3

Tips
Tricks
Tutorials
Showing and Hiding Views Loop Brace and Start/End Markers
Macintosh Macintosh
Toggle Full Screen Mode Move Start Marker to Position Click
Toggle Session/Arrangement View Nudge Loop Left/Right
Toggle Track/Clip View or Move Loop By Loop Length
Halve/Double Loop Length
Hide/Show Detail View or Shorten/Lengthen Loop
Select Material in Loop Click Loop Brace or
Hide/Show Info View
Hide/Show Browser
Hide/Show Overview Session View Commands
Hide/Show In/Out Macintosh
Hide/Show Sends Launch Selected Clip/Slot
Hide/Show Mixer Select Neighbouring Clip/Slot Arrow Keys
Open the Preferences Select all Clips/Slots
Close Window/Dialog Copy Clips Drag
Add/Remove Stop Button
Adjusting Values Insert MIDI clip or
Macintosh Double-Click Slot
Decrement/Increment Insert Scene
Finer Resolution for Dragging Insert Captured Scene
Return to Default Move Nonadjacent Scenes
Type in Value without Collapsing
Go to Next Field (Bar.beat.16th) Drop Browser Clips as a Scene
Abort Value Entry
Confirm Value Entry Arrangement View Commands
Macintosh
Browsing Split Clip at Selection
Macintosh Consolidate Selection into Clip
Scroll Down/Up Create Fade/Crossfade
Close/Open Folders Loop Selection
Set Selected Folder as Browser Root Insert Silence
Load Selected Item from Browser or Double Click Pan Left/Right of Selection
Preview Selected File Unfold all Tracks Unfold button
Activate Browser Search Mode Scroll Display to Follow Playback
Jump to Search Results
Commands for Tracks
Transport See also editing commands Macintosh
Macintosh Insert Audio Track
Play from Start Marker/Stop Insert MIDI Track
Continue Play from Stop Point Insert Return Track
Play Arrangement View Selection Rename Selected Track
Record While Renaming, Go to next Track
Back to Arrangement Group Selected Tracks
Activate/Deactivate Track 1..8 Ungroup Tracks
Show Grouped Tracks
Hide Grouped Tracks
Move Nonadjacent Tracks + arrow keys
Without Collapsing
Arm/Solo Multiple Tracks + Click
Add Device from Browser Double-Click

By holding down an additional modifier key, some of the

Editing commands across can also be applied to:
Macintosh Macintosh
Cut Clips and Slots Across all Tracks
Copy Time Across all Tracks
Paste The Selected Part of the Envelope
Duplicate
Delete can be used to move from one track or scene to
Undo another while renaming.
Redo
Rename
Select All
Original manual @ http://www.ableton.com/de/pages/downloads/manuals
Commands for Breakpoint Envelopes Grid Snapping and Drawing
Macintosh Macintosh
Finer Resolution for Dragging Toggle Draw Mode
Enable Dragging Over Breakpoints Narrow Grid
Widen Grid
Key/MIDI Map Mode and the Computer MIDI Keyboard Triplet Grid
Macintosh Snap to Grid
Toggle MIDI Map Mode Fixed/Zoom-Adaptive Grid
Toggle Key Map Mode Bypass Snapping While Dragging
Computer MIDI Keyboard

Zooming, Display and Selections Global Quantization

Macintosh Macintosh
Zoom In Sixteenth-Note Quantization
Zoom Out Eighth-Note Quantization
Drag/Click to Append to a Selection Quarter-Note Quantization
Click to Add Adjacent 1-Bar Quantization
Clips/Tracks/Scenes to Multi-Selection Quantization Off
Click to Add Nonadjacent
Clips/Tracks/Scenes to a
Multi-Selection
Follow (Auto-Scroll)
Pan Left/Right of Selection

Clip View Sample Display Working with Sets and the Program
The shortcuts for zooming and loop/region settings also 17 Macintosh
work in the Sample Display. New Live Set
Macintosh Open Live Set
Quantize Close Live Set
Quantize Settings... Save Live Set
Move Selected Warp Marker Save Live Set As...
Select Warp Marker Quit Live
Scroll Display to Follow Playback Hide Live
Move Clip Region with Start Marker Export Audio/Video
Export MIDI file

Clip View MIDI Editor Working with Plug-Ins and Devices

The shortcuts for zooming, snapping/drawing and loop/region Macintosh
settings also work in the MIDI Editor. Show/Hide Plug-In Windows
Open Second/Multiple Windows with
Macintosh Plug-In Edit Button
Quantize Open Mac Keystroke Plug-In Window
Quantize Settings... with Plug-In Edit Button
Scroll Editor Vertically Group/Ungroup Devices
Scroll Editor Horizontally Activate/Deactivate All Devices in Group Device Activator
Copy Note Drag Click to Append Devices to a Selected
Change Velocity From Note Editor Drag Device
Add/Delete Note in Edit Mode Double-Click Load Selected Device From Browser or Double-Click
Move Insert Mark to Beginning home
Move Insert Mark to End end
Scroll Display to Follow Playback
Move Clip Region with Start Marker

Original manual @ http://www.ableton.com/de/pages/downloads/manuals

 Ableton Live | Technique

1 2

>
One Way Or Another

3 4

>
Too Much USB

5 6

7 8

>
Notes Plus

9 10

>
The Effect Treatment
VIDEO ON
THE DVD
Watch the tutorial
movie on the DVD

63
Technique | Ableton Live

apply Live’s MIDI effects to the track;

MIDI-to-CV
once again, it’s just like working with
Converters
any software instrument. Check your
There are older, analogue,
synth’s manual to find out which synths out there, that
messages it will receive. Most manuals pre-date MIDI (the MIDI
spec was published in
are online now, so if I’m wondering 1983). Before that, CV/
about a particular piece of hardware, Gate signals were used for
communication between
I’ll grab the manual and read the MIDI hardware. Companies like
info. And after shopping, I keep the Kenton still produce
MIDI-to-CV converters,
PDF manuals on my computer and meaning you can include
iPad, so they’re always to hand during analogue gear in your
digital rig.
sessions. Another benefit of PDF
manuals is that they’re searchable!
The audio comes back into the
same track that the MIDI is leaving,
thanks to some neat routing from
Ableton. This is a great way to organise
your hardware for performance, but if
you want to record the incoming audio,
you’ll have to set up another audio
track, and record into that one, either
directly from your audio input 8 , or by
using the In/Out View to route audio
out from your MIDI track into the
‘recording’ track. You can also Freeze and Flatten the MIDI track, to permanently healthy for hardware synths, even with all the great software examples. The iPad
‘print’ those synth parts to audio files. This works in the usual way, but it takes is getting called on more as a control surface for them, and perhaps soon we’ll
longer because Live has to play through the song in real time to capture the see wireless connectivity become common. What I really want every synth to
audio 9 . You can add any of Live’s audio effect devices, or third-party plug-ins, come with is a plug-in editor that runs as an AU or VST inside Live – that would
to the track, to expand on the synth’s original array of effects. An interesting be a real boost to the workflow.
development with synths that connect through USB is that they usually have
some kind of supporting plug-in or standalone editor that gives you access to Sounds On Demand
their deeper features and preset management, directly from the computer. Vyzex
have produced a few of these editors for different hardware synths, including the
There is deeper integration available. An obvious
Dave Smith Instruments Evolver, and M-Audio’s Venom synth. The Venom editor one to start with is getting Live to tell the synth
is particularly useful, because the control panel on the actual synth is so bare! to load specific sounds on demand as you
Versatile boxes
launch the clip that needs the sound. This is
Control issues get interesting in other ways, too. Once your synth is hooked up, quite easy to do, although you’ll probably need
you can play it from another connected keyboard, or even the Live Virtual MIDI the synth’s manual handy! Make a MIDI clip if
Keyboard – the computer keyboard, in other words. You could use the knobs and you don’t have one already, and go to the Notes
faders on a MIDI hardware controller to reach out to your synth. A lot of modern
synths also send MIDI out from their controls, so you can use it as a hardware
box. There you’ll see choosers where you can
control surface for Live; very versatile. A modern synth can be a soundcard, a enter Program, Sub Bank, or Bank changes,
controller, even an audio processor, if it lets you run external audio signals which are sent when the clip is launched. Refer
through its onboard effects… some of those synths have fantastic filters! Where
this will go in the future, nobody can say, but it looks like things are pretty
to your synth manual to find out which messages
you need to send.
Soft Synths The effect treatment
If you don’t own any One last thing… Most of what we’re
hardware synths, none of
this concerns you much, talking about goes for hardware effects
unless you work with units as well. Look under Live’s Audio
somebody who does use
them. Software synths are Effects category in the Browser, and
so advanced now that you’ll see the External Audio Effect
hardware models aren’t
the essentials they used
Device 10. This device routes audio
to be. A soft synth and to and from your hardware, but you
a controller might do
could also send MIDI from a separate
the job!
track to load patches or change
parameters on the hardware. You may
or may not be a synth-head, and
truthfully I’m not, but everybody should
have a couple of nice pieces to expand
on their sounds and create a different
mood – and Live will make this as
seamless as possible.

64
 Ableton Live | Technique

Hook Up Your
Favourite Synth
To Live
03 >
Create a new MIDI track in your Live set. Go
to the Browser, and from the Instruments
category, drag the External Instrument Device
onto the track. The MIDI To and Audio From

Get your synthesizer working

pop-ups will show the audio and MIDI
connections you just made in Preferences, so
choose them. You don’t need to configure the

with Live, receiving MIDI, and track inputs because the device does it all.

sending audio back in

01 >
Connect your synth to your computer; how you
04 >
do it depends on what connections your synth Play a few notes on your synth, and you

has. If it’s a relatively recent one, it probably should hear its output coming back through
the track in Live. Draw a MIDI clip in the

has a USB connection, which makes things track, with some notes, and they should
trigger the synth as well, with the audio
easy, handling audio and MIDI with one wire. coming back in. It’s like a hardware plug-in!
You can even use Live’s virtual MIDI
For older hardware, with MIDI ports, you’ll keyboard (the computer keyboard) to play
the synth.
need either a MIDI-USB cable, or MIDI cables
into your audio interface, as well as connecting

05 >
the synth’s stereo outputs to your soundcard.

02 >
Once you’ve connected everything, launch
Live and open Preferences. Under the Audio
tab, make sure you’ve enabled the soundcard
Now have fun
applying Live’s MIDI
and audio effects to
the synth! This is
inputs that you’ve connected your synth’s
outputs to. Under the MIDI Sync tab, select good for playback,
your MIDI adaptor or interface ports as MIDI
Output destinations. Turn on Track and but to record the
Remote, and Sync, if you want to sync your
synth to Live’s project tempo. incoming audio, you
still need to set up
an audio track, just
like recording from
any other source.
Once you get a
set-up you like, save
it as a preset so you
can recall it quickly
in future projects.

65
MT Technique Audio & Instrument Racks

Ableton Live Become a Live Power User

UsingAudio &
New
Series
Part 5

Instrument Racks
Many people will recognise a Rack as they are used extensively in Live’s library content, but
learning to build your own is essential for fluid workflow. Liam O’Mullane shows you how.

A
bleton Live has quite a few features not found huge range of options. In fact, the only real restriction you
in other DAWs, and Racks is one of them. At the may encounter will be maxing-out either your CPU or RAM,
most basic level, Racks are containers that but this isn’t anything that any computer user hasn’t had
enable you to ‘rack’ together MIDI, instrument to factor into their workflow before.
and audio devices. A Rack containing internal/ Accompanying In this tutorial we’ll be using Live-only devices that are
project file included
external instruments is called an Instrument Rack; a Rack on the DVD quite economical in terms of CPU requirements. It’s only
of standalone audio processing devices is an Audio Rack. when you start stacking large numbers of third-party,
However, Racks are more than an easy way to bundle resource-hungry instruments and effects that you’ll
multiple elements into one easily saveable – and therefore perhaps need to be a bit more conscious about what you
recallable – package. Racks give you the option to run their use and why. If processing power does become an issue,
internal signal paths in parallel or in series, which offers a make use of Live’s Freeze feature to render the live
processing as temporary audio. When you’re ready to
commit to ideas, we encourage you to then Flatten them
Racksaremorethananeasy into newly rendered audio files. You can then perform any
additional editing in these audio files while freeing up
waytobundlemultipleelements computer resources (both of these functions are accessed
from the Edit menu).
intoasaveablepackage Racks can be used at any point throughout the
production process, and typical uses include stacking
layers of synths for huge, epic sounds, applying go-to
FOCUS ON… USING EXTERNAL HARDWARE parallel processing such as compression and distortion,
Live’s External Audio and Instrument devices enable you to create mid-and-side processing, and building interesting musical
default presets for your outboard processors and sound sources tools for new ideas or exploring intricate audio-processing
respectively.A sound being triggered by MIDI or passing in and out of
your computer as audio will always incur a little delay time.However, chains for sound-design tasks.
you can offset this for instruments by setting them to play something As you can see, there are multiple uses for these tools
percussive on the beat,then enable Live’s metronome and change the and we’ll now go on to explain some of the most important
Hardware Latency value to get both playing in time.This is set to
milliseconds by default but you can click the ‘ms’ box to switch it to aspects of Rack design. If at any point you get lost or are
sample increments for a higher resolution of detail. stuck for inspiration, we recommend that you have a look
The same technique can be applied to External Audio Effects by
playing a percussive audio clip that matches up with the metronome,
through the Live library for Audio, Instrument and MIDI
and the majority of external sources will need some housework Racks. From here it’s easy to explore and modify

56 | January 2014 MAGAZINE

 Audio & Instrument Racks Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Audio Racks: advanced control

Create a Rack by either dragging a preset from the Live Browser There are two reasons for parallel processing, the first being to
01 or using Group from the Edit menu when an existing instrument
02 audition various approaches for processing audio.This approach
or effect(s) is highlighted. Each internal audio channel – called Chains lets you try out different techniques/processors and generally explore
– will now be visible.There will be only one by default, but more Chains the possibilities for each element in your mix. Use Solo to move
can be created by clicking in the empty space below and choosing between each Chain; when you’ve decided which treatment to go for,
Create Chain or Duplicate a Chain from the Edit menu. delete the other Chains to avoid unnecessary processing.

Reason two is for parallel processing, with typical uses being for Chains can also be used to create different sonic states to move
03 compression/saturation.This is set up by keeping the first Chain
04 between, such as a lighter verse and heavier chorus treatments.
as-is and adding a second Chain to process in parallel. Chains can also Create the two treatments, using Solo to focus on each one like before,
be used to split a signal into its components: by frequencies using then open the Chain Selector Editor by clicking on the box labelled
multiple Multiband Dynamics devices; by mid-and-side components Chain. Looking like a sampler’s key-range editor, this allows you to
using the Utility device’s Width control at 0% and 200% respectively. move the assignment of each Chain to a different area horizontally.

If you move the Zone Blocks for each Chain so they aren’t All Racks have Macro controls that you can assign most
05 overlapping, the Chain Select Ruler above them (in orange) can
06 parameters within a Rack to. If you right/[Ctrl]-click (PC/Mac) on
be moved from one sound to the next. When using Zones in this way, the Chain Selector Ruler it can be assigned to a Macro and then
effects with tails – like reverb or delays – will die out naturally.To blend assigned to a MIDI controller. Multiple assignments can be made to
between the two, drag the Zone Blocks across the full range, then drag one Macro, so explore different combinations of assignments, ranges
the Fade Range shapes so they oppose each other to create the fade. and the directions in which they move.

MAGAZINE January 2014 | 57

 Audio & Instrument Racks Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Instrument and Drum Racks

Instrument Racks work in a similar way to Audio Racks and are Instrument Racks have more options than Audio Racks when it
01 useful for stacking sounds for density and depth, or setting up
02 comes to using Zone Blocks and fades. Use Velocity to create
different sounds to move between dynamically.To create something layers with expressive control from a MIDI keyboard, or Key to create
big, take the same approach of using multiple Chains and layering tonal changes up and down the keyboard. Here we’ve added a bass
contrasting sounds.The MIDI Pitch device is useful here for quickly layer to the lower keys of a melody line; the fade enables it to blend in
finding the best octave or harmony for each new Chain. at the bottom of a descending passage.

Macros can be very useful for creating consistency in an Drum Racks have the added bonus of an internal Sends and
03 instrument performance. For instance, if you want to use drastic
04 Returns setup.This is great for achieving polished production
effects such as a high-pass filter that removes the bulk of the body sounds within your Rack. First enable the Show buttons for Sends and
from a sound, you can offset any loss in presence by increasing the Returns (at the very left of the Rack). Drag the required effect to the
volume of a Utility device as the filter cutoff is increased. area labelled Drop Audio Effects Here – a Send amount will appear on
the Chain List that can be used to feed the effect.

As these effects are internal, you can sub-process all your drums A hybrid approach can be used to combine steps 4 and 5 by
05 as one, helping you to achieve a cohesive sound by processing
06 initially using Return Chains within the Drum Rack. When you’ve
both the drums and reverb with tools like compression. If you want to decided on your choices, drag-and-drop the internal Return Chains to
drive an effect that’s already set up in Live’s main Return Tracks, right/ the main Return Track area in Live.This won’t carry across the Send
[Ctrl]-click in an empty Chain area and select Create Return Chain.This amounts, which you’ll have to reapply from the main Sends section of
can then be routed to the relevant Return Track. the Drum Rack’s channel in Live’s mixer.

MAGAZINE January 2014 | 59

MT Tutorial Producing authentic drum & bass

Powered by
Technique Genre focus

Authentic and original

drum & bass Part2
Following on from the creation of drum beats and bass lines in Part 1, Liam O’Mullane turns
his attention to the vital elements of melody, atmosphere and arrangement techniques.

T
his second instalment builds on the knowledge reprocessing and re-editing, it’s important to remember that
gained in Part 1 for creating original-sounding although this may bear no fruit to begin with, pushing
drum & bass tracks. But while the drums and forward past poor initial results is the only path to creating
bass are at the heart of D&B, it’s also important something genuinely interesting. Creating perfect and
to consider the melodic – and perhaps not so Accompanying unique sounds through sound-design and mix-processing
project file included
melodic – parts you’ll need to create. Depending on the on the DVD as well as re-sampling techniques can be slow at times, so
direction you want to take your work, you may need to create keep an open mind as you work and be patient – it can take
huge atmospheric soundscapes for a dark, techy, sci-fi anything from 20 minutes to over a day of trying out ideas
movie-like track; if you’re creating a more musically driven until you stumble on that golden nugget!
piece, you will need decorative melody information in the When you’ve got your ideas together, start to think about
your arrangement; here we’ll be exploring a few ways in

We’rearmingyouwiththetools which you can take your ideas and work them into a playable
structure. There’s no strict form that a D&B song must take,

you’llneedtotakecreativeideas but do keep in mind that the majority of your audience will
hear your music in a DJ-mixing context, so it’s important to

andmakethemworkasasong make it suitable for both club and radio play as well as
maximising on the moments when the song might be
present in a mix alongside another track.
form of arp synths, pads and so on. Even the most minimal But as we stated in Part 1, we’re arming you with the
forms of the genre have elements that sit in the background tools you’ll need to take creative ideas and make them work
behind the more obvious foreground sounds, and this is as a song – not how to churn out yet another bandwagon-
where your mixes can gain a sense of depth. chasing club-banger. So turn on that sub, shut out the
First we’ll look at the approach (and perseverance) you’ll daylight and do whatever else you need to do to get into a
need to take when it comes to sound-design. Using a creative headspace. MT
multi-layered approach of processing, rendering, editing,
This tutorial has been endorsed by ACM, The Academy of Contemporary
Music, world leaders in music industry education. ACM’s Audio Production
FOCUS ON… PERSEVERANCE & NEW SOUNDS School provides Diploma (one-year) and Degree (two-year) courses in
Contemporary Music Production, Electronic Music Production, Creative
Sound-design is an integral part of D&B and there are many approaches to creating something Sound Design and Tour Production & Management.
unique and engaging for your tracks.Although sound quality is important in all aspects of music www acm ac uk
production,sometimes the audio quality of your source
as a trigger for heavily processed audio.In fact,it’ll often
you’ll need to take:starting with a selection of sounds,tr
applying automation and exploring what’s possible.If yo
processing live and in real time you can always
swap-out the source sounds to see how they are
affected by the processing as you go.
The example audio for this tutorial employs
various stages of processing and should give you an
idea of how you can approach this technique.
Starting with a few randomly chosen bass guitar
slide samples, the source material is processed
three times to create three contrasting results.
These include a combination of reverb, saturation,
frequency-shifting and white-noise vocoding.
Certain parameters are automated and edited to try
to gain the most tonal change for each sound within
the phrase. EQ is used to re-balance the sound and
reduce unwanted frequencies, then all three results
are rendered into a new audio file to be treated as a
new source sample.This is then chopped-up and
edited into something of interest. By listening to
this audio you can hear how these techniques can
yield surprising results that are drastically different
from the source.

64 | January 2014 MAGAZINE

 Producing authentic drum & bass Tutorial MT

MT Step-by-Step Decorative sounds and melodies

Depending on the vibe of your track, you can choose to fill the For atmospheric sounds you can’t go wrong with long doses of
01 background with melodic pads, pitched FX, drones, atmospheres
02 reverb, with a mostly wet balance to achieve a diffused tone.
or a mash of the lot. We’ve chosen to create a sinister pad as a tension Anything goes for the sound source. We used pitched percussion in the
layer for the intro by playing discordant notes, layering sequenced main section and a saw synth for the intro to create a huge, horn-like
sounds underneath the louder synthetic strings (for movement) and sound. We automated the reverb’s Freeze function to extend the tails
automating the pan position of the quieter layers for stereo interest. and changed the room size, all of which adds detail for the listener.

For radio-friendly styles, melodies usually require straightforward Once you’ve created a few background sounds, render them
03 synth sounds.These are readily available in many synth libraries
04 down to audio for further editing.This is a simple way to create
and can be customised through layering and editing. For deeper styles, the much-needed variation within a track and is an economical use of
try working with less conventional sounds. We’ve layered a blend of the sounds you’ve already spent a lot of time perfecting.These can
bells, cowbells and claves and added a tom underneath for continuous then easily go through further generations of manipulation without
punch and weight throughout. taxing your computer too much.

Stabs are useful for announcing new sections or to insert As your mix builds up, use a fine-tooth-comb attitude to justify
05 sporadically to create tonal contrast when everything else drops
06 each and every part to avoid unnecessary clutter. Remember to
out. Stabs are easy to make as they require just a good dose of replace sounds if needed as you develop the mix to give everything the
layering, spreading of pitch and creative panning if you want stereo space it needs to breathe. We went through various bass sounds, kicks
width. Again, explore the most unexpected sounds in your library and and snares to maintain clarity as we developed our ideas. If it helps,
use mistuned layers to give denser, moody and less-musical tones. save a new project version before making drastic changes.

MAGAZINE January 2014 | 65

MT Tutorial Producing authentic drum & bass

MT Step-by-Step Creating arrangement dynamics

When you want to develop an idea into a good 16 bars or more, a Breaks and pauses are needed not only during full breakdowns.
01 balance between creating an interesting sonic tapestry while
02 These are great dynamic tools for momentarily throwing the flow
being sensible about your approach needs to be struck. By this we in a groove, creating lifts before a new section, and adding durations of
mean not keeping hundreds of tracks running with live effects and space to break up a busy track. Focus on short sections to figure out
automation throughout the project. When you have the sounds you how many elements can be removed for a drop in energy. Mute send FX
need, render them down to audio to make your project easier to handle. such as reverb and delay through automation to achieve digital silence.

A high-pass filter will lift the low end from single sounds, groups A D&B track’s arrangement is not set in stone, but the basics of
03 or the entire mix before a new section to make it seem heavier.
04 intro, breakdown, drop, counter sections, 2nd breakdown, drop,
This technique can also be applied to parts in full song sections to alternate sections and outro is a guide if you’re unsure. If you make the
create more space in a mix for busier sections. For example, a lead intro rhythmic it will be useful to a DJ for mixing, but a more important
synth might have its full frequency content allowed in a breakdown, feature is a unique sound or melody.This acts as an audible signpost
but is high-pass-filtered on the drop to accommodate new content. for an audience to know that your song is currently being mixed-in.

There are many ways to continue an idea after the first main The outro serves the same purpose as the intro but in reverse.
05 drop: exploring bass tones over time; melodic progression; drum
06 While it’s tempting to simply copy and reverse the parts in the
sound switch-ups (switching from one tone to another); stripping back intro, try to use it as another dynamic tool.This part of the track will be
to a more sparse section or a completely different style to push the the last piece heard as it’s mixed over someone else’s intro, so create
song in an unexpected direction. Explore a few options, save them as excitement by using a different combination of previous parts and
different projects and do some trial arrangements to see what works. re-editing or introducing a new element to sign-off with.

66 | January 2014 MAGAZINE

MT Technique Clip experimentation in Session View

Ableton Live Become a Live Power User

Clip experimentation
New
Series
Part 7

in Session View
Session View has numerous uses in Live 9 , both practical and creative.
Liam O’Mullane explains how you can use and abuse the properties
of audio and MIDI Clips to make music in a different way...

S
o far in this series we’ve looked at the various this way is set up using either
different tools for creating music in Ableton On the disc Key Map or MIDI Map modes
Live, most of which can be used in either Live’s respectively. When enabled from
Arrangement or Session Views. This instalment, the Options menu, you can then assign Scene Launch or
Accompanying
however, focuses on tools that are available project file included Clip Launch buttons to a fixed mapping. This is a good
only when using Clips in Session View. Arrangement View is on the DVD approach for quickly trying out new ideas or for triggering
a linear overview showing tracks running vertically in rows, specific assignments within a prepared performance,
while time goes from left to right. Session View, on the though you’ll usually delete the assignments when they
are no longer needed.
When either Map Mode is enabled, four new assignable

For higher levels of interactive buttons appear below the Scene Launch area on the
right-hand side of Live’s display. When mapped, these

control it’s worth investing in a allow you to select Scenes using either assigned up and
down controls or a rotary encoder to scroll up and down.

dedicated controller You can then use a special Launch button that simply
triggers the scene currently highlighted.
This approach is open to anyone with a standard
other hand, takes a different approach, displaying tracks computer keyboard or a MIDI controller, but for a higher
vertically like channels on an audio mixer. Slots are placed level of interactive control it’s worth investing in a
vertically down each track, which can be used to dedicated controller. Ableton’s own Push is the Rolls-Royce
launch MIDI or audio Clips. You can choose to of options as it controls Session View and plenty
trigger an entire row of Clips at once – referred to more, making composition, sound design and
as Scenes – or launch them individually. We’ll first mixing all feasible with minimal computer
look at how you can interact with one or more Clips interaction. Other candidates include the Novation
for experimentation, then explore how to develop Launchpad or an AKAI APC-type product, which
ideas so that Scenes can be expanded into offer different levels of control but still let you
potential new song sections. navigate Session View for Clip/Scene launching.
Scenes or individual Clips can be launched But irrespective of how you want to interact with
using the mouse, mapped keys on your computer Clips and Scenes, the techniques here will
keyboard, MIDI keys or buttons. Mapping manually enhance your ability to jam in Session View. MT

FOCUS ON… EXPERIMENTATION The first parameter to understand is the Follow Action
Time, which, like loop length, determines the length of a Clip’s
The majority of this tutorial focuses on modifying individual playback until the Follow Action is implemented. This
Clips to create variation. Although some of the techniques will measures in bars, beats and 16ths and will then move to the
yield a degree of randomness, they are mostly concerned with Follow Action chosen from the A or B dropdown menu below.
making precise changes through editing. If you want to take a Underneath the two Follow Action menus is a Probability
different approach to achieve new results – or, indeed, you’re setting that by default is 1 to 0 – meaning that for every use of
looking for a different way to sequence Clips – Follow Actions A’s Follow Action, there will be zero uses of Follow Action B; 1
are worth exploring. and 1 will make them alternate between each other.
Follow Actions are essentially a rule system that you can The next setting to explore is the Follow Action itself.
apply to any Clip in Session View to dictate how the playback There are too many options to go into here, but there are two
of one Clip will lead into the playback of another. They can be simple ways to achieve unique results. The first is to set all but
applied only to Clips residing on the same track, therefore only the last Clip to play the next Clip using the Next Action, then
one Clip can play at any one time. The positioning of the Clips set the last Clip to play the first. This will create a playback
will determine how they are grouped if they’re placed on the loop from top to bottom of all Clips in the group. Experiment
same track and in consecutive Slots – ie, if there are 20 clips with the duration of the Follow Action Time for changes to
running down a track, an empty Slot between the first ten and rhythm and time signature. The second approach involves the
the second ten will result in them being grouped into two lots Any Follow Action, which sets up your Clips for random
of ten, and the Follow actions will only ever communicate with interaction. We like to use this on sound layers that sit further
the other Clips in the local group of ten. in the background of a mix for ever-changing layers of detail.

62 | March 2014 MAGAZINE

 Clip experimentation in Session View Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Experimenting with Clips

One way to interact with Clips is by changing their Launch mode There are four Launch modes to choose from. Trigger is the
01 behaviour. Unsync the Clip’s Launch quantization from Live’s
02 default mode, simply launching a Clip. Gate gives momentary
Global quantization – this gives you more expressive settings, such as launching while you hold the Clip’s Launch button; Toggle flips between
16ths, without affecting Live’s global setting. Open the Launch box in playback being on/off with each launch. Repeat creates a stutter
Clip View by clicking on the small L symbol, then select from the effect during playback while the Launch button is pressed, which then
Quantization menu. reverts to normal playback (like Trigger) when released.

Experiment with Launch modes to determine which one works You can immediately rework ideas when three or four duplicated
03 best. If more than one sounds good, duplicate the Clip and give
04 Clips are set up with different Start Marker positions. The next
them custom modes to move between. The next way to manipulate level of manipulation comes from experimenting with loops on certain
multiple instances of a Clip is to explore Start Marker positions. These Clips. With the Loop Switch enabled, resize the Loop Brace above the
are the small markers above the waveform/MIDI grid in Clip View and waveform by dragging its edges or using the numerical values below
they too can be customised for multiple instances of the same Clip. the Loop Switch button.

Start Markers take on a new life here as they can be placed If you want to keep the relative Clip playback position as you
05 before a Loop Brace’s position or at any point within it, so explore
06 move from one Clip to the next, Legato mode can be used in much
letting normal playback run into a short loop later on in the Clip. In this the same way that a synthesizer will use legato to move from one note
way, short plays of this Clip will sound normal; longer runs into the loop to the most recent one hit, no matter how many are being held. For
create a sound effect. instance, launching a new Clip on the second beat of the bar will
resume playback in the next Clip from the same position.

MAGAZINE March 2014 | 63

 Clip experimentation in Session View Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Developing Scenes into full ideas

You can extend the duration of MIDI or audio Clips for developing To vary audio over a longer duration than the audio itself you need
01 ideas, but they need to be approached in different ways. A MIDI
02 to create automation loops for variation that can act
part can be duplicated using the Dupl. Loop button, then you can independently. By opening the Envelope Box (press the small E symbol
manually edit your new MIDI data to create more interest. Because in the bottom left of Clip View), you can choose a parameter to edit
audio Clips are single audio events that are played back, a different from the Device and Controller dropdown menus. Each envelope can
approach needs to be taken to create variation within Session View. be given its own loop length by changing the Linked button to Unlinked.

Regardless of an envelope’s duration, rounded loop lengths will A modulation envelope uses the current minimum/maximum
03 allow you to create predictable changes to your Clips. This means
04 range available from a parameter’s current position. Because our
that the envelope’s loop will stay in sync with the musical phrase of the Clip volume is at 0dB, our envelope can control infinity up to full volume,
Clip’s audio. Start by creating a gated sequence – select Clip from the but if the Clip volume is lower, we’d be limited to its maximum setting.
first menu, then Volume Modulation. Use Draw mode (Options menu) For other effects automation, Absolute makes more sense as each
to edit the envelope and turn the sound on and off rhythmically. edited envelope will control the parameter.

Warp Markers are a useful tool for adjusting the timing within an For less-sync’ed changes to your ideas over time, think of
05 audio loop. These are created after double-clicking above the
06 envelopes as looping LFO. Create an envelope with a less
waveform display in the Clip View window and can then be dragged musically related duration so that it overlaps in different ways every
around. Automation that is linked to the original audio’s duration will time the audio loops. For instance, automate the movement of a notch
follow Warp Marker manipulation. Explore this for interesting ways to filter for five beats to create a sense of constant movement in a sound
edit audio and effects processing at the same time. as it plays.

MAGAZINE March 2014 | 65

MT Technique Collaboration in Ableton Live

Ableton Live Become a Live Power User

Collaboration in
Power
Series
Part 9

Ableton Live
So much can be done with one computer these days that you can forget
that other humans are around to collaborate with. Liam O’Mullane shares
various ways to get social with Live…

O
ne of the strengths and weaknesses of today’s have the interfaces available, or
all in-the-box, computer-based studios is that On the disc you can use an ethernet or
you can do it all by yourself. Composing, Wi-Fi based network. We’ll
producing, DJing, remixing and even jamming show you the basics of making
Accompanying
with yourself are all possible, but in this project file included a network function as a MIDI
workshop, we’re looking at working with others and how on the DVD interface for OSX as well, but
Live can be set-up to do just that. Even when collaborating you’ll need additional software
in the studio, it’s easy to overlook the various ways you can to perform this task on Windows
both work at the same time, rather than taking it in turns to and this is beyond the scope of this workshop. Help can be
hop on and off the computer. In its most basic form, you found however at the following link http://www.tobias-
can assign two different MIDI controllers to control an erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi/rtpmidi-tutorial.html. Just
instrument each. This gets better when there’s more than download the rtpMIDI software which pretty much mirrors
the OSX interface and follow the instructions.

It gets better when two of you The final option is to use a manually-controlled form of
tempo sync which will really test your rhythm skills. Some

can jam out ideas with one of you people will use these manual syncing techniques to beat
match machines, but in most cases it’s reserved for

taking an engineering role working with human performers whose timing can be
much more freeform. On the topic of sync again, the
quality of automatic tempo matching can vary depending
two of you as you can collaboratively jam out ideas on the gear being used and the way they are hooked up.
together while one person takes the engineering role and Although Wi-Fi is the simplest method, it’s also
tweaks the sounds. You are then also geared up to unpredictable and has a less than ideal performance –
immediately record any ideas as they arise. we’d only use this when caught short of other options in
The next level of collaboration is to work with someone rehearsals or the studio. Working with 5-pin MIDI has
else running Live. This can work great in both the studio worked fine for us so far and the best results come from
and live environments, and it’s a situation when you’ll running both computers from an external MIDI clock. But
usually opt for sync’ing two or more bits or gear together this is an additional investment, so we’d only recommend
so they lock together by tempo and, when required, going down this route if you are not satisfied with the
playback positions. Our Sync Between Two Machines results using the techniques discussed. If you’re new to
walkthrough shows you how to sync two computers the world of sync, try out Wi-Fi first as it comes at no cost
running Live. This can be done via 5-pin MIDI cables if you – you can then explore the finer syncs in life! MT

FOCUS ON… MANUAL SYNC When you want to try and sync with someone else’s tempo which isn’t known, the
first option to try is the Tap Temp (TAP) button to roughly set Live to the correct BPM.
As automatic sync can be less than ideal in certain situations, there may be times This alone will be enough to use tempo-based effects if you’re using Live as a creative
when you’d just prefer to manually beat match with another Live user – just like a DJ mixing device. If you want to run Live to launch clips in time with the other performers
would beat-match one record to mix at the same tempo with another. If you’re jamming then you’ll need to either then take over in terms of tempo by introducing something
with other musicians who are playing without a metronome, you may also need to with a beat for them to follow, or you could capture part of their performance to
manually sync to their current tempo to take advantage of Live’s tempo sync’d effects, loop via recording a clip in Session View or using Live’s
or to capture a recorded loop on the fly. The main way manual beat-matching of Live to Looper device.
another electronic source differs to working with more freeform tempos is that you’ll
have to micro manage your tempo for the latter, whereas electronic source work
will be more of a ‘set and forget’ situation.
When matching to another Live user, the simplest
option is to run at the same BPM and after launching the
second computer to sync with the first, use the forwards
and backwards nudge buttons to perfectly align both
computers. These are located to the right of Live’s tempo
readout and can be mapped to MIDI for easy control in a
live situation.

54 | May 2014 MAGAZINE

 Collaboration in Ableton Live Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Sync between two machines

Regardless of how you’re connecting up your MIDI data from one The slave is set up in the opposite way so, under its MIDI Sync
01 computer to another, the basic set-up of routing MIDI clock from
02 preferences, Enable Sync for the MIDI input to receive the MIDI
the master computer to the slave is the same for running between two clock data from the master. The Clock Sync Delay allows you to offset
instances of Live. Open Preferences on the master computer and the timing of the slave so it can be aligned with the master. Playing the
select the MIDI Sync tab. The data will control the slave so enable Sync metronomes on both makes it easy to judge when you’ve got the timing
from the Output of the MIDI port connected to the slave. right, using a loop like a breakbeat to make it easier to hear.

Two different types of MIDI clock can be chosen for the output: The master computer should have an on-the-beat light flash in
03 Song will give out the tempo along with a current position in the
04 the Sync Out indicator. Then after enabling the EXT button on the
Arrangement View. Pattern gives out tempo and beats which means slave, its Sync In indicator should flash when pressing play on the
changing your playback position on the master won’t affect the slave. master. Now your two computers should sync. It takes a few seconds
Use Song mode so you can move around an arrangement on both to truly lock together, so sync playback first with no clips playing, then
computers. Use locators from the Create menu for easier launching. launch your first clips in unison for a clean sounding start.

MIDI information will appear in Live when using a 5-pin cable, but When the slave is ready, you can connect to it from the Directory
05 you’ll need to set up MIDI when using Wi-Fi or ethernet. Go to
06 window of the master. You’ll know when they are connected as
Applications/Utilities Audio MIDI Set Up. Select Show MIDI Window. the computer will appear in the Participants window to the right. The
Double-click the Network box for the MIDI Network Set-up window latency can be adjusted from here as well but it’s slightly limited as
and click the plus icon under My Sessions. Enable this session in the you have to enter numeric values rather than having the option to click
top right, then repeat the process on the slave computer. and drag for easier control like in Live.

MAGAZINE May 2014 | 55

 Collaboration in Ableton Live Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Live jamming and processing

If you’re in sync with other people either through a manual or Set up this audio channel to record the correct input from the In/
01 automated sync set-up, you will be able to take advantage of
02 Out settings which you can reveal from the View menu. If you
Live’s tempo sync’d Session View and Devices. The first level above don’t want to hear this input signal until you’ve recorded it into a clip,
simply cueing clips in Session View is to capture someone’s else’s set Monitor to off. But if you’re using Live as a mixer you’ll need to set
audio as one or more clips to play with. To do this, first create a new the Monitor to Auto so the live input is always heard until a clip is
Audio Track and name it to be relevant to the source it will record. recorded and then played which then overrides that input.

When recording external sounds, capture a sequence and then Another way to re-work a freshly captured piece of audio is to use
03 modify it. The other option is to record the sound across a few
04 time manipulation device effects like Beat Repeat. In the Audio
clip slots so you can then immediately re-work it to creatively trigger Effects library folder, under Performance and DJ, the Knob 1 Super
them. To trigger the slots quickly you’ll need to set the Global Looper is a great device for controlling loop length with a single dial. The
Quantization setting to a higher resolution like 1/4 and then hit record default Live library doesn’t have a great range of performance tools like
on each clip slot one after the other running downwards. this so it’s worth searching online for devices other people have made.

If you need to rehearse before everyone hears it, you can use If you are using Live as a mixer you can be part of a jam by
05 Live’s Cue function. Set an output on your interface for the cue
06 processing effects in real time. EQs, compressors etc can be left
output. Then click the Solo mode button to turn it into Cue mode. Now to their static settings, but Auto Filters, Auto Panner, Redux and delays
press the headphone icon for the track you want to preview and are all great tools to manipulate on someone else’s sound. If you want
disable the track’s Activator button so it’s muted from the main master to capture these for use later, set the Monitor to In so the live input is
output until you’re ready to play your work to the world. always heard while you record in the background.

MAGAZINE May 2014 | 57

MT Technique Mixing tools and techniques

Ableton Live Become a Live Power User

Mixingtools
Power
Series
Part 10

andtechniques
When it comes to mixing, Live offers both classic and contemporary mixing
tools for a variety of sonic options. Liam O’Mullane walks you through his
main choices of devices and editing tools to make your mixes shine…

M
ixing is a process that can happen in one or there is a good reason to separate these two mixing
two stages of the music production process. On the disc processes if you can.
The first stage is creative and composition To help commit to this separation, it’s worth rendering
based, where people may mix as they go. out all of your tracks to new audio. This helps you decide
Accompanying
Here they’ll solely concentrate on mixing as project file included when you’re truly ready to mix, while also removing the
the track comes together with possibly a separate on the VD temptation to tamper with compositional aspects during
tweaking stage at the end. the mixing stage. Rendering out your audio also frees up
The second stage is after the composition is complete computer resources which means more processing power
and sounds are in place, to then mix with a subjective for plug-ins. Finally, if you intend to send your work out to
outlook. Some people will ignore major mix decisions until be mixed by an engineer, this process will create files that
this stage as it gives them the most mix options as they can use.
possible while they only have their mix engineering hats on. To export your project’s tracks to new individual audio
files, highlight the duration of the whole song and then

Itisagoodideatotryand select Export Audio/Video from the File menu. This opens
up a large range of options and we recommend you remain

separateyourmixingstage at Live’s native bit-depth of 32-bits, and stay at the same

sample rate you’re working at. The sample rate you’re

fromyourcreativestage… currently using is signified by having a small speaker icon

next to it. The only other option that needs configuring for
this task is the Rendered Track menu (all other options
Although mixing has creative sound design aspects, it also should be disabled). Select Individual Tracks for rendering
has many practical tasks and assessments that need to be and then select a new, clean, mix project folder to put
carried out. With your creative hat on, you can find this them in after clicking the Export button. You will now have
difficult to do, so if you stop to take care of these matters, a new file for every track which can be imported into a new
it can have a negative affect on your creative workflow. So project. Until next time, happy mixing… MT

FOCUS ON… EXPANDING YOUR GO O TOOLS create a dir ,lo-fi c aracteristic.T is ca be usef l or g v ng o e or wo sounds
disti ct to e of the r own i the ix.Harmonics can also be intro uced usi g
The library of audio effects in Live’s browser offers a good range of funct onal and Downsample when set o se ts Sof mode.Use a very s all amount to ntroduce a
creative mixing tools to choose from.EQ Eight and Compressor/Glue Compressor are gl ss so nding top-en for d l sou ds.
the most obvious choices for frequency and dynamics control,but there are many Wh tever tool end up e ng your favo rites,save some time nd c eate a
other devices w ich are worth exploring for frequent mixing tasks. efa lt processing c a n by Rig PC] / Ctr Mac] + c i i g o a track’s name. ere
Alt ough you can use a low- and igh-cut EQ to bracket a sound’s frequency range you can save de u open ng state or future e IDI or a di tr c s.A ter loa i g
using an EQ Eight,a Cabinet dev ce can ac ieve a similar effect with much more added in yo r pre erred m x-too s o track,se ec S v As De u IDI or A io ra
character.This is partially due to its narrower frequency bandwidth that creates a respe t vely. o al new trac s wi l e reated wit t is chai of
telep one ike effect.But this ca be balanced wit t e orig nal s gnal using the dry/ ev ce pre- oaded.
we control to return a sense of fidelity.The ra ge of the bandwidt estric ion,or
brac et, s selecte through the spea er setting.Transient smear ng is at its mos
affect ve when you se ect a dyna ic mic from t e micropho e
list and exp ore its posit o .
Cabi et ad s a element o
ynamic control as part of its
processing as wel ,bu other
options ike Saturator and Dyna ic
Tube ev ces can do this w i e
of eri g a di feren character. se a
careful balance o drive and out ut
– you can eit er go for a
ully-processe an clipped soun ,
or balance t e dry/wet amount or a
balance o t e origina signa to re a n
some ynamics.
Re ux’s Bit Reduct o ca be used
to red ce a soun ’s ynamic range,but it wi l

54 | June 2014 MAGAZINE

 Mixing tools and techniques Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Processing, side-chaining and automation

Although Live’s Compressor Device is perfectly functional, Glue If you need to remove unwanted sounds, try editing the unwanted
01 Compressor can be used to add some character for dynamic
02 portions out rather than using a gate device.This offers a higher
processing. Glue is a great channel, group and mix buss compressor level of individual control to tidy up audio over a more ‘set and forget’
with its SSL-like smoothing effect. Enable the Soft Clip function and approach used with a gate. After highlighting the portions you don’t
explore driving the signal using the Makeup gain for a hot sound.You want, delete them, then select Show Fades from the Create menu.You
can always then use the dry/wet dial to make this a parallel effect. can now drag these start and end fades to suit each audio event.

As compression is the process of level control, you can also Use an EQ Eight before any processing to remove unwanted
03 control dynamics using Live’s editing functions.You can automate
04 frequencies. Add another at the end of the chain for re-balancing
volume, but this limits you for making level adjustments down the line. the frequency curve of a sound. Check unnecessary bottom-end that
Instead, add a Utility Device at the end of the Track’s processing chain, needs removing using the analyser on the first EQ.The second EQ’s
then automate its gain parameter. For more natural automation analyser monitors how your processing is affecting the frequency
changes, hit Alt on automation lines to drag and create curves. content – useful when trying to fill out holes in your mix.

Many devices have the ability to be side-chained, so respond to Those with Live Suite can get creative with side-chaining using
05 the amplitude levels of an external signal. Most people only use
06 its Max For Live based Envelope Follower. Place this on the track
these on single or grouped sounds, overlooking the option to to be the source sound for side-chaining, then click map before
dynamically control ambience effects.Try adding a compressor to clicking a parameter you wish to control.This moves in time with the
each Return Track and set them to take Audio From the drum group. audio events on the track with the device on. Use a multimap device to
This make your mix move with a pumping, rhythmic sound. multiply and started mapping this source to various destinations.

MAGAZINE June 2014 | 55

 Mixing tools and techniques Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Advanced and unique processing

An Overdrive device is useful for thickening up the harmonic Another option for thickening up specific frequencies is the Vinyl
01 content of a sound. First, find the right frequency area and width
02 Distortion Device.The tracing model graph can be used in much
of focus using the device’s bandpass filter.Then control the density of the same way as the bandpass filter on an overdrive device. It’s the
distortion using drive and its brightness using tone. Finally, compress pinch graph below where things get interesting as harmonics are
the signal as required using the dynamic amount, then dry/wet can distributed across the stereo plane, making it useful for also
blend the processed signal to taste. enhancing its stereo width.

We discussed setting up mid and side processing using Audio If you have a stereo signal, a good way to enhance how stereo it
03 Racks in Part 5 of this series.This simple process lets you add
04 sounds is to compress both the mid and sides of the signal
different processing to the middle (mono) and sides (stereo difference) separately.This way you can reduce the dynamic range of the sides so
for a higher level of control.To get used to how these sound, after the stereo aspect of the signal is more consistent in volume. Raising the
setting-up, solo each one and play with their respective balance to level of the sides will then make the sound more stereo than mono.
hear which part of the sound each chain represents.

Another good place to consider processing mid and side signals Live’s Vocoder device can function as a noise based exciter. With
05 on their own is for ambience effects.Try using a different reverb
06 the carrier set to noise, the reverb-like noise effect can have its
device, or Max For Live Convolution Reverb on each signal with unique decay time altered using the release value. After setting the device to
settings.This creates a much deeper and engaging ambience 40 Bands for the best fidelity along with a maximum frequency range,
soundfield. A shorter decay time on the middle and longer on the side explore the depth and formant controls to tune its noise to best suit the
works well for an enhanced sense of stereo spread. source sound and EQ it to taste drawing into the filter bank.

MAGAZINE June 2014 | 57

> drum programming essentials

> Step by step 3. Programming a drum ’n’ bass beat in Ableton Live

1 2
Launch Live and press the Tab key to switch from Session to In the Tutorial Files/Drum programming essentials/
Arrangement view. We don’t need to use the default setup’s audio Programming a DnB beat in Ableton Live folder you’ll find some
tracks, so select them all and press Backspace to get rid of them. Enter DnB-ready drum sounds. Select the first MIDI track and drag Kick.wav
174 into the tempo field at the top left-hand corner of the interface. into the empty device chain pane at the bottom of the interface to
automatically create a Simpler instrument that we can trigger via MIDI
to play back the sound.

3 4
Drag over bar 5 on the MIDI track and press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+M to Double-click C3 on the first beat of the bar, and drag the right-hand
create a MIDI clip, then Ctrl/Cmd+L to loop the region. Double- side of the note created so that it runs to 1.1.2 – this may not be
click the MIDI clip to bring up the MIDI editor. visible depending on your zoom level, but it’s half way between the
start of the first beat and 1.1.3. Create another beat of the same length
starting on 1.3.3. When combined with a snare on beats 2 and 4, this
creates a 2-step pattern.

5 6
Double-click the title of the second MIDI track to select it, and this Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+T to create a new MIDI track. Drag Hat.wav
time drag Snare 1.wav onto the channel strip. Add hits on 1.2 and onto it to call up a Simpler instrument, and create a new MIDI part.
1.4 that last until 1.2.3 and 1.4.3, as shown. This kind of kick-and-snare Put a short note on the first beat of the bar that lasts until 1.1.1, then
rhythm is the foundation of most DnB beats, but it needs the addition press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to turn off snap to grid.
of a few more elements to make it fuller and faster.

12 / COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL

7 8
Hold Alt and drag the note over to just past 1.1.2 to make a copy of This timing and velocity variation will give us a more natural,
it. Again, you can drag vertically on the ruler at the top of the editor rolling hi-hat pattern that will complement our rigid kicks and
to zoom in and out. We want this hi-hat to be quieter than the first one, snares. Press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to turn snap back on, then drag over the
so drag its velocity level in the panel below down to 40 or so. area between beats 1 and 1.1.3. Now Press Ctrl/Cmd+D to duplicate the
hats and copy them out so that they last for the whole bar.

9 10
The hi-hats are quite loud, so turn the Track Volume down to -3dB. A ghost note is a quieter hit on the snare with a different timbre to
Now our beat is rolling along nicely, let’s funk it up a little bit. Add that of the main hits, used to make the rhythm more syncopated
another MIDI track, drag Snare 2.wav onto it and create a new MIDI and ‘involved’. Double-click the MIDI part to bring up the MIDI editor
clip. We’re going to use this new sound to play some ‘ghost notes’. and add 32nd-note hits on 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and 1.3.2.

11 12
We want this snare to be much quieter than the main one, so turn Now click the first of the two ghost snare clips and press 0 to mute
its Track Volume down to -7.5dB. We can use this ghost snare part it. This very quickly turns our one-bar loop into a two-bar loop
to provide variation to the beat and help it sound less repetitive. Click that’s easier to listen to for extended periods. Select the entire
the arrow at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to hide the sequence by dragging on one of the tracks, and press Ctrl/Cmd+L to
MIDI editor. Drag over all the clips created so far and duplicate them. loop it. Another way to keep a dance music beat involving is to add
and remove elements as the track progresses.

COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL / 13

> drum programming essentials

> Step by step 3. Programming a drum ’n’ bass beat in Ableton Live (continued)

13 14
Duplicate the two-bar section out three times to make an eight-bar Drag the right-hand side of the clip out so that it lasts until the end
sequence. Add a new MIDI track and drag Ride cymbal.wav onto of the sequence. To make the transition between the sections
it. Create a new one-bar-long MIDI clip at the start of the second half of more exciting, let’s create a fill. Select the kick and ride tracks (hold
the sequence and trigger the ride cymbal sound on eighth-notes. Turn Shift) and press Ctrl/Cmd+G to group them.
the Track Volume down to -9dB.

15 16
Grouping the tracks enables us to edit them as a single entity. This creates a fairly subtle variation on the beat that indicates to
Zoom in on the bar before the ride begins, then drag over the sixth the listener that something is about to happen. Another useful tool
eighth-note on the group track and delete it. Highlight the fifth eighth- for accenting particular parts of a beat is the crash cymbal. Create a
note and duplicate it. new MIDI track, drag Crash.wav onto it and trigger a single note at the
start of the ride section lasting for an entire bar so that the whole
sound can play. (Audio: DnB beat.wav)

Pick and mix

In these walkthroughs, we’ve focused purely and it takes time to learn what kinds of Once you’ve got to grips with creating
on sequencing drum sounds rather than sounds work in any particular context. It can beats using preset kits, you can take things to
processing them. The resulting beats might be tempting for new producers to always pick the next level by selecting each sound
be relatively simple, but they’re solid- the biggest, baddest-sounding sample or kit, individually and processing it. Get your hands
sounding and consistent with what you might and then make it sound even more extreme on high-quality versions of tracks that you
expect from their respective genres. An by heavily processing
important element of this is sound selection. it in ill-advised ways. If
For each tutorial we’ve specified that you use you find yourself “Practice your beat programming
a particular set of sounds, and it’s easy to falling into this trap,
hear how differently things can turn out – just
load the EXS24 or HALion Sonic SE with a
practice your beat
programming with
with the pre-programmed kits
different kit after you’ve programmed the
beat. Sometimes the results will be
the pre-programmed
kits from sample from sample packs”
interesting (for example, the Goa Remix kit packs or your DAW’s
makes a surprisingly cool substitute for the included library. These will offer a sonic consider to have decent beats – preferably
EXS 808 one), but more often than not they consistency that makes it easier to ones where the beat plays on its own during
will be less than satisfying. concentrate on learning how to use each the intro or outro – and load them into your
Trying to make a particular style of beat sound and the tricks that you can achieve DAW, where you can loop the relevant
without the right sounds is often frustrating, with variations in velocity and timing. sections and study them more easily.

14 / COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL

 sampled beats <

> Step by step 3. Applying swing to loops in Ableton Live

VIDEO

1 2
Because not all loops have exactly the same groove (see Timing Is Press Ctrl/Cmd+L to set up a loop around the samples. Drag down
Everything on p9), you may need to tweak a loop’s timing to work on the ruler over the arrangement to zoom in on the waveforms.
with its accompanying material. There are a couple of ways to do this Look at Shuffle house.wav. You’ll see that the closed hat of the first
in Ableton Live. Drag Shuffle house.wav and Straight castanets.wav beat plays a bit after 1.1.2, but Straight castanets.wav has much more
onto separate audio tracks in the first bar of a Live arrangement. rigid timing, sitting perfectly on 1.1.3. (Audio: Unaligned beats)

3 4
We can adjust the castanets’ timing by double-clicking the You can now drag the castanets into exactly the right position.
waveform to bring it up in the Clip View. Double-click the ruler Changes that are made in the Clip View will be reflected in the
above the third castanet to add a yellow warp marker. We can now waveforms on the arrangement – move the castanets to the right until
adjust the timing of the second castanet without affecting the rest of they sit perfectly under the closed hi-hat. This technique works well for
the loop. Press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to deactivate Live’s Snap mode. small jobs, but it would take quite a while to tweak the rest of the beat
in this manner.

5 6
This is where Live’s Groove Extraction capability comes in handy. You’ll see House Shuffle in there – this is the groove we just
Double-click the warp markers you’ve created to delete them. created. Drag the groove onto Straight Castanets and its timing
Right-click House shuffle.wav and select Extract Groove(s). Live will will automatically be adjusted to fit the groove. Finally, turn the clip’s
take a few moments to analyse the audio. When it’s done, click the Transpose parameter up to 3 so that it sits more comfortably with
wavy button on the left of the interface to bring up the Groove Pool. House shuffle.wav. (Audio: Aligned beats)

COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL / 21

 programming percussion <

> Step by step 3. Creative percussion processing

1 2
Percussion is a prime candidate for the extreme application of Slowing our agogo bells down to 70bpm and treating them to
effects. Take our conga part, for example. It’s pretty groovy as it is, some ping-pong delay creates an ethereal, monastic-sounding
but adding an Auto Filter set to a 2-beat LFO cycle gives it even more pattern. Live’s timestretch algorithm introduces a weird ‘sucking’ effect
rhythmic motion. A compressor is called for next in the chain, though, to the dry signal, while the delays fill the stereo field. ‘Transient’-style
as the movement of the filter introduces some serious volume algorithms are best for percussion, but it’s always worth trying others,
variation. (Audio: Conga filter) of course. (Audio: Agogos delay)

AUTOMATION SITUATION
POWER TIP
When automating effects plugins on
percussion tracks, it’s essential that any
movements are kept in line with the rhythm
being played, unless you’re after
deliberately off-kilter timings. Equally, setting
LFOs and delay times to sync with your
DAW’s project tempo is usually the way to
go. However, none of the above necessarily
applies to single-hit spot percussion.

3
Live’s Beat Repeat is a glitch plug-in to be reckoned with, and it’s
worth trying on all manner of material (non-Live users could
substitute Smartelectronix Supatrigga or Livecut). We’re not sure what
we’d use our processed triangle part for, but we’d imagine the
adventurous electronica producer could get some mileage out of it.
(Audio: Triangle Beat Repeat)

4 5
We reverse our cabasa part, and its more-or-less ‘symmetrical’ To finish, we treat the timbales with Soft downsampling (good for
attack/decay envelope means it still sounds quite cabasa-ish when introducing extra treble frequencies), modulated frequency
played backwards (but with percussion that has a ‘tail’, such as congas, shifting (unlike pitchshifting, this shifts low frequencies more than
the difference can be dramatic – try it!). We then go modulation mental, high ones, so it’s also great for retuning percussion) and a Filter Delay,
inserting chorus and tempo-synced flanger plug-ins. Much more which transforms our rather thin solo timbale part into an enthusiastic
interesting. (Audio: Cabasa modulated) trio. (Audio: Timbales bonkers)

COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL / 45

 mixing beats <

> Step by step 1. Mixing a full-on DnB beat in Ableton Live

TUTORIAL
FILES

1 2
Begin by setting the project tempo to 174bpm and dragging Kick. In their raw form, these elements sound like a big mess! The
wav, Snare.wav, Closed hat.wav, Ride.wav, Crash.wav and easiest way to get a handle on what we’re working with is to mute
Angry break.wav onto separate audio tracks. Set up a cycle loop everything apart from the kick and snare. When we do this, we can
around the bar containing the parts, and turn all of them down to -6dB hear that the snare is way too loud for the kick.
so that they don’t clip the master.

3 4
Drop the level of the snare track down to -13dB. We can see from Do the same on the snare track. Next, add an EQ Eight to the kick
the ‘uneven’ level meters on the kick and snare tracks that both are track. Set the first band to 12dB low-cut mode, and bring up the
in stereo. We want the kick and snare to sit at the dead centre of the Freq knob until you’ve removed the excess weight from the low end. A
mix, so drag Live’s Utility effect onto the kick track and set its Width setting of about 80Hz gives us a lighter, less stompy sound that won’t
parameter to 0%. interfere with a bassline as much.

5 6
Do the same on the snare track, but this time set the low-cut filter Unmute the closed hi-hat track and add another EQ Eight. Use a
to 130Hz. The snare could also do with some more high-end crack 12dB low-cut band at 1.6kHz to take out the messy lows. The top
– we could layer it up with another sound, but using a high-shelf EQ to end of the hi-hat is a little harsh, so use a bell shape to take off 2dB at
boost 2dB at 4kHz works too. (Audio: EQed kick and snare) 10kHz, and a 12dB high cut to take out everything above 18kHz.

COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL / 55

> mixing beats

> Step by step 1. Mixing a full-on DnB beat in Ableton Live (continued)

7 8
The hi-hat is a bit too loud, so turn it down to -10dB. Next, unmute We can see from the ride channel’s level meter that the part is in
the ride channel. This is clearly way, way too loud, so turn it down mono. Earlier, we put our fundamental sounds – the kick and snare
to -24dB. Add an EQ Eight, and use a 12dB low-cut filter set to 2.9kHz – firmly in the middle of the mix. Less solid sounds like rides can be
to tame its lows. This lets the ride’s mid character through, but stops it moved to the side signal to give the sounds in the middle more room
from clogging up the mix so much. to breathe. Add Live’s Flanger effect to the ride channel.

9 10
This spreads the ride across the stereo panorama, but the default The beat is starting to take shape, but it still lacks character. A good
settings are far too extreme for our purposes. Turn the Feedback way to give a DnB beat a more organic sound is to add a breakbeat.
down to 0.55, then set the Amount to 45% and Dry/Wet to 60%. This There’s one among our tracks, but let’s see how far we can take our
stops the Flanger effect from being so obvious, but still provides the one-shot sounds before we resort to using it. Let’s add some snare to
stereo feel we’re after. (Audio: Stereo ride) the reverb – turn the Send A level on the snare track up to -10dB.

11 12
The addition of reverb makes the snare – and indeed the whole This gets the reverb closer to the sound we’re after, but the tail is
beat – start to sound a lot more natural and polished. Live’s default too long. Add a Gate after the Reverb and set its Threshold to
reverb send settings aren’t perfect for this sound, so bring up the -45dB. Because this parameter is volume-dependent, adjusting the
Reverb effect on the Send A channel and set the Decay Time to 2.25s. send level will change how it responds. Therefore, the most practical
way to control the level of the reverb now is to use a Utility effect.

56 / COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL

 mixing beats <

13 14
Add a Utility after the Gate and set its Gain to -5dB, then use an EQ Set the Overdrive Drive to 87%, the Reverb Decay Time to 410ms
Eight to low-cut the signal at 2.5kHz. Now, let’s simulate an and the Dry/Wet to 100%, and use the EQ Eight to low-cut at
overhead mic to get a more cohesive, organic sound for the whole kit. 1.5kHz. Turn the drum group’s Send B level up to -18dB. Solo the Send
Add all of the tracks apart from Angry Break to a group. Delete the B return channel to take a listen to what this adds – it’s just a smeared,
default Simple Delay effect on the Send B track, and add Overdrive, dirty reverb with no lows, but it helps the drums sound more authentic.
Reverb and EQ Eight effects. (Audio: Overhead simulation)

15 16
Unsolo the send. Now we’ve got a decent sound out of our one- Add a Compressor to the Angry Break channel, and set its
shots, let’s try adding the break to the mix. Angry Break is very sidechain input to the kick channel. Turn the Threshold down to
loud, so turn it down to -20dB before unmuting it. The break has lots of -19.5dB and set the Release time to 12ms. Duplicate the effect and set
rumbling lows, so use EQ Eight to low-cut it at 220Hz. We can get a the new instance’s Source to the snare track. Set the Threshold to -1dB
cleaner sound if we sidechain the break with the kick and snare. and the Ratio to inf:1. (Audio: DnB beat)

Making the most of mid/side technique

In this walkthrough, we’ve used the Mid=Left+Right, and Side=Left-Right, but a
technique of placing the kick and snare dead more practical way to get your head round it
centre in the mix by reducing their stereo is to download Voxengo’s excellent freeware
width, and having the ride sit out on the mid/side encoder MSED (www.voxengo.
edges of the stereo panorama by running it com). Create an audio track in your DAW, put
through a flanger. We call this kind of trickery a piece of music that you think has a good
mid/side processing, and understanding it is mixdown on it, add MSED as an insert effect,
pretty much essential for getting and try muting the sides signal. The sound
contemporary-sounding drum mixes. will go into mono. Then unmute the sides Voxengo MSED is a fantastic freeware plugin for
How does mid/side work? Usually, we think signal and mute the mid signal – you’ll hear exploring the mid/side technique
about a stereo signal in terms of left and right that the mono signal disappears, leaving just
channels. We can ‘encode’ both channels into the sides.
a mid signal (the information that’s present in The advantage of dividing drum sounds By studying the mid/side profiles of great-
both the left and right channels, and thus between the mid and sides signals is that it sounding mixes with MSED (or other width
what you hear at the centre of the mix) and a gives us more headroom to work with. When control effects such as Live’s Utility), you can
sides signal (the difference between the left we use flanging to make the ride stereo, it get clues as to how to use the mid/side
and right channels, and what you hear at the reduces its presence in the mid signal, technique in your own tracks which should
very edges of the stereo panorama). In making our kick and snare both sound help you to produce bigger and better-
mathematical terms, we can express this as clearer and thus allowing us to turn them up. sounding drum tracks and mixdowns.

COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL / 57

Technique | Ableton Live

Ableton Live
them is that there are so many of them
around. They’re cheap and available, and
there are lots of brave people who have
already done the dirty work of getting them
to function with Mac OS X or Windows. The
Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars and

Gesture Based
drum kits work very well with Live, but to
me the Nintendo Wii Remote Control 4 ,
the Wiimote, is the archetypal game input
device that works brilliantly for music
production and performance, in a way that
most other controllers don’t. It has several

Control
buttons, the d-pad on the top, and the
all-important x-y-x orientation, each of
which can be assigned to a separate MIDI
CC message. If you add the Nunchuk
accessory, which plugs into the bottom of
the Wiimote, and takes its power from it,
then you’ve got more buttons, a little

Hardware controllers that you can wiggle, swipe, joystick, and another set of x-y-x orientation
controls – too much information!
stroke and squeeze – and some you don’t have to The Wiimote is a great controller for
synths, for example if you use it as a basic
touch at all. Martin Delaney gets shakin’ as he type of theremin controller for Operator 5 ,

explores some of the ways to get gesture control using the buttons to turn the Filter and LFO
on and off, and using the left/right rotation
for volume, and up/down tilts for pitch. An

F
obvious use for the Nunchuk is for effect
or electronic musicians, piano keys, pads, and buttons work The Expert control, while the main unit is dealing with
perfectly well for triggering notes and turning things on and off, Martin Delaney, the instrument; the Nunchuk has worked
and we have knobs to let us incrementally change values like Performer, Producer very well for me with effect devices like
reverb or delay levels 1 . But that’s not always enough – Artist and Auto Filter and Beat Repeat 6 . The
instructor,
sometimes we want controls that expand the interface, to give us Martin, aka
Wiimote is incredibly sensitive, and watch
different types of expression and articulation, responding to mindlobster, out, because it can be a bit of a handful if
has produced Live
movements we make with hands, arms, or our entire body if necessary. you assign too many parameters to the
training material and
was one of the UK’s orientation; it keeps sending all the time,
Let’s get physical first certified Ableton
Live trainers.
even when you put it down, so it’s essential
It makes perfect sense – if you look at more established instruments, they to plan for an ‘off’ button in your set-up!
usually have something that adds a little flourish to the basic sound. A piano More recently, the game control scene
has pedals, a guitar’s strings give you a whole catalogue of bends and slides is still healthy, with Kinect from Microsoft
(never mind the fact that it might also have a tremolo arm), Hammond organs taking broad-gesture control a little bit more mainstream, although it’s not as
have their drawbars, Wurlitzer electric pianos have tremolo controls, and usable in every day situations as the more console-like hand-held devices.
of course synths and keyboard controllers have their pitch and modulation There are also controllers that aren’t game controllers, but have been designed
wheels. That’s enough examples, you get the idea – just turning things on to evoke that old-school vibe while being functionally more suited for live
and off isn’t enough. performance and for MIDI set-ups – the MIDI Fighter from DJ Tech Tools
We can use other tactics and change settings inside our software (www.midifighter.com) is probably the best example of this.
instruments, such as velocity sensitivity, portamento 2 and aftertouch, but we
still want more physical ways of affecting what we play and how it sounds. With Use Your Computer’s Trackpad
hardware synthesizers there have been many attempts to provide different ways
of interaction, as the needs of electronically-based musicians departed further
Your trackpad is a control surface that lets you
from the traditional demands of players: joysticks (like on the Sequential swipe and click and (in many cases – certainly
Circuits Prophet VS – even the rack-mount version has the joystick, which with the MacBook) recognises hand gestures
might be annoying), ribbon controllers (as I used to enjoy on the lovely old
Yamaha SU700 hardware sampler 3 – and by the way, you can buy standalone
according to direction and number of fingers.
ribbon controllers such as the Doepfer R2M if you really want to add one to The simplest way to use it with Live is to apply it
your set-up), theremin type devices like the Alesis AirSynth, and the Roland to the XY area that appears in most of Live’s
D-Beam deployed on the classic MC-505 groovebox, as well as on their AX-7 audio effect devices. Click and hold it down at
and AX-09 keytar style synths. All of these were, or are, cool in different ways,
and they still work! Here I’m focused on these ‘other’ types of input device, and
the left corner with your left hand so it stays
how we can get some of that action for our MIDI control set-ups. ‘clicked’, and swipe around with your right hand.
Take control Beam me up
What were the first similar interfaces for computers, designed to work with Moving to the other extreme in terms of cost and complexity, we have the
software instead of hardware, to give us some of that gesture control? Sound Beam. This is a system of hardware focused on a ‘brain’ that connects to
Collectively, we turned on to game controllers quite early; the great thing about a computer via USB, then uses a set of up to four sensors, usually arranged in a

62
 Ableton Live | Technique

VIDEO ON
THE DVD
Watch the tutorial
movie on the DVD

2 3

>
Let’s Get Physical

4 5

>
Take Control

6 7

>
Beam Me Up

8 9

>
Controller Apps

63
Technique | Ableton Live

circle, to detect body movements. Up

The Nintendo
to four foot switches can be added. A
Wii Remote
full set-up will cost you around
Control
£4,000 but it is a very unique way of
I think of the Wiimote as
working, equally popular with dance a classic MIDI controller,
groups, performance artists, and game device or not. It’s
powerful, portable, and
organisations for people with physical cheap. It’s easy to set up,
disabilities (www.soundbeam.co.uk). as well – pair it via
Bluetooth and then use
This is gesture control on a big scale; a helper application
you’ll be waving your arms about such as OSCulator to
configure the controls.
more than your fingers! Unquestionably one
A joystick-style device I haven’t of the best synth
controllers around.
had the chance to try yet is the 3D
Space Navigator (www.3dconnexion.
com) 7 . This expands on the basic
joystick concept, bringing with it
user-assignable buttons and on one
model a screen as well. It’s expensive
though, and I would guess it takes
some work to get functioning with
music software. It doesn’t advertise
any compatibility at the outset – you’d have to use something like OSCulator to part of your performance. IK Multimedia’s iRing gadget currently only works
get it talking (www.osculator.net). with iOS devices, and doesn’t talk to DAWs running on a Mac or PC, but
hopefully the time will come 9 !
There’s Always Lemur iOS The most ‘everyman’ gesture controller that works with music applications
without hacking is Leap Motion (www.leapmotion.com). This is a cheap device
Liine’s Lemur is incredibly usable as a controller that you can buy on almost any high street. Its availability is probably related to
for Live, not to mention any other MIDI/OSC- its flexibility – instead of being limited to a few basic functions, or tied to
friendly applications and hardware. Lemur on an certain apps, Leap Motion has its own online store, Airspace, where you

iPad should be a candidate for your desert-island purchase apps to add the desired functionality. Have a look at our walkthrough
for the basic steps in setting up Leap Motion.
controller, if you have to choose only one. It
doesn’t offer the same physicality or game Push it
controller-like vibe you can get from some of the Ableton’s Push includes a control strip, and I was happy to see this, being a
fan of those Yamaha hardware samplers I mentioned earlier. As things stand,
other gadgets we’re talking about here, but it has however, the control strip options are limited – when Push is in drum rack
enough interface objects to keep you swiping mode, the strip merely navigates up and down through the available pads in the
that screen all day long. rack, and when it’s in note mode, the strip acts as a pitch bend, or more
specifically, like a pitch wheel, returning to the original pitch at the centre of
the strip when you release it. If you want to assign it to anything else, you can
Controller apps enter User Mode, and then the strip sends a MIDI CC, which you can assign to
iOS apps like Lemur 8 give you bouncing balls and all kinds of other anything using Live’s MIDI Map Mode. When you exit User Mode, the strip
swipeable interfaces, and apps like MIDI Designer let you assign MIDI CCs to doesn’t retain your mapping – you have to return to User Mode to use your
your iOS device’s accelerometer, so you really can gesture with your iPhone as assignment, which is not ideal.
You can get a more useful expansion of Push’s control strip
if you use a software instrument that lets you assign incoming
pitch information to another parameter – Operator will do this!
The Skoog If you have Push around, and Operator installed, try it (if you
The unique Skoog is haven’t got either of those, you can still fake it with a regular
primarily a musical toy/
interface for users with MIDI keyboard’s pitch wheel, and any instrument plug-in that
disabilities that might does the pitch remapping). Open Live and load Operator (we
otherwise stop them from
enjoying an instrument.
also have an Operator track already configured for Push in our
Based around a bunch of example Live set). Click on Operator’s Global Shell, at the
pressure sensors with an
bottom right of the display, where it shows controls for Time,
accelerometer, contained
within an almost Tone, and Volume. The central display now updates to show
bombproof rubber casing, Operator’s global settings, including Pitch Bend. To the right of
it connects through USB
and uses an intermediate that is a Pitch value setting, which defaults to +5 st
application to send MIDI. (semitones); set that to 0. This tells Operator to ignore the
pitch bend information, so when you swipe the control strip,
Operator’s pitch is unaffected. Now, next to the Pitch Bend
setting, click and you’ll see a list of every parameter in
Operator that pitch bend can be reassigned to. For our example
set choose F Freq (filter frequency), and set the pitch bend
amount next to it to 100%. Note that you can also set this to a
minus value, which would invert the way the strip works.

64
 Ableton Live | Technique

How To Control
Live Using
Leap Motion
It’s not air guitar, it’s more air…
03 >
In Geco, moving representations of your
hands appear as you move them over the
Leap Motion. The bottom of the screen

finger. Use Leap Motion and a

displays hand icons, and settings for each
recognised gesture. Reading across from the
column at the left, you’ll see that you can

couple of apps to control Live assign MIDI channels, CCs, and other more
advanced settings to each individual gesture.

01 >
You’ll need a Leap Motion, and you’ll also
need to buy the Geco MIDI application, which
costs £7.99 (there are others available,
including Aeromidi, which costs £23.99
– each specialises in different functions, so
you might want to get both). Connect the Leap

04 >
Motion via USB, launch Geco from inside the
Airspace application and launch Live.
Use the left hand for Track 1 and the right
hand for Track 2. Assign CCs from 1
upwards, to these gestures: 1) left hand
present fingers spread; 2) left hand present
fingers closed; 3) left hand roll; 4) right hand
closed up/down; 5) right hand closed roll.
The gestures have solo switches, so you can
send CCs individually.

02 >
Configure Geco in MIDI Preferences, for
Track and Remote inputs. We have an
05
Assign the CCs like this: 1) scene launch;
example Live set ready if you have a Leap
Motion – open it now. Track 1 Beats contains 2) track 1 filter on/off; 3) track 1 filter
audio clips, Track 2 Simpler contains an
instrument preset. Track 3, Push, is an
resonance and frequency (map it twice);
Operator preset for use with Push’s control
strip; ignore that for now.
4) Simpler pitch; 5) Simpler volume. Try it
with Live – your left hand launches scenes and
controls Track 1’s filter, and your right will
control Simpler’s volume and pitch!

65
> make music now / reverb: the guide

> Step by step 1. Exploring basic reverb parameters

TUTORIAL
FILES

1 2 3
We fire up Ableton Live, program a Rather than a set of specific room …the Diffusion Network controls.
drum pattern (1 Dry drums.wav), then algorithms, Reverb sports a single Different reverbs will offer different
insert Live’s Reverb plugin into its channel. room Size control. At its lowest setting, the controls with which to adjust the density
We turn off everything that can be turned drums sound like they’re in a bathroom; at and smoothness of the tail – here, we have
off, so that it isn’t filtered or modulated at max, they’re in a stadium. The Decay the Density and Scale parameters in the
all, and set the plugin to a 50/50 mix of Time sets the duration of the reverb tail, Diffusion Network section. Your reverb
drums and reverb. Any typical reverb from 200ms to 60s – that is, how long the may well let you modulate the tail to
plugin will do, and your DAW almost reverb takes to fade away to silence. impart a bit of ‘wobble’, too – Reverb’s
certainly includes one that has very similar These two knobs set the character of our Chorus module gives control over the
features to the one we’re using here. reverb tail (late reflections), along with… speed and depth of its LFO.

4 5 6
In the real world, early reflections are The time it takes for the first early Our reverb spans the frequency range,
the very first echoes to arrive at your reflections to appear is called the pre- but in a mix, you may want to rein in
ears, before all the echoes aggregate to delay, and it can be used to give transients the highs/lows. Some reverbs have filters
form a more smoothly decaying tail. The a bit of space before the reverb kicks in, for this – Live’s has them on the input and
Shape control on Live’s Reverb sets the and add to the impression of size with in the Diffusion Network (the latter acting
‘prominence’ of the early reflections, while large spaces. Live’s Predelay, found in the as reverb damping controls, to control
the Reflect dial sets their volume in the very lower left of Reverb’s interface, is bass/treble tail length). Your reverb may
mix (Diffuse does the same for the tail). typical, ranging from 0.5ms to 250ms. also have a stereo width control for
Check out audio of the different settings narrowing/widening the signal. Again,
for all steps in the Tutorial Files folder. hear it all in action in the Tutorial Files.

Four of the best algorithmic reverb plugins

2CAudio Aether Eventide Blackhole UVI SparkVerb eaReckon EAReverb

156 » 10/10 » $250 181 » 9/10 » $199 200 » 8/10 » $199 164 » 8/10 » €129
2CAudio are true masters of reverb A powerful reverb for creative sound A beefed-up version of a reverb Beautifully laid out and packing seven
design, and their flagship, Aether, is design rather than the emulation of algorithm from their UVI Engine size variations on its core algorithm,
surely a contender for greatest reverb anything even approaching real- instrument, SparkVerb might put EAReverb is at its best generating
ever made, hard or soft. With its world spaces. It sounds truly unique, its novel Preset Voyager patch small-space ambiences, which it does
extensive control array, under-the- and the morphing Ribbon Controller generation system at the top of supremely well. A max decay time of 3.8
hood randomisation and lush, and Hotswitch enable smooth or the marketing blurb, but the real seconds does make it something of a
scintillating sound, it simply doesn’t sudden transitioning between two draw is its fabulously musical sound specialist proposition, but advanced
put a foot wrong. complete parameter setups. and ease of use. early reflection controls make up for it.
www.2caudio.com www.eventide.com www.uvi.net www.eareckon.com

36 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2014

> make music now / modern mastering W orldmags.net
12 mastering tips
HANDS-OFF MIXING
We’ve gotta say it again… Don’t expect mix
problems to be solved at the mastering stage!
EQ clashes, dynamic issues and other errors
are all best addressed from within the mix
project. If you’re applying drastic amounts of
processing, revisit your mix – or if you’re
mastering for someone else, explain the
issues and see if they can remix.

KEEP IT FRESH
Don’t over-listen to a track! John Paul Braddock
explains: “What I don’t want to do is to listen
all the way through the track for six minutes,
because as soon as I’ve done that, I’ve got
used to how it sounds, rather than being
objective. It’s crucial that we don’t spend too
much time listening to the music. This might
sound counter-intuitive, but we’re not mixing
it any more. We’re not trying to listen to the
detail; we’re trying to get an overview – to Try distributing a plugin’s workload over several stages for a potentially more transparent effect
sample the overall tone of the song.”

CONSIDER IT
Once you’re ready to master a track, don’t DOES IT CANCEL OUT? STAGED LIMITING
just dive in and start processing. The aim is to Use ‘sum difference’ testing (also known as a Several gentle stages of limiting or
gently improve, not ‘mix’. Take a more ‘null test’) to hear if a plugin is ‘passive’. Get to compression can help take the load off one
considered approach. Briefly compare the know which plugins add gain boosts or single plugin. For example, three limiters
mix to a reference track at equal level, plan frequency changes in their default state. with a gain reduction of 1dB might sound
exactly what correction or enhancement the John Paul Braddock discusses: “Many plugins more natural than a single 3dB limiting stage.
mix needs, try it out, re-level, then evaluate. will actually apply a tonal or level change It depends on the plugins used, so give it a try,
even before any settings are dialled in. I‘ve and listen objectively.
ON THE KNOBS noticed that, after analysing several types of
Type in parameter values and use stepped plugins, you’ll load up a plugin with ‘no MID/SIDE DIY
plugins (with fixed 0.5dB-1dB ‘notched’ processing’, but the actual output might be A plugin with an unlinked left/right mode can
controls) where possible. It’s easy to just louder. Perhaps those plugin manufacturers also be used to process in mid/side. Simply
crank up a knob, but typing in values makes know what we now know – that ‘louder load Voxengo’s free MSED on the channel and
you think about what you’re entering. Stick to sounds better’ – or maybe that’s just a side set it to ‘Encode’. Now load your plugin after
0.5/1dB steps at a time, as half a dB will make effect of the plugin’s design. The important MSED and unlink the left and right channels.
a significant difference when mastering. thing is that you analyse the tools you’re Place a second MSED last in the chain, and set
using, and don’t make assumptions. Be it to ‘Decode’. The left side of your plugin now
MAKE IT UP critically aware of your own tools.” processes the mid (mono) part of your signal,
For transparency, try to use as few EQ or and the right affects the side (stereo).
excitement stages as possible. So, if a track REFERENCE WITH EQUALITY
has too much bass and not enough treble, try Remember to compare your final processed MORE THAN AVERAGE
using a single broad shelf to cut bass, then master with the unprocessed session mix – at Regular downwards, full-band compression
re-level by increasing the EQ’s makeup gain. equal level – to see if you’ve actually achieved can clamp down on peaks and transient
This will shift the track’s weight towards the the outcome you intended. If not, don’t be detail, ruining dynamics if not applied
treble more naturally than two EQ bands. afraid to start again from scratch. carefully. If your track needs extra average
weight, consider blending it in through the
use of parallel compression – you can bring
up the average level of your track while
keeping the detail intact.

COMPRESS GENTLY
A touch of downwards compression can pull
(or ‘gel’) the overall mix together, but keep
attack times slow so you gently clamp down
on the mix’s sustain and not the transients. A
low ratio and around 1-2dB of gain reduction
should be all that’s necessary.

LIMIT LAST
Many think of limiting and loudness as the
main staples of mastering, but this attitude
often leads to amateur results, flattened
mixes and distortion. Final peak limiting
should only be tackled when a track’s overall
Evaluate your mastering success by comparing your processed master with the unprocessed tonal, dynamic and stereo balance are in
version – remember to set both tracks to equal loudness for a fair comparison order. So leave limiting till last!

60 / COMPUTER MUSIC / January 2015

Technique | MIDI Effects

From speedy timing solutions to creative

compositional devices, MIDI processing
tools are the overlooked weapons in your As MIDI is a collection of commands

plug-in arsenal. Learn how to correct, sent between devices, we can easily
manipulate this data with dedicated
enhance and expand your performances software tools before it reaches its
destination (usually a synth or sampler). Just
with our guide to MIDI effects as a traditional audio effect plug-in takes an

T
audio signal and alters it in some way, a
he invention of synth manufacturer MIDI effect receives MIDI information,
Dave Smith in the early ’80s, MIDI processes it in real time, then outputs the
(Musical Instrument Digital result – and, as with audio effects, it can be
Interface) is the industry standard tweaked, re-ordered and bypassed at will.
data type sent back and forth between
various electronic musical instruments, Musical assistants
enabling devices to communicate ‘trigger’ MIDI data is synonymous with electronic
messages and control signals relating to music performance, and we use a MIDI
musical notation, timing, level and more. It’s keyboard to input musical notes into a
a standard protocol that you’ve almost computer, so it’s no wonder that many MIDI
certainly used already – whether it’s to effect processors act as musical ‘assistants’.
connect and control outboard gear, or to A plug-in can instantly take in large amounts
trigger software instruments with your MIDI of MIDI notes, then funnel that data into
keyboard or DAW’s piano roll – and is still a specific musical scales, effectively
hugely important (and often misunderstood) preventing the entry of ‘wrong’ notes’. Chord
form of musical communication. processors, triggered by only a single input

72
 MIDI Effects | Technique

Generating Percussion Patterns

We all recognise ’80s-style arpeggiated synth riffs, but modern MIDI devices can
take the concept much further. Let’s take an unusual route to sequenced beats

Arpeggiators divide
up a chord’s notes
into a single stream
of ordered notes.
Once fixed within a
synthesizer, we can
now take the concept
and apply it to any
MIDI data stream.
Here, we’ve
assigned several
drum hits across a
drum sampler’s
pads. By stacking
chord notes, then
arpeggiating them,
we create a ‘round
robin’ sequence of
percussion hits,
1 A variety of percussion and noise samples have been loaded into a
drum sampler. We’ve programmed the samples’ MIDI notes on top of
each other – this ‘chord’ plays back all of the samples at the same time.
2 An arpeggiator divides up the individual notes of incoming chords into
a monophonic sequence. Live 9’s Arpeggiator device is added before
the Drum Rack in the chain – it’s listening to our stack of incoming MIDI
automatically cycling
Touches of delay add character and rhythm. notes and triggering each sample in turn.
through the multiple
drum samples. The
arpeggiator’s are
then adjusted,
providing speed and
timing alterations
that would take ages
to draw in by hand.
It’s a technique
that’s great for the
buzzing closed hi-hat
repetitions heard in
Hip-Hop and Trap, or
even for robotic
drum rolls and
pre-drop build-ups.
We’ve used

3 4
Ableton Live 9’s
Changing the arpeggiator’s Rate parameter will speed up or slow down The arpeggiator’s Offset value shifts the start note of the sequence,
Drum Rack and
the sequence, cycling through more or less of the percussion hits to changing the playback order of the percussion hits; in this context, this
Arpeggiator here, but
create different rhythmic patterns. Slower speeds mean less samples are can be used to choose the first sample in the pattern. It’s now easy to try
you can use any
triggered; a rate of 1/16th gives us a rolling Techno-esque groove. out various rhythms and percussion combinations at the current speed.
DAW, drum sampler
and arpeggiator
plug-in combination
to achieve a similar
result. Download
audio examples from
vault.futuremusic.
co.uk, or find them
on the DVD with the
print edition.

5 By retriggering the sequence from the start (via the Retrigger section),
odd repetitions and interesting patterns can be discovered. Faster
settings create short loops for build-ups and rolls; 3/16ths and 3/8th
6 The various arpeggiator styles define note order, changing the feel of
the pattern. Gate shortens or lengthens each note – lower values give a
stuttering feel. Get creative with quick pattern variation and improvisation
settings offer more interesting broken sequences. by sequencing percussion patterns on a single arpeggiator interface.

73
Technique | MIDI Effects

Your DAW’s Stock MIDI Effects

Most software workstations are Luckily, Logic Pro X users have We’re not going to outline from DAW to DAW. You’ll find plug-ins; tools that process
bundled with a decent collection been rewarded with a new each host’s MIDI plug-in ‘bread and butter’ effects that and modulate other MIDI
of note-processing effects, so bundle of MIDI effect plug-ins, selection here, as there really correct MIDI timing, pitch and parameters; humanisation
you should already have access loaded in their own MIDI effect isn’t a whole lot of variation velocity; chord and arpeggiator devices; plus much more.
to a heap of MIDI-mangling slot with a few simple clicks.
tools. Being ‘hard-wired’ into Cubase still houses an array of Cubase’s MIDI
your host’s architecture, they flexible and functional MIDI Plug-ins
can usually just be inserted plug-ins, many of which remain MIDI effects bundled
directly on a MIDI or instrument from the program’s SX days. with Cubase include
track in the same way as audio Ableton Live’s MIDI effects are workhorse plug-ins
plug-ins (though often loaded also highly regarded, and feature
like Quantizer and
Transformer to keep
in their own dedicated MIDI a distinct advantage: chains of stray MIDI data in
effect ‘slot’ or position at the MIDI, Instrument and Audio check, and more
beginning of the signal flow, Effects can be grouped together creative tools
located before the channel’s into a composite Rack, and the such as Chorder,
StepDesigner and Live’s MIDI
instrument in the chain). grouped devices’ parameters can Beat Designer, which Effects
Logic users have traditionally be mapped to the Rack’s global handle sequencing.
had access to a configurable Macros. Once assigned, multiple Live features basic
Pitch, Velocity and
audio and MIDI routing network parameters can be altered
Note Length devices,
in the form of the enormously simultaneously along every stage plus Scale, Chord
powerful Environment, but even of a channel’s signal path, and Arpeggiator
basic routing configurations expanding sound design and tools. These can all
could be laborious to set up. live performance opportunities.
be collected into a
MIDI Effect Rack to
create custom
MIDI processing
combinations.

note, can output the multiple notes of a Performance enhancers offering a quick way to experiment with
chord (which are either entered manually or MIDI data also communicates information various parameter settings and outcomes.
chosen from pre-existing chords), giving the relating to the velocity, timing and swing of a MIDI effects aren’t just for existing
less musically-gifted access to plenty of performance, and these parameters can all performances, either: they’re just as useful
musical progressions. It can be thought of as be altered with plug-ins before they enter a at the composition stage, and can generate
‘cheating’ for the musically-ignorant, or can synth or instrument. Quantise tools lock exciting performances that would never be
provide the trained musician with extra incoming notes to a specified grid; MIDI discovered through traditional means. You
flexibility and performance control. ‘compression’ restricts (or even expands) the can use a MIDI effect to modulate the CC
MIDI processing also grants you the velocity values of input notes to within parameters of multiple synths with LFOs,
ability to generate riffs and patterns at certain ranges; MIDI echo tools can repeat envelopes, sequencers and other control
speeds and complexities impossible to play notes for unusual delay effects. Although signals. Several MIDI plug-ins can be placed
by hand. Usually associated with ’80s this data is traditionally manipulated in series, so the output of one can feed into
electronic music, an arpeggiator takes the destructively within the piano roll, an insert another. ‘Randomising’ effects take
multiple notes of a chord and sequences plug-in can be bypassed or changed, incoming notes and spit out unpredictable
these notes into a repetitive (and usually MIDI data streams, which
monophonic) stream. The user then defines
the characteristics of this sequence, such as You can generate can be printed to a new
MIDI file and applied to
speed, pattern order and note length.
Previously found only within a synth’s
architecture, there are now plenty of plug-ins
riffs and patterns at other instruments in your
project with ease.
But why not just
that allow you to arpeggiate incoming MIDI
notes before they hit your instrument of
The Sequential Circuits
Prophet 600 was the
speeds impossible program data into a MIDI
event? Well, insert

to play by hand
first commercially
choice – and, as you’ll find out, they aren’t available MIDI-
plug-ins promote a
only useful for musical sequences. equipped instrument different approach,
especially if you’re used
to drawing in MIDI data straight into the
piano roll. You end up with results that
would take far longer to program by hand,
while still being able to tweak the
destination instrument in real time. They
speed up your compositional process,
improve your workflow, and force you to
approach the music-making process from a
different angle. Over the course of this
feature, we’ll show you just a few tips and
techniques for getting the most out of your
MIDI – whether you choose to use stock
devices or third-party tools.

74
 MIDI Effects | Technique

Time-Efficient Composing
Whether you’re a musical maestro or a novice to notation, MIDI effects can be
called upon to speed up your music-writing

While there’s no
replacement for a
solid knowledge of
music theory, ‘chord
generator’ plug-ins
are fantastic for
starting off a track
idea or musical
progression,
especially when time
is tight. Load one
before a synth, fire
up an interesting
patch, and find
something that hits
the right notes.
We’re using Xfer
Records’ Cthulhu –
a tool jam-packed
1 To begin, we’ve loaded Xfer Records’ Cthulhu on a MIDI track, then
routed this track’s output to the MIDI input of a software instrument.
After selecting one of the preset progressions, a string ensemble sequence
2 The third chord in the sequence could do with a little adjustment, so
we record Cthulhu’s output to a new MIDI region, printing our chord
sequence to its own new MIDI file. We now adjust the notes of this chord to
with both preset
is arranged using only single MIDI notes. better suit the progression.
chord progressions
and detailed
programming
features. After
finding a suitable
sequence of chords,
we’ve recorded the
effect’s output to a
new MIDI region,
rendering the notes
as you would bounce
an audio signal. By
doing this, you can
easily alter individual
notes, duplicate
the part over to
other tracks in a
project, then create
accompaniments
in a flash. 3 The corrected MIDI file is now duplicated to a new instrument
channel, and a second part is layered over the first. It’s a washy,
evolving synth pad from Sylenth1, adding melodic character and movement
4 Our MIDI progression is duplicated to a third MIDI channel, and we
delete the majority of chord notes to create a monophonic bass part.
Rob Papen’s SubBoomBass is used to generate a weighty Reese bass,
Again, take a listen
over the static string chords for thickness and interest. underpinning the other chord elements for solidity in the low-end.
through the audio
examples for each
step, found with this
month’s download/
DVD content. You’ll
hear the initial preset
chord sequence, our
note adjustments,
then further musical
developments.

5 For an interesting arpeggiated riff, we return to our original Cthulhu

channel and route its output to a new MIDI channel containing an
instance of Synapse Audio’s Dune 2 synth. Cthulhu’s flexible arpeggiator
6 The arpeggiated notes are too predictable, so we delve into Cthulhu to
add variation to the pattern. Steps are shortened via the Gate section,
injecting rests into our synth sequence. We can again print Cthulhu’s output
generates a fast riff sequence from our original chord progression. to a new MIDI region for more detailed MIDI adjustments.

75
Technique | MIDI Effects

Corrective Note Processing

Workhorse MIDI tools, like the older MIDI plug-ins that remain in Cubase, are ideal
for fine-tuning a performance in real time

Many of Cubase’s
older MIDI plug-ins
are no-nonsense
tools that can tidy up
inconsistencies
directly on the
channel itself. To
correct the MIDI
information directly
inside the event
itself would be a
destructive process,
requiring several
undo steps to revert
back to the original
performance. By
applying real-time
MIDI processing, you
can bypass and
1 Here’s a basic chord progression that’s been recorded to a MIDI file. As
you can see, the notes’ timings and velocities vary wildly. While some
natural expression is often a good thing, we need to correct the notes of this
2 In Cubase’s first MIDI Insert slot, we’ve loaded a Quantizer effect. As
the name implies, this device quantises MIDI notes to a user-defined
timing – although, unlike applying quantisation settings destructively inside
re-order plug-ins,
sloppy performance. the piano roll, this effect is working in real time.
with the original
MIDI file still intact.
It’s also easier to
experiment with
different quantise/
swing settings,
velocity variations
and note length
adjustments.

3 Now we use a Compressor effect to even out the notes’ differing

velocity values, in exactly the same way as a regular audio compressor
would. Our notes are now more consistent, with each having a more even
4 Our performance has been corrected, but in a non-destructive way, so
we can mute or change the MIDI inserts’ settings to fine-tune our
adjustments. Now we’re happy with the alterations, we’ve arpeggiated the
level in comparison to one another. chords’ notes using Cubase’s Arpache SX effect.

Third-Party MIDI Plug-Ins

While there isn’t as plentiful a patterns. The second is a
Cableguys
selection as with their audio feature-rich arpeggiator with MidiShaper
processing counterparts, tons of step sequencer
commercial third-party MIDI functions. If you’re an
While your host may
offer some kind of
plug-ins are available, providing arpeggiator fiend, check out MIDI modulator,
more in-depth features than your Kirnu’s Cream, a highly-regarded MidiShaper gives you
DAW’s stock solutions. plug-in with chord memory slots, Kirnu Cream even more scope for
Xfer Records’ Chluthu, pattern sequencing, multiple complex routing. Its
Kirnu’s Cream is four LFOs and four
dubbed “the chord and arp outputs and more. crammed full of envelopes can
monster”, combines two MIDI For a different kind of MIDI useful note- modulate any MIDI
processing concepts. The first, programming, investigate sequencing features CC parameter.
such as four
a chord generator and Cableguys’ MidiShaper – a
independent tracks,
programmer, lets you assign device that can modulate any per-step parameter
chord combinations across MIDI CC (or MIDI Learn-enabled adjustment, 16 chord
MIDI keys to create complex device) via its customisable memory slots
progressions from basic one-note LFOs and breakpoint envelopes.
and more.

76
 MIDI Effects | Technique

MIDI Tips
Shake up your patterns, progressions and
sounds with these MIDI effect tricks

MIDI experimentation enough to add space throughout the

1
Once you’re accustomed to sequence. As an alternative, try
the flexibility of MIDI setting the rate to a completely
plug-ins, you can begin to different time division.
use them for less common
purposes. As they transform note Record your MIDI

4
data before it reaches a synth or We’ve discussed this a
sampler’s input, it’s fun to play couple of times already, but
around with unusual sound triggering it’s worth repeating again: if
and pattern sequencing. In our earlier your MIDI plug-ins are
walkthrough we sequenced beats, but generating an interesting sequence or
you can just as easily use this chord progression, remember to
method to quickly scan through FX or record that channel’s MIDI output to
vocal samples. For crazy buzzing a new region (in the same way that
effects, unlock the arpeggiator’s you’d record audio to a new track).
speed from the host tempo and
adjust its rate in Hertz.
This saves the output of your MIDI
plug-ins to a permanent MIDI file,
iOS Sequencing

7
which can then be easily adjusted or While plug-ins are convenient, a tablet’s
copied to other tracks in your project.
touchscreen is the perfect interface for
Back to basics arpeggiation and sequencing, providing

5
MIDI effects are brilliant at instant visual feedback as you send MIDI data to
creating complex melodic
elements, but remember
your DAW (or hardware) and back. Genome,
that you can also perform MIDI Pattern Sequencer and Thesys are just
very basic functions with ease. three examples of iOS apps devoted to this task,
Spice up sequences Instead of transposing a synth’s taking MIDI programming away from the

2
The traditional ‘up-down’ multiple oscillators up or down an
arpeggiated sequence is octave, slap a simple MIDI
computer screen and putting it firmly back
somewhat tiresome these pitch-shifter on its channel and within the realm of physical control.
days, so don’t stick with a adjust the pitch that way. Instead of
standard setting. The more flexible adjusting multiple velocity values
arpeggiator plug-ins allow you to inside different regions, use a single Combine to succeed single key press. Use a chord

6
fine-tune note lengths, velocity, device. The benefit to this method Combine ‘chord generator’ generator plug-in to map chords to
transposition, harmonies and other is that plug-ins have a one-click devices with an arpeggiator, single MIDI notes, then load an
CC values on a per-step basis. Often bypass function, helping you A/B to create impressive arpeggiator next in the chain. The
the simple removal of a few notes is changes quickly. musical sequences with a chord device’s output will feed
multiple notes into the arpeggiator’s
input, which sequences these notes

Remix Tricks
into an ordered monophonic pattern.

MIDI accidents

3 8
Often the most inspiring
When putting together a remix, try taking a key moments are created

melodic audio part from the original and through accidents, so be

prepared to abuse your
converting it to MIDI. Once you’ve got the note MIDI effect chain. Interesting things
happen when you place two or three
data in front of you, hook up a few MIDI plug-ins on arpeggiator plug-ins in series, each

the channel and seek out a new hook or phrase. You’ll feeding varying sequences into the
next. Quickly turn your effects off and

maintain the vibe and character of the original track, on, causing gaps in the MIDI data
stream. Steep, short automation
but likely come across a whole new direction to base curves can twist MIDI changes in
strange ways, causing glitches and
your remix around. odd occurrences.

77
Technique | Minimal Beats, Maximum Impact

When it comes to making

your beats bang on systems
both big and small, less is music too much like hard work. Good
definitely more. We show you mixdowns do that work for us, making the
important elements easy to hear and enjoy.
how to trim the fat from your Secondly, adding too many elements

sounds and get your biggest

eats up headroom, resulting in mixes that
sound muffled and messy rather than loud

mixdowns yet and proud. In fact, the trend in commercial

electronic music over the past few years has

A
been to get rid of anything extraneous. Take
common mistake made by new the drop in Martin Garrix’ Animals – it’s just
producers is to try and cram as kicks and a synth lead. As both elements
much as possible into a mix. have so much room to breathe, it sounds
This might seem like common huge on everything from laptop speakers to
sense (more sounds equals a better tune – its native ‘big room’ environment.
simple!) but sadly there are two very
important things wrong with this approach. Nowhere to hide
Firstly, having a large number of sounds The lesson we can learn from young Garrix
playing at the same time means our ears doesn’t just apply to balls-out big room
have to work harder to pick out individual bangers, although it is particularly important
elements. Generally we don’t like to have to in pared-down Dance music styles. The trick
strain to hear things: it makes listening to with minimal music is the paucity of sounds

56
 Minimal Beats, Maximum Impact | Technique

Processing Your Kick

If your bassline and kicks don’t fit together your track will suffer, particularly on
bigger sound systems. We show you how to strip the fat from your kicks

INCLUDES AUDIO l
A solid-sounding low-
end is an essential
element of a Dance
music mixdown, and
this is particularly
true for minimal
styles because
there’s less going on
in the mids and
highs to cover up
inadequacies in the
bass frequencies.
Getting the lows
right can often be
the hardest part of a
mixdown, but you
can save yourself a
lot of headaches by
1 Here’s a minimal synth bassline (Minimal bass.wav) that plays between
each beat. The bass plays between the kick of our 4/4 kick part (Big
kick.wav) but its tail is so long the sounds overlap. And the kick isn’t tuned
2 Setting the kick’s sampler patch to -2 semitones makes it sound much
better, but it will be improved further if we prevent the sounds from
overlapping. So we turn the sampler patch’s Sustain and Decay down. Here
simply preparing
to the same note as the bass, which makes the overlapping sound worse. we’ve opted for a Sustain level of -inf dB, and a Decay of 206ms.
your sounds sensibly
in the first place.
In this tutorial
we’ll show you how
to make your life
easier at mixdown
time by trimming the
fat from your kick.
Once we’ve got rid of
the excess low-end,
stereo information
and even a little
dynamic range, our
kick is leaner,
punchier and sits
more happily in
the mix.
A particularly
important technique
we use is tuning the 3 Ableton Live’s Sampler has a Decay Slope parameter, which allows us
to fine-tune how quickly the kick’s volume level drops. A setting of
-23% works well here. Despite curtailing the kick’s subby tail, there’s still a
4 The kick sound uses up a lot of headroom; we can scrape a bit back
with a little saturation. Add Live’s Saturator effect and set its Drive to
1dB. Set the mode to Waveshaper, and click the triangle at the right-hand
kick to the same
pitch as the bassline. lot of low-end energy, so we use an EQ Eight to hi-pass the signal at 40Hz. top of the effect’s interface to bring up the waveshaper’s parameters.
This is a simple
thing, taking just a
few seconds, but it
instantly makes a
mix sound better.
Getting these
fundamentals right
will only take you a
few minutes, and
will improve the
sound of your
music more than
any expensive
mixing plug-in!

5 Set the waveshaper’s Lin parameter to 80% – this gives us around the
same perceived volume at the raw signal, but it doesn’t peak so loudly.
The left and right sides of the signal peak at different levels – this kick is
6 We can squeeze more headroom out of our mix by compressing the
bassline with a sidechaining input fed from the kick. This will
imperceptibly duck the bass’ volume when the kick plays. We’ve used a
stereo. To make it mono add a Utility effect and turn its Width down to 0%. Ratio of 4:1, a Threshold of -22dB and a Release time of 20ms.

57
 Technique | Minimal Beats, Maximum Impact

Making Space In The Mix With Modulation Effects

Modulation-based effects such reducing this we get the same of the stereo signal is delayed by signal to get a similar effect. whatever technique you use it’s
as choruses, flangers and stereo enhancement, but around 10-20ms to create It’s important to remember sensible to test your mix in
phasers don’t usually get a without the undesirable, obvious width. Alternatively, you can try that many devices and club mono to hear how the phase
look-in when it comes to beat movement. It also helps to use detuning either side of the systems sum to mono, so cancellation sounds.
processing. Typically these slower modulation speeds,
effects are employed to imbue smaller ranges, and carefully Phaser
synth sounds with dramatic balance the wet and dry signals
These effects use
sweeping movement in the case so that you get the perfect LFO modulated
of phasers and flangers, or warm balance of solidity and width. all-pass filters to
fuzziness in the case of Try this technique on hats, rides create a sweeping
choruses. Neither of these and percussion sounds – it’ll
movement that
sounds great on
qualities is ideal for drum move them into the side signal, pads, but applied
sounds in a contemporary Dance making more room in the mid more subtly can work
music mix, but when used with signal for your kicks, claps and wonders on hat and
a little finesse these effects can snares, and giving you that percussion parts. Chorus
subtly enhance the stereo width essential extra bit of headroom Some choruses won’t
of your drums, and give you it takes to make your mix loud give as much control
some added headroom to boot! and punchy. over rate or depth as
The key is to use low feedback If you’d really rather not have
flangers and phasers,
but they can still be
values: feedback is the any kind of movement on your useful when applied
parameter that really makes the percussion sounds then there’s subtly. Use the Dry/
textural movement created by always the old standby of the Wet mix parameter
these effects stand out, and by Haas technique, where one side for an exact amount
of stereo width.

means that there’s nowhere for mistakes to frequencies that less than perfect monitoring Everything in its right place
hide: poor sounds are easier to spot, and set-ups can struggle to produce effectively. For each sound to have its own place in the
mixing mistakes will be more glaring. Unfortunately getting them right is super mix a compromise will be necessary and it’s
Therefore, it’s very important to get things important because it’s the low frequencies important to understand which part of each
right from the ground up. that give a track its weight, and it’s the lower sound needs to be preserved, and which
This philosophy of only using what’s frequencies that help give the listener an parts can be discarded. By knowing where
absolutely necessary isn’t just confined to idea of pitch. Both the kick and bass are and how to trim the fat, we can get an ideal
entire tracks, and extends to individual parts hugely important drivers – especially in balance of sounds with plenty of headroom
themselves. These days most of us have minimal tracks – so getting the balance right left over for a nice loud master.
access to large numbers of well-produced, is essential. Specialised tools and complicated,
super-fat samples and patches, but this can drawn-out procedures
be a curse as well as a blessing. The
amazing kick sample you’ve picked for your
Getting the low-end aren’t required for this
kind of processing, and
track might sound incredible on its own, but
is its huge subby tail going to work with the
pattern you’ve created, or fit with the big,
sounds right is super you can use your DAW’s
stock plug-ins to follow
along with all of the
bad bass sound you’ve chosen?
Getting low-end sounds to work together Less is more in a
important as they techniques demonstrated
in the following tutorials.

give a track its weight

mix, as Martin Garrix
properly can often be the hardest part of proves with his big
We’ll also look at how you
making a Dance track, as these are the room banger Animals can use these familiar
effects in unexpected
ways, including using a stock compressor to
enhance the transient of a drum sound. By
getting the most out of each sound in this
manner you can avoid adding extra layers,
which avoids phasing issues, saves
headroom, and makes your mixdowns easier.
We’ll also see how stripping sounds to the
bone can be used to create interesting new
percussive noises, perfect for minimal House
and other abstract Dance music styles.
Although we’re focusing on minimal
House in this guide, no matter what kind of
music you make, taking the time to consider
© Flanigan/FilmMagic

what’s important about each element you

add will help improve your sound design,
composition, mixdowns, and help your
tracks sound better all round.

58
 Minimal Beats, Maximum Impact | Technique

Rework An Over-Processed Clap

Sample libraries are packed with sounds that have been processed to death, but
you can breathe some life back into them with these cunning tricks

INCLUDES AUDIO l
We’ve all felt the
frustration of
stumbling upon a
sample that would
be perfect if its
creator hadn’t gone
over the top with
their compressor or
reverb. While it
makes a lot of sense
that the developers
of soundware
libraries process
their material so
much – it makes
them sound more
impressive and
polished – this often
1 Our clap sound (Reverb clap.wav) sounds great, but it’s got a huge,
noisy reverb tail. This doesn’t really work with the minimal vibe we’re
creating, so let’s get rid of that reverb, and replace it with our own effect.
2 Here we’re using Live’s stock Gate with the Threshold of -24.7dB. This
reverb tail is too quiet to pass through the gate, so we’re left with just
the dry clap sound. We can take this opportunity to process the dry signal
renders the samples
Start by adding a gate as an insert on the channel. on its own, using a compressor to enhance the clap’s transients.
less usable.
However, all is not
lost: it’s possible to
use some very
standard effects to
perform simple audio
restoration on these
sounds. Believe it or
not, simple dynamic
processors have the
power to strip away
the excess
processing these
sounds have been
subjected to.
In this tutorial
we’ll see how you
can use the humble
gate to remove
excessive reverb 3 With a low Threshold value (-inf dB), adjusting the Attack time controls
how hard the transient hits. With automatic make-up gain mode
activated this can result in very loud output – be careful! Use the Dry/Wet
4 Now it’s time to add our new reverb. This shouldn’t be too big as we
want to just stop the clap from sounding so dry. With Live’s Reverb, a
Decay time of 1.2 seconds and a Dry/Wet level of 12% is enough. You may
(which can then be
replaced with your knob to balance the processed and unprocessed versions of the clap. want to change the Quality mode to High to get a more pristine sound.
own effect), and
how over-the-top
compression can
be countered with
some remedial
compression of
your own. By using
these effects in
conjunction you can
turn flabby samples
into tight, punchy
sounds that will fit
into your minimal
mixes much
more easily.

5 To control the tail of this new reverb, we add another Gate. Turning
down the Threshold until you’re in the right ballpark for the amount of
reverb you want to let through, then bring up the Release to stop the reverb
6 Our clap is still basically mono. Let’s move it into the sides of the mix
with some chorus – Togu Audio Line’s TAL-Chorus-LX (downloaded
free from kunz.corrupt.ch). Add it after the final Gate, and turn the Dry/Wet
tail from ending so abruptly. knob down to about 8 o’clock. Check out New clap.wav to hear it.

59
Technique | Minimal Beats, Maximum Impact

Turn Toms Into Minimal Percussion

Sculpting sounds into new shapes can have creative applications too. With some
basic repitching and envelope processing we can make unique minimal sounds

INCLUDES AUDIO l
Typically 4/4 styles
of Dance music have
a familiar lexicon of
drum sounds, but to
get the minimal feel
it helps to throw in
some abstract
percussion that’s
not quite as
recognisable. There
are plenty of sample
libraries catering to
minimal styles, but
making your own
sounds is quicker
and more fun than
trawling through
endless loops.
1 We start with a very straightforward low tom sound sampled from D16’s
excellent TR-808 emulation Nepheton: Low tom.wav. This is a very
recognisable sound, but by tweaking its amplitude envelope and pitch we
2 Try playing the sound on the upper reaches of the keyboard – this gives
us punchy, tonal percussion sound. Turn down the Decay time to
between 20 and 50ms – this just lets the transient through before the
The secret to
can turn it into something else. Turn down the sampler’s Sustain to -inf dB. volume diminishes completely.
getting authentic
minimal House and
Techno sounds is
probably easier than
you think. Use
material that has a
good solid transient,
then use a fast
envelope to isolate
this part of the
sound. You can then
adjust the pitch of
this to take it out
of its usual range,
and this combination
of truncation
and transposition
results in a new,
more abstract
sonic character. 3 Sequence a pattern to accompany our existing beat (Minimal beat.
wav). Here we’re playing a very simple rhythm on G6 that gives us a bit
of interplay between the kick, the bass, and our new percussion sound. The
4 Here we’re using Live’s Reverb with a Decay Time of 360ms, and a
Dry/Wet level of 18%. However, the reverb is too wide, so we need to
rein it in with an instance of Utility. A Width setting of 22% helps the
percussion sounds unnaturally dry, so let’s add some reverb. percussion sit with the other elements in the mix.

Spicing Up Your Hats With Delay

A quick and convenient way to the delay time to 120ms or so.
add a funky human feel to your This delay will turn a straight Delay
hat and shaker parts is to use a 8th note hat part into a 16th Turn down the delay
little delay. While simply note pattern, with the delay time Feedback level so
slapping a delay preset on these controlling the level of swing. each hat is delayed
only once. Use a
type of sounds is a recipe for a Play your track back and turn delay that can be
messy mix, more judicious the delay time up gradually until unsynced from the
application can work wonders. you get the groove you're looking host tempo so that
Start by turning the feedback for. You can set the balance you can fine-tune the Straight 8ths
level all the way down, setting between the original 8th notes
level of swing that
the delay imparts on Programming a
the Dry/Wet mix to 50/50, and and the swung 16ths with the the hats. straight 8th note
unsyncing the timing from the delay’s Dry/Wet knob – you may pattern in your
DAW and then using
host tempo. If your delay has find that turning the wet level delay to swing it for
multiple taps ensure that they’re down slightly helps, especially you can be quicker
linked and, assuming you’re if you’re going for a more than fiddling with
working at around 120bpm, set natural sound. your software’s
groove settings.

60
Technique | Ableton Live

Ableton Live
The little things
Grooves are like presets that contain small
variations in note timing and velocity.
There’s a long history of groove templates
in hardware drum machines as well as in
software. In Live, we can extract grooves

Lifelike Live MIDI

from audio or MIDI clips, and apply them
to either, editing them along the way 4 . If
I have a number of tracks that I want to
share a common groove, so it feels more
like a band playing together, I’ll copy the
groove between them all, so they all have

Programming
the same basic vibe, but I still use the
Velocity MIDI effect device to tweak the
settings slightly for each, for a bit of extra
variation across the tracks. The Velocity
effect has a different level of control, and
creates a different result because, unlike
the grooves, it doesn’t affect note

Live is full of tools to help you get a realistic vibe placements. There are also times when I
use a groove but leave the velocity setting
with programmed tracks – a few tweaks make a big at zero, and use the Velocity effect instead
– see our walkthrough.
difference. This month Martin Delaney gets his
groove (and velocity) on… Keeping It Real(ish)
The most important thing
in making a MIDI

S
ooner or later you’ll want to program MIDI parts of your own, The Expert programmed part feel
and you’ll want them to sound realistic. Even if you work with
purely ‘electronic’ productions, there might be times when you
Martin Delaney,
Performer, Producer
‘real’ is velocity. If you’re
want a more organic part for the mix and you can’t find a Artist and trying to replicate the vibe
sample that fits, or you can’t get somebody to play it for you. instructor,
Martin, aka
of a real instrument
I’m not really talking about programming tips as such – the mindlobster,
has produced Live
performance, played by an
placement of notes inside clips. I’m talking about what comes afterwards, after
you’ve conceived a basic MIDI part for your drums or bass or piano, and added
training material and
was one of the UK’s
actual person, you need to
more clips containing the little breaks and fills that a real musician adds. first certified Ableton
Live trainers.
use this. Velocity is MIDI’s
Because, even if you’ve diligently programmed the notes that make a great way of expressing how
part, they won’t sound like they belong to a performance until you work them a
bit harder. They’ll be too consistent and predictable, too clean – they’ll sound
forcefully an instrument is
more like an old game soundtrack, or a karaoke backing track. played. This equates to a
Go to the example Live set on our DVD and you’ll see we have four MIDI change in volume, but also in tone, and a true
tracks in a ‘before’ group: a drum track, a percussion track, an upright bass
multi-sampled sound, or a software synthesizer
track, and a piano track. These are all completely ‘flat’, with no effects apart
from limiters, and no velocity variations at all. Then play the same clips in the that’s emulating a real-world instrument, will
‘after’ group – these are the same clips, after being processed further to make allow for these variations.
them sound more ‘real’. Hopefully you can tell the difference! Live has all of
the tools we need to make our programmed parts more organic. There are the Convolution revolution
multi-sampled instruments and drum kits, Grooves (look under Swing and Reverb can be used to create lush sounds that have no connection whatsoever
Groove in your Core Library), the Velocity MIDI effect device 1 , and the to the real world but sound fantastic, but it can also be used to recreate the
Reverb effect devices 2 . atmosphere of particular types of space, or even sometimes very specific
locations. Live has the Reverb audio effect device, which provides many
Are you sensitive? presets and is a handy tool for general reverb duties, adding a bit of depth to
The single most important thing in this process is to use velocity-sensitive your sound. I do have other options that I prefer, however. I use the PSP
instruments. If you’re using instruments like Simpler or Operator or Electric, Audioware EasyVerb and 5 PianoVerb plug-ins; I find they are better than the
this means locating the instruments’ velocity-sensitive controls and raising standard Ableton one for simulating ‘real’ tools. I also use a hardware reverb, a
them up from zero. For drums, pianos, and other complex instruments, Lexicon MXL400 – not a particularly high-end piece. I wouldn’t say the MXL
ideally you’ll be using multi-sampled instruments – made from many samples sounds ‘better’ than plug-ins, but it sounds different, and some of the presets
that reproduce the tonal changes over a range of velocities. This is the most are better than some of the plug-in presets. It’s just another flavour of reverb.
accurate way to recreate the vibe of playing a real instrument. With one of However, the most important reverb tool for making programmed parts
these, you’ll really get the benefit of dynamic changes in the performance. sound more real is the Convolution Reverb (and Pro version) that’s included in
Load a Sampler multi-sampled preset, and unfold it so you can see the the Live 9 Suite. As well as a lot of weird (good weird) effects, it has a great
multi-samples, then play some notes from a keyboard or trigger a clip with collection of real ambiences, including bathrooms, yards, rooms, chambers,
velocity changes – you’ll see Sampler selecting different samples according churches, and houses. Convolution reverbs are the business if you want ‘real’
to the changing velocities 3 . spaces. They’re made by ‘sampling’ the original space – usually by firing a test

62
 Ableton Live | Technique

>
Are You Sensitive?

>
The Little Things
VIDEO ON
THE DVD
Watch the tutorial
movie on the DVD

Convolution 5 6

>
Revolution

7 8

>
Analogue Filth

63
Technique | Ableton Live

Bass guitar usually stays in the middle with drums – those are
Take A
instruments that just sound wrong if you pan them. I don’t like
Dip In The
to use stereo effects with toms in a drum kit; it sounds more
Groove Pool
fake to me, and the average listener in front of a drum isn’t
Groove templates, which
you find in most really going to hear that much of a difference as the drummer
hardware sequencers, plays across his toms. Also, it’s a sound that I associate with
are another way to
‘humanise’ a programmed drum machines from the ’90s. To me they sound more fake
performance, as they than anything… I hate them!
combine velocity and
timing variations. Live has
grooves in the Library –
they have .agr after the
Stereo Panning
name. Top tip: use the
groove pool controls to
Most real-world instruments are
customise the settings for
better results.
‘mono’, but Live’s track pan controls
can organise the different instruments
virtually across the stereo field. Think
about when you’re watching a band.
The drums are central, the vocals are
coming out of the PA, the bass and
guitar, in most typical band formats,
are going to be left and right physically,
but where should they be in the mix?
You don’t want all of your bass coming
out of just one channel!
Analogue filth
You can take this further and distance your sounds even more
from the original clean MIDI programming. This is good if you
tone sweep and recording back the incoming signal – the impulses. An want to fake a dirtier, lower quality sample mood. There are a few tools you can
important thing to remember with Live 9’s Convolution Reverb is that you can use. I usually start by grouping the tracks that I want to process – that way it’s
drag your own samples into it to create really unique sounds, and with the easier for me to apply common effects across all of them, and it binds them
included IR Measurement Device 6 you can create a true custom convolution together sonically, as well as making it easier to control their levels with one
reverb based on the sound of whatever space you’re in. fader. This procedure involves combining effects, you can’t just do it with one.
Our example set has a regular Reverb on return A, and the Convolution One of my favourites used to be Izotope’s VInyl, a free brilliant vinyl simulation
Reverb on return B. Stereo imaging has a role to play in this, although how plug-in. It’s still available but is 32-bit only, so frustratingly I can’t use it with
much of a role depends on what instruments you’re programming, and what my 64-bit versions of Live 9 or Logic Pro X. Live has its own Vinyl Distortion
genres you’re working with. For a lot of classic band type situations, I keep it effect device, which can be useful but isn’t as deep as the Izotope version; I’m
very simple: drums in the middle, different percussion sounds with a bit of still holding out for a 64-bit version one day!
stereo width, as if the percussionist is moving round a big set-up; and guitars I have been doing this recently in real-world mixing situations. For one
and synths I usually pan either left or right, wherever there is room in the mix. project I had a speech sample I wanted to ‘age’, so I used EQ Eight, Glue
Compressor, P&M Vinylizer 7 , Waves’ RS56 EQ, and PSP’s
MicroWarmer. All of those together got me in the ballpark. I
automated the Vinylizer’s on/off where needed so I didn’t get
Recording fake crackle through my whole tune. On another project I was
MIDI In after a similar result with strings – I used Waves’ NLS Buss
Real Time plug-in, Compressor, EQ Eight, Waves’ PuigTec EQP 8 and
The best way to begin CLA-76, and another EQ! In the past on other projects I’ve
with a realistic MIDI
piece is to record it in, resampled, rendered as audio and reimported and warped,
instead of using a mouse. captured to other devices and played back in, even recorded
Use a MIDI keyboard,
drum pads, Push… you from my studio monitors to an iPhone and then imported that
can even use your – anything that gives that little bit of sonic distance and
computer keyboard,
although it won’t capture
distinction from the original clean sound.
the note velocities. I wouldn’t use this process with every track in a song, and
Experiment with different
not on every song, because it’s just going to make the whole
record quantisation
settings before you start! thing sound rough, but used in balance with other more
polished sounds, it’s a great textural tool. I know it’s adding
another level of stuff you have to deal with, but no matter how
harmonically or rhythmically refined your programming is, and
no matter how good the source sounds are, you will definitely
raise the level of your finished programming by putting some
effort into getting away from the ‘MIDI file playback’
syndrome. It’s one of the biggest and best changes you can
make when you’re creating your own programmed parts.

64
 Ableton Live | Technique

Liven Up Your
Programmed
MIDI Drums
You’ve programmed a bunch of
03 >
Over time you’ll be able to hear the kit’s
velocity changes clearly. Let’s add a Groove
as well – try the MPC 16 Funker 55 in the

MIDI drum clips but they’re still

Core Library’s Swing and Groove folder. Live’s
grooves contain both velocity and timing
information, but as we’ve already loaded the

not rocking. Start from there… Velocity effect, leave the Groove’s velocity
setting at 0.

01 >
Use the MIDI drum beat in the ‘before’ group
04 >
One thing with grooves is that you can’t edit
the controls for individual clips; changes

in the example Live set on the DVD. We’ll try a apply to every instance of that groove in your
set. This is another reason why I use the

few techniques to make this sound more like Velocity effect device, with slightly different
settings for each instrument track – for
real drums. There are three other MIDI tracks example 110 drums, 113 percussion, 101
bass, and 80 piano.
in there for you to practise on as well –
percussion, upright bass, and piano.
Experiment with all of them.

02 >
Our example beat has a constant velocity of
127; not realistic for an acoustic kit. You
05
A good reverb transforms drums, putting them
could draw velocity changes, but that won’t
sound right either, because the variations in a realistic space. Live’s Reverb device has
simply loop around. Load the Velocity MIDI
effect’s Add Some Random preset, set the
some good presets; try Storage Space. If you
Out Hi control to 110, and the Random value
to around 12/13.
have Max for Live, you get much better results
with Convolution Reverb; try Real Places/Wood
Room Small. Our example set contains both
reverbs on separate return tracks.

65
Dr Beat
with Ronan Macdonald

#02

The flam DOWNLOAD

See it in video and get the

It’s time to give your drum fills a shot of rudimental power

tutorial files on your PC/Mac at
vault.computermusic.co.uk

Ronan Macdonald The humble flam. Surely the most

elementary of all drum rudiments, yet also
throughout the track within fills; and we’re going
to look at just that: how flams can be used to
Having probably the most frequently deployed – and make drum fills more interesting and dynamic.
previously cetainly the most hard-hitting. Nothing more Flams are mostly played on the snare drum.
served as Editor than a pair of hits, the second a little bit louder The key to realistically emulating flams is making
of drummer’s than the first, so close together as to almost sure the hits don’t sound identical – ie, avoiding
bible Rhythm as sound like a single stroke, the flam is easy to the machine gun effect from using a sampled
well as play, easy to program, and makes an effective sound source with no ‘round-robin’ multisampling.
Computer tool for accenting and adding emphasis. If your drum kit ROMpler suffers from this, find a
Music, Ronan is Perhaps the most famous example of the flam secondary snare sound similar in tone and pitch
clearly the right in a rock drumming context is the intro to Guns N’ to the main one, and use that for the first hit of the
man for this Roses’ Paradise City, in which drummer Steven flam. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of getting your
particular gig. He’s been playing drums Adler nails the backbeat to the floor with both positioning and velocities right, and making sure
for over 30 years and making music hands. At first, the flam is used simply to lay down you don’t double your flams up with anything
with computers since the 90s. beats 2 and 4; but they continue to crop up else that would require the drummer’s hands.

>Step by step Using flams in drum fills

TUTORIAL
FILES

1 2 3
Here’s a four-bar programmed drum Placing a hit immediately before the The placement of the two hits on the
groove triggering Battery 4 (the last snare hit in bar 2 creates the basic timeline can have a huge effect on the
Session LE Kit, specifically). I’m going to flam. The first stroke of a flam is slightly groove, so play around with their spacing
use flams as the basis for a simple fill at weaker, so I lower the velocity of the newly and positioning until you get a feel you like.
the end of bar 2, and to greatly increase added MIDI note a touch. This kit doesn’t A flam requires both hands, so deleting
the impact of the three climactic snare hits feature round-robin multisampling, so I simultaneous hi-hat hits is essential for
at the end of bar 4, which are currently use a different (but similar enough) snare realism. Adding a couple of snare hits after
sounding a bit half-hearted. sound from another note. the flam finishes off this intermediate fill.

4 5 6
The snare hits at the end of the phrase Hitting the kick drum a 16th-note after Flams can sound awesome split
will sound much more powerful as a flam is always a winner (Nirvana’s between two drums. Moving the first
flams. Repeating the process described in Smells Like Teen Spirit stands as definitive stroke in each flam down to the floor tom
steps 2 and 3 for all three hits does the proof), so I move the kick drums in and maximising the velocity adds even
trick, and shifting their timings separately between the snares around – and add a more weight. Moving all of the hi-hats in
ups the realism. Simultaneously struck few more. A final kick at the very end of that section down to the floor tom
hi-hats need to be removed again, the bar tops off what is now a muscular, replicates the way a drummer might ‘ride’
although the hats in between can stay. driving fill. the drum in this kind of fill.

82 / COMPUTER MUSIC / April 2015 NEXT MONTH Programming linear drumming for clear, mixable beats
 MTF Technique The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 1

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live, Part 1

Ableton Live:
the inside track
Ableton Live’s popularity continues to grow, and if you’re a recent convert
and want to get a quick handle on it you’ve come to the right place, as
Martin Delaney is here to demonstrate its power…

A
bleton Live has been around for over ten years (signal routing) and the Detail View, which is where you’ll
now, but sometimes it still feels like the new On the disc see either clip contents or instruments and effects. The
kid on the block, remaining fresh, innovative keyboard shortcut you need for all of these is alt-cmd
and deceptively simple to use. The Session followed by the appropriate letter for the element. So
Accompanying
View and warping are what make Live truly project file included alt-cmd-m toggles the mixer, alt-cmd-i toggles the In/Out
unique – the competition has had a decade to try and on the DVD View, and so on (though it’s ‘l’ for the Detail View – I guess
catch up, but still hasn’t really managed to. they ran out of letters!).
Live keeps growing in popularity, too, with new users
coming on board every year, so now seems like a good time Just looking
to go right back to the start and write a guide that unearths I’ve already mentioned the Browser, and on a day-to-day
the reasons for the software’s popularity while exploring its basis this is your one-stop shop for software instruments
hidden (and not-so-hidden) depths. and effects and their presets, as well as audio sample
content. Live will install with tons of content anyway, but

Live can be easy to learn, and you can add more at any time.
Of course you can record and program your own

is a fully functional tool for music content, but Live Packs are a great way to gather more
material. (They’re like Ableton-specific .zip files, and Live

creation and performance Packs from Ableton or other suppliers will install their
contents directly into your Library, appearing in the Packs
section of the Browser.) You can also create shortcut links
Live can be easy to learn and it’s a hell of a lot of fun, to your own folders outside of the Live Library, which is
but it’s not a toy – this is a fully-functional tool for music useful if you like to keep your full-length songs in iTunes,
creation, production and performance. You’ll see Live on for example.
stages and in studios around the world, and this series will Once you have a lot of material in there sometimes it’s
explain why it has become such a force in the DAW world. faster to search for what you want instead of scrolling
through huge lists and sub folders (as long as you have an
All in one idea of what it’s called). For those times you can use Live’s
Live’s single window design contains all of the elements search function, the Browser doesn’t even have to be open,
that you need to get going, and most of them can be just hit cmd-f and begin typing the name of what you’re
shown/hidden by keyboard shortcuts to make the best of looking for – the Browser will open, and a list of results will
your available screen space. (Live also supports dual begin to filter itself as you type. Then use your
displays, where you can view Arrangement and Session keyboard’s arrow and
Views simultaneously.)
The triangle at the top left of the screen toggles the
Browser, which is where you need to be to load samples,
instruments and effects. Other elements include the
Mixer, the Overview, Sends, Return Tracks, In/Out View

FOCUS ON… VIEWS

When you’re new to Live, the first thing that’ll trip you up is the Views.
With other DAWs (digital audio workstations), there’s a timeline,
where the music flows left to right from beginning to end, and that’s
it. Live has that too – the Arrangement View – but the most unique
thing about Live is the Session View, which is a vertically scrolling
grid. This busts you out of the timeline constraints so you’re free to
improvise with the material inside the grid, ie, your clips. Actually, you
can use both Views at once, for ultimate power, but we’ll talk about
that another time…

18 | Ableton Live 2015 FOCUS

MT143.tut live.indd 18 11/02/2015 15:35

 The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 1 Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Set up your soundcard and controller

You probably have a MIDI controller and an audio interface Connect your controller by USB. Install any drivers needed (most
01 (soundcard) that you want to use with Live. The specifics of
02 controllers are class-compliant, though), launch Live and go to
setting them up varies according to which ones you have, but here are Preferences/MIDI Sync. Select your controller as a MIDI input source
the basics. for Track and Remote.

Click on the Control Surfaces list at the top – if your controller’s Close Preferences, and type cmd-m to enter MIDI Map Mode.
03 listed in there it will have a certain amount of built-in control over
04 Anything blue can be controlled by MIDI. Click a parameter then
Live without you having to configure anything further. move a knob or fader on your hardware to assign it.

Use cmd-m to exit MIDI Map Mode when you’re done. Now when Connect your soundcard while your speakers are turned off, and
05 you move your hardware control the on-screen one moves too!
06 install any necessary drivers. Open Live’s Preferences and select
You can assign one hardware control to multiple objects in Live. it as Input and Output device in the Audio tab.

enter keys to select and load the item you were looking for. will change fast as you get to know Live. So for now, if
It’s a very fast way to get around! you’ve got an old MIDI keyboard lying around, work with
As an Ableton Certified Trainer I spend a lot of time that to get started.
dealing with buying advice to do with soundcards and
controllers. I don’t want to be a party pooper, but usually Switching sides
my advice is to wait as long as possible before choosing a Live isn’t only picking up new users, it’s gathering converts
controller, because your ideas about what’s right for you from other DAWs such as Logic, Reason and Pro Tools. If

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 MTF Technique The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 1

MTF Step-by-Step The basics of launching clips

Open the example Live set on the MusicTech DVD – it’s called Track 1 contains a white clip called Beat, which is a drum loop.
01 TUGTAL1. Make sure you’re looking at the Session View with the
02 Click on the small triangle at the left of the clip to launch it. Now
grid – use the tab key to move between Views. it’ll loop forever unless you stop it!

Stop it by clicking the square in any empty slot below that clip, or You can change the clip’s launch behaviour from the Launch box.
03 on the track stop button at the bottom of the track. Control the
04 If you can’t see it, double-click on the clip and click the small
volume by moving the volume fader up and down. black L button near the lower left of the screen.

Experiment with different Launch Modes as you launch and Change the project bpm at the top left of the screen, and your
05 re-launch the clip. Mix and match with different quantization
06 loop speeds up or slows down without changing pitch or tripping
settings from the box below that and you start to see how clips can be over itself as it loops round. This is warping (timestretching) at work.
quite organic!

you’re coming to Live from another application, you’ll need different features, so check the handy comparison chart on
to undergo a period of adjustment. Live is like those www.ableton.com. There’s an upgrade path, so if at any
programs in some ways, but very different in others, and it time you want to step up you needn’t pay to start all over
can be frustrating at first. But be patient, it’ll be worth it! again. Prices are also lower if you purchase the download
Live comes in three flavours: Intro, Standard and Suite versions rather than boxed discs. Occasionally you’ll find
(currently at version 9). Increasing in price, each version has other versions of Live bundled with third-party hardware

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 The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 1 Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step How to program a simple beat

Live also enables us to work with MIDI, programming our own Double-click the clip slot at the top of the track to create an
01 parts as well as using audio from other sources. Let’s add some
02 empty one-bar clip. Launch this, even though it’s empty. Your
more electronic-sounding drums. Track 2 contains Live’s Core 808 Track 1 clip will play too, unless you stop it.
drum kit.

Double-click the clip to view the MIDI Editor. The left side of the Preview the 808 kit sounds by clicking the preview button
03 editor displays the names of the sounds in the kit. The grid is
04 (headphone icon) at the top of the list, and clicking in the boxes
numbered with beats and 16th notes. next to each sound. Turn off preview when you’ve done this, though.

Let’s add a kick part. While the clip’s playing, double-click in the Draw a snare at 1.2 and 1.4, and cowbells at 1.2.3 and 1.3.3. Scroll
05 grid on 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 in alignment with the kick on the left.
06 if you can’t see the entire kit. Click the Dupl Loop button in the
The notes will trigger as the clip loops. Notes box, then draw another snare at 2.4.3.

such as keyboards and so on and branded with the effectively making it the Suite version.
manufacturer’s logo, so be aware that they might have Our walkthroughs take you through the simple
different features as well. This is mostly a thing of the past, process of configuring your controller and audio
as I believe Ableton has standardised these bundled interface, launching your first clip, and programming your
editions. If you can’t decide which version you want, or first beat. Have fun with these first steps – you’re entering
whether you want to buy Live at all, download the demo an exciting world! MTF Martin’s Ultimate Guide To Ableton
and give it a spin – it’s fully functional for 30 days, Live continues over the page.

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 MTF Technique Part 2: Beginning a Live project with drums

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live, Part 2

Beginning a Live
project with drums
Ableton Live is fantastic for drum programming; it has all the tools you
need, and it’s easy to get started. Martin Delaney counts you in…

L
ast time round we gave ourselves an more simple by freeing you from thinking about structure
introduction to the basics of Ableton Live – the On the disc at this early stage, so you can concentrate on the job in
interface, key commands, clip launching – hand: making the best beat possible. A benefit of working
before programming our first little MIDI drum with MIDI is that you don’t really have to commit to a fixed
Accompanying
beat, using Live’s Core 808 kit. Now we’re project file included tempo until a long way into the production process – and
moving on to a new project, one that we can work on over a on the DVD with Live, even when you’re working with audio, you’ve got a
few simple instalments, building it into a self-contained lot of freedom with tempo changes thanks to the wonders
set that will include all the tips and material referred to in of warping. It’s also important to remember that you can
the tutorials. automate BPM changes in the Arrangement View if you
We’ll begin by going back to drum programming, to want your music to breathe a bit.
create a beat that’ll be the foundation of our new project.
Most music projects begin with a beat, even if it’s simply Get kitted out
In the interests of compatibility, I’m using one of the

No matter how focused you standard Live library drum kits for the tutorial, but there’s
no need to limit yourself to this as there are many more

are on electronic beats, you’ll still Live Packs available which feature great sounding kits,
whether you’re looking for acoustic or electronic sounds

work with acoustic sounds – you’ll find some on the Ableton website (the Session
Drums pack is a good example), as well as through
third-party providers.
acting as a glorified click track for the recording of live When you’re browsing the Library drum kits, you can
instruments. We’re going to use an acoustic drum kit, in audition each kit without loading it; either click the Preview
the shape of Live’s Kit Core Session Dry. button that sits just below the Browser, or simply
No matter how focused you are on electronic beats, right-arrow on your computer keyboard to hear a brief
you’ll still be working with acoustic sounds, and their sample of the kit sound (this only works with the Live
playing and programming techniques. A clean acoustic kit factory sounds). Along the way we’ll be adding two little
is also a better way to illustrate MIDI programming tweaks samples – just to let you know that this is possible!
and audio effect usage, instead of one that loads with a lot We set Record Quantization to Sixteenth-Note, though
of effects in place before you start. you’ll change this on a project-specific basis depending on
Our tutorial will skim through the fundamentals of Live the part you’re recording. If you forget to enable
beat production – including creating clips, programming quantization, you can use Cmd-U to quantize the
beats, customising drum racks and adding audio effects. recorded notes, so you
For this, we’re working in Session View because the
loop-based workflow is ideal for programming beats – at
times like this you just want the part in focus to keep
looping round while you edit it, which makes things a lot

DO YOU REALLY NEED DRUM PADS TO

PROGRAM BEATS?
In a word, no! But a sensible answer takes longer – you can program
MIDI beats perfectly well using a computer mouse or trackpad, but
that doesn’t always get you in the mood. We can play in drum hits
using Live’s computer MIDI keyboard for starters, then the options
ramp up after that: from MIDI keyboard to MIDI drum pads,
culminating in a more dedicated device such as Ableton’s Push. Never
mind the funny keyboard-in-a-grid gimmick, if there’s one thing Push
is good for, it’s creating drum parts! Velocity-sensitive pads, step
sequencing, device control… it’s all there.

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 Part 2: Beginning a Live project with drums Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Making a beat with Ableton Live

Open our example set – TUGTAL2. Look at the Session View: a Enter a bpm value in the tempo box near the top left of the
01 timeline gets in the way when you’re building beats (we want
02 screen. We could use any value from 20-999 bpm, but let’s agree
them to loop indefinitely) and there are some clips there! on 126 for now – a little bit upbeat.

Type Cmd-F to search, and start typing ‘Kit-Core SessionDry’. This is an acoustic drum kit, as you’ll hear when you audition the
03 When you see the kit in the ever-updating list, navigate to it with
04 sounds from your MIDI controller (arm the track first), or from the
the computer keyboard’s down arrow and hit Enter to load it. triangular preview buttons in each cell in the drum rack.

We want to add one electronic sound now, so drag the audio Double-click in the top clip slot in your drum track. This
05 sample we’ve called ‘Noise’ on to the Conga cell in the drum rack
06 automatically creates a 1-bar MIDI clip. Turn on the metronome
– that’ll replace the original sample. Drum racks contain 128 cells. as well. Launch the empty clip. All you’ll hear is the metronome.

don’t have to record them again, with an Amount control can also expand the editor upwards by mousing over the
that lets you blend in the amount of correction. border at the top, where you’ll see the pointer icon changes
When you’re working in the MIDI Note Editor, you can into a dragging tool – and you can scale the editor upwards
navigate note pitches by simply clicking and dragging up/ so it fills the screen, which makes it easier to work with.
down on the piano roll at the left, and you can zoom in and The way I like to work when I’m creating a drum track is
out by clicking and dragging left/right at the same spot. You to add variations and breaks in the programming of the

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 MTF Technique Part 2: Beginning a Live project with drums

MTF Step-by-Step Making a beat with Ableton Live… cont’d

You should now be viewing the MIDI Note Editor grid. If not, click As the clip loops around, draw kicks at 1, 1.1.3, 1.3, and 1.3.3. Refer
07 the device view selector at the bottom right. Time to draw the
08 to our screenshot – draw the hi hats, noise and snare as you see
beat. Enter the notes by double clicking in the grid. there. That’s a 1/16th note grid.

Now we have enough activity, we don’t need the metronome –

09 turn it off. Drag our ‘Tambourine’ clip onto the Cowbell cell in the
10 Go to the Edit menu and find Record Quantization. Set it to
Sixteenth-Note Quantization. This will tighten up the timing when
rack. Let’s record the tambourine in real-time, just for the practice. we play in our live tambourine part – it saves editing time later!

Arm the track (the red button lit at bottom), then find the key or Now you’re recording! As the loop plays, add a tambourine hit on
11 pad for the tambourine. Click the Session Record button in the
12 each beat. They’re overdubbed over the other parts, nothing’s
Control Bar, and playback begins; the clip play button is red. overwritten. Because Record Quantization is on, the timing of your
tambourine is corrected automatically.

notes, but to use the Velocity MIDI Effect Device for can impart a ‘human’ feel in your beats. Most of us will
dynamic variations – this keeps them randomising across probably be working in 4/4 time, but don’t forget that Live
the length of the track. We’ll offset the snare hits a bit, can easily handle more complex time signatures, and even
which is what real (good) drummers do to vary the feel of time signature changes can be automated, so don’t limit
what they’re playing. This is part of what Live’s Grooves do yourself to the ones that feel safe.
as well – you can find them if you look under Packs/Core Live’s drum kits are usually based on drum racks, but
Library/Swing and Groove. If you use these carefully you it’s worth remembering that the good ol’ Impulse drum

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 Part 2: Beginning a Live project with drums Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Making a beat with Ableton Live … cont’d

Press Stop or the spacebar. Now we have a 1-bar beat, but if you For live-sounding drums you need velocity changes. Find the
13 click the Dupl Loop button in the Loop Box, you get an instant two
14 MIDI Effect preset Velocity/Add Some Random, and drag to the
bars! Add some more kicks at the end of bar 2. drum track. These variations are too extreme, so raise Out Low to 110.

We can tweak the beat’s timing, to take the edge off the tempo.
15 Drag the snare hits to the right, but only a tiny bit, so they sound
16 Drag the Simple Delay from the Audio Effects Browser straight on
to the drum cell that contains the ‘noise’ sample. Set the Dry/Wet
like they’re dragging behind the beat. to 20% – this gives a little extra rhythmic value to that sound!

17 Drums sound flat unless they’re located in some kind of room

space, so add the Audio Effect preset Reverb/Room/Ambience to
18 We can use a compressor to fatten up our beat (we’ll be coming
back to compressors later). Find the preset Compressor/Mildly
the track after the rack. Set the Dry/Wet mix to 30%. Aggressive and drag it on to your track. It should sound punchier…

sample player is still there. This is a basic beat-making processing them, and laying that on top of the beat we’ve
tool, but it’s great if you’re building your own electronically- created. In part 4 we’ll then be adding bass and keyboard
oriented kits and you want to limit your options. parts to the project to create an entire track.
And don’t forget to look at our example Live set on the
Making tracks DVD this issue, which contains the raw material that we’ve
Next time we’ll be treating beats more aggressively – used in this tutorial plus the remaining four tutorials
taking audio samples of drum loops and slicing and coming up! MTF

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 MTF Technique Part 3: Processing your beats

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 3

Processing
your beats
In Part 2 of the Ultimate Live Guide we built a nice,
clean MIDI beat with a few realistic variations, but
now Martin Delaney explains how to dirty it up!

I
n our last tutorial, we began a new Live project and the track, which is incredibly useful. Just be aware that
created a beat using one of Live’s more acoustic, On the disc Flatten is destructive - your original track is gone! What I
natural-sounding kits. All good but now we’re going to usually do is duplicate the track, then create a group track
cannibalise that beat in two different ways - we’ll called ‘Spare’ which I use to contain all of the original
Accompanying
duplicate and process it to create a new tuned project file included versions of my frozen tracks.
percussion part that plays over the top, and we’ll also on the DVD You’ll notice that every clip in a flattened track is
convert that original beat to audio, before slicing it up for double the length of the original source clip - this is a
yet more processing, removing some of the slices feature not a bug(!), designed to accommodate effect tails
at the end of loops - this makes sense because it’s quite
annoying to hear a reverb tail cut off and begin again as a

There’s no right or wrong with sample loops. If you’re obsessive about house-cleaning,
which I am, you can use the crop sample command to put

the beats you use as long as they your clip back to its original length.
We added the Resonator effect to our new percussion

are right for the project track. I love the Resonator, it has quite a distinctive sound,
although that means that sometimes you have to tweak it
somewhat to get something different. It’s very important
completely and replacing them with totally different to use that Note control though, and make sure it’s pitched
sounds. correctly to fit in with your other parts - things can get a
There’s no right or wrong about the type of drum bit discordant otherwise.
sounds you use; what matters is they’re right for the Having programmed and customised a beat earlier,
project you’re working on at the time. Truthfully in most we’re now converting it to audio and beginning the process
genres these days, you’ll be working with many drum all over again, slicing it up and adding different sounds
tracks playing in parallel, combining acoustic and and effects. We’re doing this because I want to show you
electronic sounds. Dance music tracks are typically based the very cool ‘Slice to New MIDI Track’ command, and also
on core drum kits derived from the classic drum machines because it’s another interesting creative step you can take.
of old, the Roland TR-808 and TR-909, but these sounds Even when you’re working with something you’ve
will be customised, processed with audio effects, and programmed yourself, you can give it more of a ‘sampled’
often layered alongside more realistic percussion sounds vibe by converting it to audio and slicing it up. It makes you
for a richer texture. As well as mixing and matching source use different tools in different ways. ‘Slice to
kits, there’s a lot of leeway with sample resolution and New MIDI
sound quality; you can build a kit that includes nice high
resolution drum hits alongside grungy little samples that
you’ve grabbed from an MP3, YouTube, or you’ve
resampled from a little dictating recorder. Mix and match
- that’s what it’s all about.
During the tutorial we talk about freezing and
flattening tracks - this retains each separate clip within

FOCUS ON… QUANTIZATION

Sometimes Live treats audio and MIDI in similar ways. An example of
this is quantization. We discussed this for MIDI already, but we can also
do it with audio samples – a very powerful feature. Try the sample in
our example Live set, Loose Beat. Double-click the clip to see the
waveform – you’ll see it’s not exactly in time and we can fix this.
Right-click inside the waveform and type Cmd-U. You’ll see the peaks
in the waveform snap to the grid. Cool! To change the quantization
values, use Shift-Cmd-U to access the quantization settings.

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 Part 3: Processing your beats Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Processing your beats

Open our example set - TUGTAL3. Select the drum track and type Freeze and Flatten makes double-length audio clips – this helps
01 Cmd-D to duplicate. Right-click the new track, choose Freeze
02 handle effect tails and the like. Use the Loop Brace, Start Marker,
Track, then right-click again and choose Flatten, creating an audio and Crop Sample command to cut the clip back to the original length.
version of the track.

Set the new drum audio clip to Beats Warp mode if it isn’t already, This deactivates the Transient Loop mode, which determines how
03 then go down to the bottom of the Warp controls and choose the
04 the gaps between slices in Beats mode are handled. While the
top arrow icon, pointing to the right only. loop’s running, click and drag downwards in the adjoining box to
reduce the decay between slices.

It sounds cool, yes? It’s gating the waveform’s transients. Drag Go to the Audio Effects category in the Browser and add the
05 right down to 0 for a delicious clicky part, then use the Transpose
06 Resonator preset called Berlin to the track. Set the Note inside
knob at the left to raise it by 24 semitones or two octaves. Resonator to E2, then try setting the Dry/Wet mix at 35%.

Track’ is great if you have a beat from another record, and slices made by this command, as they’re created and
you want to edit the arrangement, or tweak or even replace placed in a rack, is ‘chains’. Dragging samples or
some of the sounds in the sample; putting a compressor instruments to replace slices is a big thing; you can take a
on the kick in a sample loop is a good example. I also like to loop from an old record and totally replace the kick or
use lo-fi effects such as Redux, Erosion, and Cabinet to snare with another sample. Or as we touched on here, drag
dirty things up a bit. The correct technical term for the in an instrument. The slice will be replaced, and the

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 MTF Technique Part 3: Processing your beats

MTF Step-by-Step Processing your beats... cont’d

Now you’ve created a melodic percussion part by tweaking your Uh, maybe we’re getting bored with the original beat now – it
07 original beat. Live is great for recycling your audio and MIDI parts!
08 sounds quite flat against the Resonator percussion track. Let’s
It is definitely possible to make an entire tune from one source sample. put it through the wringer taking it on a gratuitous journey of sonic
dismemberment.

Right-click the track containing that original beat and choose This is just a fun way to mess with your parts as we want a
09 Freeze Track. Right-click again and choose Flatten. The MIDI
10 different vibe. Crop the new clip down to only two bars. Right-
track’s disappeared! Freeze/Flatten is destructive – that’s why we click on it and choose Slice To New MIDI Track.
copied the track when we did it before.

Choose the 1/8 Slicing option from the new window. Now you This operation has sliced the audio clip, and made a new drum
11 have a new MIDI track and clip. Perverse, isn’t it? Launch the clip
12 rack, with a different instance of Simpler for each slice. It’s also
– it should sound pretty much the same as the original. automatically created a MIDI clip, with a note for each slice.

instrument will play as the clip loops. You can build really and hide the various elements that make up the rack,
interesting loops by adding soft synths, audio effects… including input/output routing, effect sends and returns
really taking it on to another level. (yes you can have these in a drum rack), and of course the
If you’re ever following a drum rack tutorial and you’re macros, chains, and devices.
not seeing everything, make sure to click on the black If you really want to go big with elaborate evolving
buttons at the bottom left of the rack – these will show beats, you can start using automation as well. This is a real

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 Part 3: Processing your beats Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Processing your beats... cont’d

Audition the slices from your MIDI controller, or from your Effectively we’ve sampled ourselves. Experiment with dragging
13 computer keyboard (Shift-Cmd-K to activate that), or enable
14 the notes around the editor grid, to see what happens; you can
Preview for the clip (the headphone icon) and click on each note to take any beat and reorganise it to fit your song, this is one of Live’s
hear it. top features!

Not only can we reorganise the notes, we can tweak each slice. Now we turn our attention to the snare. Drag the Ping Pong Delay
15 Give the kick a little bump by dragging the Compressor preset
16 onto slice 3, the first snare in the clip. Wow! That’s too much. Dial
Brick Wall onto slices 1, 5, 9 and 13 in the clip. the Dry/Wet control down to 30%.

Delays are a great way to change the rhythm of your beats. Doing that automatically replaces the original slice – now you
17 Onwards. We have another sample, called ‘bass note E’. Drag it
18 have a bass note hitting alongside the beat. Click on the track
onto slice 7. It automatically creates a Simpler instrument to contain it! name, type Cmd-R, and rename the track ‘Sliced beat’. That’s it for now.

opportunity to go nuts, because you can automate every for a few weeks!
device in every chain in the rack, and that can be hundreds That’s all we have room for now and we haven’t even
of parameters. And of course you can separate the length mentioned the totally awesome ‘Convert Audio to Drums’
of the automation loop from the clip length (with the Link command. That will have to wait for another tutorial. Turn
button), and do that individually for each parameter, so to p34 where we use the Simpler instrument and MIDI
warn your friends and family that you’re going to disappear Effect devices to add some bass to our beats.. MTF

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 MTF Technique Part 4: Let’s make some bass

Ableton Live The 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 Accompanying
project file included

to make it bounce. Here’s his guide… on the DVD

T
oday we’re adding a bass part, ideally one that 128 racks inside another rack, so you can quickly end up
somehow fits in with our beat from the last with thousands of chains buried deep within your rack.
tutorial. Refer to the example set included with When you connect a MIDI keyboard or use your
the issue – it’s called TUGTAL4. The set includes computer keyboard to play those sounds, you’re going to
all the steps from the last tutorial as well as a get a massive sound because all of the chains will play at
couple of samples you’ll need to complete this one. once. This can be a bit overbearing, but we’re only using
Bass sounds change considerably across genres; two today, so we’ll deal with that issue another time, and
you’ve got classic electric bass played with pick or fingers, 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
Resist the temptation to bass – a low bass fundamental tone which fattens up the

make a huge bass sound

bottom end. It can be almost inaudible in the mix at
certain times. For reasons of simplicity, we’re pairing it

because we plan to add

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

other instruments
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
analogue and digital synths, and LFO-driven wobble last time to make sure it didn’t overlap with the new bass
sounds. They’re all good and they’re all readily available to part. When you’re working with MIDI programming, a lot of
us these days,through real or software instruments and mixing problems can be fixed at the programming stage.
Live Packs. We’re going to build our own bass sound and It’s the same reason we set the Simpler instruments to 1
program our own part. This is because the Simpler voice each, to avoid overlaps that will affect the bass part.
instrument we use is included in every version of Live. If I
was to do the tutorial using the Operator synth, you might Simpler sampler
not be able to follow the steps. You should try Operator, Simpler is a very powerful sampler, although it has a
though – it’s my go-to synth for bass parts. I’ll move user-friendly interface. It makes it possible to build long,
on to others only if I can’t find what I want in there. sustaining notes by loop and crossfading short samples,
We’re spending more time working with but on this occasion we don’t need those controls. Lucky
instrument racks as this is a great way to build us! Maybe we’ll come back and use them later.
deep synth sounds that would otherwise require As I mention in the tutorial, it’s important to
complex routing across several tracks. In many resist the temptation to make a huge bass sound
ways they’re similar to drum racks, which we’ve right now. This is because we plan to add other
already encountered. We’re using two chains in our instruments, and sonically there won’t be any room
rack – that’s two instruments playing together – but for them if we have a bass sound that’s riddled with
you can have up to 128 chains in a rack. Impressive effects and covering a huge frequency range.
enough, but then bear in mind that you can have We use clip envelopes to create repetitive
movement of the Auto Filter controls; it makes our
FOCUS ON… REAL BASS bass sound a bit more evolving and interesting. It
The best thing you can do if you want to program good depends on what genre you’re working with, but
bass parts is to get your hands on a bass guitar – it’s a automated filters can be a huge factor in the mix. If
great way to try ideas against your drum tracks. You don’t
have to learn to play properly, it doesn’t even have to be a you don’t like the restrictions and mouse-work of
good bass and it doesn’t matter what it sounds like, drawing these envelopes, be aware that you can
because 99 times out of 100 it doesn’t even get plugged in. record them in real time if you’re using a
This is my most common way to create bass parts, noodling
away while the drums loop. To get a bass vibe…play bass. It’s suitable hardware controller. Also I can’t stress
pretty obvious! enough the importance of unlinking clip
envelopes from the clip length. And remember:

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 Part 4: Let’s make some bass Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Making some bass

Open our example set, which follows on from last time. Load Arm the track and play your keyboard to audition the sound, in a
01 an empty Instrument Rack into a new MIDI track. Drag the
02 low-ish range. Drag the clip ‘sine’ into the rack’s drop area,
clip ‘square’ into the rack and it’ll automatically appear inside a creating another chain. Now you’ll be playing both sounds together.
Simpler instrument.

In the ‘sine’ Simpler instrument, set the Trans (transpose) value to You might want to rename the chains now, for visual reference –
03 -12 semi-tones, that’s one octave down. We’ll use this as our sub
04 Cmd-R. Good, now let’s draw in some notes. Double-click in an
bass and the saw as our more immediately characteristic tone. empty slot to create a new MIDI clip, as we’ve done before.

Refer to the screen shot. It’s just E1 then D2 at 1.1.3 then E1 again There’s a bass sample in the drum kit; our bass clip leaves room
05 at 1.3, D2 at 1.3.3, and A2 at 1.4.3 and E1 at 1.4.4. Match the note
06 for that. But, find the controls for the bass note in the drum rack
lengths to what you see in the picture. and reduce the Release to 1.00 ms, shortening the note.

each envelope can be a different length. You might notice although that’s one area where I think third-party plug-ins
that the sine wave part of the bass sound doesn’t react or even hardware can step in and do the job better, for
much to the filter, but that’s normal – sines are not so those times when you want a compressor that purposely
responsive compared to other more complex waveforms. adds some character to the sound. If you have the Glue
We finished off the bass track with Live’s Compressor. Compressor from the Live 9 Suite, that’s a good place
This is perfectly adequate as a clinical compression tool, to start…

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 MTF Technique Part 4: Let’s make some bass

MTF Step-by-Step Making some bass… cont’d

While we’re shortening, set the Sine’s Sustain to -7dB. This makes Because we’re using short punchy notes for this, we don’t have to
07 it shorter against the higher, square sound; when you play the
08 play with the other Simpler settings for loop/fade, release time,
clip, it keeps the punchy low bass hit without cluttering up the mix. and so on. Our samples are long enough that it won’t matter.

Our simple bass part will be monophonic – only one note at a We could add effects to each chain and use the Spread control to
09 time – so we can set the voices for each Simpler to 1. This means
10 make a monster bass sound, but it doesn’t leave much room for
we can’t play or program any overlapping notes by mistake. other sounds in the song if the bass is too big.

Let’s raise the sine volume inside Simpler to 0 dB – Simpler and Let’s add Auto Filter for some nice filter sweeps. Drag it right after
11 Sampler always default to -12 dB, I guess to protect us from
12 the rack so it applies to both chains and set the filter cutoff to
ourselves! You can keep tweaking the levels as you go on. 170Hz, and the Q (resonance) to 2.00.

As we’re adding more elements to our track, we’ve got 0 using the white boxes under each Pitch control. That
to make sure everything sounds good alongside everything should sound better!
else. While working with the bass sound, I was starting to That’s all for now. Next time we’ll be working on a
feel the Resonator settings were a little bit too abrasive. To keyboard part to layer over our bass and beats. Once
fix this you can go to the Resonator in our percussion track again we’ll take a shot at building our own instead of
and tame it a bit by resetting all of the fine tuning values to loading a preset. MTF

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 Part 4: Let’s make some bass Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Making some bass… cont’d

Sweep time. Inside the MIDI note editor, click the envelope arrow Click the left end of the red dotted line in the editor to anchor it.
13 and choose Auto Filter and Frequency from the pop-up choosers.
14 Drag the right end upwards to 1.50 Hz (Cmd-Click-Drag for finer
Click the Link button and type a value of 4 bars next to that. resolutions). Now the frequency changes as the clip plays.

Choose Resonance now, unlinking it again, anchor it, then draw What sounds cool is if you create different length sweeps for
15 an envelope that ends at 2.90. You’ll hear that as well. Look at the
16 different parts of the song. Once you’ve clicked that Link button,
Auto Filter and you’ll see red dots marking the automated controls. you can set envelopes to any length, even with simple one-bar clips.

When you’re repeating these nice envelope sweeps, don’t Drop in Live’s Compressor/Classical Compression preset. Make
17 use the same values every time either – it’ll sound more
18 sure it goes right after the entire rack so it applies to both chains.
organic if you vary them a bit. You will hear the difference especially If you’ve got Glue Compressor from the Live 9 Suite, try that instead.
with the Resonance.

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 MTF Technique Part 5: Make your own keyboard sound & sidechain it

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 5 On the disc

Make your own

Accompanying
project file included
on the DVD

keyboard sound
& sidechain it…
Anybody can load a synth preset but it’s fun to As well as adding a new sample to our set – which
build your own. Connect your keyboard and again, incorporates the steps from the last tutorial – I’ve
taken the opportunity to reorganise, rename, and colour
Martin Delaney will show you how it’s done. code the tracks and clips. Not only do I get a kick out of

W
organising everything, it helps me recognise what I’m
e continue our Ultimate Guide by adding a looking at faster and it avoids accidentally triggering or
simple keyboard part to our ongoing selecting the wrong clip or track. I made a ‘spare’ group
project, following on from the bass last track for unused tracks, and put the original beat in there.
time. You like the project? Good. You don’t We mentioned this before – Shift-Click to select the tracks
like the project? That’s fine too as it’s you want to group, then type Cmd-G. You can also drag
merely a vehicle for us to introduce the core techniques of additional tracks in later.
using Ableton Live. Our keyboard part doesn’t have to be too demanding.
All we need for this project is something basic that doesn’t

If you’re not great at take up too much room, sonically speaking; we’ve got
enough going on already. We’re just using one note, then

music theory Live has a making it move with some sidechaining instead.
Whenever we talk about creating instrument sounds,

whole bunch of tools to make sure you’re using a keyboard to audition the sound
constantly as you work on it. If you already have a MIDI clip

make parts sound busy and notes in place, you could just keep that playing and
rolling round. But if you’re working on a sound that needs
to have some velocity sensitivity – some responsiveness
Once again we’re using the Simpler instrument device, to how hard you hit your keys or pads – it’s better to use
with a sample that you can load from the provided your keyboard or pads in real time while you’re testing. As
example Live set. This works for us because there are a I’ve said before, I like to use the computer keyboard as
few different versions of Live out there – Suite, Standard well, and when I’m doing that, I’ll keep tapping on the c
and Intro, not to mention older versions counting from 9 and v keys to change through some different velocity
backwards – so using a synthesizer instrument device at settings if relevant – they’ll take you up and down through
this point could cause compatibility issues with some the velocity range from 1 to 127 in increments of 20. Don’t
folks reading this. We’re on safe ground with Simpler forget to keep an eye on your track and master volume
because it’s in every version of Live – it has to be, because levels as well as we don’t want to see any red peaks!
drum racks in particular won’t work without it! We don’t use any notes other than E4 for this clip,
Either way it’s good, partly because we can now say because we want to start with a drone and then find a way
we’re using sample based synthesis, a form of sound to make it sound a bit more interesting. If you’re not great
design that uses audio samples as well as waveforms at music theory, Live has a whole bunch of tools to help
generated by the synth instrument itself. Many synths let you make even a basic
you combine these techniques in one preset, which really
opens up the sonic spectrum.

FOCUS ON… THE HARDWARE

In this tutorial we’re building a keyboard sound based on a sample
from a Waldorf Pulse Plus, a hardware, rack-mount, synth first
released in 1997 (the range is still going strong in a tabletop format).
I used the Pulse for two important reasons: one, because it would
give a different texture than resampling a plug-in, and two, because
it was nearby! One of the great things about Simpler is that it makes
it easy to use almost any sound as a source. Hardware instruments
seem to be on everybody’s mind at the moment, so the Pulse it is.

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 Part 5: Make your own keyboard sound & sidechain it Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining

Be sure to use our updated example set for this tutorial. I’ve Load the Simpler sample-playback instrument into a new MIDI
01 added a new sample, ‘synth note’. This is a synth playing a long C
02 track, and drag the ‘synth note’ sample into Simpler’s drop area.
note (sampled from the Waldorf Pulse Plus hardware synth). Double-click the top empty clip slot in the track to make a clip.

This should sound familiar, because we’ve done this step before When you arm your track and play your MIDI keyboard, you should
03 when we made our bass part. Click the Dupl.Loop button in the
04 be hearing the sampled synth tone playing across the range. We
MIDI Editor’s Notes box twice, creating an empty 4-bar MIDI clip. used a C so it’ll be correctly in pitch with other instruments.

Draw an E4 note across the entire length of the clip - launch the To edit the note velocity, unfold the MIDI Velocity Editor (click on
05 clip and then it’ll play just like a drone over four bars. Keep the
06 the little triangle) below the MIDI Note Editor, then drag the
velocity to around 100 or 110 – it doesn’t matter precisely. velocity marker up or down until you reach the desired range.

programmed part sound busy i.e. the MIDI Effect Devices. it) and applying it to the keyboard sound to create a
We’re using the Chord device a little bit here, but don’t be ‘pulsing’ quality. After you’ve loaded the Compressor into
surprised if we come back and look at MIDI effects again in the keyboard track, you can choose any sound as a source,
the near future. digging deep into drum and instrument racks to find the
The other thing we do to make it sound more active is to exact trigger you want. However, from a workflow point of
sidechain it, taking the timing of the drum track (or parts of view I find it much easier to work with a separate track as

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 MTF Technique Part 5: Make your own keyboard sound & sidechain it

MTF Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining cont’d

So far we have a pretty dull synth part so let’s jazz it up a bit. At Let’s make some changes inside Simpler. Start by turning Loop
07 this stage if you need to do any volume management for this
08 on and set it to 40%, then turn Snap on and set the Start to
sound, use the Volume control in Simpler. 0.30%. Set Length to 14% and Fade to 70%.

Set the Volume envelope Attack to 500ms so there’s a bit more to Now let’s add some interest: because we’ve been lazy with our
09 the tiny little fade-in at the beginning of the sample (as you can
10 programming, let’s expand the part with one of Live’s MIDI effect
see, it starts quite gradually already). devices. Add the Chord MIDI effect to the track, it’ll go before Simpler.

Set the Chord device’s first two Shift control knobs to +3 and +5 The extra notes make it sound very full – too full, in fact. So drag
11 semitones. As the clip loops or as you play your keyboard, you’ll
12 an EQ Three audio effect to the end of the chain and set the
hear the extra notes. Set Simpler’s Spread to 50. GainMid to -12dB. This thins it out nicely.

a source for a sidechain, that’s why we’ve copied the drum going when the drums drop out. You could even automate
track here. Not only do I then have something that visually that sidechain track and do very weird things with it,
helps me keep track of what’s going on, outside of the without disrupting your drum beat. As it says in the
drum kit, a separate track for sidechaining, it enables me tutorial, remember that the sidechain source can be silent
to program a totally different kick pattern to trigger the – mute the track and it still works!
compressor if I want to, or even to keep the sidechain feed If you’re a musical type of person, who can play

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 Part 5: Make your own keyboard sound & sidechain it Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining cont’d

Now we need to add some movement to this keyboard part – I Inside the rack, solo chains 1, 3, 5, 9, and 13 and deactivate the
13 guess you’d say it’s a pad sound; duplicate your MIDI drum track
14 track by clicking on the yellow track number. Launch the clip,
by clicking on the track name and type Cmd-D. though. Yes, that’s right. We have a plan.

If you can only solo one item at a time, check your Record/Warp/ Click on your copied drum track and use Cmd-R or the Context
15 Launch Preferences and make sure Exclusive Solo is off.
16 Menu to rename the track ‘Sidechain’, then load the Compressor
Otherwise, temporarily override the preference setting by Cmd- ‘Brick Wall’ preset into your keyboard track after the EQ Three.
Clicking on each item.

Click on the small triangle in the Compressor title bar, turn on Bring the Compressor Threshold down to -50.0dB and set the
17 Sidechain and choose the sidechain drum track from the Audio
18 Attack to 0.30ms. Play your keyboard and sidechain clips and you
From box. Leave the other settings alone. should hear a new rhythmic pulse to your keyboard part.

keyboards and who understands musical theory, Live is a effects we’ve mentioned here. It’s about as novice-friendly
great tool for you anyway, especially with ‘alternative’ input as it gets, and it doesn’t fail to deliver once you get more
devices like Push and the forthcoming Novation knowledgeable. We’re making good progress through this
Launchpad Pro. project. Next time we’ll be adding our final element – a
But if you’re really confident or even conscious in terms speech sample – and processing that in a few interesting
of theory, Live can really give you a boost with the MIDI and different ways. MTF

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 MTF Technique Part 6: Recording and manipulating speech samples

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 6 On the disc

Recording and
Accompanying
project file included
on the DVD

manipulating
speech samples
Time to do some audio recording. Get mic’d up thorough and immediate routing options, so you can send
- Martin Delaney will show you how to add some and receive audio freely throughout the application.
There’s also the lovely Resampling input option which
speech samples to our ongoing Live project. provides post-master, post-everything, capture of Live’s

S
output, straight back into the Live set. Live works with
o far we’ve used MIDI and we’ve used existing audio samples at different sample rates, mono or stereo,
audio samples, but we haven’t covered how to and combines .aiff, .wav, and .mp3 files in the same
record our own audio material. Instead of project. Despite what some say, there are no audio quality
jumping in at the deep end and attempting to issues with Live; you’re more likely to experience problems
record fully-blown vocal or instrument takes, through user error – choosing the wrong Warp mode for
let’s make it easy on ourselves by recording a short speech time-stretched material or stretching a clip way beyond
sample that’ll also work inside our ongoing project. To be what any reasonable person would do (we’ll be coming
back to that later).

I record short speech Although Live isn’t an audio editor, it covers some of the
basics. Crop Sample, which we use in this tutorial,

samples into Session View discards unwanted portions at the start and end of an
audio clip; and Consolidate – available only in the

and anything longer goes Arrangement View – combines two or more audio clips to
create a new one. These functions are non-destructive –

into Arrangement View you’ll find the new samples in the sub-folders inside your
Live project folder.
You probably already have the necessary equipment to
honest, this is more frequently the type of recording I do record a voice sample – most computers have some kind
with Live anyway – capturing short snippets to use in the of built-in microphone. Then it’s a matter of scaling up
Session View. We aim to record one short sample, then use from there with a dedicated microphone and soundcard
it to create three different clips. Note, because this is such (as far as we’re concerned, a ‘soundcard’ and an ‘audio
a variable exercise, and I can’t hear what you’re doing from interface’ are the same thing). You can get excellent
here(!), I’ve included an ‘after’ voice track to make it clear affordable USB soundcards – look at the Focusrite
what kind of result you’re shooting for. Scarlett range – and a basic microphone for not much
It might not sway Pro Tools snobs, but Live does a great cash at all. There’s an ever-growing number of good USB
job of recording audio. It has the advantage of two views, microphones, too, although you lose the flexibility
so two distinct approaches. As a rule of thumb I record of a soundcard. There’s also
short clips like speech samples and effects into the
Session View, and anything like a full vocal track for a
song, rhythm guitar parts, and so on, goes into the
Arrangement View. In either View, you can record into
multiple tracks at the same time, and Live has very

FOCUS ON… THE MICROPHONE

It’s nice to use expensive microphones and recording hardware but
you should be willing to work with what you’ve got. It’s easier for us
because we’re recording a simple speech sample here so we’re not
tied up in the complexities of recording a sung vocal against backing
tracks and creating a headphone mix. What I will say is that unless
you have a very specific idea of what you want, you should always try
to get a clean voice recording, without distortion or baked-in effects.
Other than that limitation, anything from your computer’s built-in
microphone upwards will do fine.

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 Part 6: Recording and manipulating speech samples Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech

For this walkthrough we have to make some assumptions about Choose your soundcard in the Audio Input Device and Audio
01 your microphone and soundcard; read our main text for more
02 Output Device lists then close Preferences. Connect your
details. Connect your mic and soundcard, launch Live and go to the headphones to your soundcard (watch your volume) and turn your
Preferences Audio tab. monitor speakers off to avoid feedback.

Open our example Live set. Make sure you’re using the updated Use Alt-Cmd-I to open the In/Out View. This will display the audio
03 ‘part 6’ version and use the shortcut Cmd-T to create a new audio
04 routing options at the bottom of your tracks. Click on the Audio
track. We’re still working in the Session View, of course. From chooser to select your input – Ext. In.

Below that is a list of available audio inputs – click to view the Set up your microphone and mixer so you get a manageable
05 list. As you talk into your microphone, you’ll see a level displayed
06 volume level. Exactly how this works will again depend on what
alongside one of those inputs. That’s your microphone. Click it. equipment you’re using but please avoid red peaks anywhere in the
signal chain!

the Apogee One, which is unique because it has – or require – you to monitor somewhere else along the
connections for a microphone and instrument, but also signal chain. As I said, we’re not singing along to a backing
boasts a built-in microphone. It’s a cool tool for the track with this exercise, so frankly, accurate monitoring is
travelling musician. I’m not going further into this not so critical.
discussion now, because it’s a whole other tutorial… There are different ways to initiate recording: you can
Well, a whole other book, actually! use a mouse or trackpad, your controller, or even your
I’ve suggested that you set the track’s Monitor switch to iPhone. You can go into record while Live is already running
Auto, which means you’ll hear the mic input when you arm or enter record to start Live running. Record start and stop
the track, but bear in mind that your set-up might enable are quantised so that means if you’re using the default

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 MTF Technique Part 6: Recording and manipulating speech samples

MTF Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech (cont’d)

Set the track’s Monitor In switch to Auto, and arm the track – As you arm/disarm the track for recording you’ll see the square
07 click the small circular button in the mixer, it goes red. Stop your
08 stop buttons in each empty Session View clip slot (in that track)
other clips – you’re not singing along to anything for this one! transform into circles; that means you can record into these.

We’ll record a short phrase to use as a one-shot sample and a Press the space bar to stop Live when you’re finished. Note the
09 rhythmic loop. Click a slot button to start recording. Wait a beat or
10 clip length is cropped to the nearest bar. Disarm the track so you
two, then record yourself saying ‘Please be aware’. can’t record anything else by mistake and always save after recording.

Before you launch your other clips again, listen to your voice Double-click the clip to view the waveform if necessary. Let’s
11 recording on its own, checking for distortion and also checking
12 discard some of the silence around it. Position the loop brace
that you haven’t chopped the start or end off as it’s very easy to do. around the ‘keeper’ part and the start marker at the front of that.

global quantization of one bar, recording commences on The most important thing when recording is to avoid
the next bar. It’s important to remember this and not start overloading and distorting your input levels. It’s very ‘rock’
talking too soon, otherwise you lose the beginning of your to record to tape with everything in the red, and it sounds
sample. Record ending is also quantised which is great as cool, but sadly it stinks when you do it with digital
it gives you ‘pre-cut’ loops, rounded off to bars and more recording. Live has some great distortion effects, so why
likely to loop in sync with your other content straight off. not save that fun until later? If you’ve erred on the side of

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 Part 6: Recording and manipulating speech samples Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech (cont’d)

The Loop Brace is that bar above the audio waveform. You can Make sure the Loop Brace is an even bar length, though.
13 drag to reposition it and grab either end to change the length. FYI
14 Right-Click inside the area contained by the loop brace and
the Loop Brace dimensions and coordinates are MIDI-mappable. choose Crop Sample. Duplicate this clip to the slot below using Cmd-D.

Select the first clip. From the Sample View at the bottom of the Use Cmd-D to duplicate the second clip. Double-click above the
15 screen, deactivate Warp so it’ll play just once at its original
16 right end of the waveform to add a Warp marker. Grab it and drag
speed. Now you have a one-shot, plus a looping version. to the right, doubling the length of your original sample.

Make sure you adjust the length of the Loop Brace to Quantize the audio-click inside the waveform and type Cmd-U.
17 accommodate the stretched waveform. Experiment with Warp
18 Watch the waveform peaks snap to the grid; you’ll see Live inserts
modes – the difference between Beats and Complex is very noticeable yellow Warp markers to achieve this.
(but let’s stick with Beats).

caution and recorded at a low level, use the clip Gain slider vocals, which is why we’re doing it here. A bit of
to boost the volume. Do this while the clip’s playing, so you quantization also adds to the unreal effect, but it can also
can check for the distortion that arises if you go too far! make a looping speech sample sit more neatly on the beat.
We’re touching on Warping and audio quantization That’s it for now. I hope that over these six workshop parts
during our walkthrough; it’s fun to over-stretch audio I’ve given enough tips to inspire and help your music
samples and tweak the Warp modes; I can’t resist it with making – happy producing! MTF

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 MTF Feature A bluffer’s guide to EQ

MTF Feature EQ Guide

A BLUFFER’S
GUIDE TO EQ
This is what a boost in the highs
looks like. Our node is at about
5kHz, and we’ve got a very high
Q. Expect seriously snappy
snares here.

The first step in becoming a mix master is getting to grips with the
simplest of tools at your disposal: EQ. Rob Boffard shows you
how to bring balance to your musical force…

T
he Equaliser, or EQ, is the Tetris of audio effects. You’ll figure out how
it works in seconds, but it takes an age to master. No other effect, if
used subtly, can make such a dramatic difference to your sound. If you
know what you’re doing with an EQ it’ll make your mixes sound as if
they’ve popped out of a top-of-the-range studio. Conversely, there is no
other effect that, when mishandled, can screw up your mixes so badly. A heavy or
badly managed hand with EQ can wreck a good song.
Don’t stress, though. EQ may sound intimidating but in practice it’s not
difficult to get the hang of. Give us a few minutes with this guide and we’ll show
you exactly what you need to know about this powerful effect.

What’s the frequency?

Let’s start with the basics. Sounds have frequency, right? It’s the part of sound
that is measured in pitch. A high pitch, or high frequency, means that the sound
waves are packed closely together and hit your eardrum more frequently than
sounds with a lower pitch. A low frequency is the opposite, where sound waves
are spaced further apart. That means your eardrum hears those sounds as
low-pitched. If that sounds hard to handle, think of it this way: a violin has a
high-frequency sound; a bass drum has a low frequency.
An EQ enables you to boost or reduce those frequencies. You can make the

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 A bluffer’s guide to EQ Feature MTF

bass louder, the highs

higher. You can also cut
that bass, or remove
some of the high
frequencies so things
don’t get too sharp. In a
full song where you have
any number of different
sounds, all with their
own frequencies, this is
an exceedingly
important technique.
You’d be hard-pressed to
find a music session
that didn’t have some EQ Your basic paragraphic EQ. Note the individual nodes (each of them draggable), the frequencies along
in it somewhere. the top, and the decibels on the left.

Frequencies are
measured in Hertz (Hz), named for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who was the first to
Tech terms
identify electromagnetic waves. Humans can hear only a certain range of
frequencies, from as low as 20Hz to as high as about 20,000. Dogs, obviously, can FREQUENCY: The
vibrations in sound
hear much higher, but since they aren’t great music fans the 20-20,000 range is
that determine its
what you’ll see on most EQ displays. This range is known as the frequency pitch. You can also
spectrum. Again, instruments such as bass drums are down low, violins up high, use this as a distinct
the human voice somewhere in the middle. measurement – as in, it
Instruments can possess more than one frequency. Indeed they have ranges of has a low frequency, or a
their own. Think of a kick drum. Sure, you’ve got the big, bassy boom which will frequency of 50Hz.
show up at around 200Hz, but you’ve also got the ‘snap’ as the beater hits the
HERTZ: The unit used
surface, which registers much higher in the spectrum at around 2,5kHz to 4kHz. to measure frequencies.
What you’re trying to do is lower or raise the volume of these frequencies to Named for Heinrich
bring out, or reduce, a sound’s desired characteristics. Rudolf Hertz. Most EQs
Here’s a pro tip for you: when talking frequencies and EQ, don’t talk about go from 20 to 20,000Hz,
bass or treble. Talk about highs, mids and lows. and it’s not uncommon
to see the latter
abbreviated as 20kHz,
Revert to type or KiloHertz.
So what exactly are you going to see when you bring in your EQ? Well, that
depends. There are a few types of equalisation, some of which are more useful GAIN: Simplified,
than others, and it’s gain is volume. It can
worth going through be raised to boost a
frequency or lowered to
Instruments can have more
them all.
cut it. It’s measured in
First, you’ve got your
decibels, or dB.

than one frequency. Indeed

fixed EQ, the most basic
of all the types. Q: The width of the

they have ranges of their own

Essentially it gives you a space under an EQ
bunch of controls curve. No, we don’t
– knobs, usually – each know why it’s called
Q. Doesn’t matter.
set to a specific
You’ll want to pay close
frequency. You can’t change that frequency, but you can raise and lower the gain attention to it.
(read: volume) for each one.
Then you’ve got your graphic EQs. Instead of the few controls you’d get in the
fixed EQ you’ve now got dozens, usually appearing as faders instead of knobs.
Each one of them is still locked to a specific frequency and you can still raise and
lower the gain as before, but what this EQ does is enable you to create ‘curves’ by
setting the faders in increments. You usually see this sort of EQ on an old HiFi,
and frankly, they’re a pain to work with.
Paragraphic EQs are what you want. Now you don’t have fixed frequencies;
instead, your EQ display will have nodes, each of which can be dragged to any
frequency you want. You can raise or lower each node to change the gain, and
(this is the clever bit) adjust its ‘Q’ to change the shape of the curve. The lower
the Q, the more space there will be under your EQ curve, which means more
frequencies will be boosted or cut. It’ll look like a hump. Raise the Q, and you’ll
get a spike, with far fewer frequencies affected by the boost or cut.

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 MTF Feature A bluffer’s guide to EQ

When it comes down to it that’s all the controls

you ever need worry about with EQ: frequency, gain,
Q. Go try it out now. Load a track into your DAW and
start playing. Like Tetris, you’ll figure it out
straightaway. We promise.
OK, there are one or two more things to bear in
mind. Most of the time EQs will include what are
known as high- and low-pass filters. A high-pass
filter is a specific type of gain cut that removes all
frequencies below a certain point. In other words it
lets you eliminate the lows. The opposite is true for a
low-pass filter, which gets rid of the highs. This is
useful when you’re doing things such as EQing
vocals – with so few bass frequencies in them there’s
often no need to have any lows at all, and so a
high-pass filter will get rid of them for you. Handily,
this can also help eliminate background hum.
You also get shelving filters. Essentially they’re a
stripped-down version of the high- and low-pass A high-pass filter. Any and all frequencies under about 700Hz will be cut. This is very useful for
elements such as vocals or strings.
filters, which cut or boost the frequencies in far less
dramatic fashion.
Some EQs provide a subtle colour or warmth to have all sorts of other noises to play with. Sounds
the sound when used. It’s pretty cool. If you don’t share frequencies, they don’t exist in a vacuum. Your
want that then consider investing in a linear or kick drum and your bassline both have low
transparent EQ, which will do nothing but boost and frequencies, and when they combine one will mask
cut your frequencies without colouring your sound. the other. When your sounds start masking each
other you’ve got problems. You’ll end up with a
Make room muddy, disappointing mix.
So you’ve got your EQ. You’ve loaded it up, you How do you fix this? You use the EQ to carve out a
understand how Q and gain work, and you’re ready space for each sound. When your vocals start there
to go. What exactly do you do with it? shouldn’t be anything else dominating those
On an individual level, when applied to a specific, frequencies, so you can use your nifty paragraphic
solo’d sound, you’re going to use it to make things EQ on instruments that conflict with the vocal and
sharper. You’re going to use that EQ to take the sound lower the gain in their middle ranges.
from where it is to where you want it to be. You will Now, we can’t teach you how to do this. We can
boost the frequencies that bring out the sound’s best

The only way that you get

qualities and cut the ones that muddle it. A big,
booming bass drum will not suffer – indeed, will be

good at using EQ is by doing lots

improved – if you use a shelving filter to remove
some frequencies above, say, 15,000Hz.

and lots of mixing

But that’s not difficult. The tricky part is what
happens when you un-solo a sound because then you

teach you how it works but the only way you get
good at Tetris is by playing, and the only way you
get good at EQ is by doing lots of mixing. You need
to learn how different sounds work together and
which cuts and boosts you need to bring out their
best qualities. You need to listen to a sound –
really listen – and discover where its most
important frequencies are, as well as the ones
which you can cut.
That being said, there are a few principals to
abide by. Cut first, boost later – often, things can be
improved just by dropping the gain in a few places.
And be gentle. You don’t need big Q spikes; and if
you’re boosting or cutting over -3dB, then you’re
going too far.
Most of all, remember that EQ doesn’t exist in
isolation. You’re going to be using a whole whack of
See that greyed-out mountain range? It’s a frequency analyzer. It gives you a visual representation of
other tools to help you along, such as compression,
your sound, showing you the dominant frequencies – useful for EQ.
which we’ll deal with another time… MTF

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 MTF Technique A track from scratch part 1: Dubstep bass

Technique A track from scratch: Part 1

Dubstep bass
Liam O’Mullane and Christopher Pearson begin a massive tutorial to guide you through
the process of creating the harder edge side of this contemporary genre, their first point of
call being the fundamentals of bass design…

D
ubstep is a genre that’s morphed from its something original. It would be pointless to give you a full
dubbed-out form over the years and since On the disc how-to on today’s sound as the leading artists will have
splintered into two distinct camps. For the more moved on by the time you’ve learned your trade. Although
meditative and deeper experience, artists such today’s sound is of importance, do try to keep an open mind
Accompanying
as Burial, Phaeleh and Mala fly the flag, sticking example audio files
and fully explore our suggested practice in your own way.
to the genre’s original principles of a mix with depth, space included on the DVD This is key, as a lot of the best ideas and sounds will come
and general musicality. Over the years and more recently in from happy accidents and a pursuit for originality. So set
the mainstream, a louder and more aggressive influence your tempo to 140bpm and let’s begin by first defining the
has taken hold. The driving force behind this new breed of essential components for the dirtiest of basslines.
dubstep include Skrillex, Zomboy, Excision and Flux
Pavillion to name a few. Although terms like EDM and Bass: defined
brostep are often frowned upon due to their buzzword The word ‘bassline’ when used in bass music may differ to
nature, this is the musical style we are focussing on in this your own definition, so it’s important to understand what it
five-part feature. means in the context of a dubstep track. Although a sub
bass is used to pin various instruments and sounds
together – so they have an even sense of low-end weight

Set your tempo to 140bpm and – what people consider to be the bassline can be a large
range of musical, noisy, discordant and SFX sounds. If we

let’s explore the components of break down the elements that form to make a dirty
bassline, there are no set rules and this is why

the dirtiest of basslines experimentation is so important. Though less common in

use today, a single bass sound can be the singular feature
of a track, but this does require a huge amount of creative
Like any bass-orientated electronic genre, there are programming to give it the variation it needs to hold the
rules that apply across the board in terms of composition listener’s interest. The more common approach today is to
and production. These aspects will be highlighted when work between at least three separate sounds with
relevant, but our real aim here is to educate you on the contrasting timbres, then after
standard tools for crafting a heavy dubstep track, whilst
offering a variety of techniques you can use to create

FOCUS ON...GUIDE
DRUMS
Though we’re starting our track off
from bass-design onwards, it’s good
practice to get some basic drums in
the mix for a guide as you go. The basic
requirements are a kick and snare with
some form of cymbals/percussion to
add a further sense of rhythm.
Anything busier than this could be too
much information at this stage and
influence your choice of sounds, so
remember to try to keep it simple
Though your first drum sounds can be
sparse, they still need to be
appropriate for the genre. Keeping
things simple we’ve used a quick
double layering technique with an
acoustic sounding drum kit from BFD
edited to add a sense of space and
texture. We’ve then layered synth drum
sounds for that much needed weight
and impact using Tremor. Our hi-hat
has been chosen simply to be clean
and minimal. This is all we need to then
start creating our first bass elements.

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 A track from scratch part 1: Dubstep bass Technique MTF

MTF Step-by-Step Vowel bass foundation with FM synthesis

Not all FM synthesisers are equal and some techniques might

translate differently from one to the next. The fundamentals
however, are the same. Sytrus is one of our preferred options
because it allows control of individual partials (harmonic frequencies
above the fundamental).
Our first oscillator begins its life as a sine wave-based sub. Sines are a clean
01 source meaning frequency modulation is easy to hear and therefore control in
establishing an initial idea, use internal modulation
finer detail. The sine is pitched to E1 or 41.2034Hz – this will sound much higher when
and automation to twist and take their tone into
we apply frequency modulation. The second oscillator’s pitch is the same as the first,
different areas for maintaining listener interest. but slight detuning can be used to create movement.
Though dirty bass might be fierce and in your face, a
constant barrage of a singular distorted synth will lose
the listener’s interest quite quickly through monotony.
Bass design is about building the right sounds, but
before you lay down a single note, you need to be
thinking ahead for how you’ll create bass dynamics.

Dynamics
When designing a bass sound, asides from the technical
starting points we’ll discuss next, be mindful of your
options for twisting and turning a sound. When
balancing parameters of a synth or subsequent creative
audio processing, take note of parameters that create
either a subtle or severe timbre shift. These can then be
either internally modulated within your synth or
sampler so they respond to MIDI note information as
you play, or you can program them within your
sequencer through automation or MIDI CC data. Our second oscillator is set to modulate the frequency of the first oscillator
02 using a triangle wave. This imposes new harmonics which thicken up the sine
wave. If you can control oscillator partials, raise the 32nd to add a new fifth octave

The more common pitch to the triangle’s shape. Otherwise, add a 3rd triangle oscillator up by five octaves
to modulate the 2nd.

approach now is to use

at least three sounds
for you bass
In the interests of workflow, make use of macro
options within the instrument itself or your DAW so
multiple parameters can be controlled at once. If you
don’t decide on the best parameters to modify, or group
them up in this way from the start, you’ll soon find
yourself swamped with confusing movement data. This
will always cause problems when it comes to
arrangement and further editing of your track, so do treat
this as an essential part of the initial creative process.
Moving the modulation amount for the second oscillator will now create a basic
As the parameter combinations of synths and audio 03 vowel sound. Next add another oscillator to create high information for a sense
effects are infinite, let’s look at the standard options we
of air. Pitch a different oscillator (we’ve used a square) up by 64 semi-tones and add
always consider when creating a bassline sequence. modulation depth to taste.
The first choice is what register you want a sound to live
in. Even though the sub bass may stay in the same
frequency area, a lot of dynamics can be created by

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 MTF Technique A track from scratch part 1: Dubstep bass

synthesis are used so much in today’s production for

dirty-sounding bass. Uneven clusters of harmonic
content that are static or move over time are all used
against each other to create the type of textures the
older generation often dismiss as noise. But it’s this
contrast of tuned and none-tuned sounds that are
essential in creating aggression, abrasion and a
generally up-front energy that still retains a sense of
movement and depth.

FM design
To start with a solid foundation, we use a sine wave
based oscillator. A pure sinusoidal waveform is the
most clean, and therefore most powerful wave we
can create and being infinitely smooth, it has nothing
Bass Processing uniqueness in character. This allowed us to firm but its fundamental frequency to impart. The sub is
There are two different categories you can put up certain areas of the frequency spectrum and
audio processing into when it comes to bass: add harmonic information per-band or mid and essential as it carries the weight of the track and the
creative and mixing. Creative processing can be side plane as required. For EQ balancing you frequencies you want from sub woofers to rattle the
a fundamental part of a sound or punched in on shouldn’t need to do any major removal work to audience’s nose cartilage.
occasion to create a timbre shift for dynamics remove brash frequencies. If you’ve got too much
and variation. Amplitude modulation is a popular grit, go back to source and find what element of On its own, a sub instrument can be nice but our
choice at the moment and can be achieved your synth or plug-in chain is creating it and tone examples throughout the article contain sub, mid and
through a tremolo effect or LFO controlling a it down!
synth’s amplitude. At slower rates you’ll hear a Wherever possible we like to group ‘types’ of
high range information. Sometimes we’ll achieve each
detectable rhythm, but get the rate above 20Hz sound together. Not just for aesthetics and bass instrument with more than one layered source, but
and you’ll hear a distortion that creates edge housekeeping but mainly to give groups of it’s entirely possible to create large and complex
with a soft characteristic sounds their own identity and colour in the mix
As long as you’re processing the mid to high to help them stand out as a unit. For example, patches within a single synthesizer. In this particular
frequency part of your bass sounds (i.e. not all bass sounds will go to a bass group and genre, FM synthesis seems to be the main staple for
processing the sub-bass) the options for creative be compressed, EQ’d and mastered as a unit.
processing are endless. Dry/Wet reverb control, This solidifies its range and defines its space,
strong phasing, guitar distortion and glitch-like allowing other groups to cut through around
effects are tools which feature in dubstep on a these main bass elements.
regular basis. So the more you experiment with Bear in mind that it’s always good practice to
the less common options, the better. pick out similar sounds. So rather than grouping
Mix processing involves the use of EQs and everything musical to a single ‘music’ group,
dynamics processing to balance each sound to think about dividing them by their transient and
fit comfortably within the track. We generally timbre nature. For example, we wouldn’t group
used multi-band processing that also includes pads and guitars together as they’re so different
an element of saturation. FabFilter’s Saturn, sonically. If picked instruments are grouped, we
Image-Line’s Maximus and iZotope’s Alloy 2 can then accentuate frequencies that are plucky
are good examples for their sonic quality and with EQ and add transient processing if required.

Experiment with different processing on your grouped bass sounds

The sub is essential as it

to fill or create space to all sounds as a whole. This will help unify
them and put them in their own space within the mix.

carries the weight of the track

and frequencies you want…
alternating between a low- and high-pitched
instrument. For instance, one sound can be very
low-end orientated which leaves space in the mids and
top-end of the mix. Another sound can have lots of mid
and top info so it’s a fuller-sounding part and the third
sound could be scooped in the mids by being a sub with
a thin sound that plays towards the top-end of the mix
– very much akin to classical music.
The nature of each sound’s frequency content is
another element to explore for dynamics. Fundamental
waveforms – sine, triangle and saw waves – are pure,
slightly and very harmonically-based respectively. The
harmonics are even so they create a pleasant, defined
musical pitch. Square waves also carry pitch clearly, but
they consist of odd harmonics which means they sound
big and hollow. These waveforms can be used in modern
When experimenting with audio processing, or any onboard synth
dubstep, but they will be a point of contrast against
modulation, it’s worth trialling a sound to see if it works better when
other, much less musical components. These re-sampled into a sampler or kept live. Playback speed alters when
instruments are a counterpart by being non-musical playing a sample higher or lower and this adds a character of its own
to a bass idea.
and noise like. This is a big reason why FM and additive

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 A track from scratch part 1: Dubstep bass Technique MTF

Re-sampling and Slip Editing

A good way to get creative with an existing idea is to re-work it as
a new sample. This can be done in various ways depending on the
tools available in your DAW. All DAWs can bounce audio and this is
the simplest way to re-sample. Once bounced, you can chop and
re-edit the sample, or use slip editing to move the start position of
the audio within the audio clip. This changes the content but the Though we’re focussing on FM synthesis for most of our bass design, additive synthesis is a great option
clip itself stays in place on the grid. This is good way to encounter for different textures. It allows complex waveforms to be built from many sine waves just as real sounds
happy accidents and is most commonly used on long pieces of are in the natural world. But it’s the unique approach it takes to synthesizing sounds and its interface that
audio recorded when jamming with a synth and its parameters. will encourage unique results.

bass creation. Because of how FM synthesis works, it Food for thought

becomes very simple to create complex, warped In this first instalment, we’ve covered the very essence
sounds. In fact, even when basses are created in other of what this genre is about – bass! You should have the
types of synthesizers, it’s usually an FM technique that tools and basic understanding of FM synthesis to
will make the sound fit the genre. For instance, NI’s explore or use to try and mimic our example sounds. You
Massive, although subtractive, uses phase modulation can explore different styles of guide drums at this stage
to create similar-sounding effects. to help expose new potential vibes, but let’s not get too
committed at this stage. After all, we haven’t explored
musicality or thought about song structure and

FM synthesis allows us to
flexibility is a gift at this stage in the process. We’ll next
explore where our bass ideas can go while also

create warped tones – a sine

designing our principle drum sound. MTF

wave adds more harmonics…

Turn over the page for part 2 of Liam and Christopher’s
dubstep guide.

FM Synthesis allows us to create very warped tones

by using oscillators to modulate other oscillators. A sine
wave set to modulate another will impart new even
harmonics which in turn create a new waveform at the
synth’s output. But detuning the modulating oscillator,
or changing its wave type, it will venture into noisy and
unpleasant timbres. Sweeping the amount of
modulation being applied is key to achieving the FM
bass sound used countless times in this genre. So be
sure to explore tuning, waveform choice, waveform
phase and additional oscillator routing to move away
from the norm.
For example, a few of our bass sounds use Image-
Line’s Sytrus with internal modulation amounts being
used for movement. After exploring some strong-
sounding parameters to automate, we then mapped
Musical keys side of this, going too high can leave your track
them across an X/Y controller within the synth. These Due to the sound-design biased nature of the lacking in any low impact information when
X/Y parameters are then mapped to our host software more extreme end of dubstep, musical keys compared to other music in the mix. Also bear
as two automation lanes to keep life simple. To find the are difficult to decipher and follow. Pitching in mind that sound systems are EQ’d to sound
sounds, re-sampling them, pitch-bending etc pleasant for their environment and genre; boosts
sweet spots of where the X and Y best overlap, we can result in the end result, often venturing into and cuts will be applied in the expected sub
started with random automation data, then fine tuned non-western scales and microtuning. But an area, kicks, snares and even where cymbals are
important factor is the choice of root notes expected to fall. For all of these reasons, bass
the automation until we achieved a groove and that you base your sub bass around and its genre artists have naturally fallen into using the
interesting timbre shift against our varied drum track. closest harmonics. keys of around E, F and G.
To underpin an FM instrument with a clean sine Most club sound systems have a bass roll-off You can test this phenomena by running
of around 40Hz which means pitching your sub reference tracks through a spectrum analyser
wave to emphasise bass, we can simply enable another bass any lower than this can cause a less than to study where their keys lie. Even individual
operator, set to sine and keep it modulation free. This universal translation from one venue to the next. sounds are becoming standardised to frequency
means we have all elements of the sound available to In some cases this means you’ll hear no sub at all so mixes tend to have a unified and equally
if your choice of key is too low. On the opposite musical sound.
play in one instrument.

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