Day 341: 20 Ableton tips in 8 Minutes...

The excellent Cuepoint tv dropped this smart video the other day. I didn't get round to watching it right away, but am sure glad I did in the end.

I've been using Ableton for about a year now, and thought I was starting to get under it's skin. So when at the beginning of this video he said that current users might roll their eyes at a lot of the tips, I wasn't expecting to learn much.

I was surprised then to find that almost all of the tips were either new to me, or added on things I knew, but obviously hadn't been getting the most out of.

This video should be compulsory viewing after someones had Ableton a month or so, it could save you hours.

40/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 270: Excellent Drum and Bass tutorial.

Staying on the tutorial tip, here is another fine fellow kind enough to impart their wisdom for our benefit.

What I like about these tutorials is not only that they touch on exactly the areas I like (Electro, Dubstep, Drum and Bass etc) but also that they are actually quality. Some of the tutorials you find on line either are light on the info, or, sad to say the track they are tutorialing is lame.

An added bonus to these tutorials is that they are peppered with good lil nuggets of musical theory which put it all into perspective.

Check out the rest of the site here at Boy in a band, and be sure to check out the rest of the videos, including the one of their brilliant performance on T4.

Mad professor indeed....

40/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 207: How to be endlessly creative.

Nothing worse than setting some time aside to finally work on that masterpiece only to stare blankly at your DAW without a clue.

Drag a few on beat kick drums into the drum rack, create a one finger stab... listen to it go round a few bars... yeah, it's not happening is it.

Sometimes it just don't flow like you want it to. Though don't fret all is not lost. While there is no such think as creative magic dust (tho the Rolling Stones might tell you other-wise) there are some things you can do to start the ball rolling.

Synthgear came up with 170 of them:

1. Stop thinking of drums as KICK/SNARE/HIHAT
2. Use more 16th notes!
3. The relationship between percussive sounds and rhythmic noises can be a melodic relationship
4. Turn it into a melody
5. Turn it into percussion
6. Turn it into a pad
7. Think about a bongo player sitting in the street
8. Select a new random tempo
9. What Would Joe Zawinul do?
10. Make a cliché

11. Put in something off-key
12. Get reckless
13. Less logic
14. List your standard process from start to finish, now reverse it
15. If you dismiss an idea, stop and ask yourself why
16. Skip your first impulse and use the second one
17. Do something that isn’t 4/4 now
18. How can you make this fall apart
19. Play it backwards – the part, don’t reverse audio.
20. Pretend your mom is sitting next to you

Check the rest on the original post, but some real good ideas in there, anything to start looking at things from a different angle...

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 168: Ableton track walkthrough #1

A while back I posted some samples from some new tunes I had started. I thinly promised to go through the making process to see how things develop, and give a kinda raw look into the process. See what bits are kept/canned/developed etc. So here is one such example.

The tune I have been focusing on most recently is currently entitled 'Pre Party' and the snippet I posted a while back sounded like this:

As you can see, just a coupla bars, giving an idea of a tune. Basically I had created the bass sound using an LFO to control the cut off of a bass note (I wont go into the fuller synthesis details here), and a fairly simple kick/high hat 4/4 combo. I also added in a high end string stab at the end of the bar to 'answer' the bass tone.

This next piece of audio is what it has developed into so far. I would say the arrangement is about 40% done, just needs filling out, then detail adding to the 8 bar phrases to make it more interesting. I have added some variations to the bass and string sections to give it more of a 'tune'. I also actually lowered the bass in the mix a bit, to bring out the high end, and in fact I might actually go further with that and make the high end the key part.

The queue for the first hearing was mega.

The drums I have added a few hits in to make it more interesting and off centered some of the sounds to widen out the beat a bit. So far I haven't gone into adding effects and compression as such, and to that end the all over mix is still not that hot, but hopefully you can see that it's starting to begin to sound like more of a structured tune:

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 164: How to make build ups in Ableton.

Here is a neat little tutorial about how to make those essential build ups using Ableton.

So stop reading, go watch:

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 137: Synthesiser Bootcamp.

Subtractive synthesis is a fairly complex subject, yet one that is important to master if you really want to rule at producing.

You could just sit there for hours with you synth twiddling all the knobs, seeing what sounds cool, or you could actually learn what they all do, and then be the master of your music. It's a no brainer really.

What is 'a 'brainer' though is actually learning it, no matter how I approach it, it all makes sense for about 5 seconds, then I've forgotten which thing effects the other all over again.

Below is a fairly no frills, yet informative introduction to Modulation, which is 'affecting sound over time' more or less. But as always with subtractive synthesis... also not that at all. Yeah exactly.

Worth a look though:

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 129: Getting the frequency right

After beat matching, I would say this is one of the most important/effective things I learnt about DJing. Seems so simple when you think about it, but using kills to drop out conflicting parts of the tunes you are mixing can really make a massive difference.

Once I understood thins my mixing definitely went to the next level, and you suddenly start to have more control over your mixes, and become more creative with them. Once you got this licked, plus beat matching, and know your bars and phrases, you've got the solid foundation you need. Get these right before anything else, it really is worth it.

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Day 116: Scratch in Ableton Live 8...

The more I see of Live, the more I love it. It just seems to be endless in it's capabilities. That coupled with it's intuitive user interface and amazing built in tools makes it just so much fun, and something that's fun surely leans towards being more creative.

Check out this sweet demo from dubspot where they misuse the new Ping Pong delay settings to achieve this effect. Much like real scratching it's creative misuse, rather than proper use that comes up with something interesting.

2/365

p&&l

bang!