Hey there, I have to be brief because I’m just leaving the studio to do yoga (down the hall but I wanted to share an awesome Ableton Live feature that I’ve been using almost every time I work on a Live project now. This my friends is a quick tutorial on linked and unlinked region loops within Ableton Live. I’m using Live 8, but this will apply to older versions, or just check out the demo free on the Ableton site.
Click to enlarge
Normally when you click the little “e” in the bottom left of the clip window, you are taken to the clip envelopes page. This is really neat, because rather than deal with all the envelopes (read: all the automation) in the arrangement view, this can set up automation in the session view. It also helps when we want a repeating and looping modulation on a clip.
In the image above I have a simple kick drum pattern set up. Generally on the bass track I would set up volume automation to simulate the effect of a side chain compressor with a few advantages.
First, it takes up zero cpu.
If you think about that, you could have dozens of audio clips playing with all sorts of crazy modulation playing LIVE. Zero fear of a plugin locking up a live show or any of that junk. All you would have is a simple volume automation on a white noise clip to make it pulse to the beat. Actually, don’t do that, I’m going to do that!
Second, you only have to draw it once per clip, only one curve! See image below for an unlinked region loop
Click to enlarge!
If you “unlink” the region/loop button, and drag the loop brace to the first perfect loop you will notice it replaying the automation curve you drew once, on top of every consecutive beat. I hope I’ve explained this clearly and hopefully it helps someone save some time! I bet a video capture tutorial would have been more clear.
Last night I submitted my remix for Moguai’s competition with Novation, Ableton, Soundcloud and mau5trap. I may later post a Remix Tutorial like I did with my other remix tutorials. I went through a few different creative stages to create this remix and it might make an interesting topic.
This is the sort of thing I have been waiting to see. Functionally it is a replica of many of the things that the Lemur is trying to offer, but for a much smaller price.
The video below is a demo of the LiveControl application for the iPod and iPad, using TouchOSC.
It allows complete auto-mapping of Ableton Live to TouchOSC.
I just finished making a tutorial video that teaches how to use Ableton Live and its plugins as an instrument within Apple‘s Logic Pro 9. This is acomplished using the ReWire protocol (link to wikipedia description) to stream audio and timing information between the two programs.
Make sure to watch the video fullscreen and also make sure you are playing it in HD if your machine is capable.
A few weeks ago I made a remix of a song by a band that I’ve been a really big fan of for a couple years, Vibrasphere. You can check out the link above to get caught up with the song I’m about to describe and break down.
In this post I’m going to explain how I put together this arrangement, as well as some details on how I’m configuring Ableton Live to play around with the samples before I get to the arrangement stage.
I save a lot of time by playing around with musical ideas in the Session View before commiting myself down to an arragement. After I create this arrangement I usually don’t need to spend more than an hour or two making automation changes and other mixing since I’ve been able to organize so much ahead of time.
If you haven’t heard the original song, you should check out this YouTube video of Wasteland:
Stems vs. Individual Samples:
All of the remix parts that I used can be purchased at the Vibrasphere music store for $6.80 US. I bought a whole pack of them because I think this band is really great! The samples are really well sliced, unlike some remix packs that I have bought. Generally what producers provide is a “stem” of all or some of the tracks but Vibrasphere has provided all the samples in their original form. In cases where effects have been applied, they have provided both a wet (effected) and dry version of the sound. For those of you not familiar with what a stem is I have provided a definition from Sound on Sound below. You can always find a handy list of technical definitions at the Sound on Sound Glossary.
STEMS: When mixing complex audio material it is often useful to divide the tracks into related sections and mix those sections separately before combining the whole. In mixing film soundtracks, the material would often be grouped as a dialogue stem, a music stem, an effects stem and so on. Each stem might be mono, stereo or multichannel, as appropriate to the situation. In music mixing, stems might be used for the rhythm section, backline instruments, frontline instruments, backing vocals, lead vocals and effects — or any other combination that suited the particular project.
The main disadvantage with stems is low versatility. If there are multiple layers that make up a synth part and they are mixed down into a single stem there is no way to separate these parts for editing later on. Also, I often notice that producers mix effects, such as reverb and delay, with stems making one entire drum or vocal track. This limits your creative options unless you recreate and re-synthesize the sound from scratch. With this project I was able to re-synthesize the individual vocal samples which allows much more freedom compared to working with a single vocal stem.
This is the mixer layout I used in Ableton.
Session View and saving time:
Recently I began working with a standard arrangement that I borrowed from JazzMutant. While I don’t own any of their products (Lemur or Dexter) I was interested to see what their Max4Live code looked like since I was interested in an OSC project a while back. It wasn’t very useful from that standpoint since the code was impossible for me to decipher, but I did get an fantastic layout for most “electronic” based songs that I have begun using to layout ideas in a playable format.
This basic layout has tracks for the following drum sounds: Kick, Clap, Hats, and additional Perc. There is a track for bass and four melody tracks that can play any of the synth sounds that I might want to play. I also have a “steam” channel that is always sending some of its signal to sends A & B, a reverb and delay. This steam track provides a broadband hiss (like . . . steam) that I can use at any point to provide a transition sound. This is such a great component of the set that I often use it when DJing with Live since it provides a nice sound and it is very light on the CPU (but big on the dance floor!).
Session View
I have begun to make use of Scenes within Live so that I have a playable version of the song. This makes adding compatible parts really simple since I can just record the changes in the Session view and work with new sounds until something clicks. Check out the photo to see what the Session view looked like with my samples loaded in.
Using the Slice to New MIDI Track command to chop up the vocal
Vocal Sample as point of interest:
I really wanted to work with the vocal sample, and usually to do this I would load up the sample in another audio application and start applying effects and edits. This time, rather than destructively edit the original sample, I loaded the sample into the Sampler instrument in Live so that I could re-edit the pattern using MIDI. This is easy to do with the “Slice to MIDI” operation that you can apply to any audio clip. Using the 16th note preset it automatically creates 16 slices for every bar. You can then individually manipulate the MIDI notes to re-arrange the playback. I also applied some distortion and EQ effects on certain slices. This is what provides the variation from the original vocal theme.
I would love to hear your comments, thanks for reading!
Edited by Alex Massaad from sources at MTV (who cannot write good copy to save their life)
No one was prepared for Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee to take the stage with Canadian sensation Deadmau5 to close out the night. The two began the set with a treat fans have come to love WMC for, the debut of a brand-new song (so new that it’s still untitled!). Lee departed after this initial song, and the ‘Mau5 launched into an hour and 40 minutes of hits, including his own mix of Rage Against the Machine, “Strobe” and his biggest fan favorite “Ghosts ‘N Stuff” (featuring Rob Swire). Deadmau5 had the crowd in a fit of laughter when he killed the music and emitted the death sound effect from “Super Mario Brothers.” Game over!
When we started working on Live, and finally showed a first Version in 2001, the big music software companies did not take us very serious. “A laptop on stage? You must be crazy!” or “This interface looks horrible!” were reactions we got often. However, we are now the most successful music software company out there, with an incredible number of customers all over the world, and our software massively changed the way electronic music is created and performed.
It became very easy to make music. And this is bad. Everyone can make a boring uninspired piece of music in a lunch break, and it will sound good and ‘professional’. It became really very, very easy to make music with our software. And this is great! Because it not only allows highly musical people with limited budget to create fantastic and complex music, it also allows those folks like me to dive deeper into the creation and exploration of music, sound and structure than ever before. I never spent less time thinking of technology and more time making music with it. Well, apart from my engagement with the company.
I’ve been listening to this for a long time now, and I really love this song. While this zippyshare download isn’t a release quality link, it does allow me to play this song out to more people who can love it too via iTunes or Ableton!
but I wanted to share an awesome Ableton Live feature that I’ve been using almost every time I work on a Live project now. This my friends is a quick tutorial on linked and unlinked region loops within Ableton Live. I’m using Live 8, but this will apply to older versions, or just check out the demo free on the Ableton site.
