Lessons
Ableton Live Overview
14:35 2Sound Design in Ableton
29:50 3Quick Tips for Beginners
10:44 4Physics of Music
40:01 5The User Interface
28:37 6Sound Design: Building the Palette
14:37 7Sound Design: Kicks and Bass
10:31 8Sound Design: Lead Synth Sounds
09:35Sound Design: Pads and Pianos
16:51 10Sound Design: Collision, Tension and Effects
16:03 11Composing & Arranging: DJing in Ableton
22:15 12Composing & Arranging: Step Sequencing
18:22 13Composing & Arranging: Hatching Ideas & Songwriting
23:21 14Composing & Arranging: Riffing on Loops
18:14 15Composing & Arranging: Genre Hacking
10:26 16Sampling & Remixing: Sampling with Simpler
09:31 17Sampling & Remixing: Building Drum Racks
17:19 18Sampling & Remixing: Impulse and Clip View
14:26 19Sampling & Remixing: Slice to MIDI and Organization
18:07 20Sampling & Remixing: Remixing and Mashups
25:22 21Advanced Techniques: Modular Components
18:46 22Advanced Techniques: MIDI & Audio Effects Racks
13:24 23Advanced Techniques: Clip Launching
23:41 24Recording in Ableton
15:05 25Mixing in Ableton
36:46 26Mastering in Ableton
29:45Lesson Info
Quick Tips for Beginners
So we're going to talk a little bit about deejaying and remixing, and I like to think of deejaying and remixing us sort of this, um, I call it the macro cosmic little universe for for deejaying because, uh, you can kind of approach it on such a granular level. I mean, you can loop, uh, the tiniest segments and songs, they're basically big loops based upon each other, and you're just combining a three minute loop with another three minute leaper, five minute leaper, whatever. So this sort of these little universes of loops and sounds and at each other are repeating in these bigger fractal patterns and that's really similar to the nature of theories of our universe. So I like to call it macro cosmic deejaying. So another cool thing about about a bolton is it's it's pretty much your limited? Teo, you know how many tracks your cpu can handle this far is like how many channels of of audio you want to run and each clip is sort of like a record, and the challenge is like a line mixer playing ...
back your cd, your turntable, or what have you so it's really needed it's it's a really fun, um, interface for deejaying um, I like that. I like to focus on the arrangement and the effects of deejaying more than I really care about beat mixing beat matching is a really great skill toe have and it's a great way to train the here for timing and for phasing and that kind of thing um and it's just something I'd prefer to do beforehand quite perform on and on and that's the approach with a bolton umm so for sets that basically a deejay said unable to requires a little more preparation beforehand in regards to cueing and warping the song um other programs are designed to handle that more on the fly and able ten is designed to do that beforehand er like I said you can time stretch there's a bunch of different algorithms uh that warp audio extremely well and keep it sounding nicely for when possible if for deejaying or working samples I used the pitch algorithm if if the pitch doesn't matter if it's just shifting it outside tio where it's undetectable or it actually sounds good I try to use the pitch algorithm because that's the highest resolution ah warping out rhythm and there's also a variety of others like complex pro you know we can take a look real quick his beets tones textures and each one of these different um warping out rhythms lends itself to the sound it indicates respectively another thing that's great about deejaying and remixing and live is that it is it's really great at handling lots of audio able to kind of jokingly say it runs on thin air because a lot of times it's just amazing how much it can play back and handle as faras effects and uh audio playback goes it's really amazing so able to it is a very cpu friendly program not to say you can't max out though because you can definitely break it um and it's also improvisation friendly since the database gives you ah huge overview off all kinds of these various options um and these air all clips here in different colors it's really great for for exploring and trying new things so it's really it could be really fun for deejaying especially if you're playing in other loops or improvising a cz your you know, performing music along with longer loops or other songs are doing remixing so I've got some quick tips for for starting out if you're just getting started with able to end or making music and uh basically these air just some things that really helped me get going and tracked my my progress really quickly so my first one is to develop attainable goals that add up the thing that changed my game with music making is I started making a loop every day and it was just I said okay, I'm going to spend a half hour and when I started it be like eight bars um and then after about five or ten days it started getting up a sixteen bars and then that that loop just got started getting bigger every day and I would just go with a time limit half hour and make something every single day and I kept a folder of that music and it added up there were songs they're they're loops and there that I wanted to turn in the songs and there were awsome there are lots of ideas a lot of you know jussi parts that I could go in and just basically flush out into a full song later so you've got a couple things when you do that sort of everyday loop you have the loop itself which you can just it lives on its own it's its own thing and you can add that into your set you can layer it with other things and and have it be one of these clips and your infinite turntables um or you can actually evolve the idea at our later time now I kept the process of the loot making and whatever songs I was working on separate because it allowed me to explore new ideas that I had never done before and uh and I didn't feel obligated I could I could stay to uh I could stay to answering and problem solving the music that I already created in the songs that was already working on but if I had an idea about something else um, that day or whatever if I felt inspired, I could access that inspiration right there and it was ah it's a it's a great process, so try to do something every day and also, you know, even if it's for fifteen minutes make yourself do it usually by the end of ten minutes I want to make a track for an hour, so it's it's a great way to get in the mode if you're not feeling motivated and something to hold yourself to and something to be proud of after and after a month, you've got thirty loops, which is pretty awesome it's a significant amount of music to play around with, if anything, just throw all those loops in the session view and go nuts and it's a really good time. My next step is the experiment fearlessly, I don't think anyone has ever had unable to injury last I checked anyways, uh, so go nuts, you know, this is the jazz of now kind of mean, I think the thing that excites me the most about making electronic music is since we're working in this new digital realm, that, uh, there's potential to do something new and, uh, exploit that, explore everything, you know, if you're not feeling something, feel it more keep going with it don't be scared of anything in ableto it's it's, your friend, I promise. Um another thing is like there's that info view here and so there's a there's some all these little different arrows we'll show and expand parts of the user interface, which I'm going to go over here in a minute and these arrows r release ful and the cool thing about info view is that you can mouse over anything and it'll tell you what you use tell you what it does, I still use it. I generally run with it off to keep my real estate, but there's still things after over ten years of using this software that I'm like, what does that do exactly? Or what does that mean? How does that work? And usually in four of you will get you halfway there at least, um and provide a decent explanation. Another thing is learned the key commands um, you can get a keyboard cover that has all the key cream hands on in there. They're very affordable. Um, you could also just print it out. I've mentioned here on, uh, chapter thirty four on page five hundred ninety seven in the manual. If you're gonna print anything in that manual or read any part of that manual, make sure it's the hot keys and learn him that will get you at a point where you can do things you can literally start making stuff and making sounds, and when she started, just just practice the hot keys and it won't take long. And the next, uh, in my final tip to go from from nube pro is tio understand the limitations of the software and the science of sound, the limitations and the powers of the science of sound and it's really simplified. When you look at it like, ok, I can change these parameters. Aiken affect the volume. I can affect the pitch I can add at the time I can, I can shift the phase, aiken do these different things. I can affect the space and really there's, not that many more sort of axes of control than that it's it's fairly limited, but and when you're aware of these limitations of you're like, ok, well, these you understand your options and you can go in there. You can solve problems quickly and you can push the boundaries, which is a lot of fun.
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Electronic Music Production