Transcript
Intro to Ableton Live: by Baconhanger Part 1. Basic navigation (crash course): for additional info, consult google/youtube :p TAB goes between the arrange window and the mixer Arannge window: the top is your tap/tempo/metronome. time signature. navigation (play stop rec), playback quantization (defaut says "1 bar" **set this to 1/16**), pen tool, loop mode, keyboard as midi button. to the left is ableton instruments/midi effects/effects. 3rd party vsts (set your folder in preferences). folders 1, 2, and 3 are for browsing your audio file folders. all the arrows minimize. the bottom is for audio files/midi piano roll. there is also a tab at the bottom right that is your effects chain. if you are using a midi instrument, it will be at the beginning of the effect chain found in this tab. to the right are the audio, midi, return, and master channels. in each channel, you have 2 drop down boxes. the top is the effect, the bottom is the parameter. the yellow numbered box is the channel on button, the orange numbered box is track volume. white box labeled C (for center) is panning. the 2 (normally) small white boxes that reads "inf" is the sends to the return channels (A and B). S is solo, and then there is a track arm record button, and a volume meter. the vertical/horizontal bars in circles in the top right corner is the same as your TAB key... it switches between mixer and arrange windows. In the middle, you're looking at the grid. the time in minutes/seconds are along the bottom. and the measure is at the top. also along the top you'll see a long bar across the top... this is an overview of your whole track. clicking on this will take you to any position in the track quickly (but try NOT to touch it unless you HAVE TO). if you mouse just below that, and above the measure numbers, you'll that the cursor changed into a magnifying glass. make sure you're in the negative space, click. hold. drag up and down to zoom in... try zooming far in, and far out. mouse just below the measure numbers and you'll see the cursor change to a speaker. this means "play from this point". there are some brackets up there, and that's for looping sections of your arrangement. The mixer window: The mixer (much like the effect chains) go from LEFT TO RIGHT. go to the bottom right, and you'll see a few circles named I/O (inputs/outputs), S/R (sends and returns), M (mixer), D (track delay), and X (cross fader). MAKE SURE THESE ARE ALL YELLOW/HIGHLIGHTED. Audio channel : (top down)... track title. scenes (if interested, google). Audio from dropdown (will list all channels), stereo/mono, monitor (more on that later), audio to (default to master). send amount A and B. panning. volume. track on. solo. track arm (record). track delay. crossfader assign (A/B).
Midi Channel: track name. scenes. midi from. midi channel. monitor. midi to. track on. solo. arm. track delay. Return channel: audio to. send amount. pan. volume. track on. solo. track delay. xfader A/B. Master channel: track name (master, duh) play all scenes 1xx. stop clips. cue out. master out. pre/post fades for return tracks. pan. volume. cue. cue solo. track delay. xfader. Just be aware of where these are located... we'll get more into functionality as we get deeper into this.
Part 2 Audio + Midi Audio clips/tracks TAB over to the grid, and then go over to the left and locate your sample folder. at the bottom is a preview, so as you're USING THE ARROW KEYS to go up and down, you can hear each sample if the blue headphone icon is highlighted. when you use the right and left arrow keys, they open and close folders... making browsing quick. once you find something you like, drag and drop it into an audio track. click on the clip and you will see the waveform appear at the bottom of the screen. if it is automatically warped, WARP will be highlighted. this is more or less an estimated guess of bpm and meter based on where the transients are located in the waveform and ableton tries to quantize it to the grid for you. turning the warp off, will bring the sample to it's original length and pitch. in the box labeled "sample", besides warping, mainly focus on the following: Rev (reverse), transpose (pitch), the sample volume. down in the bottom left corner there's an E. that is envelopes. when you click on it, you'll see transpose, volume, pan. those are the main 3 to mess with, but there's also drop down menus for more options, once you've added more effects to the chain. mousing above the waveform and using your scroll wheel, you can see +48 to 48 for transpose (pitch). like the grid above you can also zoom in the exact same way here and get in close, precise. when you transpose with warp off, the time duration of the loop will change. 12 doubles the length, 24 quadruples the length. opposite if you pitch it up, it shrinks! let's say, for shit's and giggles sakes, you throw an amen break in there. you can see where each hit is. warping (try this with simple drum loops at first to get the hang of it) double click just above the waveform where you see the greyed arrows sitting, and then drag each hit to match up EXACTLY on beat. (make sure you zoom way the fuck and get spot on for best results). this will sync up to your master tempo. when you look at the box labeled "seg. bpm" this says "at this tempo, this loop will be it's original bpm". so if you hit the :2 and *2, you can speed up or slow down the loop by changing that seg.bpm number. below that is various warping methods. it's best you just play around with those, because the results are nearly instantaneous if you stretch the waveform out enough (seg.bpm 400+)
so try this: highlight one drum hit on the grid. hit cntrl/cmd E to separate the sound from the rest of the waveform (region). drag it out somewhere on it's own so you have room to stretch it out... turn the warp off. transpose 48. turn warp on. transpose 0. warp type: texture. and then just play with grain size. (make sure you have your start arrow/loop points set so you can hit spacebar and preview it as you're fine tuning). once that is set, try going to the envelopes section and drawing in some lines in the transposing (bends)... want to sync beats up without warping? do it all manually on the grid. zoom way in on your waveform. using ctrl/cmd E you can add precise slices at the beginning of each transient. after each note/hit is sliced, simply move those slices where they need to be on the grid. getting weird pauses in between notes? add a dash of reverb with short decay time that turns on for the decay and the silent gap, and off during the attack. to combine the clips back into one clip... highlight a section and use ctrl/cmd J to join/consolidate MIDI to create a midi clip, highlight how long you want the clip to be on the grid, on a midi track. SHIFT ctrl/cmd M, creates a clip. double click the clip, the piano roll pops up. double click to make a note, double click a note to erase it. ctrl/cmd drag, copies. there are a few envelopes for midi clips, but they don't work on all plugins. midi is information. the piano roll is the beginning of the midi chain. it tells the instrument what note, how loud, how long. so your midi effects are based on these. arpeggiator, chord, pitch, random, scale are all based on "what note". velocity and note length are "how loud" and "how long" so in the effect chain, everything goes from left to right. on a midi channel, it will be in order, midi effect, midi instrument, audio effect. you want to automate the knobs? in the little midi instrument box in the chain, there's 3 buttons on the top left. on/off. view parameters... and open midi instrument window. some parameters may already be set, but if not, hit configure and move the knob manually. it should show up. then go to the arrange window to the midi track. in the drop box, select the midi instrument in the top box, and the parameter in the bottom, and then draw the line automation on the grid. there's 2 types of tools for drawing. the line tool or the pen tool. the pen tool will draw a straight line horizontally depending on grid size (how close/far you are zoomed in), pen tools i usually use for on/off functions. when using the line tool, double click to create a start point, an end point, and then change the parameters in between those points. to erase quickly, click a point and hold shift and drag. or simply double click a point. vst's are like little programs, and the more programs you have running at once, the harder your computer has to work. once you have your midi set in place, convert it into an audio file. The quickest and easiest way is the following: create a new AUDIO track (ctrl/cmd T) TAB to mixer, in the new track, select audio from (midi track name), arm the audio track, go back to the grid, go back to where you want to start recording. hit record at the top of the screen, and play... when done, hit stop, and your midi is now audio. now delete the midi instrument. now you can take the midi clip further by manipulating it using the slicing and warping methods used earlier. now think before you do this! once you record the audio, whatever effects are in there, are in there! you might actually want to keep the midi sound natural and then add the effects later after you have it converted!
Part 3 MIXING for the best possible result, it's best to have monitors. i know not everyone can afford them, but you should consider that an investment if you are serious about production. for less than $300 you can get a pair of ACTIVE monitors, i highly suggest it. if not, you MIGHT be able to get away with mixing in headphones, but i wouldn't 100% trust them. the best thing to do is try to find a balance. listen in the car, on a shitty boom box, headphones, earbuds, etc. and then try to take note of how it sounds and what you may be able to do to correct your mix. is one sound too loud? too much/not enough low end? write it down if you can while listening... also, when you mix... mix at conversation level or lower... if you can hear everything in your mix at a low volume level, it's going to sound excellent when you crank it up. but if you mix loud, chances are your listener will have to listen to it loud too... so mix at a quiet volume, your neighbors will thank you, your listeners will than you, and you'll be amazed by how awesome it sounds in the end. also with volume levels... each layer you add to the mix adds more level at the master, so keep everything at a relatively LOW volume. if you can't hear something in the mix, and you have the instinct to grab the fader for that one sound and crank it up... DONT DO THAT! bring other things that are loud in your mix down in volume! PANNING i know this is a silly knob that people tend to overlook, but it's more useful than you think. think about where drums are placed when you sit behind a drum kit... pan accordingly. maybe the bass is in the middle and you have 2 guitar sounds on the right and left that are slightly different. maybe you want to widen out a sound by duplicating the track and pan one to 3 oclock and one to 9 oclock. or you want to give certain sounds movement, going from right to center to left to center to right... of if there's a conversation between 2 people in an audio sample and you pan them out to sound like one is standing to your left and one is on your right. think about the sounds around you... they aren't all dead center. that would be boring wouldn't it? so in your mix, imagine in this space you create, where everything is located from the listener's perspective? where is the listener in this space? behind the drums (drummer perspective) or in front of the drums (audience perspective). this will give life to your final product, and also helps certain sounds stick out more in the mix so you have less use for eq and compression... because eq and compression should be used in such a way that you don't want it to be noticed... LIMITING/COMPRESSION i'm not going to get too deep into this, so if you need more info, do some research. i'll give a half assed breakdown of what i basically use these for... the limiter in ableton, i simply just drag and drop from my plugin folder straight to the master channel. this is just "insurance" ... so that i know my master channel will NEVER be in the red. what a limiter does, is limits how loud something can be. when the sound passes through and gets too loud, the limiter says NOPE, and only lets the set limit pass through... but what happens to the rest of the volume that it cuts off? say it's a sine wave... nice and round... and you give the whole thing a flat top haircut like it's about to go into the army... it basically turns the sine into a square! ... this is the result of clipping. so, just make sure everything is brought down in volume so it doesn't have to do it's job!
compressors are dynamics processors (so are limiters). but how i like to think of compressors is, it balances out the input and output of the sound like an old school scale or balance beams or something. the main things i mess with are the threshold fader and the output fader... sure you can toy with the ratios, but until you fully understand what that means, i'd just focus on threshold and output, or just try not to use the compressor at all. the only time i use the compressor is when i want to bring something up in volume that is kinda quiet, or has quiet parts and loud parts and i want to balance out the levels to make them more uniform. so i drop the threshold just below where the sounds peak. you'll see GR (gain reduction) pop on and off with the peaks... it's compressing. now bring the output fader up (but not in the red). the best way (i think) to use a compressor is what's called "parallel compression" ... to do this, we're gonna create a parallel effect chain. from ableton's effects, drop an audio effect rack before the compressor in the chain. to the left of the audio effect rack there's 3 circles, the top one with horizontal bars is for the parallel chains. click that. there will be a section open that should say by default "drop audio effects here" ... drop your compressor in there. you also need another parallel chain... so for an example, just drop another compressor in on another chain, but then deleting it out, leaving the chain empty. so... now you have a "wet" chain with compression on it... and a "dry" chain with no compression on it... now you'll see for the chains there are volume amounts for each. have your dry chain at normal volume level, and with the wet channel, start at 0 volume and bring it up until you can hear it come in... and get louder. this is mainly used on drums... to make them sound fatter...
USE OF FILTERS AND EQ think about your sounds, and their frequency content. where is the fundamental frequency of the sound, or the lowest pitch... is the sound rich with harmonics/overtones? does it have a lot of low end? is the sound high in pitch? take a good look at this for a few minutes http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm now think about how each individual sound relates to another, in terms of frequency/pitch the easiest example i can give is the relationship between the kick drum and a bass note. the kick drum has 2 main elements to it's frequency content... the low end thud, and the high end pop. in this order in your effects chain (after/to the right of your other effects) auto filter (high pass), 8 band eq, auto filter (low pass) high pass set to just below the thud, low pass filter set just above the pop use the 8 band eq (using notch filters) to cut away bits of the frequency content IN THE MIDDLE/MIDRANGE to take out the stuff you don't need/can't really hear or to take out some of the mud... this leaves a gap in the spectrum, to leave room for your other sounds to pop through the mix. now listen to the kick and bass together... the kick still isn't punchy enough... of course not! you gotta carve away at that too! where did the thud from your kick peak at? do you remember? check your high pass filter at the beginning of your chain for the kick...
now set up the same kind of chain on your bass ... MINUS the high pass in the front (you want low end) take your first notch filter in the 8 band eq, locate where the thud from your kick is, and knock it down... where you cut that frequency out, your thud should pop out more... try widening the Q to make some more room (but not enough to effect the bass! ... use as tight as a Q as possible) now think about this... the main pitch you recognize is the fundamental... everything above that is just harmonics/overtones. so when you use notch filters with high Q on overtones, you aren't cutting parts of the sound that determine pitch, so it's a little more forgiving. BUT you still want to carve out chunks where needed to make room for the other sounds in the mix. so when choosing samples, what instruments to use... think in terms of high/mid/low. bring your synth line up an octave instead of having it the same as your bassline, and then you can high pass up further than your bass sound is... giving it's own place to sit in the mix.
various editing, processing, aesthetic techniques BREAK EDITING (crash course) again, back with the amen sample (but i would HIGHLY suggest you use something else!) drag and drop break into an audio track, and separate the regions. create 4 audio tracks (or one for each separate sound). 1.kick 2.snare 3. hat 4.crash tab to mixer, select "sends only" in the AUDIO TO dropbox. turn send knobs 100% on A. place kicks and snares FIRST. then fill in the blank spots with hats, crash... to get that "rolling" sound... take your snare and hat and bring the volume level 3 to 6 db (for the audio clip, not the channel) and alternate between the 2 using 8th notes or smaller. NEXT, try unconventional warping techniques described above, in the section about warping... for individual hits. transpose single hits. consolidate pieces and then use the transpose envelope for the section. drop an auto filter in the effect chain and automate the frequency on various filter settings (high pass, low pass, band pass, band reject). to get that buzzy kinda feel... either timestrech AND warp, or duplicate TINY sections from the attack of the hit... and filter that in or out. pan shit around... use various other effects (set in off position, only turned ON when you want them on)... advantages to separating your 1 shots: *can layer the hits *can add eq, filters, effects to JUST ONE hit instead of the whole kit *effect the whole kit in the return channel... (volume fade for the kit instead of multiple tracks)
FILTER/EQ your single hits! kick: high pass just below the thump, this allows room for your bass to pop out! (and alternately with the bass, use a notch filter to cut the same point your thump from the kick is hitting on, allowing your kick to pop out from your bass) negative eq (cutting instead of boosting notch filters) all of the unwanted frequencies between the thump and the "snap" of the hit... (like with the relationship of bass to kick, you want to take out the primary frequencies your other sounds hit on) low pass just ABOVE the snap, or attack of the kick... leaving room for the hats to come in should be panned center snare: high pass until you hear it take effect and nudge it back a hair. negative eq the midrange, allowing your other sounds to pop through. low pass the unneeded crap, just the opposite way you cut out the unneeded lows. IF YOU ADD REVERB, reverb should go to the LEFT... so you eq the the reverb, not add reverb to your eq'ed stuff (which kinda defeats the purpose of even eq'ing in the first place)... you should have this panned either at 10'oclock or 2'oclock (drummer perspective/audience perspective) hats/crashes: same shit... high pass all the way up until you can hear it, then bring it back just below. leaving the high end is fine, so no real need to low pass. you may have to use negative eq, depending. hats are usually panned the same as the snare, and the more various crashes you use, you can space them out in the stereo field, giving them a sense of space. return channel: volume fades in/out. effects on the whole kit.
GRID RESOLUTION
you want a high grid resolution! this will give you more beats per "bar"... i put "bar" in quotations for this reason... I.E. you want a 120bpm FEEL... set the bpm to 240 to double your grid resolution. 1 bar at 120, would be 1/2 bar at 240. so... 2 bars at 120 = 1 bar at 240. quarter note at 120 would be an 8th note at 240 ... OR quadruple your grid resolution ... 120 feel = 480. 1 bar at 120 = 1/4 bar at 480... OR 4 bars at 120 = 1 bar at 480. MORE BEATS PER SECOND! the FEEL is all in the ARRANGEMENT... you CAN write speedcore at 50bpm IF YOU WANT... (use smaller notes ... 1/64)
COMMON SHORTCUTS! to speed up workflow, i suggest you learn these as soon as possible, and use them instead of using the mouse for these functions! i'm going to use windows commands... those of you who use MAC, substitute cntrl with cmd. ctrl A select all ctrl B pen tool ctrl C copy ctrl D duplicate shift ctrl D dupliate time shift alt D duplicate automation ctrl E separate region ctrl F follow (during track playback) ctrl J consolidate (join) ctrl K key mapping ctrl L loop highlighted area ctrl M midi mapping shift ctrl M create midi clip (in highlighted area) ctrl N new project ctrl O open shift ctrl R export ctrl S save ctrl T new audio track shift ctrl T new midi track shift alt T new return track ctrl V paste shift ctrl V paste time shift at V paste automation ctrl X cut shit ctrl X cut time ctrl Y redo ctrl Z undo delele delete TAB mixer/arrange window arrow R/L open close folders arrow U/D browse folders
