth section.

COPYCAT

If you’re making music in a genre that adheres to ‘DJ-friendly’ arrangeme arrangements, nts, drag a commercial track into the project, and check out exactly how it’s arranged. How long is the intro? When does the bass come in? How long before the second breakdown? Is there a long outro?

Time yourself working, and set yourself time-limited sessions to get tasks inished under pressure

04

AGAINST THE CLOCK

Who says a great track needs to take hours and hours to inish? If you endlessly iddle with an 8-bar loop without getting an arrangement down, you’re probably probably working too slowly; after too much time listening to the same idea, you’ll likely get bored of it, no matter how good it is! Instead, focus upon working fast. Pull out all the stops and try turning your loop into a full






























SEND/RETURN TRACKS

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A track idea will often need additional ideas or sounds adding to progress the arrangement, but throwing in new sounds can sound disjointed and messy, especially if your aim is minimalism and groove. Instead, run parts of your track through extreme reverb or delay e fects, then render results and mangle further. Or grab any outboard gear you can – a cheap cassette deck, an old 90s mixer mixer,, some guitar pedals – and run sounds through them. Sending portions of track elements to creative return tracks (such as eccentric delays, long reverbs and mangling, glitchy e fects) will generate plenty of extra material that can be printed to audio and processed further – and as these sounds derive from existing elements, they’ll it the tone and timbre of the track.

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To create an arrangement, duplicate the main groove through the track (as above), then strip bits away (as below)

ENJOY THE SILENCE

We’re all guilty of creating overcomplicated ideas and dense loops, and you can easily end up trying to cram everything you’ve got into an arrangement – especially if you’re basing it on a busy loop that you’re already expecting to be the “climax” of the song – which may lead to a messy, convoluted track idea. Instead, use silence and contrast to your advantage. Remember that dynamics are an essential part of music. Take away expected sounds, or even fade them to silence. As well as contrasting quiet against loud, set o f low bass with sparkling treble, subtlety with intensity, and so on. Filter or fade parts in and out rather than having elements just stop and start; or identify sections where the listener could get bored, and hammer them with a startling sound out of nowhere!

08

CLICHÉ CLUB

Don’t be afraid of using clichés. They’re used time and time again for a very good reason: they work! Every genre has its own, but a few dance music examples include four crashes on the last bar of a phrase, 16th-note drum rolls, a white

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SUBTRACTIVE ARRANGING

Begin with a short 8- or 16-bar loop of a track idea, which should contain all the core elements you’ll need, then duplicate the idea throughout the project for ive or so minutes. This should help you visualise the completed track, and you’ll set yourself an ‘ending’ to work





























> make music now / instant inspiratio inspiration n

Track-Finishing Checklist Don’t call it inished until you’ve ticked off these ten simple pointers Clear out the clutter

Check it in mono

It’s easy to get used to a mix with layer upon layer of sound, but unnecessarily busy tracks can be unlistenable. Often, this clutter exists in the low-mid or high frequencies from multiple instrument layers. Use or adjust high- and low-pass ilters on individual tracks to create more space, or revisit your arrangement, removing elements one by one to re-assess their impact on the overall mix. Less is often more!

If the mix balance changes a lot when played in mono, “phasey” stereo sounds/e fects (such as) reverbs may be too dominant. Narrow or rebalance them so the mono and stereo mixes are consistent, ensuring a solid mix that’s compatible with mono playback systems.

Kick/bass relationship

Listen on different systems

This vital aspect usually needs a inal check. Listen to the balance between the two to assess whether either is too dominant, and if necessary, notch a space in your bass sound for the kick, using an EQ and/or a spectrum analyser to hunt the precise kick frequencies. Try putting a 100Hz low-pass ilter on your master bus to monitor bass levels and spot low-end clashes.

Monitoring on multiple alternative listening systems can be confusing, so it’s best used to highlight signi icant problems rather than as an additional monitoring setup. Car stereos, in-ear headphones an d consumer devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones are all useful, particularly when judging lead instrument balance. Make notes on anything you think needs attention, then return to the studio and work through each point.

Check the sub level

Pops, clicks and artifacts

Following on from the previous point, excess sub bass can be problematic on big systems, and it’s easy to unwittingly accrue when mixing on smaller near ield monitors. If you’re mastering your own mixes, use all available tools to check this – including headphones, bass heavy systems such as car stereos – and do some spectrum analysis, comparing your mix to similar tracks. The low-pass ilter trick in the previous step can help.

Clicks and pops sound like digital errors and have no place in your inal mixdown. They can be caused by poor or missing crossfades, level overloads, audio ile errors or badly edited audio comps. Listen for any strangeness, zoning in o n problem areas and resolving these issues at so urce. Often the best tool for this task is a pair of headphones.

Overall vocal levels

Take your mixing hat off

If your track has vocals as a focal point, their

Be as objective as possible, ‘hearing’ the track






























Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 7 Ableton Live The Ultimate

Working with audio effects

On the disc Accompanying project file included on the DVD

Things can sound a bit dry without audio effects. For stage or studio, Martin Delaney shows you how to add some ear candy to your Live projects…

Y

ou are probably at the stage where you have recorded or used audio in Live. In this series we specifically use a voice sample to use in our project. That’s the last clip element we’ll be adding; in this tutorial we’ll add some audio effects to our audio and MIDI tracks, return tracks, and the Master Track itself. Don’t worry if you don’t have the last tutorial as you can make sure you’re using the latest version of our example set included on the cover disc.

When browsing and loading, it it pays to be keyboard friendly. You can mouse around but it’s much faster to use your Arrow keys When it comes to browsing and loading devices, it pays to be keyboard-friendly. Sure you can mouse around, but it’s faster to use your computer Arrow keys. Inside the Browser, Left and Right Arrows move between columns, while Up and Down will scroll, obviously, up and down

like ‘Cut-O-Move H’ or ‘Elastic Band’, you’re loading a preset for the relevant device. There’s also the Hot Swap button on each device – the little circle next to the Save File button. Click that to jump straight to the relevant Browser section for your current device, and remember to use the Arrow keys to navigate and load fast. Your saved presets go directly into the relevant category in your Library, although you are free to move these and create new folders to contain them. You might be wondering about which effects go where. Generally, if you want to process something that only occurs in one track, you add the effect to that track (I should state explicitly that you can use audio effects on MIDI and audio tracks, but only MIDI effects on MIDI tracks). If you want the same effect to apply to a selection of tracks, group them and put the effect on the group. If you have an effect that you want to blend by different degrees over a number of tracks, that’s a job for Return tracks. Using a single effect on a Return track instead of duplicating it across many tracks can also save CPU if it’s a particularly power-crazed plug-in. Finally, if you want to process the entire song – everything, including the signal from the returns – you need to be adding that effect to the Master Track. You’ll find that effects behave differently
































MT Step-by-Step

Working with audio effects

Let’s find some effects to add to our tracks, ideally a combination of ‘helper’ and more ‘showy’ effects. Open the example set on the disc, TUGTAL7. This’ll keep you up to date with our progress.

01

Open the Browser. Don’t Don’t forget to use the keyboard shortcut: shor tcut: Alt>Cmd>B. Click on ‘Audio Effects’ in the left-hand column, but from then on use your computer Arrow keys to navigate the presets.

02






























MT Step-by-Step

Working with audio effects… cont’d

the voice track, add EQ Three and click the L switch, killing the 07 On low frequencies. Then add the Vinyl Distortion/Awfull preset – you’ll hear it does a funny pitch thing as well as adding grunge.

can be toggled on and off with the Power buttons left of 08 Effects their names. You can remove an effect from a track using your Delete key, and they can be copied and pasted.






























MT Step-by-Step

Working with audio effects… cont’d

Create two Return tracks, adding one effect to each – Ping Pong Delay on A, and Reverb/Large Hall on B. Set their Dry/Wet controls to 100%. We’ll use the Sends to mix the levels instead.

13

Send the tracks to the reverb effect on Send B. Try it like this:

Set the keyboard and vocal track sends A to around 3 o’clock and 12 o’clock o’clock respectively.You can see the dB values displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

14

The final location to add effects is the Master Track; again,





























FM | PRODUCER’S GUIDE

INCLUDES INCL UDES VIDEO AND AUDIO VAU VAULT LT.FUTU .FUTUREMU REMUSIC.C SIC.CO.UK O.UK

Ableton Ableton Push Push





























Producer’s Guide To | Ableton Push

Drum Rack is loaded, the 64 pads are divided into three sections, so you can simultaneously play the pads live, step-sequence notes, and set the current clip’s length and loop length. If the current track isn’t a Drum Rack (ie a regular MIDI instrument), Note mode calls up Push’s unique MIDI ‘keyboard’,

Push In Use

The Push user experience begins with the Browser: hit the Browse button, then use the top encoders, buttons and screen to peruse and load one of Live’s instruments, effects or preset Racks – although third-party plug-ins must all be wrapped and mapped ahead of time into Live’s Rack format if you want to fully browse and control them with

the hardware. Once loaded, the encoders map to the currentlyselected device’s parameters and can be tweaked accordingly. Playback, record, undo, delete and most other menu functions are executed using the various menu buttons on either side of Push. After you’ve called up an instrument, enter Note mode. If a

whereby the pads trigger MIDI notes in a user-defined key and scale. Melodies and chords can also be step-sequenced by pressing Note again. Once you’ve laid down a few clips, you’ll want to re-order and arrange them. Press the Session button, and the 8x8 grid now changes to display the available clips and scenes in the Session View (triggered by tapping the appropriate pads). The bottom-right arrows move the selection square around the Session View, while holding Shift accesses Session Overview mode – useful for navigating large sessions. Finally, after assembling a collection of clips and scenes that you’re happy with, it’s a good idea to print your live performance (non-destructively, of course) into Live’s linear Arrangement View. To do this, head back to Live 9 and hit the Arrangement Record button before using Push to ‘perform’ your track.

QUICK TIPS

1

Punching a Drum Rack pad selects that pad for editing, but it also triggers the sound. If you’re recording, hold Select and hit a pad to select sounds silently.

2

Several buttons (eg Accent, Note and Session) feature a ‘hold’ modifier. modifier. Press the Repeat button to toggle the effect on, or hold it down to punch it in and out on the fly. When in Drum































Ableton Push | Producer’s Guide To

Drum Sequencing With Push Learn how to sequence beats using Push with our step-by-step guide…

Let’s compose a beat using Push. Begin in a new project: set the global tempo to 122bpm and global swing to 20% using the top-right two encoders, then hit Browse and navigate to the Drum Racks folder to load a TR-808 kit (hit the Browse button again to exit

>

Select the kit’s kick pad (hold Select while tapping a pad to select that sound without triggering it), then tap the upper 8x4 pads to enter kick notes on the sequencer. Step length is set via the right column of Scene/ Grid buttons, while clip and loop length is set

>






























Ableton Live The Ultimate Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 8


Build a musical structure in real-time and capture it to the Arrangement View






























MT Step-by-Step

Clips and scenes

begin as usual by loading the up-to-date example Ableton 01 Let’s Live set from this month’s DVD. I’ve included all the steps we went through in the last tutorial. The set is called ‘TUGTAL8’.

already know about clips; now we’re using scenes as well. A 02 You scene is a horizontal row of clips, across any number of tracks. We trigger scenes with the Launch button in the Master Track.






























MT Step-by-Step

Clips and scenes… cont’d

07 Now type Shift>Cmd>I – the Capture and Insert Scene command.

Your beat’s copied to a new scene, without interrupting playback! p layback! The new scene is placed on whatever row was highlighted at the time.

08 Drag the scenes up and down after creating them, or choose

where you want the new one before capturing. Play the Beat and Bass clips; Shift>Cmd>I for a new scene containing both clips.






























MT Step-by-Step

Clips and scenes… cont’d

13 Make sure the Automation Arm button is yellow, to ensure control

moves are correctly captured as clip and track automation. Push users have a dedicated button for this on the hardware.

14 You can stop clips by launching others in the same track with the

Stop buttons, or by putting them into Toggle Mode if you’re using hardware, so they go on and off when tapped a second time.































MT Feature 6 ways to…Get Inspired

01





























6 ways to… Get Inspired Feature MT

02

overlooked. Do whatever you have to do: go for a walk, go for a run, go watch a movie, go play an XBox, go kick around a football. As long as it takes you out of the studio for a bit. It gives you distance from the material, lets your mind wander a little and gives those overworked neurons a break. If you’re really clever, you’ll find a way to make your brain perform different creative tasks. Video games are perfect – the benefits of playing them have been well documented, and as much as it might not look it, taking down a tricky boss or beating a particular area is a creative act. Yes, we’re






























Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 9 Ableton Live The Ultimate

Editing your composition in the































MT Step-by-Step

Editing in Arrangement View






























MT Step-by-Step

Editing in Arrangement View… V iew… cont’d




























































Feature | Ultimate Edits





























Ultimate Edits | Feature





























Feature | Ultimate Edits





























Ultimate Edits | Feature





















































































































































































































































Ableton Live Tips and Tricks Part 5

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