Ableton Live Tips and Tricks Part 5

Tips
Tricks
Tutorials
MT Technique The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4
Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 4
Lets make
some bass
On the disc
Martin Delaney thinks its time to add some

bass to our beats, doubled up with a little sub
to make it bounce. Heres his guide
his month were adding a bass part, ideally one

that somehow fits in with our beat from the last
tutorial. Refer to the example set included with
the issue its called TUGTAL4. The set includes
all the steps from the last tutorial as well as a
couple of samples youll need to complete this one.
Bass sounds change considerably across genres;
youve got classic electric bass played with pick or fingers,
Resist the temptation to

make a huge bass sound
because we plan to add
other instruments
analogue and digital synths, and LFO-driven wobble
sounds. Theyre all good and theyre all readily available to
us these days,through real or software instruments and
Live Packs. Were going to build our own bass sound and
program our own part. This is because the Simpler
instrument we use is included in every version of Live. If I
was to do the tutorial using the Operator synth, you might
not be able to follow the steps. You should try Operator,
though its my go-to synth for bass parts. Ill move
on to others only if I cant find what I want in there.
Were spending more time working with
instrument racks as this is a great way to build
deep synth sounds that would otherwise require
complex routing across several tracks. In many
ways theyre similar to drum racks, which weve
already encountered. Were using two chains in our
rack thats two instruments playing together but
you can have up to 128 chains in a rack. Impressive
enough, but then bear in mind that you can have
FOCUS ON REAL BASS

The best thing you can do if you want to program good
bass parts is to get your hands on a bass guitar its a
great way to try ideas against your drum tracks. You dont
have to learn to play properly, it doesnt even have to be a
good bass and it doesnt matter what it sounds like,
because 99 times out of 100 it doesnt even get plugged in.
This is my most common way to create bass parts, noodling
away while the drums loop. To get a bass vibeplay bass. Its
pretty obvious!
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Accompanying
project file included
on the DVD
128 racks inside another rack, so you can quickly end up

with thousands of chains buried deep within your rack.
When you connect a MIDI keyboard or use your
computer keyboard to play those sounds, youre going to
get a massive sound because all of the chains will play at
once. This can be a bit overbearing, but were only using
two today, so well deal with that issue another time, and
there are various tactics we can use to specify which
sounds play at what times.
Were using a transposed sine wave to create a sub
bass a low bass fundamental tone which fattens up the
bottom end. It can be almost inaudible in the mix at
certain times. For reasons of simplicity, were pairing it
with our square wave sound, but theres no reason why a
sub couldnt be on a track of its own and subject to a
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
last time to make sure it didnt overlap with the new bass
part. When youre working with MIDI programming, a lot of
mixing problems can be fixed at the programming stage.
Its the same reason we set the Simpler instruments to 1
voice each, to avoid overlaps that will affect the bass part.
Simpler sampler
Simpler is a very powerful sampler, although it has a
user-friendly interface. It makes it possible to build long,
sustaining notes by loop and crossfading short samples,
but on this occasion we dont need those controls. Lucky
us! Maybe well come back and use them later.
As I mention in the tutorial, its important to
resist the temptation to make a huge bass sound
right now. This is because we plan to add other
instruments, and sonically there wont be any room
for them if we have a bass sound thats riddled with
effects and covering a huge frequency range.
We use clip envelopes to create repetitive
movement of the Auto Filter controls; it makes our
bass sound a bit more evolving and interesting. It
depends on what genre youre working with, but
automated filters can be a huge factor in the mix. If
you dont like the restrictions and mouse-work of
drawing these envelopes, be aware that you can
record them in real time if youre using a
suitable hardware controller. Also I cant stress
enough the importance of unlinking clip
envelopes from the clip length. And remember:
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The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4 Technique MT
MT Step-by-Step Making some bass
Open our example set, which follows on from last time. Load
an empty Instrument Rack into a new MIDI track. Drag the
clip square into the rack and itll automatically appear inside a
Simpler instrument.
Arm the track and play your keyboard to audition the sound, in a
low-ish range. Drag the clip sine into the racks drop area,
creating another chain. Now youll be playing both sounds together.
In the sine Simpler instrument, set the Trans (transpose) value to

-12 semi-tones, thats one octave down. Well use this as our sub
bass and the saw as our more immediately characteristic tone.
You might want to rename the chains now, for visual reference
Cmd-R. Good, now lets draw in some notes. Double-click in an
empty slot to create a new MIDI clip, as weve done before.
Refer to the screen shot. Its just E1 then D2 at 1.1.3 then E1 again
at 1.3, D2 at 1.3.3, and A2 at 1.4.3 and E1 at 1.4.4. Match the note
lengths to what you see in the picture.
Theres a bass sample in the drum kit; our bass clip leaves room
for that. But, find the controls for the bass note in the drum rack
and reduce the Release to 1.00 ms, shortening the note.
01
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05
each envelope can be a different length. You might notice

that the sine wave part of the bass sound doesnt react
much to the filter, but thats normal sines are not so
responsive compared to other more complex waveforms.
We finished off the bass track with Lives Compressor.
This is perfectly adequate as a clinical compression tool,
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although thats one area where I think third-party plug-ins

or even hardware can step in and do the job better, for
those times when you want a compressor that purposely
adds some character to the sound. If you have the Glue
Compressor from the Live 9 Suite, thats a good place
to start
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MT Step-by-Step Making some bass contd
While were shortening, set the Sines Sustain to -7dB. This makes
it shorter against the higher, square sound; when you play the
clip, it keeps the punchy low bass hit without cluttering up the mix.
Because were using short punchy notes for this, we dont have to
play with the other Simpler settings for loop/fade, release time,
and so on. Our samples are long enough that it wont matter.
Our simple bass part will be monophonic only one note at a

time so we can set the voices for each Simpler to 1. This means
we cant play or program any overlapping notes by mistake.
We could add effects to each chain and use the Spread control to
make a monster bass sound, but it doesnt leave much room for
other sounds in the song if the bass is too big.
Lets raise the sine volume inside Simpler to 0dB Simpler and
Sampler always default to -12dB, I guess to protect us from
ourselves! You can keep tweaking the levels as you go on.
Lets add Auto Filter for some nice filter sweeps. Drag it right after
the rack so it applies to both chains and set the filter cutoff to
170Hz, and the Q (resonance) to 2.00.
07
09
11
As were adding more elements to our track, weve got

to make sure everything sounds good alongside everything
else. While working with the bass sound, I was starting to
feel the Resonator settings were a little bit too abrasive. To
fix this you can go to the Resonator in our percussion track
and tame it a bit by resetting all of the fine tuning values to
48 | May 2015
08
10
12
0 using the white boxes under each Pitch control. That

should sound better!
Thats all for now. Next time well be working on a
keyboard part to layer over our bass and beats. Once
again well take a shot at building our own instead of
loading a preset. MT
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MT Step-by-Step Making some bass contd
Sweep time. Inside the MIDI note editor, click the envelope arrow
and choose Auto Filter and Frequency from the pop-up choosers.
Click the Link button and type a value of 4 bars next to that.
Click the left end of the red dotted line in the editor to anchor it.
Drag the right end upwards to 1.50 Hz (Cmd-Click-Drag for finer
resolutions). Now the frequency changes as the clip plays.
Choose Resonance now, unlinking it again, anchor it, then draw

an envelope that ends at 2.90. Youll hear that as well. Look at the
Auto Filter and youll see red dots marking the automated controls.
What sounds cool is if you create different length sweeps for

different parts of the song. Once youve clicked that Link button,
you can set envelopes to any length, even with simple one-bar clips.
When youre repeating these nice envelope sweeps, dont

use the same values every time either itll sound more
organic if you vary them a bit. You will hear the difference especially
with the Resonance.
Drop in Lives Compressor/Classical Compression preset. Make

sure it goes right after the entire rack so it applies to both chains.
If youve got Glue Compressor from the Live 9 Suite, try that instead.
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The Ultimate Guide To Additive Synthesis | Technique
Basic Additive With Operator

Operator might be a predominantly FM instrument but its ideal for getting to grips
with additive synthesis too
Getting to grips with
additive synthesis at
its most basic level
is straightforward
and, because quite a
few synths have
additive capabilities,
you dont even need
a dedicated
additive-based
instrument to get
started. Were going
to use Ableton Lives
Operator, which
while essentially a
frequency
modulation synth
also boasts a useful
additive waveform
editor, handy for
making waveforms
from scratch, and
editing the synths
library of included
waveform shapes.
Operators
implementation of
additive synthesis is
quite straightforward
and doesnt allow for
modulation of partial
levels in real time,
but its adequate for
demonstrating the
fundamentals of the
technique. Building
up harmonically
complex waveforms
is easy with the
Oscillator editor
page, and these can
be used to create
rich, evolving sounds
when modulated by
another of the
synths operators.
In fact, modulate
one additive
waveform with
another and you can
create filth to rival
the likes of FM8!
Operator is Abletons bread and butter FM synth but unlike traditional

FM synths it has the ability to create and customise waveforms with
additive synthesis. Load the synth up on a MIDI track, and click the
Oscillator button at the bottom of the envelope display.
In default mode this displays all of the oscillators 64 available bands.

Currently the oscillator is set to a sine shape and as such only the first
band is active. The additive display is pretty small, so click the 16 button at
the right of the display to zoom in to the first 16 bands.
Lets edit the oscillators waveform by adding some energy to the third
harmonic. Play a note and drag up on the third column to about threequarters of the way up. Youll see the visual representation of the waveform
at the bottom right change slightly, and the sound becomes more organ-like.
Continue adding odd-numbered harmonics that get quieter. Our

waveform begins to sound and look more like a square wave with each
one we add. This is additive in a nutshell! In some synths its possible to
vary the levels of these harmonics over time but in Operator theyre static.
By combining Operators additive synthesis and FM capabilities, we

can create some useful sounds. Click User under the Wave parameter
and select Saw 64 from this list. This gives us a 64 band sawtooth wave.
Noise up the waveform by increasing the volume of some arbitrary bands.
Click operator B, set it to 0dB, and its attack time to 1.38 seconds.
This causes operator B to frequency modulate our sawtooth, with the
complexity of harmonics increasing as its amplitude level increases during
the attack stage. This gives us a filthy sweep, ideal for a grungy bass sound.
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MT Technique Subscriber gift tutorial special
Ableton Live Subscriber gift tutorial special
Getting started
with the Novation
Launch Control
Weve been offering a fantastic Novation Launch Control as a special gift to subscribe to
MusicTech. If you have taken us up on the offer or are tempted to! heres a special tutorial
on using the Launch Control, written by our Ableton Live expert Martin Delaney
ovations Launchpad has become the go-to clip

launching device for Ableton Live users its
amazing how often you see it, on stage, in the
club, or in the studio. Its simple, mobile and
practical. From the original Launchpad to the
Launchpad S and Launchpad Mini, its well ubiquitous,
is probably the best word. But there are times when you
might want a different type of controller. The Launchpad
has it covered for Live clip and scene launching, and for a
certain level of simplistic mixer-type control, but
sometimes you still need faders and knobs to take care of
business. This is where the Launch Control comes in.
Our expanded walkthrough should fill you in on what to
expect from the Launch Control, and how to get it going
with Live. If you dont have Live already, thats cool because
the Launch Control includes a free copy of Ableton Live
Lite, so youre ready to go straight out of the box; its a
really nice little bundle.
When youre deploying the factory and user templates,
remember that you can switch between them at any time
during a performance or recording; you can flip from
launching clips in Live to sending MIDI to other devices and
hardware without missing a beat.
A bonus feature is that the Launch Control is iPadcompatible. As usual, youll need an iPad Camera
Connection Kit to attach it, but then youre good it gets
its power from the iPad. You can use it with Novations iOS
apps, or any other app thatll receive MIDI messages.
If youve visited the Novation website, or youve been
paying attention generally, youll be aware that the Launch
Control is part of a wider range of launch-type products. It
began with the Launchpad, which continues to thrive as
the Launchpad S, and as the dinky little Launchpad Mini
and of course theres the Launchpad Pro, which has been
On the disc
Accompanying
on the DVD
announced and you never know, may be released by the

time you read this. There are also the excellent Launchkey
keyboards, in 25, 49, and 61 key varieties, as well as a
Launchkey Mini version for the dedicated mobile diehard. I
guess what they have in common is pads they all have a
certain number but also a clean, focused, design ethic,
which makes them very straightforward to set up and use.
If using the Launch Control doesnt satisfy your control
itch, you might be a candidate for upscaling to the Launch
Control XL, which includes more buttons (adding track solo
and record arming, among other things), extra rows of
knobs and pads, and importantly, eight faders.
On the customisation front, each knob is backlit; the
default arrangement is red for the top row, yellow for the
centre row, and green for the bottom, but through the
Launch Control XL Editor software, you can change these
colour assignments, using red, yellow, green, or orange.
Whats also cool about the XL is that Novation has added
the extra while keeping it to the same size as the
Launchpad itself.
Whatever you use it for whether youre using it to
control your DAW, plug-ins, iPad, hardware the Launch
Control is a very versatile and capable little thing. No
installers necessary, no mains power needed, and it
doesnt take up much room in your bag or case.
You cant do it all with touchscreens, and you cant do
it all with pads. Sometimes
those two rows of knobs,
and some faders a
MIDI mixer,
basically are
just what you
need MT
FOCUS ON JOINED UP THINKING

Novations Launchpad and Launch Control hardware controllers function perfectly well
individually, but combining them makes a lot of sense for Live users. Perhaps its not a
coincidence that the Launch Control and Launchpad are the same width, hmm? Locate them on
your desk for a well-appointed setup that doesnt take up much room, and packs easily for gigs.
The layout works well if you position the Launch Control directly below the Launchpad - the USB port
is on the side, out of the way. If you need more ports, Novations Audiohub 2x4 has enough to connect up
to three devices simultaneously.
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Subscriber gift tutorial special Technique MT
MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control
Connect the Launch Control to your computer using the supplied

USB cable. Its one of Novations neat right-angled ones but
dont fret if you lose it, any USB cable will do. No mains power required.
If youre running short of USB ports, you can connect via a hub.
I can tell you for sure the Launch Control works with Novations
own Audiohub 2x4 but then youd expect it to.
The Launch Control is plug and play you dont have to install any
drivers on Mac or PC, but it will be useful to download the free
Launch Control Editor software more on that later.
Now launch Live, and open the Preferences MIDI Sync tab.
Choose Launch Control from Control Surfaces at the top, and
from the Input and Output lists next to that. Close Preferences.
To get you off to a quick start, weve provided an Ableton Live set
to use for this tutorial. Its on our DVD, and its called Launch
Control (self-explanatory title alert) open it now.
Before starting, lets check the Launch Control has the correct
factory template loaded. Hold down the top right Factory button
and press the bottom left pad. There are other templates well
discuss them shortly.
Were in Lives Session View for this one. For now, use your mouse
to start some clips playing. This is a mix that needs work, and we
can use the Launch control to tweak it.
The volumes and pans are all over the place. No need to assign
any controls manually. Use the top row of knobs to adjust pans,
and the lower for volume. The pads toggle tracks on/off.
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MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control contd
We have two return tracks in our set. A contains Ping Pong Delay,
and B hosts a Reverb. To access the sends, press the down pad
to control Sends A and B with the knobs.
Live Intro has only two sends available, but the full version of Live
has 12. You can access all of your sends by simply using those up
and down buttons.
Dont worry about losing track of where you are. As you use the
Launch Controls knobs and buttons, the Status Bar at the bottom
of the screen lights yellow, giving you a helpful read-out.
Factory template 2 provides clip launching. Press the Factory

button with the second pad to get a micro Launchpad. The down/
up arrows provide scene navigation, the left/right gives you track
selection, and the pads launch clips.
In true Launchpad style, the pad LEDs light with one of three
colours. Yellow means theres a clip available on that pad, green
means the clip is playing, and red means youre recording into it.
Moving on to template three, the first two sets of four knobs from
each row, correspond to the first eight controls in your rack or
device. The other knobs remain freely assignable.
The down/up arrows select devices within the track, and the left/
right buttons select tracks. In this mode, the pads select further
banks of eight controllers, going deeper into the selected device.
The Launch Control doesnt create a pop-up red box in Live to

show you where you are, but again, the Status Bar plus the
usual highlighting of active tracks, scenes, and devices is enough.
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Subscriber gift tutorial special Technique MT
MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control contd
Theres no limit on how many tracks, scenes or devices in Live the

Launch Control can access. Once youve used it for a while youll
be skipping around the screen like a skippy ninja.
There are eight factory templates ready to use the others

arent intended for Live specifically. They contain various
combinations of MIDI control messages and notes, and you can view
these in the editor software.
Those templates are worthy enough, but theres also that User
button. That gives us access to eight user templates, which we
can edit as we desire using the Launch Control Editor software
mentioned previously.
The Editor software is a free download for Mac or PC, and is a

breeze to use. This lets you configure MIDI notes, CC messages
and channels for each control on the Launch Control.
Thanks to the Editor, the Launch Control can take command of

your DAW, software instruments, Max for Live devices, and even
hardware synthesisers and drum machines anything thatll take
MIDI through your computer.
For controlling plug-in instruments and effects inside Live you

might need to use the Device Configure mode, where you can
assign controls inside Live to specific controls within the plug-in.
To control external hardware, youll need to create an empty MIDI

track and load the External Instrument Device. Choose the MIDI
input and output corresponding to the LC and the hardware.
Your messages go straight through Live and out to the hardware.

You can also configure that device to receive audio back in from
the hardware, if relevant. Im using it with Elektrons Octatrack here.
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MT Feature A bluffers guide to acoustics
Although a purchased full

package is the minimal fuss
solution (such as the London
12 Room Kit pictured here from
Primacoustic), your room may
benefit from the more custom
treatment when building your
own solution. And, yes, we
know theres no door.
MT Feature Music Technology
THE BLUFFERS GUIDE

TO ACOUSTICS
Your room can make or break your sound. Its all about
its acoustic. Rob Boffard explains all
he most important piece of equipment in your studio is not your

computer. It isnt your DAW or your monitors or your MIDI controller.
The most important piece of equipment in your room has zero moving
parts, probably looks a little bit ugly, and is something you will almost
certainly never actually notice.
Were talking about your acoustic treatment. The acoustics of a room where
music is made, mixed or mastered is the single most important thing in the
entire production chain. It doesnt matter how good your ears are or how
expensive your equipment is: if your space isnt treated right, then what youll be
hearing wont be accurate, and you wont get a good sound.
In this guide, well go into exactly what acoustics are. Well talk about what
sound is, how it behaves, and how you can tame it. Well also detail a short
construction project that you can undertake to make your own acoustic panels.
Trust us: it will improve your sound like you wouldnt believe.
Powered by
Ride the wave

Think about sound for a minute.
Very obviously, it has a source, like your speakers, and a destination that
would be your ears. But in-between the source and destination, that sound is
doing some very interesting things.
Sound, as we hope we dont have to explain, consists of pressure waves in the
air. When those pressure waves hit something, such as a wall or chair or desk or
coffee mug or bookshelf, they are either reflected or absorbed. Well admit, thats
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A bluffers guide to acoustics Feature MT
putting it a little simply, but the point is that the sound you hear is dramatically
affected by the environment its in. Youve almost certainly experienced this:
think of the last time you were at church, or a massive concert hall. There is a
heavy reverb to the sound, which comes not only from the walls and floor and
ceiling, but also from the distances between them. Likewise, step into a cupboard
very quickly (go on, well wait) and say a few words. Chances are, your voice will
sound muffled and stripped of character.
These are not ideal conditions for music making. Its less important at the
actual production stage, when sound quality and balance take a backseat to
musical creativity. But when youre starting to mix, you want as little
environmental interference as possible. You need an accurate picture of whats
coming out of your speakers in order to make informed mix decisions. Plenty of
songs have been recorded in a cathedral, but very few have been mixed there.
Assuring that the environment you are in is as acoustically neutral as
possible is absolutely key. Lets have a look at how to make that happen.
Foam pit
Well operate on the principle that you have a room at home for your music
making. Furthermore, well operate on the principle that you can do things to
that room. If you are a renter, or otherwise unable to change the room too much,
this may not apply. That being said, its still worth reading, as it will help you
understand the principles of how noise treatment works.
Chances are youve got a room with regular furniture. A table, chair, maybe a
couch, perhaps a couple of bookshelves, too. Stand at the centre of the room, and
clap. Listen to what happens to the sound. Try to analyse where the echoes (or
reflections) come back at you from, and what they sound like. Dont worry if you
find this difficult its just a crude test, meant to illustrate that most rooms
dont treat sound that well.
There are a couple of things we can do to this room to make that sound better.
The first has nothing to do with acoustic treatment at all.
Its all about positioning. Every room will have a sweet spot, where the
sound is at its most honest. This can be quite difficult to find, but fortunately,
there is a very good general principle you can use. Assuming you operate at a
desk, set that desk up so that when you sit at it, youre facing one of the short
sides of the rectangle. Make sure you are at least three feet from the wall.
Now: your monitor speakers. Imagine that you and the speakers form a
triangle. It should be an equilateral triangle that is, one where all three angles
are equal. Dont worry about getting it too exact for now; just make sure that you
are roughly the same distance from the speakers as they are from each other. In
addition, try to arrange things so that your speakers are each the same distance
from the wall on either side. Even if you cant get it exactly right, or if your room
is a weird shape, dont worry. What were going to do next is to treat your room.
Look at your walls and ceiling. Right now, they are almost certainly flat.
Thats not good for sound waves, which will be reflected back into the room,
Tech terms
SOUND WAVE:
The way sound appears
in the environment, as
a pressure and
displacement wave
that travels through
air, as well as solids
and liquids.
STANDING WAVE:
What happens when
two sound waves get
trapped between two
flat surfaces facing
each other, common in
untreated rooms.
Causes unpleasant
artefacts in the sound.
ACOUSTIC FOAM:
A thick, dense,
open-celled foam
designed to attenuate
sound waves. Youll
want to invest in some
of this stuff.
BASS TRAP:
A piece of acoustic
foam of above-average
thickness, thats
designed to be placed
in corners to corral
errant low-frequency
sound waves.
MT Step-by-Step Building an absorber

Back
3
2
Staple
4
Frame
1
Using 2 x 3in pine, make a frame thats

1,199 x 650mm in size. Use screws to
connect the timber together. Staple in some
Cara fabric or attach a hardboard back. This
will keep the Rockwool in place.
01
Turn the frame over and insert a

60mm-deep mineral wool fibre slab
snugly within the frame. A tight fit will help the
material to stay in position.
02
Cut enough Cara fabric to wrap around

the front and to be stapled to the rear of
the absorber. You may want to place tape
over your staple heads to prevent marking on
your walls. Alternatively, make a wooden
frame to face the absorber. Use picture
mounts to hang it.
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MT Feature A bluffers guide to acoustics
messing with your mix. You might think the way to

solve this problem would be to blanket all flat
surfaces in acoustic treatment, but if you did, youd
end up with a room that sounded completely dead.
We dont want that. What we want is something
between the two, where some surfaces are covered.
That will ensure that you dont have too many
reflections, while allowing your room to retain its
acoustic character (and remain pleasant to work in).
What were going to use to cover them is acoustic
foam. This is very different to regular foam, in that
its a lot more dense, with a ridged or textured
surface. It is specifically designed to absorb sound
waves, trapping them before they get to your ears.
Plenty of companies sell acoustic foam, and in its
most common form, it comes in slabs that are a
couple of feet square. Eggcups, by the way, dont
work, no matter what youve seen on TV.
The goal is to put these slabs at key points on the
walls and ceiling. Again, this will depend on the
Even a little bit of acoustic

proofing will immediately benefit
the sound of your room
dimensions of the room, but a good rule is to
position them adjacent to your speakers, covering
the walls with a roughly nine-foot square section of
foam. In addition, youll need to put it on the wall
directly in front of you when you are sitting at the
desk, and the wall directly behind you. You would be
very wise to attach it to the ceiling as well. Dont
worry if you cant hit all the spots. Even a little bit
of acoustic proofing will immediately benefit the
sound of your room.
While youre at it, isolate your speakers, either
with specially-designed stands or by placing them
on acoustic foam. Several companies actually sell
angled chunks of foam for this purpose. This will
ensure that the surface your speakers rest on doesnt
MTM Pro Technique Studio ergonomics

The ergonomics of your studio is something to
consider both for your comfort as well as its impact
on your room acoustically. Naturally, it is important
to ensure that all the equipment you use is well
within your reach and doesnt require stretching for,
something that perhaps later results in injury.
Ensure that your chair is up to the job and that
youre comfortable when youre working. Your desk
needs to be at the right height and should be suitable
for the kind of work youre doing. Placing your most
often used equipment within your arc of reach will
therefore prevent you moving your arms in repetitive
movements that can cause injury.
Also its worth considering installing your
equipment in racks built within your desk or having
them in a desktop rack. However, spare a thought for
reflections that may be caused by such devices and
how you might tackle them if they cause unwanted
reflections. For more details, see last months Ten
Minute Master, in which we explored ergonomic
considerations for the studio.
bounce too many reflections back at you. Youre not

done yet. You need to deal with the bass frequencies.
Low-frequency sound waves have less power than
high-frequency ones, and traditional acoustic foam
slabs cant deal with them adequately. In addition,
MT Step-by-Step Building a bass trap
Were going to look at a corner

broadband trap here. Take some timber
12mm plywood is ideal and cut two
right-angle triangles (300 x 300 x 424mm).
These will form the top and bottom of your
trap. The backs will be 300mm by the height
you can accommodate in your room.
01
108 ||June
March
2015
2015
Connect the parts together, either with

screws or fixing blocks on the inside.
Using a saw, cut Rockwool slabs into triangles
slightly smaller that can stack up snugly inside
the frame. These will provide a very deep
absorber essentially, but work well for trapping
bass and other frequencies.
02
Complete the corner trap by facing with

Cara fabric or a perforated wooden
panel of some description, ensuring it is
acoustically transparent.
03
MAGAZINE
MAGAZINE
15/04/2015 15:34
A bluffers guide to acoustics Feature MT
bass has a nasty habit of accumulating in the

corners, and letting it do so can really muddy your
mix. To fix this, youll need to invest in bass traps,
which are thick, chunky pieces of foam designed to
fit right into the corners of a room.
Again, please note that these are general
principles. You dont treat a live room as you would a
vocal booth, and acoustics can be a detailed science
that experts will charge a lot of money to get right.
But as a general guide, this should get you going.
There are some products that

are difficult to DIY. Vicoustics
products are both elegant and
highly effective, such as this
WaveWood Bass Trap.
DIY style
Acoustic foam panels differ from other audio
equipment in one crucial way. You can actually make
your own without any specialist knowledge.
Were not going to go into the exact step-by-step
procedure here, as its relatively simple, especially if
youre a dab hand with DIY. What you need to do is
construct a solid wood frame. Cover one side of the
frame with fabric, making sure it fits tight around it
(you can staple-gun it into place). What youll need to
do then is fill the interior with a substance known as
Rockwool. This material, readily available from
hardware stores, is very sound absorbent, and is
easy to work with. Once youve filled the frame, all
you have to do is close the back we suggest using
another piece of fabric, perhaps with a wooden bar
placed across the middle of the frame to keep the
Rockwool in place. Congratulations: youve made an
acoustic panel. If you want more detailed
instructions, youll find hundreds of them online.
But how do you go about hanging these on the
wall and ceiling? Many companies sell an adhesive
spray that you can use to attach the foam directly to
the wall. Were going to speak from personal
experience here: avoid this stuff. Not only is one can
not sufficient to prove an entire room, but it doesnt
last very long, so your panels are in danger of falling
away. Despite that, the substance itself is absolute
murder to get off the wall.
What you can do, however, is attach each section

of acoustic proofing to a pre-cut wooden panel
chipboard will do. You can try using the spray, but a
better option might be to use metal brackets to hold
the foam in place. The panels can then be hung on
the wall like a picture. The real advantage of this is
that if you move studio, you can simply take down
the panels and take them with you. MT
This feature is endorsed by SSR which has been
providing professional education training in the
audio engineering industry for over 30 years. With
campuses in London, Manchester, Jakarta and
Singapore, SSR has gained a healthy reputation
within the music industry for producing well
trained, professional graduates across the globe.
MT Step-by-Step Building a diffusor
Building a diffusor is perhaps the most

difficult task presented here, partly
because theres a bit more maths involved,
but also as it takes a little more skill in the
workshop. The prettier of the two is perhaps
the blockwork Quadratic (Skyline) Diffusor,
but both varieties are pretty difficult. The
best starting point is to download a diffusor
calculator from the net and consider how it
should perform.
01
Cut the blocks of wood into the

appropriate lengths. Purchase some
hardboard or 9mm MDF and cut to the required
frame length to support the blocks. The next
step is the tricky bit: arranging the blocks as
per the grid provided by the calculator. As you
arrange youll need to glue each block to the
back and to any adjacent blocks it comes into
contact with.
02
Leave the blocks to dry overnight (or

longer, depending on the adhesive).
Next, turn the whole diffusor over. Using a
drill, pilot four holes through the rear
hardboard to the longer lengths of block.
Screw together to aid adhesion. Make two
holes through the 0 sections (no blocks) in
the sequence to connect the diffusor to the
wall or ceiling.
03
MAGAZINE June 2015
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15/04/2015 15:34
Technique | Beat Loop Processing
Never mind cutting, chopping and layering with

individual samples Lets look at the beat, the
whole beat, and nothing but the beat
s producers, working with beats

brings us closer to our roots,
safe in the knowledge that were
following in the footsteps of our
distant ancestors and their noble traditions
no, were not on about the caveman
banging on his animal-skin drum; were
talking about the dinosaur on the turntable,
making his breaks dirtier than a sewerworkers kecks!
Todays cutting-edge technologies let us
slice and dice on the atomic level, beefing
up our beats with single hits, and thats got
a huge place in the art of production. But
52
were going to take a step back here and

examine some ways of processing whole
beats on their own, getting a little creative
along the way.
Layering beats together

Some of us like to get perfectionistic,
performing miniscule surgery on our beats
and getting them just right adding a
sub layer onto kick drums, some extra
attack to snares, and whatever else. But
layering two or more whole beats together
can be the creative antidote to this mindset
for those looking to take a different
approach. So what considerations are to be
taken when slamming two unassuming
beats together?
Mixing whole beats is fairly
commonplace already, usually appearing as
a percussion layer added to throw some
rhythm onto a stiff kick-and-snare beat.
Beat Loop Processing | Technique
Layering Beats Together

Some beats just work together, but most of them simply dont, and sometimes
youve got to apply some processing
INCLUDES VIDEO l
Here well explore a
few simple rules for
getting two beats to
sound good together.
The done thing
might be layering
breaks onto beats for
a crusty top-end, but
were going to delve
into lining up two or
more whole beats.
Most often these
days, beat
processing is done
by layering in
individual samples,
but trying a
whole-beat
approach can
increase your
creative potential.
Watch how we go
about it in video
form on the DVD.
When layering beats, most of them wont go together. If two beats have
different rhythms, grooves and frequency content, theres not much you
can do about it! Finding two matching beats will take some trial and error in
auditioning, but it should be quicker to do than forcing two together.
Some beats go together easily. For example, a kick/snare loop gels with
a percussion loop the low-end of the kick, the impact of the snare
and the high-frequency rhythm of the percussion stay out of each others
way, and even enhance each other. You can enhance the effect with EQ.
But its more likely youll end up with a pair that almost goes together.
How can we make them work? Try some filtering of one or both layers
one high-pass, the other low-pass. This may help with chalk-and-cheese
layers, but its not a solution if youre trying to stick similar beats together.
If two beats have a slightly different groove, time-stretching is a simple

answer. Get a good look at the two waveforms transients, make sure
youre in a percussive time-stretch mode, and line em up.
Try retuning/pitchshifting one of the beats as a whole. This could make

it sound better or worse. You could also try shifting just one frequency
band, eg the snare, by copying the track twice, band-passing the copies in
the area you want, inverting one and pitchshifting the other.
Then, create a subgroup and experiment with compression and

saturation to glue the beats together. Use the compressors Attack
time to control which transients are emphasised or reduced. Saturation and
reverb can help in giving the two bussed beats the same character.
53
Layer In Phase
Layering anything can lead to
phase issues, and it can be
especially bad when it comes to
beats theyre whole tracks of
multiple instruments working
together. If the waveform of one
beat layer is heading upwards
while the others heading down,
they can cancel each other out
and you can end up with a
reduced impact of the hits and a
not-so-perfect stereo field.
The old-school way to try and
sort this was to invert the
polarity of one channel often
done for multi-micd sources
like guitar amps or snare drums.
It wasnt always guaranteed to
work, mind. There are some
software analysis tools to help
detect and/or fix phase issues
(like Sound Radix Pi), but if you
dont have the time to use an
electron microscope, youd be

wise to check out track delaying.
By taking one of your beat
layers, disabling your DAWs
snap to grid function, and
moving the track by a few
samples (not milliseconds), you
may be able to knock out most
phase issues. Zooming right into
the waveforms and making sure
a hits initial transients ups and
downs coincide will help but,
when layering entire grooves,
you could also cause problems
to other hits.
The best way to approach
track delay may well be to use
your ears if slight movements
in position make your signals
transients more powerful, or give
it a better stereo impression, go
with it at least at the creative
stage of your production.
Use track delay,

polarity inversion, or
manual waveform
dragging to get the
most powerful sound
trust your ears
above all else.
Out Of Phase?
These two hits peaks
and troughs line up
as much as is
possible, especially
at the crucial
front-end impact.
difference between a bland and an

interesting sonic scene.
When it comes to groove shadows,
considerations to bear in mind include the
level of the shadow, the frequency content
of the shadow, and the rhythmic makeup of
the shadow. These properties can be
controlled, of course, but sometimes finding
the right beat to use for a shadow is the
best policy to take from the start. There are
even sample libraries dedicated to groove
shadow sounds, which arent a bad place to
start looking, but if youre seeking out the
unorthodox, you can create one from the
most unlikely of sources.
Breakbeats are often also used as a crusty

top layer, providing the vibe at the higher
ends of the frequency spectrum. So
dual-layer beats are there to complement
each others qualities for breaks and
percussion, its the feeling and energy of the
top-end, and the aim becomes to enhance
those qualities.
Once youve discovered what a certain
loop is adding to the overall feel, its that
contribution that you need to keep. This
could be as simple as opposing EQ boosts
and cuts, or using high- or low-pass filters to
emphasise or de-emphasise the quality on
different tracks.
Groove shadows
Sometimes, just adding reverb to a beat is
enough to give it the qualities you want; but
if youre after a different sort of atmosphere,
and your mix is begging for some extra
character, you can try using a heavily
reverbed signal from another beat
altogether. When placed very low in the mix
behind the main beat, this can be the
Line It Up
MeldaProductions
MMultiBandDynamics
is a powerful tool for
tweaking complex loops
For extra character,

try using a heavily
reverbed signal
from another beat
Band processing
Multiband processing was previously the
preserve of the mastering engineer, but
working in the box has made plenty of
multiband plug-in effects available.
Dynamics are the most obvious things that
spring to mind when it comes to multiband
set-ups the stalwart de-esser often
manifested as a multiband compressor
itself. These devices can be a great way to
claw back extra headroom from one track,
beating a flatter frequency spectrum into it,
but only when it starts to peak.
54
However, in addition to classic

compressors, there are multiband set-ups
for almost every effect you can imagine.
Check out the MeldaProduction range for a
huge amount of choice, and options like
FabFilter Saturn for some refined ideas.
When it comes to full beats, it can be
helpful to add overdrive to key snare
frequencies, or light modulation to
hi-hats, so make sure you check out
these simple options.
You can even get custom by crafting
your own multiband chains to add in any of
your plug-ins for some dedicated processing
on any band you like. Its a good idea to
save these empty
processors in a rack/
macro for when you need
to call them up again
later. Check out the
third tutorial for a
quick how-to.
As well as full
set-ups, well also show
you how to create a quick
one-band processor with
some clever routing tricks. By duplicating a
track and filtering the band you want to
process, then phase inverting the copy,
youll remove that band from the signal.
Then, by taking another duplicate track, you
can apply the same filter to add the sound
back in again on a dedicated channel.
So, however you like to process your
beats whether youre a rough-cutter or a
micro-surgeon with robotic laser eyes
check out these three tutorials to get some
creative ideas and a new approach to
processing any track!
Beat Loop Processing | Technique
Groove Shadows
Heres how to liven up or add atmosphere to one beat by using the reverb signal
from another beat
INCLUDES VIDEO l
A groove shadow is a
heavily reverbed
signal from another
beat (or any sound
source) that sits
behind your main
beat. Well show you
the basics and the
most vital processors
youll get help from
if youre up for
making a groove
shadow. Check out
the video on the DVD
to hear and see it in
action. Try this one
next time youre
about to reach for a
reverb plug-in.
Set up one channel for your main beat, and another to create your
shadow. On the shadow channel, set up a reverb, fully Wet, and bring
the level down. Audition shadow beats alongside the main beat and see
what catches your attention. You dont even have to use a beat; get creative.
Lets get the beat and its shadow sounding better together.
Pitchshifting the shadow reverb signal up or down can give it energy
where it didnt have it before. Choose whether to match the main beat or to
separate beat and shadow, depending on the effect youre after.
Gating the shadow can provide a bit more rhythm. Set up a large
reduction amount, a quick attack and crank the Hold up. Getting
the Threshold setting just right is crucial if youre auditioning a lot of
different candidates.
So weve got three crucial processes reverb, gating and pitchshifting.

The ordering of these can make a big difference. Keep an eye on the
relationship between the gate and reverb modules; if the reverbs smearing
the beats transients, the gate may not have anything to detect.
As the shadow is a reverb effect that adds a sense of space, try

delaying it further, having the beat pop out over the top more
obviously. This can be done using the reverbs predelay control, or with a
simple delay processor set to 100% wet. Start at about 50ms and move up.
Try throwing some effects on the shadow signal to push it even further.
Modulation effects such as chorus, phasing and flanging are one way
to go, as is distortion, or any other creative effect.
55
Band Processing
Use multiband processors to make easy work of whole loops, or set up your own
multiband or single-band signal chains
INCLUDES VIDEO l
When it comes to
quick processing of
full-band tracks,
getting good (and
fast) with multiband
processing will help
you out. Well look at
some common
multiband effects,
and show you how to
make your own.
Then, well do a
fly-by of a rough n
ready one-band
processor, perfect for
adding an effect to a
select band of the
spectrum in a busy
mix (see below for a
more in-depth
explanation). As
usual, check it out
in the video
version, too.
Multiband plug-ins let you make changes to different parts of the

frequency spectrum in different ways. The traditional multiband
processor is dynamics; multiband compressors affect different frequencies
in different ways good for clawing back headroom while mastering.
To get even more custom processing done, you can create your own
multiband devices by setting up some clever signal routing. Bypassing
the processing of multiband devices and only using their crossovers, on
returns, new tracks or rack chains, lets you add your own effect to any band.
But there are plenty of other multiband processors too distortion and
saturation might work better applied to different bands by different
amounts, just like the response of well-driven analogue tape; and all sorts of
other multiband effects like modulation, delays and reverbs.
You can make your own single band isolator to process a specific part
of the frequency spectrum. This could be useful for de-essing duties
(using a standard compressor), or collapsing the stereo field to mono in the
bass region, for example. Watch the video or see below to find out how.
Band Caveats
To make a single-band
processor, duplicate the track
twice, filtering both the
duplicates with the exact same
settings, and phase inverting
one of them. The non-inverted
track should now control the
band youve filtered off, which
will be missing from the original
track when combined with the
phase-inverted copy. You can
use return tracks or channels
instead of track duplicates,
depending on your DAW. You
can continue the process to
arrive at a multiband set-up.
56
Before you run off and do it,

avoid filter settings with any
resonance or Q settings that
create boosts use filter cuts
only. Also, make sure your DAW
is compensating for the latency
of any processors youre using to
filter or process your bands.
Check your DAWs settings
and manual.
You can phase-invert your
entire multiband set-up against
a duplicate of the original track,
and check that theres no
output, just to make sure your
set-up is a perfect replication.
DIY One-Band
Processing
Heres a quick and
dirty method for
isolating one band
for processing. The
original track is
copied twice.
Duplicated Waves
Both duplicates are
filtered, and one is
phase inverted to
cancel out that band
in the original track.
Make your own

keyboard sound
& sidechain it
Anybody can load a synth preset but its fun to
build your own. Connect your keyboard and
Martin Delaney will show you how its done.
e continue our Ultimate Guide by adding a

simple keyboard part to our ongoing
project, following on from the bass last
time. You like the project? Good. You dont
like the project? Thats fine too as its
merely a vehicle for us to introduce the core techniques of
using Ableton Live.
If youre not great at

music theory Live has a
whole bunch of tools to
make parts sound busy
Once again were using the Simpler instrument device,
with a sample that you can load from the provided
example Live set. This works for us because there are a
few different versions of Live out there Suite, Standard
and Intro, not to mention older versions counting from 9
backwards so using a synthesizer instrument device at
this point could cause compatibility issues with some
folks reading this. Were on safe ground with Simpler
because its in every version of Live it has to be, because
drum racks in particular wont work without it!
Either way its good, partly because we can now say
were using sample based synthesis, a form of sound
design that uses audio samples as well as waveforms
generated by the synth instrument itself. Many synths let
you combine these techniques in one preset, which really
opens up the sonic spectrum.
On the disc
Accompanying
on the DVD
As well as adding a new sample to our set which

again, incorporates the steps from the last tutorial Ive
taken the opportunity to reorganise, rename, and colour
code the tracks and clips. Not only do I get a kick out of
organising everything, it helps me recognise what Im
looking at faster and it avoids accidentally triggering or
selecting the wrong clip or track. I made a spare group
track for unused tracks, and put the original beat in there.
We mentioned this before Shift-Click to select the tracks
you want to group, then type Cmd-G. You can also drag
additional tracks in later.
Our keyboard part doesnt have to be too demanding.
All we need for this project is something basic that doesnt
take up too much room, sonically speaking; weve got
enough going on already. Were just using one note, then
making it move with some sidechaining instead.
Whenever we talk about creating instrument sounds,
make sure youre using a keyboard to audition the sound
constantly as you work on it. If you already have a MIDI clip
and notes in place, you could just keep that playing and
rolling round. But if youre working on a sound that needs
to have some velocity sensitivity some responsiveness
to how hard you hit your keys or pads its better to use
your keyboard or pads in real time while youre testing. As
Ive said before, I like to use the computer keyboard as
well, and when Im doing that, Ill keep tapping on the c
and v keys to change through some different velocity
settings if relevant theyll take you up and down through
the velocity range from 1 to 127 in increments of 20. Dont
forget to keep an eye on your track and master volume
levels as well as we dont want to see any red peaks!
We dont use any notes other than E4 for this clip,
because we want to start with a drone and then find a way
to make it sound a bit more interesting. If youre not great
at music theory, Live has a whole bunch of tools to help
you make even a basic
FOCUS ON THE HARDWARE

In this tutorial were 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 everybodys mind at the moment, so the Pulse it is.
48 | July 2015
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MT Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining
Be sure to use our updated example set for this tutorial. Ive
added a new sample, synth note. This is a synth playing a long C
note (sampled from the Waldorf Pulse Plus hardware synth).
Load the Simpler sample-playback instrument into a new MIDI

track, and drag the synth note sample into Simplers drop area.
Double-click the top empty clip slot in the track to make a clip.
This should sound familiar, because weve done this step before
when we made our bass part. Click the Dupl.Loop button in the
MIDI Editors Notes box twice, creating an empty 4-bar MIDI clip.
When you arm your track and play your MIDI keyboard, you should
be hearing the sampled synth tone playing across the range. We
used a C so itll be correctly in pitch with other instruments.
Draw an E4 note across the entire length of the clip - launch the
clip and then itll play just like a drone over four bars. Keep the
velocity to around 100 or 110 it doesnt matter precisely.
To edit the note velocity, unfold the MIDI Velocity Editor (click on
the little triangle) below the MIDI Note Editor, then drag the
velocity marker up or down until you reach the desired range.
01
03
05
programmed part sound busy i.e. the MIDI Effect Devices.

Were using the Chord device a little bit here, but dont be
surprised if we come back and look at MIDI effects again.
The other thing we do to make it sound more active is to
sidechain it, taking the timing of the drum track (or parts of
it) and applying it to the keyboard sound to create a
02
04
06
pulsing quality. After youve loaded the Compressor into

the keyboard track, you can choose any sound as a source,
digging deep into drum and instrument racks to find the
exact trigger you want. However, from a workflow point of
view I find it much easier to work with a separate track as
a source for a sidechain, thats why weve copied the drum
MAGAZINE July 2015
| 49
29/05/2015 15:00
MT Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining contd
So far we have a pretty dull synth part so lets jazz it up a bit. At

this stage if you need to do any volume management for this
sound, use the Volume control in Simpler.
Lets make some changes inside Simpler. Start by turning Loop

on and set it to 40%, then turn Snap on and set the Start to
0.30%. Set Length to 14% and Fade to 70%.
Set the Volume envelope Attack to 500ms so theres a bit more to

the tiny little fade-in at the beginning of the sample (as you can
see, it starts quite gradually already).
Now lets add some interest: because weve been lazy with our
programming, lets expand the part with one of Lives MIDI effect
devices. Add the Chord MIDI effect to the track, itll go before Simpler.
Set the Chord devices first two Shift control knobs to +3 and +5
semitones. As the clip loops or as you play your keyboard, youll
hear the extra notes. Set Simplers Spread to 50.
The extra notes make it sound very full too full, in fact. So drag
an EQ Three audio effect to the end of the chain and set the
GainMid to -12dB. This thins it out nicely.
07
09
11
track here. Not only do I then have something that visually

helps me keep track of whats going on, outside of the
drum kit, a separate track for sidechaining, it enables me
to program a totally different kick pattern to trigger the
compressor if I want to, or even to keep the sidechain feed
going when the drums drop out. You could even automate
50 | July 2015
08
10
12
that sidechain track and do very weird things with it,

without disrupting your drum beat. As it says in the
tutorial, remember that the sidechain source can be silent
mute the track and it still works!
If youre a musical type of person, who can play
keyboards and who understands musical theory, Live is a
MAGAZINE
29/05/2015 15:00
MT Step-by-Step Keyboards and sidechaining contd
Now we need to add some movement to this keyboard part I

guess youd say its a pad sound; duplicate your MIDI drum track
by clicking on the track name and type Cmd-D.
Inside the rack, solo chains 1, 3, 5, 9, and 13 and deactivate the

track by clicking on the yellow track number. Launch the clip,
though. Yes, thats right. We have a plan.
If you can only solo one item at a time, check your Record/Warp/
Launch Preferences and make sure Exclusive Solo is off.
Otherwise, temporarily override the preference setting by CmdClicking on each item.
Click on your copied drum track and use Cmd-R or the Context
Menu to rename the track Sidechain, then load the Compressor
Brick Wall preset into your keyboard track after the EQ Three.
Click on the small triangle in the Compressor title bar, turn on

Sidechain and choose the sidechain drum track from the Audio
From box. Leave the other settings alone.
Bring the Compressor Threshold down to -50.0dB and set the

Attack to 0.30ms. Play your keyboard and sidechain clips and you
should hear a new rhythmic pulse to your keyboard part.
13
15
17
great tool for you anyway, especially with alternative input

devices like Push and the new Novation Launchpad Pro.
But if youre really confident or even conscious in terms
of theory, Live can really give you a boost with the MIDI
effects weve mentioned here. Its about as novice-friendly
as it gets, and it doesnt fail to deliver once you get more
14
16
18
knowledgeable. Were making good progress through this

project. Next time well be adding our final element a
speech sample and processing that in a few interesting
and different ways. MT
This tutorial is one of the all new tutorials available in the MusicTech Live
2015 Focus on sale now.
MAGAZINE July 2015
| 51
29/05/2015 15:00
MT Feature A bluffers guide to MIDI
MT Feature Music Technology
A BLUFFERS
GUIDE TO MIDI
Get your head round MIDI and youve got your head round music
production. Rob Boffard explains the ins and outs
IDI can be one of the most mystifying parts of music production.

Although its basic purpose can be intuitive with a little bit of
practice, unlocking its hidden depths often takes a lot of time,
especially if youve never encountered it before. But it is crucially
important to know how it works, especially if you want to
produce anything involving software instruments.
Thats because all manufacturers of DAWs from Apple to Avid to Ableton to
Propellerheads rely on it. Its the Rosetta Stone of music production; a common
language that enables any device and any software program to talk to each other.
If you can master MIDI, if you can work out how it functions and make it part of
your toolkit, then your production will become much faster, and the results will
be as slick as they come.
Powered by
MIDI Magic
Musical Instrument Digital Interface: thats what MIDI stands for. We dont
really want to go in-depth into its history (theres plenty online if youd like to
find out more) this is a Bluffers Guide, after all but what you need to know is
that it came to fruition in the early 1980s as part of a collaboration between
engineers Dave Smith and Chet Wood, and several synthesiser companies such as
Korg, Moog and Roland. Smith and Wood initiated this, because the market had
just got far too complicated. There were too many protocols, and too many
devices, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to talk to each other.
MIDI was the solution.
106 | July 2015
MAGAZINE
29/05/2015 12:34
A bluffers guide to MIDI Feature MT
By having your software

instruments respond to
properties of your MIDI notes,
you can put together
interesting effects.
But forget the

history. The best way to
understand MIDI is to
talk about what it is
now. Well get to the
complicated information
that a MIDI sequence can
contain in a minute. For
now, were just going to
talk about the basics.
The easiest way to
understand this is to
pull up your favoured
A single MIDI note. This one is perfectly in time, locked in place on the grid.
DAW, and load up a
software instrument. Ill
use Reason, but you can use any one you like. Once youve queued up your
Tech terms
instrument, youll need to go into the sequencer, where youll see a virtual
NOTE: a single
keyboard (or equivalent) running vertically. Running horizontally along from that
piece of MIDI data,
keyboard should be a line-up of rigid blocks.
usually expressed as
a slim rectangle and
Find the pencil tool, which is usually located in the toolbar, and click one of
displayed on a grid.
those blocks. Youll notice it will fill in. There: youve just drawn a MIDI note.
Instructs an instrument
Now, if you press play, your software instrument will play a sound when the
to play audio.
marker reaches the note. You can play these back at any tempo you like, and they
VELOCITY: a method
will stay in time.
of simulating the
At its most basic, a MIDI note is an indication for an instrument to play a
perceived loudness
note. A much-used analogy is that of an orchestra. If the instruments are the
of a given MIDI note.
violins, horns, woodwinds and the like, then the MIDI notes are the sheet music.
Measured in units
They tell the orchestra what to play. By arranging MIDI notes in sequence,
from 0 to 127.
running up and down the chords on the keyboard, you can create complex
QUANTISATION: the
melodies. This is why MIDI notes are so popular in electronic music production.
process where MIDI
Its worth remembering that MIDI notes, beyond just being sheet music, are a
notes are snapped to
way the different instruments are able to communicate with each other. It
their nearest spot on
enables you to play a note on a physical keyboard (called a MIDI controller) and
the grid in order
to compensate for
have it appear as MIDI data on your screen. Thats important, by the way: MIDI is
human playing, and
not sound. By itself, it cant do a damn thing. If you draw a MIDI note without an
retain timing.
instrument connected to it, nothing will play. Its just data, and it relies on the
context its being used in for the outcome.
Up a level
But of course, MIDI programming is a lot more complex than simple instructions
for an instrument to play a note.
Lets start with one of the most common ways of treating a MIDI note:
velocity. If you hit a piano key hard, the sound it plays will be much louder than
if you just pushed it down gently. MIDI has the same principle encoded in it. The
higher the velocity, the louder the note. The advantage of this is that you can
tweak the volumes of individual notes on a particular track, instead of having to
automate the track fader.
Velocity gives you a hugely versatile way of controlling your sound. You could,
for example, set your instrument to only trigger certain effects at certain
velocities. Try doing this with a filter that has the MIDI velocity as its source,
and get it to activate only when the velocity crosses a certain threshold. Velocity
is usually measured from 0 to 127, so its easy to set an exact value for it. This
particular trick has endless applications. One we really like is setting different
samples to trigger at different velocities, which can really bring some life to a
track. At this point, we need to stress that not all techniques will be available on
all instruments, and its crucial that you spend time getting to know your
favoured software instruments before playing around with this.
There are other ways of controlling the character of a MIDI note, but they are
largely restricted to the software instruments themselves. You can apply
envelopes to the notes, changing their attack, decay, sustain and release settings.
You can apply filters to them. Some DAWs even let you adjust the fine pitch of
CONTROLLER: a
device thats used to
input and sequence
MIDI notes. Usually
this is a keyboard, or
set of pads.
MAGAZINE July 2015
| 107
29/05/2015 12:34
MT Feature A bluffers guide to MIDI
the MIDI notes, adding a human element to your

compositions. But really, once you understand how
MIDI notes and their velocities work, youll find it
extremely easy to start composing.
And since weve got onto composing, there is an
additional concept its worth giving your head
around: quantisation. Essentially, all MIDI notes are
displayed on a grid but when theyre being
recorded, particularly if youre using a MIDI
controller, perfect timing is often elusive. By
switching on quantisation, you essentially lock
each note to its closest segment in the grid, resulting
in perfect time, every time. Quantisation is always
desirable (it can sound a little robotic if applied too
heavily) but its a real boon when youre recording.
Fine tuning
There are a few advanced applications of MIDI that
you can use once youve got the hang of things. Were
going to go into a few of them now, although were
You can layer your MIDI notes to create complex chords.
Once you understand how

MIDI notes work, youll find it
easy to start composing
not going to spend too much time on the individual
steps to pull them off. This is because theyre largely
dependent on individual DAWs.
One of the most fun ways of employing this is
using the MIDI notes to trigger external
instruments, not just software ones. In this way, you
can use the data to get a MIDI controller, like a set
of pads, talking to another instrument like a
hardware synth, and using one to play the other. It
takes a little bit of work to set up, but if you find
yourself with a lot of different instruments and one
preferred control method, then this is a neat way to
streamline your work.
Here, we are adjusting the notes velocity. This will control its perceived loudness.
108 | July
March
2015
2015
As we mentioned earlier, you can also use MIDI

data like velocity and note on/note off to trigger
certain aspects of the software instrument. This
gives you very fine grained control, and allows you to
come up with some seriously wild effects. Also,
because you can draw multiple MIDI notes into one
track, including on top of one another at different
octaves, its easy to create complex chords and
layered effects.
One of the lesser-known ways of creating MIDI is
to extract it from audio information. DAWs such as
Ableton are known for enabling users to do this.
Essentially, it means that you can input a piece of
recorded audio and extract pitches and note
locations from it. This is a great way to create
accompanying parts to a recording.
In addition, one of the big pluses of MIDI
composition is that it is highly portable. What we
mean by this is that because the notes are simply
bits of data, and contain no actual audio information
themselves, its really easy to port them over to
another computer and continue working on it there.
As long as youre using the same DAW, and using the
same instruments and effects, you will easily be able
to move back and forth between the two.
In fairness, this is less important these days now
that even the smallest flash drive has multiple
gigabytes of space, but its a useful tool to illustrate
what MIDI is and how it works. Its data, and
nothing more.
Every DAW will treat MIDI slightly differently,
display it differently, and enable you to do more with
it. So experiment, and switch between them until
youve found one you like. MT
This feature is endorsed by SSR which has been
providing professional education training in the
audio engineering industry for over 30 years. With
campuses in London, Manchester, Jakarta and
Singapore, SSR has gained a healthy reputation
within the music industry for producing well
trained, professional graduates across the globe.
MAGAZINE
MAGAZINE
29/05/2015 12:34
Recording and
manipulating
speech samples
Time to do some audio recording and get micd up.
Martin Delaney shows you how to add some
speech samples to our ongoing Live project.
o far weve used MIDI and weve used existing

audio samples, but we havent covered how to
record our own audio material. Instead of
jumping in at the deep end and attempting to
record fully-blown vocal or instrument takes,
lets make it easy on ourselves by recording a short speech
sample thatll also work inside our ongoing project. To be
I record short speech

samples into Session View
and anything longer goes
into Arrangement View
honest, this is more frequently the type of recording I do
with Live anyway capturing short snippets to use in the
Session View. We aim to record one short sample, then use
it to create three different clips. Note, because this is such
a variable exercise, and I cant hear what youre doing from
here(!), Ive included an after voice track to make it clear
what kind of result youre shooting for.
It might not sway Pro Tools snobs, but Live does a great
job of recording audio. It has the advantage of two views,
so two distinct approaches. As a rule of thumb I record
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
On the disc
Accompanying
on the DVD
thorough and immediate routing options, so you can send

and receive audio freely throughout the application.
Theres also the lovely Resampling input option which
provides post-master, post-everything, capture of Lives
output, straight back into the Live set. Live works with
audio samples at different sample rates, mono or stereo,
and combines .aiff, .wav, and .mp3 files in the same
project. Despite what some say, there are no audio quality
issues with Live; youre more likely to experience problems
through user error choosing the wrong Warp mode for
time-stretched material or stretching a clip way beyond
what any reasonable person would do (well be coming
back to that later).
Although Live isnt an audio editor, it covers some of the
basics. Crop Sample, which we use in this tutorial,
discards unwanted portions at the start and end of an
audio clip; and Consolidate available only in the
Arrangement View combines two or more audio clips to
create a new one. These functions are non-destructive
youll find the new samples in the sub-folders inside your
Live project folder.
You probably already have the necessary equipment to
record a voice sample most computers have some kind
of built-in microphone. Then its a matter of scaling up
from there with a dedicated microphone and soundcard
(as far as were concerned, a soundcard and an audio
interface are the same thing). You can get excellent
affordable USB soundcards look at the Focusrite
Scarlett range and a basic microphone for not much
cash at all. Theres an ever-growing number of good USB
microphones, too, although you lose the flexibility
of a soundcard. Theres also
FOCUS ON THE MICROPHONE

Its nice to use expensive microphones and recording hardware but
you should be willing to work with what youve got. Its easier for us
because were recording a simple speech sample here so were 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 computers built-in
microphone upwards will do fine.
44 | August 2015
MAGAZINE
23/06/2015 12:35
MT Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech
For this walkthrough we have to make some assumptions about

your microphone and soundcard; read our main text for more
details. Connect your mic and soundcard, launch Live and go to the
Preferences Audio tab.
Choose your soundcard in the Audio Input Device and Audio

Output Device lists then close Preferences. Connect your
headphones to your soundcard (watch your volume) and turn your
monitor speakers off to avoid feedback.
Open our example Live set. Make sure youre using the updated
part 6 version and use the shortcut Cmd-T to create a new audio
track. Were still working in the Session View, of course.
Use Alt-Cmd-I to open the In/Out View. This will display the audio
routing options at the bottom of your tracks. Click on the Audio
From chooser to select your input Ext. In.
Below that is a list of available audio inputs click to view the

list. As you talk into your microphone, youll see a level displayed
alongside one of those inputs. Thats your microphone. Click it.
Set up your microphone and mixer so you get a manageable

volume level. Exactly how this works will again depend on what
equipment youre using but please avoid red peaks anywhere in the
signal chain!
01
03
05
the Apogee One, which is unique because it has

connections for a microphone and instrument, but also
boasts a built-in microphone. Its a cool tool for the
travelling musician. Im not going further into this
discussion now, because its a whole other tutorial
Well, a whole other book, actually!
Ive suggested that you set the tracks Monitor switch to
Auto, which means youll hear the mic input when you arm
the track, but bear in mind that your set-up might enable
02
04
06
or require you to monitor somewhere else along the

signal chain. As I said, were not singing along to a backing
track with this exercise, so frankly, accurate monitoring is
not so critical.
There are different ways to initiate recording: you can
use a mouse or trackpad, your controller, or even your
iPhone. You can go into record while Live is already running
or enter record to start Live running. Record start and stop
are quantised so that means if youre using the default
MAGAZINE August 2015
| 45
23/06/2015 12:36
MT Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech (contd)
Set the tracks Monitor In switch to Auto, and arm the track
click the small circular button in the mixer, it goes red. Stop your
other clips youre not singing along to anything for this one!
As you arm/disarm the track for recording youll see the square
stop buttons in each empty Session View clip slot (in that track)
transform into circles; that means you can record into these.
Well record a short phrase to use as a one-shot sample and a

rhythmic loop. Click a slot button to start recording. Wait a beat or
two, then record yourself saying Please be aware.
Press the space bar to stop Live when youre finished. Note the
clip length is cropped to the nearest bar. Disarm the track so you
cant record anything else by mistake and always save after recording.
Before you launch your other clips again, listen to your voice
recording on its own, checking for distortion and also checking
that you havent chopped the start or end off as its very easy to do.
Double-click the clip to view the waveform if necessary. Lets

discard some of the silence around it. Position the loop brace
around the keeper part and the start marker at the front of that.
07
09
11
global quantization of one bar, recording commences on

the next bar. Its important to remember this and not start
talking too soon, otherwise you lose the beginning of your
sample. Record ending is also quantised which is great as
it gives you pre-cut loops, rounded off to bars and more
likely to loop in sync with your other content straight off.
46 | August 2015
08
10
12
The most important thing when recording is to avoid

overloading and distorting your input levels. Its very rock
to record to tape with everything in the red, and it sounds
cool, but sadly it stinks when you do it with digital
recording. Live has some great distortion effects, so why
not save that fun until later? If youve erred on the side of
MAGAZINE
23/06/2015 12:35
MT Step-by-Step Recording and editing speech (contd)
The Loop Brace is that bar above the audio waveform. You can
drag to reposition it and grab either end to change the length. FYI
the Loop Brace dimensions and coordinates are MIDI-mappable.
Make sure the Loop Brace is an even bar length, though.

Right-Click inside the area contained by the loop brace and
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
screen, deactivate Warp so itll play just once at its original
speed. Now you have a one-shot, plus a looping version.
Use Cmd-D to duplicate the second clip. Double-click above the

right end of the waveform to add a Warp marker. Grab it and drag
to the right, doubling the length of your original sample.
Make sure you adjust the length of the Loop Brace to

accommodate the stretched waveform. Experiment with Warp
modes the difference between Beats and Complex is very noticeable
(but lets stick with Beats).
Quantize the audio-click inside the waveform and type Cmd-U.

Watch the waveform peaks snap to the grid; youll see Live inserts
yellow Warp markers to achieve this.
13
15
17
caution and recorded at a low level, use the clip Gain slider
to boost the volume. Do this while the clips playing, so you
can check for the distortion that arises if you go too far!
Were touching on Warping and audio quantization
during our walkthrough; its fun to over-stretch audio
samples and tweak the Warp modes; I cant resist it with
14
16
18
vocals, which is why were doing it here. A bit of

quantization also adds to the unreal effect, but it can also
make a looping speech sample sit more neatly on the beat.
Thats it for now. I hope that over these six workshop parts
Ive given enough tips to inspire and help your music
making happy producing! MT
MAGAZINE August 2015
| 47
23/06/2015 12:36
INSTANT
instant inspiration / make music now <
Your music deserves more!

Step into that creative
frame of mind and get it
done, with this massive
guide to starting, finishing,
and everything in between
While some tinker with music-making
simply as a hobby, the majority of
computer musicians ultimately want to
convert their musical ideas into finished
tracks. Yet, no matter how many issues of
you read, knowledge and skills alone
arent going to get your music completed:
a large dose of hard graft, time and effort
is also essential.
But what about those times when your
creative reserves are running low? Perhaps
youre stuck staring at a blank arrange window.
Maybe youve got an overwhelming number of
sketch projects that you cant seem to arrange.
Or your tunes might be 90% finished, but you
cant seem to draw a line under them and move
on. Often, trying harder only makes things
worse, and plugging away ad nauseam doesnt
get to the root of the problem, leaving you even
more frustrated. With most technical issues
come a definitive solution, but a lack of
creativity is a more abstract problem to solve.
So, to tackle these problems head-on, weve
compiled the best advice you can find to
achieve inspiration, overcome writers block
wherever it might occur in the music-making
process and get your music-making muscles
into shape. Weve pooled the collective
experiences of our in-house

writers to
come up with over 60 techniques, methods
and things to try all picked up from years of
music-making experience, accumulated
wisdom, and pure trial-and-error.
Youll probably notice that weve rejected
our usual step-by-step tutorial format in favour
of snappy tips and techniques. Inspiration is an
intangible entity different states of mind call
for different types of inspiration, and every
producer is unique, so one very specific way of
working isnt applicable to everyone. Instead,
think of the next few pages as a big creativity
toolbox of useful ideas, inspirational advice
and alternative points of view from which you
can cherry-pick the most applicable to your
working methods. If one of our tips doesnt get
you frothing at the mouth, simply move on to
the next one and see if it can help you out.
To watch the video versions or download
tutorial files, just head over to our online Vault
at vault.computermusic.co.uk on your
PC/Mac, register this issue of the mag (221), and
download. Plus, if youre reading this via our
iOS app, just tap the play button for each entry
to immediately stream its video. So, without
further ado, its time to get inspired, speed up
your workflow and boost your creativity!
DOWNLOAD
Grab all the videos and get
the files to do it yourself at
vault.computermusic.co.uk
DOWNLOAD
Get all the videos and tutorial
files on your PC/Mac at
vault.computermusic.co.uk
October 2015 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 37
> make music now / instant inspiration
20 Track
Starting
Tactics
Struggling to get rolling on
a new track? Here are 20
inspirational ideas to give
you the jumpstart you need
Picture the scene. Youve set aside a chunk
of time for music-making, your other half/
kids/dog/phone are all locked out of the studio,
and youre finally sitting down at the computer,
bursting with enthusiasm. Its the moment
youve been building up to for days: its time to
get a new track underway! Visions of label
interest, Beatport No.1s and A-list DJ-play briefly
flash through your mind as you fire up the DAW.
You have a good feeling about this one after
all, youve spent sufficient time and effort
learning the right tools and techniques, so why
cant this be your best track yet?
Yet, when greeted with an empty arrange
page, its almost impossible to transfer that
enthusiasm into anything resembling a good
idea. Every sample you audition is greeted with
38 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2015
a weak meh. The drum beat youve laid down

is bland and uninspiring. You have a few parts
working, but its nowhere near good enough to
even bother arranging. You flit between projects
and plugins, but to no avail. Deflated, you stamp
the session with an almighty fail.
This scenario is one that every producer has
experienced. Even with no distractions, the
perfect studio setup, and buckets of talent, its
all too easy to find yourself staring at a blank
screen. The passive solution is to attribute this
to an inevitable lack of inspiration, cross your
fingers and hope that your next session will be
more productive. The proactive solution, as
well explore over the next few pages, is to roll
up your sleeves, analyse your weaknesses and
try out new approaches for starting tracks.
01
Start with a
soundscape
Many producers choose to start a track with

drums. While this does get your rhythmic
foundation down straight away, drums in
isolation arent always that inspiring and you
might inadvertently fill up your groove with
too many sounds, leaving less space in the mix
for other elements. Instead, aim for character
and vibe from the get-go: consider beginning
with interesting, organic soundscapes, FX,
weird vocal snippets, strange noises, subtle
soundscapes, vinyl crackle, tape noise and so
on. These can all form interesting beds of
sound. Also, try and give this foundation some
kind of rhythmic element, to help visualise
how the groove of your track could progress.
Once you have something cool down, the
vanilla sounds such as beats and bass should
slot into place, and you may find you dont
need to make those elements as elaborate.
02
Remix
yourself
Find a track or idea youve previously worked on,

bounce out interesting chunks of riffs or sounds, then
mangle them up beyond recognition for a completely
new starting point. Or, you can even use creative
plugins to resample one of your completed tracks.
Tools such as Elastique Pitch 2, Paulstretch and our
own XFadeLooper CM can all mash up an existing file
and deliver plenty of new starting points to the
inspiration-starved producer.
03 MPC-style drum pad chopping

Load different synth or vocal sections across a drum samplers pads, tune
them so they all work together, then play/record the pads live to create
stuttering vocal riffs or complextro-style bass chops. Heres how its done
Find a collection of bass and synth

samples or loops the more varied,
the better and import them into your
DAW. Quickly sift through the sounds and
chop out small chunks and phrases,
setting them aside for later. Aim for a
mixture of short cuts and longer notes
(or even longer loop sections). Again,
contrast is good.
Import your chosen cuts and chops

into a drum sampler, making sure that
each slice is on its own drum pad. Play
through the pads, auditioning the sounds
to find suitable interactions and riff
combos. Use the samplers tuning
functions to transpose individual pads,
ensuring the slices are in tune and work
musically together.
Now have fun jamming with a pad

controller. Try punching in potential
riff combos, alternating between different
pads to create stuttering, crazy, chopped
riffs and, ultimately, a Frankenstein riff
made from all those individual cuts. Note
that this technique works great with vocal
slices too.
04
MIDI
trickster
MIDI data has burst the banks of the

simple piano-roll editor that it once
filled and has become a part of the
creative process itself. Many DAWs now feature
some kind of Extract to MIDI function, which
can turn a musical audio file into MIDI data to
feed another instrument. Begin with a chordbased musical loop that you like, extract it to a
MIDI file, then delete the original audio; use this
MIDI to trigger a synth or instrument, ideally
playing a different type of sound from the
original loop for contrast. This new part can now
be used as a springboard to start a new track.
Almost all DAWs now feature MIDI plugins,
which take incoming notes and process them in
interesting ways. These can be used to further
develop a new melodic idea. Start by duplicating
the previous MIDI part to a new channel, and
load up a different synth sound on this track.
For variation, head into the MIDI and remove or
change a few notes. Now use your DAWs
arpeggiator device to turn the chord notes into
a monophonic sequence, and even use other
MIDI plugins to further tweak the notes.
Finally, dont be afraid to use MIDI plugins in
unorthodox ways an arpeggiator can become
a super drum sequencer, for example.
05
Spoken
vocal
Were not all natural singers, but many

electronic tracks feature processed spoken
vocals. Hook up your microphone even the most
basic will produce usable results lay down a few
words or noises, make it sound cool with effects if
needed, then let the words and their rhythm guide
your sound choices, so you end up with a piece of
music that complements the vocal.
06
Drums to
melody
Coming up with inspirational melodic or

bass hooks can be tricky, and its easy to fall
into creative ruts. Next time this happens,
try converting drum loops to a melody line.
There are a few ways to do this. Here, weve
used Lives Convert Melody to New MIDI
Track function to extract note information
from our drums and apply it to an
overdriven electric piano sound. If your
DAW doesnt have a pitch-to-MIDI function,
try an automatic tuning plugin (such as
Computer Musics very own vieklang 2 CM).
Even if you end up changing the notes, the
grooves are often much funkier and more
syncopated than you might otherwise play.
You could also try using MIDI effects to
create chords and arpeggios from the
notes; or how about simply slicing the loop
to MIDI and using that to trigger a synth,
giving a nice ascending rhythmic riff as a
starting point?
07
10
Deliberate
accidents
Build a loop using

only one sample
Dance music used to be made with hardware

samplers, and each time you loaded a project,
you had to make sure the corresponding
sampler banks were loaded. If they werent,
youd end up with, say, a MIDI file designed to
trigger drums instead triggering a chopped up
vocal, a bass part or sometimes totally different
drum sounds. Sometimes this actually sounded
great, and such happy accidents are easy to
reproduce today. Check out how we approach it
in the video, and to get an idea of the kind of
unexpected results you can get.
08
This creative sound design

challenge is a truly awesome way
to make a loop that sounds
nothing like anybody elses
The sounds
around
Its easy to stagnate in the studio. For most of us,

the first port of call for creative inspiration is
some new sample packs or virtual instruments,
but the world around us is full of sounds. Get out
and about for half an hour with a field recorder
(or just your phone), record everything you hear
and try bringing it back to the studio and
manipulating it into something cool. We took to
the streets of Hackney and recorded everything
from keys and trains to sirens and people
check out the video to see us transform our
found sounds pitchshifting, sidechain pumping,
modulating and more.
09
Stack em and
pick em
A fantastic way to build up an original but

convincing and authentic-sounding loop is to
comp together other loops. Take between five
and ten loops of one-to-four bars in length
(most should be beats but one or two musical
and vocal loops can be great), line them up in
your sequencer and slice each one into its
constituent hits, mapped to a sampler. Before
slicing, its worth using a sampler-style

repitching mode to get them to the same tempo
and then render before slicing. Now play all the
loops together and listen for a groove, then go
through each loop, looking for the individual
hits contributing to the groove you hear and
muting the rest. Often you might only take one
noise per loop or delete some loops
altogether. In this way, youll quickly build up an
original groove. Be sure that repeated nearidentical samples (kicks, snares and offbeat
hats, for example) are using the same notes.
Kicks are ideal for this task, and

weve used a tonally rich one. We
tighten it up using envelope controls,
then use a version pitched down an
octave with a softened attack to play a
bassline, and another version an octave
up to fashion a tom-style sound.
We use a version of the kick tuned

high and processed to create a
metallic top end. A strong low-cut filter
then gets rid of the original signal so
were left with the metallic tapping
thats our off beat hat. A similar
instance (but tuned higher and heavily
distorted) is our crash cymbal.
A bitcrushed version with chorus,

distortion and very narrow bandpass filtering provides a crunchy snare,
while a syncopated version of our
offbeat hat is treated with a Frequency
Shifter for some percussion. We also
shift the sample start point much later
to create a clicking sound.
10 more ways to get a track started

11. TRAWL YOUR BACK-CATALOGUE
Many DAWs allow us to import
individual tracks from project files,
including MIDI parts, audio,
automation and channel strips. This
means that all those unused riffs, melodies,
chord progressions and other leftovers from
your previous sessions are a potential
starting point. Choose one or two tracks and
parts from another session, or mix and match
from a couple of sessions beats from one
and keys from another, say. And to make this
approach even smoother in future, get into
the habit of rendering out cool-sounding
parts as they occur during your sessions,
labelling by key and BPM. Do this and youll
have a stack of awesome ready-made custom
loops in no time!
12. MAKE A CHANGE

If you usually play MIDI using a keyboard, try
instead arranging and pitching sampled
notes as audio on the timeline; if you usually
draw drum patterns in the piano roll, try a
sequencer plugin or drum pads. Get away
from the screen entirely with Abletons Push
or NIs Maschine software/hardware hybrids.
Try randomising the individual modules of your plugins, one by one, until you come to something fresh
13. START WITH A RHYTHM
a pile of bespoke, royalty-free sounds to call

on, all neatly categorised.
Get something rhythmic down straight away,

even if its not drums. Plenty of sounds in your
palette can be played rhythmically, good
examples being bass, guitar and percussive
keyboards such as piano. Use a click track to
stay in time, and loop a four- or eight-bar
section the same way you would for beat
programming. Map the results to beats once
youre happy, or use the rhythms for melodic
hooks or basslines.
15. NATURAL MIMIC

Copy one aspect of an existing track, then
make it your own. In light of Pharrells Blurred
Lines lawsuit, this may seem risky, but if its
done correctly, the final result will bear no
obvious relation to the original. A good
example is to program a bassline to match a
track you like, then edit the notes and/or
rhythm until youve got an original bassline.
14. BUILD YOUR OWN SAMPLE PACKS
16. KEYWORD SEARCH
Getting sidetracked programming synth

patches, hunting for samples, or designing
sounds from scratch can get in the way of
those inspirational moments so why not
create your own sample and preset packs?
Set aside time to do this as a task in itself,
without actually trying to write music. Give
your packs a theme or title eg, 100 Ultimate
Synth Stabs, 50 Stripped-down Breaks, 80
Electrifying Guitar Loops, etc and stick to it.
This will give you an achievable goal, and
when you do come to start a track, youll have
Choose a keyword, then search your synths

for sounds that contain it. Inevitably, many of
the sounds wont inspire you at all, but it only
takes one sound to capture your imagination,
and youll be up and running. Try the same
technique with samples and loops, where
youll often find musical key, instrument,
genre and style used as file tags. Your DAWs
browser may help make this process easier
Studio One 3, for instance, has a ready-tagged
sound library, and these tags show up in its
search results.
17. RANDOMISE FOR FRESHNESS

Many plugins include randomise
options. Play from your MIDI
keyboard, or set up a MIDI loop,
then head for the Randomise
controls. Basic full patch randomisation will
give rise to results that are rather hit and
miss, requiring patience and repeat buttonclicking; however, in the video, were using
MeldaProductions MPowerSynth, which
allows you to randomise individual parts of
the instrument oscillators, envelopes,
effects modules, etc. Starting with one
oscillator, well add two more oscillators, then
start to add in some filters and effects,
randomising and tweaking as we go. Dont
settle keep hitting that randomise control
until you get something that works or can be
tweaked a little to your liking.
18. NOTE DOWN THE CHORDS

Compile a list of progressions from songs and
tracks that you like, focusing on the order and
scale degree I-V-vi-IV, for example rather
than a particular key. When inspiration is
short, grab the list and work your way
through until something inspires you.
19. RESTRUCTURE
Step away from regular eight-bar structures,
choosing a different cycle length, then write a
melody to match. Start with a simple ten- or
12-bar structure, or try seven, nine, 11 or 13
bars for more interest. Or go all-out and
experiment with odd time signatures and
unfamiliar scales.
20. TRY A NEW INSTRUMENT
Many of our VIP Series artists use the sounds in their own tracks so why not make your own sample packs?
Record yourself playing an instrument you

dont know how to play often innocence and
navety result in the simplicity youre after.
You can always use time- and pitchcorrection to improve the performance, or
treat it with effects to create something
completely fresh.
10 workflow accelerators
Try and comprehend the full music-making power, convenience and
potential of the modern computer. Mind-bending, isnt it? But with more
options comes more choice, and an abundance of choice can be
overwhelming. Too many variables and decisions to make can sap your
creativity, disrupt your studio flow, and kill off your productivity. So, to
prevent you getting bogged down in technicalities, battling DAW options, or
generally doing things the hard way, weve put together ten key tips to help you
release and realise your musical ideas quicker than ever.
01
MIX AS YOU GO
It can be productive to quickly

throw your track elements together
roughly at the composition stage,
then address the mix later once your ideas are
down. This does mean that the incomplete mix
may lack the professional sheen of your
favourite releases, which may cause you to lose
heart. In this case, try the opposite approach
and mix as you go, adding basic processing to
each sound as you slot it in the track. Having
pre-prepared plugin racks or channel strips are
invaluable. Try both approaches and discover
which works best for you.
03
02
RTFM!
Getting stuck on a DAW feature

or synth parameter is a workflow
killer, so become a ninja at your
chosen software by reading the manuals of your
DAW and plugins. Also, follow software-specific
tutorials/guides such as our own How To Use
series. Time is limited for all of us, so keep
learning time to a minimum, and restrict
yourself to only a handful of tools you can learn
inside out. Make your own notes if necessary
compile a list of useful features, menu functions
etc. You can even print your crib sheets out and
keep them to hand if needed.
PREPARATION IS KEY
As the old saying goes, fail to prepare

and prepare to fail. So take heed and do
as much of your plugin and DAW setup
ahead of time as you can. Have a variety of template
sessions and racks ready, catering for elements such as
multi-out instruments, channel strips, creative plugin
chains, mastering chains, and outboard gear.
Spend a little time organising your plugins list to your

preference, so everythings in easy reach later on
04
If your DAWs list of plugins is an

endless minefield to navigate,
speed up productivity by
categorising them into relevant folders perhaps by processor type or most-used. See
The CM Guide to Plugins in issue 217 for details
on how to accomplish this in many major DAWs.
To take this concept further, prepare custom
racks or devices for things that you do all the
time from basic workhorse gadgets like a bass
roll-off tool, to inspiring banks of sweeps/FX.
You can even have your own pre-prepared track
finisher sample pack full of sweeps, crashes,
noise textures, or useful instant FX return
effects loaded up for quick results.
05
Like many DAWs, Cubase lets you save common template setups as starting points, saving you tons of time
CUSTOM PLUGIN LIST
DISABLE DISTRACTION
Were all passionate about making

music, but external influences
always get in the way to some
extent. Be fully prepared for this. When youre
ready for a studio session, minimise potential
distractions. Log out of your social media
accounts or disconnect yourself from the
internet, put your phone on silent and out of
reach, have food prepared, tell your partner or
friends to leave you alone for a few hours then
focus your full attention on the DAW.
06
KEYBOARD
SHORTCUTS
Sending your mouse pointer up

to a file menu every time you
need a particular DAW command may seem
quick, but these frequent movements all add up.
While keyboard shortcuts arent sexy, they will
accelerate your workflow immensely and help
you to finish tracks quicker, so try and memorise
your most used keyboard shortcuts. Functions
like quantising MIDI, slicing audio at the
playhead point, looping sections and muting
regions are just a small handful of commands
you should know. Every time you reach into a
menu for something, see if theres a shortcut
command for it, and use that instead next time.
Furthermore, many DAWs allow you to create
your own keyboard shortcuts see Shortcuts to
Success in
186 for more on this. Some DAWs
even let you make your own chain of keyboard
commands (macros) and define custom
processes to do things like muting all clips that
are less than a bar in length, for example.
07
SITTING
COMFORTABLY?
Is your studio chair comfortable?

Can you wear your headphones
for hours at a time with no discomfort? Is
everything within easy reach? Are your speakers
positioned for the best sound? Its easy to focus
on whats going on inside the computer to help
speed up workflow, but if your studio setup isnt
ergonomic, comfortable and set up for optimum
playback, your work rate will suffer, and you
may even develop long-term problems.
08
TIME TO TIDY
Is your project getting out of

hand? Too many tracks? Loads of
ideas and alternative
arrangements knocking around on the timeline?
Bypassed plugins sitting around just in case
you decide to revert to that old EQ setting? All of
this can hold you back, making the project slow
and confusing to navigate, and eating system
resources. Work out a strategy to deal with it:
save the project, then delete unused tracks,
render parts to audio that youre happy with, go
through all those unused ideas and delete any
you cant see yourself using in this project. Now
Save As to save this tidier project most DAWs
have some kind of Collect All and Save function,
which will save the whole project, samples and
all; but dont retain any large, unwanted takes of
audio from the bloated project.
Compare your track to commercial releases early on visual analysis tools can really help with this
09
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Ever got a track finished, only to find

that it doesnt stack up next to your
favourite commercial mixes? Start
comparing it early on rather than right at the end, and
then continue to do so with every vital change.
Also, hitting Save each time will overwrite your
previous stages; instead, when youve made a few
significant tweaks, Save As, and create numbered
versions. Render a mix out whenever you do this so
you can easily compare to your current version
sometimes, you might decide to revert to an
earlier, better mix.
10
QUALITY SAMPLES
Tidy your project up! Place everything in a sensible order,

get rid of the chaff, and use colours for ease of navigation
Having a large, diverse sample

collection is all very well, but
rummaging through thousands of
samples on your hard drive can be a massive
buzzkill when youre trying to focus on musicmaking. Instead, make a highly organised
samples folder thats all about quality, not
quantity reduce the bloat and keep only the
best sounds that are unique to you and your
signature sound. The same goes for old,

abandoned projects, too. Harvest these for
parts, then archive them in an organised fashion
or just delete them for good.
In terms of how you should organise your
chosen samples, thats up to you! Some prefer
breaking it down by instrument (hats, kicks,
etc); while others prefer to go by genre or
sample collection. When you do choose a
structure, make sure you stick to it.
10
Easy
Music
Theory
Tips
Spruce up your chords and
snazz up those scales with
our ten simple methods
Music theory has always had a slight whiff of
the uncool about it, conjuring up images of
dry, dusty, bewigged baroque musicians from
centuries past, the nightmare of childhood
piano lessons, or baffling overheard discussions
in jazz clubs concerning the superiority of
augmented 13ths over Neapolitan sixths or the
joys of soloing in the Mixolydian mode. This bad
rep is entirely unjustified however, since
regardless of whether youre a composer,
songwriter, producer or DJ, shoring up your
musical knowledge with a smattering of
grassroots theory can have a profound effect
on the quality of your output.
Here at
, we never underestimate the
importance of a good grounding in music
theory hence our long-running regular Easy
Guide feature found in every issue. After all,
how music actually works is the key to
everything we do when were creating a project.

The idea is to think of theory as a framework to
support and inspire your musical endeavours,
rather than inhibit and rule them. The best part
is that you dont have to plumb the murky
depths of the subject to be able to use it to your
advantage. When a crippling loss of creativity
strikes and this can happen to any of us at any
time, lets face it having a few tried, tested and
theoretically proven techniques in your back
pocket can be a lifesaver.
Over the next few pages, then, were going to
highlight ten of our favourite, most practical
theory-based tips that can help to kickstart the
creative process next time your inspiration well
runs a little dry. Every tip includes a video
walkthrough, so you can see and hear exactly
how to make them work for yourself. Time to
knuckle down and get theory-ous!
01
Broken
chords
Should your keyboard parts naturally tend

towards the clunky side, things can be
improved by employing a technique known as
broken chords. This involves breaking chords
up into their component notes and playing
these as short arpeggios (runs of notes). The
technique doesnt just add rhythmic interest,
but it can be a great way of coming up with
ideas for cool melodies that work naturally
with the chord progression, since the notes
you pick out are taken from the chords
themselves. In our illustration below, on the
left, we have a four-bar progression of simple
block chords. To the right, we have the same
progression, but played using broken chords.
Like finger-picking on an acoustic guitar,
instead of playing all the notes on the same
beat, each triad is split into individual notes.
See
201s Easy Guide to arpeggios for more.
02
Animating chords
with inversions
Moving the order of notes around within a chord can

take a progression in new directions without
changing the actual chords. This is easily done by
selecting notes and shifting them up and down an
octave most DAWs have a shortcut key for this, such
!
as Shift-Up/Down. Here weve taken a simple C, D, E , F
progression and completely altered its shape by
swapping the note order around in the second half.
These rearranged chords are known as inversions.
03 Change the bass note

The notes a bass part plays can assume the role of root note for the
chords played by parts above it. Sticking different bass notes
underneath can radically alter the sound of a static chord sequence.
Lets illustrate by looking at a piano

part playing a repeated rhythmic C
minor chord sequence over and over
and over. It sounds pretty boring, as the
chord doesnt change. Instead of thinking
up new chords, though, lets try injecting
freshness by using a more animated
bass part.
For the first two bars, we stick to a C

bass note, as its the root note of the
chord. After two bars, however, we shift
the bass note down from C to A, forming a
completely different chord with the piano
!
!
an Am7 5, (A-E -G-C) in fact.
Keeping the piano chord the same, we

!
next move the bass from A to A ,
!
! !
making an A maj7 (A -E -G-C) chord. Then
down to F, up to G and back to C again. If
youre not sure what bass notes will fit, try
picking notes that are already in the
accompanying chord(s).
04
New flavours
with modes
If youve never encountered modes before, this

one tip could change your musical outlook
forever. Scales are a basic component of music
theory most people know one or two of the
major scales, the most commonly known being
C major (C D E F G A B). But what if we told you
that you could unlock a secret world of
evocative alternative scales simply by playing
any scale from a different starting note?
Try it by playing C major in the conventional
fashion, from C to C on a MIDI keyboard. Now
give your ears a few seconds rest to forget the
sound of it, and play the same scale again, but
without starting on C. Try going from D to D. Or
F to F. Notice how they have a different quality
to the majors happy, kindergarten sound? What
youre playing are different modes of the C
major scale, and they sound different because of
the different sequence of intervals between the
notes that happens when you start somewhere
other than the root note of the scale.
Underpinning each new mode with a bass note
the same as your new starting note will reinforce
the effect. Thats enough to get you started, but
when youre ready for more info on modes,
check out
207s Easy Guide on the subject.
05
Monotony
rules
Melody-writing can be tough, but sometimes, if the

rhythm is hooky enough, sticking religiously to one
note is all you need for a melody. Try using a
monotone melody in a verse part, and slowly add
small variations through the bridge section to build
to a chorus hook. This approach also gives you an
opportunity to focus on rhythm and sonic variety,
rather than just melody alone, for adding interest.
06
Borrowed
chords
Diatonic means in key, and diatonic

chords are formed using only notes taken
from a particular scale. So a C major scale
containing the notes C D E F G A B the
white notes on a keyboard would give you
the diatonic chords C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and
Bdim, formed by stacking alternate notes
onto each note within the scale. These are
the basic triads you may already be familiar
with; however, a palette of only seven
chords can be limiting, so why not borrow
chords from other keys?
Borrowed chords are most often taken
from parallel keys keys that have the same
root note as the original key. In the case of
C major, the parallel minor key is C minor,
so we have a whole new set of chords to
choose from Cm, Ddim, E!, Fm, Gm, A! and
B!.
214s Easy Guide has more tips and
advice on using borrowed chords.
07
10
Layer chords
together
Go pentatonic
For an exotic sound, try combining regular

major or minor triads together to form
polychords. For a classic polychord combo, lets
use C major as the first chord (C-E-G). For the
second, we need to find the major chord that
has its root a perfect fifth above the root of the
first chord. In this case, this happens to be G
major (G-B-D). Play the two chords together and
you get a Cmaj9 chord (C-E-G-B-D). If youre
stuck for which chords to combine, go for ones
that already have a note or two in common.
For an in-depth look at polychords, check out
219s Easy Guide.
08
Limiting yourself to notes from a

pentatonic scale may give you a
smaller choice, but it can give rise
to some memorable melodies.
Take some
giant leaps
To give things a kick when putting together a

melody, try making a dramatic leap up the
keyboard. A good interval to use for this is a
minor or major sixth. You find these intervals by
using the scale degree numbering system
outlined in Tip 10. With major scales, the
distance between the root note and degree 6 of
the scale is a major sixth, so in the case of C, a
major sixth above would be A. Jump up from C
to A in the course of a melody, and itll take you
up into a whole different area of the keyboard.
09
Build an
extension
Extending regular major or minor triads by

adding extra notes can radically transform your
track. For instance, in C major, a Cmaj7 is made
by adding the seventh degree of the C major
scale (B) to a C major triad (C-E-G). If we extend
the scale up the keyboard beyond the octave,

we get into the extended range, where a ninth is
essentially the scales second degree played up
an octave. So an easy way to play a ninth chord
is to play a root-position triad (for example C
major C-E-G) and add in the second degree
between the root and the third (C9 C-D-E-G). If
you want to learn more,
200s Easy Guide is
focussed entirely on extended chords.
While a conventional major or

minor scale contains seven notes, a
pentatonic scale only contains five.
Effectively, theyre regular scales with a
couple of notes removed. If we look at a
normal C major scale, we can see that it
contains the notes C, D, E, F, G, A and B.
We can then give these degrees

numbers, from 1 to 7. To make the
scale pentatonic, we need to remove
degrees 4 and 7 in this case, thats F
and B, leaving us with C, D, E, G and A,
the C major pentatonic scale.
For a minor pentatonic scale, omit

!
the second (D) and sixth (A )
degrees. For the C minor scale, were
!
!
left with C, E , F, G and B . Pentatonic
scales sound great, and theyre fun and
easy to use, but if you need more
information, check out our Easy Guide
to pentatonic scales in
192.
10 arrangement methods
In our Creative Concepts articles,
Features Editor Joe Rossitter has
often discussed the notorious loop land that all producers find
themselves in from time to time. Its relatively easy to lay down a few
decent ideas, but turning them into fully-fledged arrangements is,
arguably, the hardest part of music production. If youve got a hard drive
full of cool 16-bar loops crying out to be assembled into songs, then read on for ten
loop-busting arrangement approaches that you can put into practice right away.
01
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
While DAWs are thought of as strictly

linear sequencers, most now offer
features geared towards
arrangement experimentation. Ableton Lives
non-linear Session View, Cubases Arranger
track and Logic Pro Xs Arrangement markers
allow you to concoct and perform multiple
arrangement ideas on the fly, the best of which
can be printed onto the timeline at your leisure.
Studio One 3s new Scratch Pads offers an extra
timeline for trying out ideas independent from
the main arrangement. Take time out to learn
these features and reap their rewards.
02
TWOS COMPANY
Many of your unfinished track

ideas probably consist of one
concept or theme (ie, a chorus),
leaving you listening to the same sounds over
and over. If youre bored with the same old
loop, try making a completely contrasting
section, or even concentrate on making two
sections work well together for example, a
verse leading into chorus, or a breakdown
building up into a drop. Once you have two
differing sections working well together, itll be
easier to branch off and make a third, fourth and
fifth section.
03
COPYCAT
If youre making music in a genre that

adheres to DJ-friendly arrangements,
drag a commercial track into the project,
and check out exactly how its arranged. How long is
the intro? When does the bass come in? How long
before the second breakdown? Is there a long outro?
Copy the tracks structure in your own arrangement,
using it as a template, and no one need ever know.
Time yourself working, and set yourself time-limited

sessions to get tasks finished under pressure
04
Who says a great track needs to

take hours and hours to finish? If
you endlessly fiddle with an 8-bar
loop without getting an arrangement down,
youre probably working too slowly; after too
much time listening to the same idea, youll
likely get bored of it, no matter how good it is!
Instead, focus upon working fast. Pull out all the
stops and try turning your loop into a full
arrangement as quickly as possible perhaps
even to a strict time limit so you dont lose
interest and focus. If anything seems to be
slowing you down during this process, identify
what it is, and look for a solution.
You can even time yourself, giving
yourself a deadline to finish a certain
task, and once times up, its done.
05
Scrutinise a well-structured commercial track and nab its arrangement just make sure you use your own music!
AGAINST THE CLOCK
DUB IT LIVE
Back in
209, we explored the
modular mindset, which involves
recording long passages of synth/
effects tweaking live to audio, then selecting the
best bits to chop up onto the timeline. This will
help prevent endless tweaking of live plugins,
forcing you to commit to audio via a dedicated
record channel, freeze and flatten feature, or
bounce in place. By responding and reacting to
your track in a live fashion, youll often end up
with cool FX and transitions that make your
arrangement seem more natural and flowing.
06
SEND/RETURN
TRACKS
A track idea will often need

additional ideas or sounds adding
to progress the arrangement, but throwing in
new sounds can sound disjointed and messy,
especially if your aim is minimalism and groove.
Instead, run parts of your track through extreme
reverb or delay effects, then render results and
mangle further. Or grab any outboard gear you
can a cheap cassette deck, an old 90s mixer,
some guitar pedals and run sounds through
them. Sending portions of track elements to
creative return tracks (such as eccentric delays,
long reverbs and mangling, glitchy effects) will
generate plenty of extra material that can be
printed to audio and processed further and as
these sounds derive from existing elements,
theyll fit the tone and timbre of the track.
07
To create an arrangement, duplicate the main groove through the track (as above), then strip bits away (as below)
ENJOY THE SILENCE
Were all guilty of creating

overcomplicated ideas and dense
loops, and you can easily end up
trying to cram everything youve got into an
arrangement especially if youre basing it on a
busy loop that youre already expecting to be
the climax of the song which may lead to a
messy, convoluted track idea. Instead, use
silence and contrast to your advantage.
Remember that dynamics are an essential part
of music. Take away expected sounds, or even
fade them to silence. As well as contrasting quiet
against loud, set off low bass with sparkling
treble, subtlety with intensity, and so on. Filter
or fade parts in and out rather than having
elements just stop and start; or identify
sections where the listener could get bored,
and hammer them with a startling sound out
of nowhere!
08
CLICH CLUB
Dont be afraid of using clichs.

Theyre used time and time again
for a very good reason: they
work! Every genre has its own, but a few dance
music examples include four crashes on the last
bar of a phrase, 16th-note drum rolls, a white
noise sweep, an ever-doubling kick drum buildup, or a trance-gated sustained vocal. You can
use them to lead the listener comfortably
through a track, or if that sounds a bit too safe,
surprise the listener by using clichs in an
unexpected way. And, if all else fails drop
everything out for a bar or two and throw in a
cheesy sample!
09
Begin with a short 8- or 16-bar loop of a

track idea, which should contain all the
core elements youll need, then
duplicate the idea throughout the project for five or so
minutes. This should help you visualise the completed
track, and youll set yourself an ending to work
towards, as the original loop will probably be the
climax of your song. Now, start from the beginning
and form rough sections (intro, breakdown, chorus,
etc) by removing, muting or filtering parts as you go.
10
Get your guilty pleasures from audience-pleasing
chlichs like snare rolls, crashes and white noise sweeps
SUBTRACTIVE ARRANGING
SWITCHED OUT
Looped parts can become stale and

repetitive, but instead of throwing
them out or elaborating on them,
simply change the accompanying parts instead,
to reframe them. Change the chords used
beneath a repeating melodic phrase to create
variation; switching the beat up to double- or
half-time to vary the pace throughout the track;
pitch material up or down by an octave or
transpose the key of all musical material for add

interest or to develop the theme. You could try
experimenting with MIDI data, through
stretching or compressing regions to alter their
timing, or using MIDI plugins in different parts,
creating arpeggios or chords that werent there
before. All of this can help maintain a sense of
cohesion throughout your track, as well as
helping you get the most out of your tracks
main hooks and phrases.
Track-Finishing
Checklist
Dont call it finished until youve ticked off these ten simple pointers
Clear out the clutter
Check it in mono
Its easy to get used to a mix with layer upon

layer of sound, but unnecessarily busy tracks
can be unlistenable. Often, this clutter exists in the
low-mid or high frequencies from multiple
instrument layers. Use or adjust high- and low-pass
filters on individual tracks to create more space, or revisit
your arrangement, removing elements one by one to
re-assess their impact on the overall mix. Less is often more!
If the mix balance changes

a lot when played in mono,
phasey stereo sounds/effects
(such as) reverbs may be too
dominant. Narrow or rebalance
them so the mono and stereo
mixes are consistent, ensuring a
solid mix thats compatible with mono playback systems.
Kick/bass relationship
Listen on different systems
This vital aspect usually needs

a final check. Listen to the
balance between the two to assess
whether either is too dominant, and
if necessary, notch a space in your
bass sound for the kick, using an EQ
and/or a spectrum analyser to hunt the precise kick
frequencies. Try putting a 100Hz low-pass filter on your
master bus to monitor bass levels and spot low-end clashes.
Monitoring on multiple alternative

listening systems can be confusing,
so its best used to highlight significant
problems rather than as an additional
monitoring setup. Car stereos, in-ear headphones and
consumer devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones
are all useful, particularly when judging lead instrument
balance. Make notes on anything you think needs attention,
then return to the studio and work through each point.
Check the sub level
Pops, clicks and artifacts
Following on from the previous point,

excess sub bass can be problematic on
big systems, and its easy to unwittingly
accrue when mixing on smaller nearfield
monitors. If youre mastering your own mixes,
use all available tools to check this including headphones,
bass heavy systems such as car stereos and do some
spectrum analysis, comparing your mix to similar tracks.
The low-pass filter trick in the previous step can help.
Clicks and pops sound like

digital errors and have no
place in your final mixdown. They
can be caused by poor or missing
crossfades, level overloads, audio
file errors or badly edited audio
comps. Listen for any strangeness, zoning in on problem
areas and resolving these issues at source. Often the best
tool for this task is a pair of headphones.
Overall vocal levels
Take your mixing hat off
If your track has vocals as a focal point, their

level has to be right. Take time to get the
levels right in specific sections using automation,
riding phrases and words if necessary. As a final
test, listen at different levels, on different systems
and in mono to make sure the vocals are neither smothered
nor too prominent. If youre still unsure, opt for the slightly
higher vocal balance, or run off an alternative vocals up mix.
Be as objective as possible, hearing the track

as would a first-time listener. Techniques
include coming back to the track after a break (be
it minutes, hours, days, weeks or more!); listening
from a different position or outside your room with
the door open; A/B-ing with commercial tracks you
rate; listening to the track as background music while doing
other tasks; and sticking your mix in a shuffled playlist.
Listen to transitions
Push it into a limiter
These are usually delivered

naturally by live players but can
require more thought for
programmed tracks. If youre lurching
from section to section and lacking an
overall flow, transitions may be badly
balanced or just missing. Remedies include sweeps, crashes,
stops/silences, impacts, bends and slides. If a transition still
sounds too abrupt, adding a touch of long reverb helps
smear transitions without dominating the mix balance.
Output limiters are a key

aspect of mastering and
can highlight balance issues,
particularly excess low and high
frequencies. Insert this last on your
master output and see how loud you can make your mix
before distortion gets too audible. A good, balanced mix will
go loud quite easily; if yours doesnt, it likely needs more
work. Study an RMS meter an RMS peak of -10dB is plenty,
though higher is possible by tailoring low frequencies.
Working with
audio effects
On the disc
Accompanying
on the DVD
Things can sound a bit dry without audio effects. For

stage or studio, Martin Delaney shows you how to
add some ear candy to your Live projects
ou are probably at the stage where you have

recorded or used audio in Live. In this series we
specifically use a voice sample to use in our
project. Thats the last clip element well be
adding; in this tutorial well add some audio
effects to our audio and MIDI tracks, return tracks, and the
Master Track itself. Dont worry if you dont have the last
tutorial as you can make sure youre using the latest
version of our example set included on the cover disc.
When browsing and loading, it

pays to be keyboard friendly. You
can mouse around but its much
faster to use your Arrow keys
When it comes to browsing and loading devices, it pays
to be keyboard-friendly. Sure you can mouse around, but
its faster to use your computer Arrow keys. Inside the
Browser, Left and Right Arrows move between columns,
while Up and Down will scroll, obviously, up and down
through the listed items. If youre on a folder in the
right-hand column, a Right-Arrow will open the folder so
you can keep moving down through its contents, while a
Left-Arrow will close the folder. When youre on a device or
a preset, tapping the Enter key will load it into the
currently selected track. When you load an effect name,
like Auto Filter, youre loading the default settings for that
effect device (actually thats true of all Ableton devices),
and when you go below that effect name in the Browser,
inside what appears to be a folder, and load something
like Cut-O-Move H or Elastic Band, youre loading a

preset for the relevant device. Theres also the Hot Swap
button on each device the little circle next to the Save
File button. Click that to jump straight to the relevant
Browser section for your current device, and remember to
use the Arrow keys to navigate and load fast. Your saved
presets go directly into the relevant category in your
Library, although you are free to move these and create
new folders to contain them.
You might be wondering about which effects go where.
Generally, if you want to process something that only
occurs in one track, you add the effect to that track (I
should state explicitly that you can use audio effects on
MIDI and audio tracks, but only MIDI effects on MIDI
tracks). If you want the same effect to apply to a selection
of tracks, group them and put the effect on the group. If
you have an effect that you want to blend by different
degrees over a number of tracks, thats a job for Return
tracks. Using a single effect on a Return track instead of
duplicating it across many tracks can also save CPU if its
a particularly power-crazed plug-in. Finally, if you want to
process the entire song everything, including the signal
from the returns you need to be adding that effect to the
Master Track. Youll find that effects behave differently
according to what order you place them within the chain
(you can drag freely to reposition them later). I dont
personally feel there are rules for this as such, its a
matter of what combinations work for the track.
There are times when I
FOCUS ON RETURN EFFECTS

Within this tutorial I talk about the value of Return Tracks and their
Send controls as live performance tools. A good selection of return
effects, combined with a knob-rich hardware controller, makes a
great interface for dynamic live performance in addition to, or
instead of, any effects you might have added at the production stage.
Sometimes youll see somebody playing with a set that doesnt look
too busy, almost like theyre faking it, but check their controller and
their hands. Maybe theyre keeping the on-screen stuff simple while
they work with the controller and some carefully configured effects
56 | September 2015
MTF40.TUT live7NEW.indd 56
MAGAZINE
31/07/2015 09:06
MT Step-by-Step Working with audio effects
Lets find some effects to add to our tracks, ideally a combination

of helper and more showy effects. Open the example set on the
disc, TUGTAL7. Thisll keep you up to date with our progress.
Open the Browser. Dont forget to use the keyboard shortcut:

Alt>Cmd>B. Click on Audio Effects in the left-hand column, but
from then on use your computer Arrow keys to navigate the presets.
We can load effects in different ways. If youre using the Arrow

keys to navigate, hit Enter when youre on the device or preset
that you want, to load it into the currently highlighted track.
Alternately you can use your mouse to drag the effect across to
the target track. Were going to use a combination of some factory
presets and our own tweaks to the vanilla default settings.
Lets compress the drums. Load the Compressor/Brick Wall

preset. Lower the Threshold to -12.0dB. Lower it further if you
want to hear some drum smashing sounds, but put it back when
youve finished!
Add Redux to the keyboard track, and set Downsample to 4. This

gives the sound a slight edge without pushing it too far. Redux is
great at extreme settings if you like chip tune sounds.
01
03
05
02
04
06
MAGAZINE September 2015
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31/07/2015 09:06
MT Step-by-Step Working with audio effects contd
On the voice track, add EQ Three and click the L switch, killing the
low frequencies. Then add the Vinyl Distortion/Awfull preset
youll hear it does a funny pitch thing as well as adding grunge.
Effects can be toggled on and off with the Power buttons left of
their names. You can remove an effect from a track using your
Delete key, and they can be copied and pasted.
If youve created a sound you want to keep and reuse, save it as a

preset using the Save Preset button (disk icon). Live
automatically locates it in the correct place and lets you name it.
We can also use effects on Return tracks. These let us share a

common audio effect over many tracks, while the Send controls
let us mix the amount of the effect applied to each track.
Use Alt>Cmd>R to view Return tracks, and Alt>Cmd>T to create

them. If you cant see any, its because you havent made any yet!
Use Alt>Cmd>S to show/hide the sends.
You can have up to 12 Returns in Live 9 Standard and Suite,

although Live Intro is limited to just two. A new Send control is
added automatically when you create a new Return.
07
09
11
would put a delay after a compressor, and there are times

when Id flip that round; it does make a difference.
In the walkthrough steps, I mention turning effects on
and off with their individual little Power switches. You can
do this dynamically; you dont always want every effect
active all the time. Whats cool is that when Lives in Record
mode, those on/off actions are recorded as automation, so
it easily becomes part of your performance and then part
of your production. The switches are mappable, so you can
58 | September 2015
08
10
12
use MIDI Map Mode (Cmd>M) to assign them to your

hardware or, more regularly for me, use Key Map Mode
(Cmd>K) to assign them to letters or numbers on your
computer keyboard. The good ol keyboard makes a very
useful source of buttons for jobs like this. Were not hitting
it too much this time, but sooner or later youll encounter
screen space management issues; you can use keyboard
commands like Alt>Cmd>S and Alt>Cmd>R to show and
hide Sends and Returns respectively, and also double click
MAGAZINE
31/07/2015 09:06
MT Step-by-Step Working with audio effects contd
Create two Return tracks, adding one effect to each Ping Pong
Delay on A, and Reverb/Large Hall on B. Set their Dry/Wet
controls to 100%. Well use the Sends to mix the levels instead.
Set the keyboard and vocal track sends A to around 3 oclock and
12 oclock respectively. You can see the dB values displayed in the
status bar at the bottom of the screen.
Send the tracks to the reverb effect on Send B. Try it like this:
drums -19 dB, percussion -9, bass -53, keys -9, voice -9. Set the
percussion A Send to -10 dB while youre there.
The final location to add effects is the Master Track; again, we

might be using practical effects like compressors and limiters or
more obvious types of effect, like filters, and disruptive time effects.
Lets add Beat Repeat, set like this: Interval 1/4, Grid 1/16,
Variation 5, Pitch -12, Pitch Delay 100%, turn on Ins. Practice
turning it on and off; you wont want this on continuously.
As a practical thing: add the Multiband Dynamics preset

Multiband Compression. This will make your track sound shinier,
beefier, and louder. If your levels are going red, add the Limiter/Upper
Ceiling preset after it.
13
15
17
on the title bar of an instrument or effect to fold it up

very useful with long chains of instruments and effects.
You can use up to 12 return tracks in the full version of
Live. If you need more than that, maybe you need to start
experimenting with group tracks, as I mentioned earlier, or
with routing to and from audio tracks. When you open
Lives In/Out View and look at the Audio To tab, youll see
that each track can be routed to Sends Only, which means
you wont hear any dry output at all, and nothing until you
60 | September 2015
14
16
18
bring up at least one Send in the track.

The tutorial ends with the addition of the Multiband
Compression preset. Mastering is a whole other subject,
and there just isnt room here, so were shamefully throwing
in this preset, which is not ideal but at least it gets us
started on the topic. Theres so much more to cover with
effects, including MIDI effects, and mastering well be
coming back to all of this in time. Next time we put our raw
material into some kind of structure. MT
MAGAZINE
31/07/2015 09:06
FM | PRODUCERS GUIDE
INCLUDES VIDEO AND AUDIO VAULT.FUTUREMUSIC.CO.UK
Ableton Push
Part 1: Push Essentials
bleton Live is the DAW of choice for loop-loving

musicians and live performers, providing the
antithesis to traditional left-to-right sequencers
with its Session View: an environment where
cyclical clips (individual audio or MIDI loops) and scenes
(horizontal rows comprised of these clips) are triggered
and mixed. By firing off combinations of clips and scenes,
the electronic producer is able to experiment with multiple
arrangement ideas within a non-linear structure, while a
DJ can remix and re-edit any audio on the fly.
As youd expect from such performance-oriented
software, plug n play integration with MIDI hardware
has always been a big part of the Live experience. Most
third-party Live-centric controllers allow you to fire off
clips and scenes via grid-based interfaces that mirror the
Session View, whereas others include faders and rotaries
for live parameter adjustment and automation but these
usually require you to pre-prepare and edit the contents of
each clip to some degree, keeping you chained to the
mouse and computer. With this in mind, Ableton enlisted
the expertise of pad hardware gurus Akai to help develop
the first official Live controller, Push, designed to not
only integrate with Live 9s underlying code to a degree
unparalleled by other third-party offerings, but also to

provide the immersive and tactile experience of composing
with a physical instrument away from the screen.
While its appearance borrows from other popular Live
controllers, its clear that Ableton have set out to
differentiate Push from its peers through sheer
craftsmanship: the units 64 velocity- and pressuresensitive pads, 11 touch-sensitive encoders and 49
buttons are luxurious and responsive, while the rubberised
matte-black finish and bulletproof build quality make
other Live controllers seem cheap and cheerful. In
operation, Push does do the usual clip-launching and
rotary assignments, but goes much further, enabling you to
construct clips from the ground up. Live 9 is the brains of
the operation, running everything behind the scenes as
Push is switched between roles as an MPC-style
groovebox, step sequencer, MIDI compositional tool, multicoloured clip-triggerer, device browser and editor.
Push demands a level of competency from the user, so
throughout the next few pages were going to help you get
up and running with Abletons hardware/software duo. You
can download the accompanying audio and video content
from vault.futuremusic.co.uk.
57
Producers Guide To | Ableton Push
Push In Use
The Push user experience begins
with the Browser: hit the Browse
button, then use the top encoders,
buttons and screen to peruse and
load one of Lives instruments,
effects or preset Racks although
third-party plug-ins must all be
wrapped and mapped ahead of time
into Lives Rack format if you want to
fully browse and control them with
the hardware. Once loaded, the

encoders map to the currentlyselected devices parameters and can
be tweaked accordingly. Playback,
record, undo, delete and most other
menu functions are executed using
the various menu buttons on either
side of Push.
After youve called up an
instrument, enter Note mode. If a
Drum Rack is loaded, the 64 pads

are divided into three sections, so
you can simultaneously play the pads
live, step-sequence notes, and set
the current clips length and loop
length. If the current track isnt a
Drum Rack (ie a regular MIDI
instrument), Note mode calls up
Pushs unique MIDI keyboard,
whereby the pads trigger MIDI notes
in a user-defined key and scale.
Melodies and chords can also be
step-sequenced by pressing
Note again.
Once youve laid down a few
clips, youll want to re-order and
arrange them. Press the Session
button, and the 8x8 grid now
changes to display the available clips
and scenes in the Session View
(triggered by tapping the appropriate
pads). The bottom-right arrows move
the selection square around the
Session View, while holding Shift
accesses Session Overview mode
useful for navigating large sessions.
Finally, after assembling a
collection of clips and scenes that
youre happy with, its a good idea to
print your live performance
(non-destructively, of course) into
Lives linear Arrangement View. To do
this, head back to Live 9 and hit the
Arrangement Record button before
using Push to perform your track.
Composing Melodies And Chords With Push

Push is designed to make composing a breeze, even if your knowledge of
music theory is limited. Heres how to get going
Press the Note button once youve loaded any instrument that isnt a Drum Rack, and the 64 pads turn either white or blue: white
pads are notes in the current scale, with the blue notes representing the root note at various octaves. When in In Key mode, notes outside
of the current scale dont appear, so you can happily tap away on the pads to create musically-correct riffs and chords with no prior
knowledge of music theory.
By default, playing the pads sequentially from left to right will ascend to the next note in the scale, while the next vertical pad up will
play a 4th higher in the scale. This configuration, along with the current key and scale, can be changed via the Scale menu.
>
Enter Note mode and the 8x8 grid becomes

a melodic instrument on which you can play
in MIDI notes and chords. In the default In
Key mode, blue pads represent the root note in a
given key, ascending in octaves from low to high,
while white pads are notes in the current scale.
58
>
Hit the Scale button to choose a key and

scale. When In Key mode is active, Pushs
pads filter out any notes that arent in the
current key and scale. Switch to Chromatic mode
to show all notes of the current key, with notes in
the scale appearing brighter.
>
Pressing the Note button again will call up

the melodic step sequencer. Use the upper
row of pads to set clip and loop length, then
tap sequencer steps to enter notes at a division
set by the right column of Scene/Grid buttons.
Light up steps vertically to create chords.
QUICK
TIPS
Punching a Drum
Rack pad selects
that pad for
editing, but it also
triggers the sound. If
youre recording, hold
Select and hit a pad to
select sounds silently.
Several buttons
(eg Accent, Note
and Session)
feature a hold
modifier. Press the
Repeat button to
toggle the effect on, or
hold it down to punch
it in and out on the fly.
When in Drum
Rack mode, Live
9.2 users can
hit Note to switch to
64-pad view perfect
for, say, auditioning the
multiple sections of a
sliced loop.
Fully integrate
your favourite
third-party
plug-ins, effect chains
and presets into the
Push workflow by
saving them into Live
9s Library as Racks.
Use Pushs Note

Repeat function
with Note mode
to drop in choppy note
stutters and rhythmic
variations as you play.
Ableton Push | Producers Guide To
Drum Sequencing With Push

Learn how to sequence beats using Push with
our step-by-step guide
>
Select the kits kick pad (hold Select

while tapping a pad to select that sound
without triggering it), then tap the upper
8x4 pads to enter kick notes on the sequencer.
Step length is set via the right column of Scene/
Grid buttons, while clip and loop length is set
via the bottom-right 4x4 grid, with each pad
representing a bar: double-tap a pad to loop that
bar, or hold the first pad and tap another to loop
the selected area.
>
>
Lets record some live pad-playing. Punch

the Record button then tap a yellow pad (in
our case, the rimshot) to overdub notes in
the clip; hit Record again to turn off recording.
Our timing is off, so we tap and hold the rimshot
pad while punching Quantize to lock the part to
the 20% global swing setting. A sequencer notes
brightness indicates its velocity level: tap and
hold a blue note, then adjust timing, note length
and velocity settings via the top encoders.
Next Issue: Roland JD-XA
Get to grips with Rolands new analogue/digital hybrid.

Available September 24th. Look out for Push part 2 in FM298.
>
Lets compose a beat using Push. Begin in

a new project: set the global tempo to
122bpm and global swing to 20% using the
top-right two encoders, then hit Browse and
navigate to the Drum Racks folder to load a
TR-808 kit (hit the Browse button again to exit
the browser). In Drum Rack mode, the yellow 4x4
grid mirrors a Drum Racks 16-pad layout; tapping
a pad will play the corresponding drum hit, and
also select that sound for step-sequencing.
>
When in Device mode (activated via the

top-right button), you can tweak
currently-selected Drum Rack parameters
and effects with the top encoders. We add a clap
to every 2nd and 4th beat before pitching it up to
+3 semitones. After ensuring the clap is selected
using the top two Selection Control buttons, hit
Add Effect, then load a Reverb device; use the
encoders to tweak the reverb, and deactivate a
device/s with the lower State Control buttons.
When Pushs MPC-style Note Repeat

feature is active (either toggled or punched
in via the Repeat button), pressing and
holding a Drum Rack pad will repeat that note at
a division determined by the Scene/Grid buttons.
Try switching the repeat speed live to create
trap-style hi-hat rolls, and vary your finger
pressure on the responsive pads to change the
level of the repeats. We record in notes to capture
a cool 16th-note closed hi-hat pattern.
>
Once the red Automation button is toggled,

punch Record in and out while sweeping an
encoder to print these movements within
the clip. Try using this technique to add motion
and variation to repetitive patterns: for example,
weve automated changes in the closed hi-hats
decay time, plus the claps pitch and reverb decay
time. Finally, hit Double to copy the contents of
the two-bar clip, creating a four-bar clip within
which we can alter our pattern further.
59
On the disc
Build a musical
structure in real-time
and capture it to the
Arrangement View
Accompanying
on the DVD
Martin Delaney explains how to use scenes to

organise clips and then capture them into Lives
Arrangement View, ready for editing
ast time, we worked on applying audio effect

devices to our Live project. That was the final step
in the process of creating and compiling our
content prior to organising it into some sort of
structure for a more traditional production
routine. Right up to the point of getting everything into a
workable timeline, and setting everything in stone, Live
gives us options, we can always rethink structure, try new
ideas, and introduce new instruments and effects.
And thats where were up to. We have a small number
of clips, a few audio effects, and now we need to knock
them into shape. As I said, Live gives us options; if you
really want to or if for some technical reason, you have to
you can use Live in a totally linear fashion. You can
spend all your Live time working in the Arrangement View,
laboriously dragging clips around on screen, and perhaps
working with your eyes more than your ears. Used in this
way, Live behaves more like other DAWs, such as Cubase
and Logic. However, it lacks the refinements and
focused user interfaces of those applications. Id go so
far as saying if you dont aim to use Lives Session View,
its not really worth using Live at all its all about the
Session View! So, for this tutorial, were looking at how
we can use Lives Session View and global recording
functions to totally short circuit that old-school way of
working, creating our arrangements in a way thats more

like recording a live take Live is an instrument, after all!
So were launching scenes and individual clips to build
our structure. You dont have to do it this way you dont
have to use scenes at all. You can just hit record and start
triggering those clips; a technique which works better with
Push and Launchpad-type devices, although they do
scene launching as well. The ideal is to create a hybrid
method where youre using scenes for the big picture
changes, and clips for other, less global, activity.
When youre using scenes to switch song sections, you
can create more organic transitions by employing the Clip
Stop buttons. If you have a long clip that you want to
continue playing across two or more scenes, click in the
empty slot below the long clip, and use Cmd>E to remove
the clip stop button. Now, when you trigger the following
scenes, the clip in the first scene continues playing. This
sounds good because its no longer just the sound of eight
clips going on or off simultaneously, theres a bit more
bleed between parts when you want it. Use Cmd>E to
restore these buttons, too. You can also help expand
that organic vibe by playing
FOCUS ON HARDWARE LAUNCH

Live is very spontaneous to use, thats why were working with the
Session View here, to jam and capture everything we do. You can work
wonders using just your computer keyboard to control Live, with a
combination of keyboard shortcuts and the Key Map Mode, but for
advanced (and fun) clip launching, youll be better off using a hardware
MIDI controller. For the tasks in this issues tutorial, Id recommend
something like Push, Launchpad Pro, APC40, or TouchAble on iOS. All of
these let you trigger clips and scenes, and control effects, and they all
show correct clip colours too.
42 | October 2015
MT151 p42-46 TUT live8.indd 42
MAGAZINE
01/09/2015 15:18
MT Step-by-Step Clips and scenes
Lets begin as usual by loading the up-to-date example Ableton

Live set from this months DVD. Ive included all the steps we went
through in the last tutorial. The set is called TUGTAL8.
You already know about clips; now were using scenes as well. A
scene is a horizontal row of clips, across any number of tracks.
We trigger scenes with the Launch button in the Master Track.
Scenes are awesome because they give us an easy way to

create dynamic musical structures in Lives Session View,
without having to make the more permanent commitment of working
in a timeline.
As far as launching and navigation are concerned, scenes are

quite like clips. We can launch them in any order, using those
Master Track buttons, or MIDI messages, or assignments from our
computer keyboard.
We can create scenes by dragging clips up and down. Copy and

paste them with Cmd>C and Cmd>V, and duplicate with Cmd>D,
where theyll automatically be placed in the next row down.
Should you need more empty scenes, use Cmd>I. However, this
way of building scenes is not very spontaneous theres a better
way. Click the Stop Clips button in the Master Track. Launch your beat.
01
03
05
around with the various clip launch modes, which we

talked about in part 1 (see MTF Ableton LIve 2015).
Scenes can be triggered with the triangular launch
buttons in the Master Track, or mapped to MIDI control, or
the computer keyboard. They dont have overall launch or
quantisation characteristics; thats still set at clip level.
Scenes can re-ordered by dragging them up and down
02
04
06
in the Master track, and you can also delete or copy them
from there. You can use the Context Menu to rename and
colour-code your scenes. Renaming is interesting as well
as helping you label your song sections, it gives you a way
to make more dynamics changes. You can use scene
names to tell Live to change project tempo and time
signature throughout your set. This is good for small tempo
MAGAZINE October 2015
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01/09/2015 15:18
MT Step-by-Step Clips and scenes contd
Now type Shift>Cmd>I the Capture and Insert Scene command.

Your beats copied to a new scene, without interrupting playback!
The new scene is placed on whatever row was highlighted at the time.
Drag the scenes up and down after creating them, or choose

where you want the new one before capturing. Play the Beat and
Bass clips; Shift>Cmd>I for a new scene containing both clips.
Get it? Keep going until you have made six scenes in total. Choose
any combinations of clips that sound good to you. After that, use
the Context Menu to rename and colour-code your scenes.
Rename a scene with a BPM value, like 121 bpm, and Lives
tempo changes to that BPM when the scenes launched. Time
signatures work too, or both together i.e. name a clip 5/4 121 bpm.
Now we have a basic structure that we can explore by launching

scenes, in any order. Along the way were still free to launch
individual clips, and change settings on instruments, effects, and
the mixer.
Well start recording by clicking the Arrangement Record button

at the top of the screen. When we do, everything we do inside Live
will be recorded scene and clip launching, effects control, mixer
moves, everything.
07
09
11
changes, and equally awesome for mad speedups and

slowdowns. It doesnt matter if you use bpm or BPM or if
you insert a space after the digits. The ability to embed
tempo changes within scenes is one of the greatest
features in Live and is a great asset for live shows.
We want to move our Session View clips into the
Arrangement View, so well have a linear timeline to enable
44 | October 2015
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12
the last stages of song arrangement and mixing. We use

the Session View and Global Record to do this, so we can
create a song structure in a spontaneous way, that also
includes audio effect and mixer changes, which will be
recorded as automation that we can edit afterwards.
Recording begins in different ways according to your
settings in Lives Preferences. If count-in is enabled, youll
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01/09/2015 15:19
MT Step-by-Step Clips and scenes contd
Make sure the Automation Arm button is yellow, to ensure control

moves are correctly captured as clip and track automation. Push
users have a dedicated button for this on the hardware.
You can stop clips by launching others in the same track with the
Stop buttons, or by putting them into Toggle Mode if youre using
hardware, so they go on and off when tapped a second time.
Shift>Click on the Arrangement Record button; itll go into actual

record as soon as you launch your first clip or scene. Make sure
you use your controller to be creative with device settings.
Feel free to experiment while recording. You can even drop in new
devices during recording, and Live wont flinch. Use the Overview
(Alt>Cmd>O) for a heads-up of what your tracks are doing.
You can also use your Tab key to switch between Views, again,
while still recording. You can watch everything drawing into the
timeline, including automation. There are no rules about how long to
play thats up to you.
Stop Live, and save your set immediately. In the Arrangement

View, click the orange Back To Arrangement button, and use the
transport controls to review your jam. Not perfect? Dont worry as next
time were editing!
13
15
17
hear a count-in of your chosen length before the transport

begins rolling. If not, itll just go straight into action, unless
you right-click on the record button, in which case it waits
until you launch a clip or scene before recording starts. You
can also enter record at any time, when Live is already
running. Its a good habit to get into double-clicking the
stop button before recording, which sets the counter to
46 | October 2015
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1.1.1 and avoids you getting any bars of silence at the

beginning of your take.
Now that we have our arrangement mapped out, next
time well go on to look at our editing options. In the
meantime, I suggest you keep playing around with Scenes,
explore Lives automation recording, and experiment with
your hardware controller. MT
MAGAZINE
01/09/2015 15:19
MT Feature 6 ways toGet Inspired

01
MT Feature 6 Ways To
6 WAYS TO
GET INSPIRED
W
Inspiration is essential to musicians, but it can be an elusive and

fickle beast. Rob Boffard brings you his six tips to make sure your
creative well doesnt run dry
riters often talk about their muses.

Stephen Kings muse, according to him, is
an old guy who sits around all day,
smoking cigars and doling out nuggets of
genius for King to make into stories
(judging by Kings track record, this must happen quite
a lot). While its not often put as explicitly as that,
musicians have muses as well. We might not have a
personified imaginary friend, but we do have places
from where we get inspiration except when it refuses
to come. Inspiration is a very fickle thing, and its easy
to find yourself without any at a crucial moment. Here
are six ways to get that inspiration back.
01
Listen to something else
Seriously, anything. At all. As long as its not the genre

you actually create music in. If you spend your time
creating drum n bass, then turn off your regular
playlist and bump some hip-hop instead. Or rock.
Or classical. Doesnt matter as long as its something
different to what you normally bump. The science
behind this is that your brain needs to switch off to
make the right connections. Harvard scientist Dr Shelley
Carson calls this divergent thinking, and its about the
108 | October 2015
MT151.6 ways.indd 108
mind defocusing from the current project and being

allowed to just drift, letting it make the connections it
needs to. And on that note
02
Capture it
You dont get to control when inspiration strikes. It can

happen in the shower, at the shops, as youre falling
asleep; and if you forget the details, youll have lost it
forever. So you need absolutely need something to
capture it on. Since the inspiration is musical, that
means something that can record sound. With
smartphones and their assorted apps, there have never
been more ways to jot down an idea. There are dozens
available, most of sufficient quality to put down a quick
idea, even if its a hummed melody or beatboxed beat.
We like Apples Garageband (free on iOS), Propellerhead
Figure (also free) and FL Studio (paid, on Android). They
arent as fully-featured as most DAWs, but theyre
fantastic for putting down bare-bones ideas.
03
Get out
Following on from that: sometimes, you need a change

of scenery. It sounds so obvious and thats the
problem, because its a trick that can often be
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01/09/2015 15:31
6 ways to Get Inspired Feature MT
02
overlooked. Do whatever you have to do: go for a walk,

go for a run, go watch a movie, go play an XBox, go kick
around a football. As long as it takes you out of the
studio for a bit. It gives you distance from the material,
lets your mind wander a little and gives those
overworked neurons a break. If youre really clever,
youll find a way to make your brain perform different
creative tasks. Video games are perfect the benefits of
playing them have been well documented, and as much
as it might not look it, taking down a tricky boss or
beating a particular area is a creative act. Yes, were
giving you permission to go gaming. Its work. Totally.
04
Show up
Inspiration doesnt always appear from nowhere like

magic. Sometimes, it can come simply because your
brain is primed to give it to you. If you can train your
03
02
Do whatever you have to do: go

for a walk, watch a movie, play an
XBox, kick around a football
brain to be in a regular creative space, then youll find
that inspiration comes that much more easily. A simple
way to do this is simply to work on music production at
the same time each day difficult if you have a day job/
significant other/children, but still very possible. And by
doing this, youll very quickly find that solving difficult
problems or getting that much-needed inspiration
becomes easy. Your brain actually has a process known
as neuroplasticity, referring to the ability to form new
connections between neurons and if you make a habit
of taking the time and space to form those connections,
youll be sorted.
05
05
06
06
There are no bad ideas
Weve all been there. You start a session bursting with

creative energy, and within an hour you have something
that sounds like a cat being put through a combine
harvester. You hate both it and yourself, and you close
without saving, wanting to expunge the thing from your
brain. Next time that happens, hold up. Save it. Put it
somewhere hell, put it in a file called Terrible Ideas.
When youre stuck for inspiration, months or years
down the track, dig into that folder. Youll still probably
go God, what was I thinking? but youll have the
benefit of distance, and youll be able to see what made
you make those production decisions in the first place.
Collaborate
You know what makes inspiration happen? Other

people. Even if youre a total introverted loner, getting
together with someone for a pint or on-line can spark
ideas especially if that someone is a fellow producerfriend. Better yet: get together in-studio, and work on
a track together. This comes back to the Terrible Ideas
folder forget how it sounds, just enjoy the back-andforth. Youd be surprised at the great ideas that can
come out of sessions like this, and it works even better
if there are more than two of you. Another mind can take
you in directions youd never have gone in by yourself. MT
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MT151.6 ways.indd 109
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01/09/2015 15:31
Editing your
composition in the
Arrangement View
On the disc
Accompanying
on the DVD
Previously we captured our Live jam into the Arrangement View

timeline. Now Martin Delaney shows you to how polish that and
create a finished structure
ast time, we concluded with a recorded jam a

spontaneously-created structure, laid out along
the timeline in Lives Arrangement View. The
purpose of this was to show how Lives Session
View relieves you of the pressure of making
commitments and working out your songs intellectually.
Instead you can start record, start playing and improvising,
and just see where it takes you.
After you tap the Tab key to view your recorded tracks,
youll see theyre greyed out. This is because Live
prioritises the Session View clips. To restore Arrangement
playback, click the orange Back To Arrangement button
above the top right of track 1, to enable all tracks (this
button disappears when not needed, which is confusing/
annoying until you get used to it). Youll also notice
separate Back To Arrangement buttons for every track, so
you can specify individual tracks you want to drop back in
to from Session View. This provides a very powerful and
dynamic way to work with the Views; useful if youre
running a complex live show that might need both planned
and spontaneous elements. Understanding the
relationship between the Views is an essential step to
mastering Live. Youre seeing the same tracks in both
Views, laid out vertically or horizontally; if you delete a
track from either View, its gone from the entire set! But if
you delete a clip from, say, track 1 in Session View, it
doesnt affect any clips in the same track in the
Arrangement view.
Our aim now is to edit the structure that we created
through jamming; everything is up for grabs, everything
can be tweaked. You can keep working with your set from
last time, or you can use the up-to-date version on the
disc, which includes all of the steps from the last tutorial.
(Theres a good chance weve started to diverge as weve
made different recordings, so these walkthrough steps
might not make sense unless you use our example set.)
When youre working with a lot of tracks, you will need
to manage your screen space. Folding and unfolding them
helps, and you can zoom in and out, but you can also
expand individual tracks by mousing over the bottom of
the track and dragging downwards. If you hold Alt at the
same time you can expand all your tracks simultaneously.
Editing automation is easy in Live just click to add or
remove breakpoints. Mouse near an envelope so it turns
blue, then you can drag it around, or copy and paste it,
delete it, whatever you want to do. Hold down Alt while you
do this, and you can draw curves as well as straight lines.
FOCUS ON MONITORS
You can get quite a long way into the composition and production process without high quality
monitoring - Im sure many of us begin sketching out tunes on mobile devices or laptops, where were
either listening on tiny built-in speakers, or on cheap headphones. As you progress towards finishing
your track, though, you need to hear whats going on more clearly, and across a wide frequency range.
You will need some high-quality monitoring headphones, and some monitor speakers as well. You cant
be applying critical processes like equalisation and compression when you cant really hear what
effect theyre having.
42 |November 2015
MAGAZINE
30/09/2015 11:28
MT Step-by-Step Editing in Arrangement View
Im using my recording; naturally this will differ from yours. You

can either apply similar steps to your own project, or load the
completed part 8 set from our disc.
Tap the Space bar or the Play button, to hear the recorded
arrangement. If any of the tracks are greyed out, use the Back To
Arrangement button to restore them read more in the main text.
Also be aware that if you now pop back to the Session View and
launch any clips, they will affect the arrangement playback, so
avoid that unless its really what you really want to do!
Zoom in and around the timeline by clicking and dragging above

it, where youll see a magnifying glass icon, or in the black
rectangle in the overview. Double-click there to view the arrangement.
You can also zoom using the + or - keys. Manage vertical space
by folding tracks click the small triangle at the end of the track.
Hold Option/Alt and every track unfold/folds simultaneously.
If you move any on-screen controls during recording, these are

captured as automation, depicted by red lines that go from left to
right in the Arrangement View tracks these are called envelopes.
01
03
05
Caution! When youre deleting an envelope, make sure you

have it selected properly, otherwise youll delete the
entire region that it applies to, clips and all. If you want to
view multiple lanes of automation in the same track, use
the little + and - buttons that appear when you unfold
the track.
In the walkthrough, we edit the beat in the first MIDI
clip, to remove the noisy sample hits from the beginning of
the song. If you remember, we created this beat by using
02
04
06
Lives Slice To New MIDI Track command. Each note

represents a slice of the original sampled beat, so when
we drag the notes in the clip around, were choosing to play
different slices at that point in time. By choose Slice 5
each time, were substituting the slice that doesnt contain
the noisy sample.
We shorten some of the sections to the typical bar
counts that you see in music everything happens in
fours! Im just getting you to do that to practice editing, Im
MAGAZINE November 2015
| 43
30/09/2015 11:28
MT Step-by-Step Editing in Arrangement View contd
If you can see a red dot on a control, that means theres

automation present. Use the pop-up boxes in the Mixer at the
right of the screen to view the envelope.
Lets tweak the example set as discussed. Unfold track 1 by

clicking the triangle left of the name. Choose mixer from the top
chooser. It has a red dot by it, indicating theres automation present.
Sometimes you need to dig to find the envelope. Click the lower
chooser, and youll see Track Volume listed, with a red dot. Select
that, and youre looking at the track volume automation, in red.
At the beginning, I increased the beat volume. Right-click on the

Track Volume box at the end of the track, and choose Delete
Automation, to straighten out the entire volume envelope.
Lets automate the bass tracks filter. Unfold the track so you see
the automation for Auto Filter/Resonance. Use single-clicks to
delete each breakpoint between bars 46 and 54.
Unfold the Frequency lane and do the same there. What this does
is create a unique longer filter sweep for that part of the song.
Fold the track afterwards if you want to be tidy.
07
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11
not suggesting you always have to use such regular bar

counts. Of course, youre free to do it how you like.
Live is quite intelligent with its handling of automation,
when it comes to copy and paste, or to moving clips
around. When we copy and paste the bass clips in the
tutorial, youll see the filter envelopes for those clips are
copied as well. Also, if you copy and paste a clip between
44 |November 2015
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10
12
Session and Arrangement Views, the envelopes are

preserved, converted to clip envelopes or vice versa to
track automation.
We briefly touch on the topics of locators these are
very useful for identifying and labelling sections in longer
songs. The arrows at the top right of the screen let you skip
through your locators, while the Set button can be used to
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30/09/2015 11:28
MT Step-by-Step Editing in Arrangement View contd
Double-click the first MIDI drum clip, revealing the notes. Drag
the notes for slices 1 and 9 vertically to align with Slice 5. Now
theyll all play the same sound, without the noisy sample.
The second section, starting at bar 37, is 5 bars long; lets remove
one, just to keep everything even; click and drag to highlight bar
45, then use Shift>Cmd>Delete to delete the time.
Likewise, cut out bars 9, and 33-35. After that, click and drag to
highlight bar 16, and tap the Delete key. Drag the ends of the
percussion and bass tracks to fill the gap.
Cut the last long section to 24 bars. Make a 2-bar break at bar 65.
Drag the percussion and bass across, but also drag the beat back
two beats so it resumes earlier.
Unfold the bass track. Click and drag from the start of bar 55 for 2
beats. Copy with Cmd>C. Paste with Cmd>V at bar 53 and 54.
Check out the automation!
Sometimes it helps to label song sections using locators.

Right-Click above the timeline, choose Insert Locator, then
rename it something helpful. Repeat as desired throughout the song.
Use the Arrows to navigate the locators.
13
15
17
insert them dynamically and all three of these controls are

MIDI-assignable. If youre studying song structure,
sometimes its good to load a song you like, and use
locators to map out all the parts. Then delete the song and
build your own tune using the structure! Its not stealing
youre not taking any samples, melody, or anything, its just
a good learning and experimentation tool.
46 |November 2015
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18
Be warned, creating a piece of music in Live doesnt

truly end until you render and master it. Even after
recording into the Arrangement View, you can drag in, or
record, more audio and MIDI parts, add new tracks, or add
new effect devices. As with a lot of music production you
have to be clear about reaching a cut-off point otherwise
youre working on the same tune forever! MT
MAGAZINE
30/09/2015 11:29
Feature | Ultimate Edits
TOOLS OF THE
TRADE
Back in the days of magnetic tape,
there was one way to edit: you got a
scalpel, sliced that tape up good,
then stuck it back together. All very
hands-on, but it must have taken an
age compared to the practically
instantaneous results delivered in the
digital realm. Whats more, in a DAW
you can change the tempo of a track
without affecting its pitch, and vice
versa tremendously useful for
creating mashups. This is known as
time-stretching, or warping.
Most DAWs will automatically
warp the audio for you, making
editing even speedier and presenting
us with all kinds of possibilities for
mashups. In fact, most DAWs use the
same family of time-stretching and
pitchshifting algorithms, zplanes
lastique Pro, including Ableton Live
9 and PreSonus Studio One 3. These
DAWs implement zplanes algorithms
in different ways, and offer disparate
modes. The general consensus is that

Ableton Live offers the best choice of
algorithms and workflow for this kind
of work. Its warping features are well
established, and the programs
transient detection identifies a tracks
tempo quickly and easily. Its usually
pretty accurate, though with older
material youll often need to go
through and make sight timing

adjustments. Another great thing
about Live is that it has the ability to
load practically any audio file: WAV,
AIFF, MP3, M4A, even FLAC and
OGG. This makes it a simple process
to drag music straight from your
media player onto an audio track
without having to convert it first.
Most DAWs will

warp audio for you,
making editing
even speedier
With its Warp capabilities and swift workflow, Ableton Live is a smart choice for creating edits
Basic Warping In Ableton Live

Taking a few moments to warp a track makes it easy to edit it up in a flash.
Heres how to do it in the DJs favourite DAW, Ableton Live
If youre unfamiliar with Ableton Lives approach to warping tracks to fit the project tempo, it might look intimidatingly complex, but in
reality its a very straightforward system thats extremely quick to use once youve got the hang of it. In the following tutorial well show you
how to warp up a track in three simple steps. This is useful because it means, once a track is slaved to Lives project tempo, we can adjust
the tempo and pitch of the track independently, and can quickly select specific bars and edit them as we see fit.
In the next tutorial, well start slicing away at our freshly warped track, creating an extended intro and a shortened breakdown to make
the tune easier to mix. Theres even a House banger in the Tutorial Files folder to cut your teeth on, so chop chop!
>
Load up Ableton Live and press Tab to

bring up the Arrangement view. Youll find a
track to work on in the Tutorial Files folder:
Cubs Vortex.wav. Drag the file onto the start of
an audio track, and Live will automatically warp
the track.
30
>
Double-click the audio clip, and zoom in on

the end of the clip by dragging down on the
timeline. Youll see that by the first beat of
the tracks final bar (193) Lives tempo detection
has slipped out of sync. Double-click the transient
above the waveform to create a warp marker.
As Ableton Live is the de facto

DAW for this kind of work, weve used
it in the following tutorials (if you
dont own it you can follow along with
the demo version from www.ableton.
com), but its not flawless. Digital
time-stretching is analogous to the
musique concrte technique of
micro-editing, where short,
millisecond
slices of tape
were edited
together to create
new textures.
DAWs timestretch by slicing
the audio into
many tiny pieces,
and adding or
removing these
tiny slices as
needed to make the tempo slower or
faster. This affects the audio signal in
an audible manner, and the artefacts
created will depend on the particular
time-stretching algorithm used.
All of Lives warping modes are
compromised in one way or another:
Beats mode makes sustained notes
sound jagged and unnatural, and the
Complex, Tone and Texture modes
arent great at preserving transients.
This leaves us with Re-Pitch, which
preserves transient effectively and
works well with musical material. The
downside is that Re-Pitch doesnt
correct the pitch of the audio, so the
faster you speed it up the higher the
pitch will get, and vice versa.
If this bothers you, a workaround
is to keep your re-edits at the same
tempo as the original version. If
youre putting an acapella over the
top of an instrumental, the optimal
solution is usually to work to the
instrumentals original tempo,
ensuring it doesnt need to be timestretched. Because vocals transients
arent as crucial as the instrumental,
you can get away with using Complex
Pro to warp it. This gives us the best
of both worlds, and Complex Pro
mode even has a Formant parameter
which allows one to set the level of
formant compensation and prevent
so-called chipmunkification when
pitchshifting vocals up.
Things get trickier if we want a
mashup of two tracks that are at
different tempos and a compromise
has to be made somewhere; though if
the tracks sound acceptable together
when Re-Pitch mode is used, you
can get away without time-stretching
or pitchshifting anything.
>
Drag the warp marker to the right itll

snap onto the start of the bar. The Segment
bpm value in the clip view says the track is
130bpm, so set Lives Tempo to 130. Activate the
metronome and play the track back youll hear
that its now syncd up.
Ultimate Edits | Feature
Re-Edit A Warped Track In Ableton Live

Once youve warped your track you can re-arrange and tweak it to your
hearts content. Heres how to get smooth-sounding edits
>
If you havent completed the previous

tutorial already, load up WIP edit.als to get
up to speed. Vortexs intro isnt very long a
mere 16 bars before a 32 bar breakdown.
Unfortunately, the intro features a pad with a
gradually opening filter on it.
>
This edit wont sound too incongruous in

the mix, so lets roll with it. While were
at it, lets cut that big breakdown in half.
Drag over bars 33 to 49 and press Ctrl/
Cmd+Shift+Backspace to delete time. Now
the intro goes straight into the second half of
the breakdown.
>
We need to find a section we can loop

without it sounding too unnatural. Drag over
bars 1 to 9 on the clip, and press Ctrl/
Cmd+L to loop the section. Play the project back.
This loop doesnt segue very smoothly: the filter
movement on the pad is too obvious.
>
This sounds okay, but we miss the big

booming crash at the start of the
breakdown. We can smooth the transition
using Lives fades. Select Fades in the Track Title
Bar, and drag the Fade In Handle at the top
right-hand corner of the intro clip, and drag it to
the right so that it sits at about 33.3.4.
>
Lets try a shorter section instead. Move the

loop start to bar 5 instead. The four bar
section doesnt sound too shabby! Drag over
the clip from bar 5 to bar 9 and press Ctrl/
Cmd+Shift+L to duplicate it four times, giving us
a 32 bar intro.
>
This is a long enough fade for us to hear the

crash, but short enough so that we dont
hear any of the spoken word vocal that plays
shortly after it. Weve completed our simple
re-edit; now all we need to do is highlight the
entire track and select File > Export Audio/Video
to bounce it out.
31
Feature | Ultimate Edits
DOS &
DONTS
DO
try out unusual

combinations of material
as long as the music fits
together, the more
sophisticated audience
loves surprising
juxtapositions of styles.
Re-editing familiar tracks
into unusual new
arrangements can help
re-invigorate them too.
DONT go overboard
on the processing. If youre

using already mastered
tracks they almost certainly
dont require further gain
reduction. EQ can be
useful to help two tracks sit
together in a mashup, but
wont usually be necessary
otherwise unless youre
working with a particularly
poor or vintage recording.
DO
make your intros

as DJ friendly as possible.
That dont have to be
ridiculously long and
beat-centric, but a few
clues to a tracks tempo
during its intro can make
all the difference in a
stressful mixing situation.
GOTTA KEEP EM
SEPARATED
A common question asked by
newcomers to the world of music
production is how do I extract a
tracks vocal?. It is indeed possible
to isolate a piece of musics
elements, but you will experience
various degrees of success depending
on the nature of the source material
and the techniques used.
The trouble with vocals is that
they occupy such a wide frequency
range that EQing isnt usually a
viable option. Specialised audio
isolation software does exist, for
instance Sonys SpectraLayers Pro 3,
but these are aimed at high-end
users such as movie studios, and are
priced accordingly. Whats more,
theyre time-consuming to use, so
theyre not a practical solution for
most of us.
A relatively cheap and reliable
way to obtain an isolated vocal is
to get your hands on an acapella
version (ie, without instrumental

accompaniment). iTunes and
discogs.com are great places to hunt
for acapella and instrumental
versions of your favourite tracks, but
the rub comes when these arent
available. In this case youre down to
hunting on sites of dubious legality
such as acapellas4u.co.uk for a rare
rip, or even a DIY acapella. DIY

acapellas are something of a last
resort, and their quality can range
from acceptable to unusable. If
youve got access to both the vocal
and instrumental versions of a track
you can use some simple audio
processing trickery to make your own
DIY acapella see below for more.
Specialist applications can help extract a vocal, but these tend to be expensive and time consuming
DIY Acapellas In Ableton Live

If you have both a vocal and instrumental version of a track, its possible to
create your own DIY acapella with a little phase cancellation
The simplest way to create a DIY acapella requires you have both the full vocal and instrumental versions in your possession. The theory is
that the only difference between these versions will be the vocal. Therefore, inverting the polarity of one of the tracks waveforms will cause
everything apart from the vocal to disappear thanks to the magic of destructive interference. Unfortunately, there will often be subtle
differences between the vocal and instrumental versions, and they may have received different treatment at the mixing, mastering and
encoding stages, further complicating matters. The proof is in the pudding, so lets give it a whirl. Here we create a DIY acapella with vocal
and instrumental versions of Cassies 2006 R n B banger Me & U, but you can use any song you like and the process is exactly the same.
DONT layer two
different vocals on top of

each other if you can avoid
it. It almost always sounds
horrendous, makes vocals
less intelligible and your
mix feel messy. If youre
struggling to make an
arrangement work, try
looping the previous part
rather than proceeding to
the vocal section.
34
>
Drag your vocal and instrumental versions

onto separate audio tracks in Live. Ensure
that both clips Warp modes are deactivated
by clicking on the clips and inspecting the Clip
View panel. When theyre both unwarped, ensure
their start points are roughly aligned.
>
Turn snap to grid off (press Ctrl/Cmd+4),

then zoom in to the start of the waveforms
by dragging down on the Beat Time Ruler.
Keep aligning and zooming until youve zoomed in
as far as you can. Before you play the tracks back,
turn them both down to -6dB.
>
If youve correctly aligned the track, you

should hear the track sound normal, albeit
with a vocal thats been reduced in volume
by a half. Put a Utility from the Audio Effects
folder on either track and activate its Phz-L and
Phz-R buttons to invert the signals polarity.
Ultimate Edits | Feature
Enhancing A Kick Drum In Ableton Live

If only the biggest and baddest beats will do for your re-edits, youll need to
do a little surgical drum replacement. Luckily thats easier than it sounds
>
Load the Edit.als project up in Live, and put

Voxengos excellent spectral analyser SPAN
(a free download from www.voxengo.com)
on the master buss. Play the project back and
hover the mouse pointer over where the kick
peaks in SPAN youll see this happens at 67Hz,
or C2.
>
Drag the sample onto Simpler to load it up.

Its already tuned correctly so we dont need
to worry about transposing it. Turn up
Simplers Volume to -4dB, and play the project
back. Youll notice that, while the new kick drum
is providing us with more character in the mids,
the extra headroom its eating up is causing our
project to clip the master.
>
We can double check the key of the track by

loading up a synth and tapping along with
the track, and this confirms that C is indeed
the key were working with. Lets find a
compatible kick drum sound to supplement the
track with. Add a MIDI track, and put an instance
of Simpler on it.
>
We can remedy this by ducking the original

track when the kick plays. To do this put a
Compressor effect on the audio track, and
set its sidechain input to the Simpler track. Bring
down the Threshold to -9dB, set the Ratio to
4.00:1 and set the Release to 20ms.
>
Sequence a four to the floor kick pattern

like so, and loop the clip so that it plays for
the entire track. Now we just need to find a
suitable kick drum. Youll find an appropriate
candidate in the form of Solid kick.wav in the
tutorial files folder.
>
Our mix is still clipping, so put a limiter

such as iZotope Ozones Maximiser on the
master. We can now get away with pushing
the mix a bit. Add Lives Saturator to the Simpler
track, and gradually turn up the Drive level until
the kick is banging enough for your taste. 4dB
gives us a good balance of solidity and presence.
37
FM | PRODUCERS GUIDE
INCLUDES VIDEO AND AUDIO VAULT.FUTUREMUSIC.CO.UK
Ableton Push
Part 2: Essential Techniques

& Workflow Tips
Back in issue 296s Producers Guide, we
took you on a three page whistle-stop tour
of Push, Abletons feature-laden MIDI
controller instrument designed to control
multiple aspects of their Live 9 DAW. After
covering the basics such as stepsequencing in Drum Rack Mode, Note
Mode and general workflow it was clear
that wed barely scratched the surface of
Pushs capabilities. So, with that in mind,
were now going to build upon our previous
foundations and delve deeper into the
Live-Push experience to explore further
features and concepts. Many of the
following tips, tricks and techniques come
directly from one of the masterminds
behind the controllers development,
Ableton Push Product Owner Jesse Terry,
who has kindly offered his expert insight to
help take your Push skills to the next level.
As youd expect from an advanced
guide like this, were going to assume
youre already reasonably acquainted with
Push and Live 9; be sure to check out our
Part 1 guide from issue 296 if you need to
get up to speed. Plus, as usual, audio
examples and video can be downloaded
from vault.futuremusic.co.uk.
75
Push Preparation
An efficient Push workflow requires a certain
amount of pre-preparation, so we asked Abletons
Jesse Terry for a hefty helping of expert advice
FM: Firstly, whats your role in the
development of Push?
JT: Im the Product Owner for Push,
which means I define the vision for
the product, and try to translate this
vision along with a really talented
team of designers and developers.
How should users organise sounds,
sample libraries and Racks for use
with Push? Are there considerations
when building Racks and devices?
If you want to have a set of device
parameters that are specific to your
workflow, make your own Instrument
and Effect Racks in Live, then save
these presets. Take note of where you
want the most important parameters
to be obviously the 1st and 8th
encoders are the easiest to grab
quickly in a performance scenario.
When you save presets to Lives
library, move them to the right folders
for instance, if you make a reverb
preset, put it into the Space folder so

you can always find your reverb
presets together. I always put a [j]
before presets I make, so they rise to
the top and I can quickly find them.
can always get to the subsequent

parameters via the Edit view.
Theres a great trick for drum
hits not many people know about: if
you keep a folder called Drum Hits in
the User Library and you have folders
in there that correspond to the folder
names Live uses, eg Kick, Hihat, or
Snare, put your drums in those
folders they will show up mixed
into Lives samples when you browse
a drum pad from Push. Plus you can
share these drums with all your Live
sets, without needing to copy them
into each new Live Set.
Finally, the most important thing
to do is have a
good strategy for
your User files,
called Places in
Live. This is
where you can
organise your
samples or loop
libraries. As a
Hip-Hop guy, I
have a folder for
samples that
contain drum loops, a folder for
samples that contain drum hits, and
a folder for general mixed samples I
might want to work with but how
you organise your sounds depends
upon what you want to do and what
style of music you make.
Have a good
strategy for your
User files, called
Places in Live
For VSTs and AUs, Live has a
configure button, which allows you
to rearrange the parameters of your
effects and instruments. This is a
great way to make sure your top eight
favourite parameters show up when
you load a particular plug-in, but you
Fixed Length Recording

On-the-fly recording is an essential part of the Push workflow. Lets see how
the Fixed Length function can be used to capture the perfect take
Abletons Jesse Terry offers a handy tip for using the Fixed Length function when recording ideas into a new clip. I generally keep this off,
but there is a cool trick when making a long recording. With Fixed Length off, press record, and start playing and working on a riff I
generally practise with Record on, and once I feel Ive got it right, I press the Fixed Length button, which ends the recording and loops the
last few measures of the long recording (depending on the Fixed Length setting). Its a good way to practise until you get it right, and then
loop the part when youve finally nailed the perfect take.
>
With Fixed Length deactivated, the length

of a recorded clip will extend until you
deactivate recording. When Fixed Length is
active, Live will record for a predetermined length
and then loop. Hold the Fixed Length button to
set a value of between 1 beat and 32 bars.
76
>
With Fixed Length deactivated, hit Record

and begin jamming away. As expected, the
length of this new clip will continue to
extend as you play. As soon as youre happy with a
section, punch the Fixed Length button to loop
the final take.
>
Fixed Length is great for generating multiple

clips and variations too. Activate Fixed
Length, set a length, then record in an idea.
Press New, come up with a variety of loops, then
switch to Session Mode to move between or
launch the different ideas youve made.
QUICK
TIPS
When stepsequencing drums

or melodic
material, you can use
several fingers to enter
or delete several notes
at once, or hold down
multiple notes before
adjusting note or
automation values
simultaneously.
nativeKontrols
free ClyphX is a
MIDI Remote
Script that allows
you to save Pushs
current key and scale
settings within a clip.
Download the script at
http://bit.ly/ClyphX
Create quick
loop variations
when working
with the step
sequencer: use the
Double button to copy
your current clips
contents over, make a
few variations, then
tap on the loop length
pads to jump the loop
markers throughout
the clip on the fly.
When in Session
Mode, to see a
scenes name
appear on the display,
hold Select and tap
that scenes Scene/
Grid button.
Navigating clips
and scenes with
Session Mode
Lives Session View is great for

sketching out ideas. Heres how to
navigate it with Session Mode
03 >
To stop a clip, tap an empty slot on that

track; alternatively, hit the Stop button to
activate Stop Mode, then press a tracks red
State Control button. Note that Stop Mode
wont be accessible if youre in Device or
Browse mode.
01 >
When in Session Mode, the 8x8 frame in

Live represents the clips displayed on Pushs
pads. Use the bottom-right arrows to move
this frame around by one scene/track; hold
Shift and press (or use the Octave Up/Down
buttons) to move by eight.
04 >
Busy sessions can be confusing to navigate,

especially live; in this case, use Session
Overview mode, accessed by holding Shift.
Each individual clip slot now represents an
8x8 grid: tap a pad to zoom in on that section.
02 >
Currently-playing clips pulse green, recording

clips white, and others their respective colours.
Tap a clip to launch it and launch a horizontal
scene using the right column of Scene/Grid
buttons. Hold Delete and tap a clip to delete.
05 >
When in Note Mode, press and release the

Session button to permanently switch to
Session Mode. Hold the button to temporarily
switch over to Session Mode, then release
the button to return to Note Mode. The
reverse applies when jumping from Session
to Note.
77
How to
Become A
Push Ninja
How to
Use A
Footswitch
With Push
>
How to
>
How to
Once youre comfortable with

basic composing and
navigation in Push, try
combining several techniques in
quick succession: for example, start
off by step-sequencing the bare
bones of a riff, then quickly switch
back to Note Mode and punch
Record to enter additional notes in
the gaps between. When performing
in Note Mode, there are plenty of
different techniques you can
combine: vary pad velocity and
aftertouch, punch in quick Note
Repeat variations, use the touch-strip
to add subtle pitch bends and
wobbles, tweak parameters using the
top encoders, and so on.
If two hands arent enough

when composing or performing
with Push, hook up a foot
pedal. Two connections are available:
one for sustain and one for recording.
Ableton recommend using a
footswitch with normal polarity, rather
than those which are inverted. Push
Product Manager Jesse Terry: I play
guitar and bass, so Pushs footswitch
is a really great way to record handsfree. The first press starts recording,
the second press loops the recording,
and double-tapping the pedal makes
a new slot to record into. I also use
the footswitch when I am recording
samples from my vinyl collection, so I
can have it near my record player.
Controlling
Hardware
Incorporate
Velocity And
Aftertouch
Effectively
Pimp Up Pushs
Functionality
>
Pushs main 64 pads respond

well to variations in velocity
and aftertouch, facilitating
expressive, nuanced performances. If
youre designing your own Instrument
or Drum Racks, hook up velocity or
aftertouch as mod sources to
maximise the amount of timbral
variation youll be able to inject into
your live playing. Hold down Pushs
User button to access User Settings,
where you can customise the units
Pad Threshold (how hard a pad must
be hit to trigger a note), Velocity
Curve (the gradient between strike
force and velocity), and Aftertouch
Threshold (how hard you must hold a
pad before aftertouch kicks in).
>
While Push offers plenty of

control over Live straight out of
the box, several third-party
developers have sought to expand
upon the default functionality via
MIDI scripting. PXT-Live by
nativeKontrol, a $19.50 MIDI
Remote Script for both Windows and
OS X, adds a wealth of extra features
such as Arrangement View navigation
and editing, the ability to edit one
track while navigating through others,
APC40-style device control, and
heaps more. PXT-Lives additional
features are only accessed when in
User mode, so you can easily switch
back to Pushs regular mode at the
touch of a button.
Jesse Terry is particularly enthusiastic about the topic of

controlling outboard via Push, and he tells us how to go
about it: I have a largish collection of old synthesizers and
effects, and I play them all with Push, as Im not such a
great keyboard player. First, set up External Instrument
presets to work with your external synths: set the External
Instrument device to send MIDI out to the same channel
as your synth, and set the input to bring the resulting
audio back in from your audio interface, so you can treat
your external gear kind of like a plug-in and utilise Pushs
scales and step-sequencing.
Once youve saved these as presets, simply browse and
load them easily from Push. You can also use Max for Live
to create editors for your synths (or find premade ones on
maxforlive.com). I have most of my synths sitting around
the edge of my studio, and I play and edit them directly
from Push so my focus is in one place, even though Im
using a huge variety of synths and effects.
Next Issue: Sequential Prophet-6

Push control isnt confined to Live its great used with hardware too
78
The revived brand has produced arguably the synth of the

year. Take a tour of its capabilities. Available November 19th.
Melodic stepsequencing and

step automation
Pushs step-sequencing capabilities

are highly useful and inspiring
when composing melodies
Watch the video

here: http://bit.ly/
fmpg298
04 >
Step resolution, set to 1/16th notes by default,

is changed via the right column of Scene/Grid
buttons. To lengthen the first note, we tap and
hold that note before changing its Length to
three steps using the top menu/encoder.
01 >
Lets explore melodic step-sequencing by

composing a basic riff. In this session, weve
put together a drum beat before calling up an
electric-style FM bass patch from Operator.
Well set the projects key and scale to F Minor
via the Scales menu.
05 >
Its also possible to add parameter

automation for individual steps. Well tap and
hold a note of our riff, hit the Automation
button to reveal our devices automatable
parameters, then change various macro
values. A square block in a parameters name
shows its being automated.
02 >
Enter Note mode on the bass track, then hit

the Note button again. The 8x8 grid turns
into a step-sequencer: in our default In Key
mode, the blue line represents our root note
of F, while the white pads are notes in the
current scale.
06 >
Finally, hit the Double button to copy the bars

contents over to the next bar, add variations,
then tap the bars to jump between them. You
can also stack notes vertically to enter chords,
as were doing here with an added piano part.
03 >
The top row of pads set loop length.

Double-tap a pad to loop that bar, or hold a
pad and tap another to loop those bars. Well
loop the first bar, then tap pads on the
sequencer to enter notes. Use the touch-strip
to navigate up or down through the octaves.
79
Getsomevideoin
yourLiveset
Accompanying
on the DVD
If youre creative musically, youre probably creative

visually. Martin Delaney reveals how to add movies,
either to make a music video, or pimp out a live show.
oure making music on a computer, right? Well,

video is just as easy to do on the same machine.
If youre a video virgin, dont worry if you can
understand how to use audio clips in Live, you
can handle this. Its a good skill to have you
might be asked to soundtrack a movie, you might want to
make your own music video, or you might want an
hour-long visual set for your own live show.
Live can open any QuickTime-compatible movies (be
advised that you cant import video into Ableton Lite or
Intro, though), so you have many solutions as far as
content goes. There are websites that provide copyrightfree movies, and while they have restrictions on
commercial use, if you squirt them on a wall during a live
set, that may not be such a problem. There are also
browser plug-ins and applications that let you download
YouTube movies. A more rewarding way to add visuals is to
make your own. In my sets Ive used video from cheap
digital cameras, DSLRs, iPhones, HD movie cameras, and
GoPros; if you mix and match you get a better texture, its
like sampling audio from different sources. For most uses,
video from a phone is easily good enough. I like to use
bright colours, and close-ups of small objects as they get
really trippy when theyre blown up big on a large screen.
When it comes to digitally-created images, and keeping
it within Live (read about VJ software elsewhere on these
pages), Max For Live users have options in terms of
visually-oriented devices, such as Ganz Graf Mod X,
Vizzable, and V-Module. This tutorial is all about using
actual movies, but theres no reason why you couldnt
combine techniques throughout your set. And you know
what? Whatever images you use, somebody will usually
tell you that they suit your music perfectly!
Live works great as a brutally simple movie editor.
FOCUS ON VIDEO APPS

For more sophisticated visuals,youre probably better off running a
video application alongside Live.I like Arkaos Grand VJ its been
around for years but its still going strong.Its MIDI-controllable, so
Live can control it;all you need is a separate MIDI track,sending
notes to launch movie clips,and sending clip envelopes to change
effect parameters,so Arkaos will always load the right image for that
part of the set,even when youre improvising.For timeline use,
Arkaos also has a record mode so you can capture everything and
render it to pair with your mix afterwards.
42 | December 2015
MAGAZINE
You can stack multiple tracks, or place different clips on a

single track any section not covered by a movie clip will
make a black screen. You can split movie clips using
Cmd>E (you cant join or reverse them, though), loop them,
and choose which portion of the clip to play.
Lives greatest video tool, though, is the ability to warp
video, which it does by warping the audio the attached
movie simply follows along. Add warp markers and drag
them around to slow down or speed up your movie clip.
Even if theres no visible audio waveform, you can still
insert warp markers above the flat line where the audio
should be.
As well as being a fantastic visual effect, Ive used this
a couple of times when syncing audio to video as Ive
sneakily expanded or contracted the video to fit the music.
For those more pro timing moments, Right-click in the
time ruler below the Arrangement View timeline and
choose to view different frame rates in FPS, instead of the
default minutes and seconds.
You can also load jpegs, dragging their starts or ends to
change their duration within the timeline. Try to make sure
your jpegs have the same proportions as your movies, so
you dont get black bars, or unwanted glimpses of movie,
appearing behind your top-most image. Jpegs would also
let you add text titles to your Live video projects; you never
know, theres probably a Max For Live device out
MT Step-by-Step Video in live
Start by opening your Live set from last time or, if you prefer, use
the up-to-date version supplied with this issue of MusicTech. Ill
be referring to that version throughout the tutorial.
Weve also supplied a folder which contains the movie clips

needed for the tutorial Live movies. You can navigate to that
and drag it into your Live Browser, to save it as a shortcut.
Drag sky.m4v to the area under the current Arrangement tracks,

at the start of the song. Itll behave just like when you load audio
clips, creating an audio track to host the clip.
If you look closely, youll see the clip has little movie frames along
the edges to differentiate it. Live should have opened the Video
Window automatically. If not, use Alt>Cmd>V to show it.
Double-click in the middle of the video window to enter or exit

full-screen mode. Start Live running, and the video will start too,
its pretty simple. But the movie clip is very short
Remember I said its like an audio clip? Go to the end of the movie
clip, and drag the end back so the clip is exactly 8 bars long we
can sync video cuts to our beats.
01
03
05
movie titles for Live. If there isnt, somebody probably

needs to make one.
Well discuss final processing and rendering of audio
files another time. For movies, if youre working on your
own material, youll probably only use one or two settings,
02
04
06
but the other controls are valuable if youre working with

clients who need files in specific formats. If I just want a
take away render to watch on my phone or computer, I
use the iPhone preset. When Im delivering video to
publishers, Im following their stated requirements for
MAGAZINE December 2015
| 43
MT Step-by-Step Video in live contd
Now go into the Sample box and turn on Warp and Loop. Grab the
end of the movie clip and drag it out so it loops to fit the entire
length of the song.
This all makes more sense if you have a second display or video
projector connected. Drag the video window to the display/
projector window, then double click it again for full screen video.
Drag in flower.m4v, once again creating a new track. Shorten it to

4 bars. Set it to warp and loop. Drag it to 8 bars length. Place it at
bar 9 on the timeline.
Now play through that section. Youll see that the video in the
lower track takes priority. Thats how it always works with video
tracks in Live. Hmm, this is getting to be like video editing!
Load synth.m4v, but put it in the previous track at bar 32 and

again at bar 53. Dont warp or loop this yet.Yes you can put many
movie clips in the same track.
Double click it to see the audio waveform its some speech. Try
dropping Lives Ping Pong Delay on that track, set the dry/wet to
whatever sounds good to you. We can process movie audio!
07
09
11
image size, frame rate, and so on. If youre impatient,

remember that video takes longer to render than audio,
and the more youre compressing it, the longer it takes.
Everything weve discussed has related to the
Arrangement View; theres a simple reason for that. Drag a
movie onto Session View, and youll be advised that Live
44 | December 2015
MAGAZINE
08
10
12
cant handle video in Session View. But its not all bad itll
give you a chance to ditch the video content but retain the
audio which is a fast way to extract audio samples from
movies! If you really need video coming out of the Session
View, itll have to be via Max For Live devices like the ones I
mentioned earlier.
MT Step-by-Step Video in live contd
Warp and loop the second instance of the clip. Add a Warp Marker
to the end of the clip. Drag that left until it reaches the end of bar
1. Shorten the loop brace to one bar.
Now play that section. Not only have you made the audio play
faster, youve made the video loop and play faster with it isnt
that cool? This is an awesome Live feature! So much fun
With these techniques, you can use Live as a basic movie editor,
and the video warping is a nice extra trick.You can even warp
silent movies by placing warp markers on the clips flatline waveform.
Be aware that if you execute the Collect All And Save command,
the movie clips will be collected as well as the audio, so you will
get larger than usual Live projects.
To render the movie with audio, open the Export Audio/Video, and
make sure video is switched on.There are many available export
formats; what options you see will depend on your computer and OS.
See more in our main text about video formats. As far as more
detailed audio rendering goes, well be talking about the more
final stages of finishing and exporting your completed tunes next time.
13
15
17
Although Session View is a no-no, you can have a

timeline full of movie clips in Arrangement View, and flip
back to Session View to launch clips in real-time like
always. Your video output isnt affected, as long as youre
not launching clips in the same tracks that contain video
clips. Sometimes its safer to remove the clip stop buttons
46 | December 2015
MAGAZINE
14
16
18
in the video tracks as they appear in Session View, so you

cant accidentally stop or launch anything in them.
This is an easy route into movie editing if youre curious
about that, and most importantly, its a lot of fun. You
already have Ableton Live and a computer, and probably a
phone with a camera. So whats stopping you? MT

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Tips

MT Technique The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4

Ableton Live The Ultimate Guide to Ableton Live Part 4

Martin Delaney thinks its time to add some

his month were adding a bass part, ideally one

Resist the temptation to

FOCUS ON REAL BASS

128 racks inside another rack, so you can quickly end up

The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4 Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Making some bass

In the sine Simpler instrument, set the Trans (transpose) value to

each envelope can be a different length. You might notice

although thats one area where I think third-party plug-ins

MT Technique The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4

MT Step-by-Step Making some bass contd

Our simple bass part will be monophonic only one note at a

As were adding more elements to our track, weve got

0 using the white boxes under each Pitch control. That

The Ultimate Guide To Ableton Live Part 4 Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Making some bass contd

Choose Resonance now, unlinking it again, anchor it, then draw

What sounds cool is if you create different length sweeps for

When youre repeating these nice envelope sweeps, dont

Drop in Lives Compressor/Classical Compression preset. Make

MAGAZINE May 2015

The Ultimate Guide To Additive Synthesis | Technique

Basic Additive With Operator

Operator is Abletons bread and butter FM synth but unlike traditional

In default mode this displays all of the oscillators 64 available bands.

Continue adding odd-numbered harmonics that get quieter. Our

By combining Operators additive synthesis and FM capabilities, we

MT Technique Subscriber gift tutorial special

Ableton Live Subscriber gift tutorial special

ovations Launchpad has become the go-to clip

announced and you never know, may be released by the

FOCUS ON JOINED UP THINKING

Subscriber gift tutorial special Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control

Connect the Launch Control to your computer using the supplied

MAGAZINE June 2015

MT Technique Subscriber gift tutorial special

MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control contd

Factory template 2 provides clip launching. Press the Factory

The Launch Control doesnt create a pop-up red box in Live to

Subscriber gift tutorial special Technique MT

MT Step-by-Step Launching Launch Control contd

Theres no limit on how many tracks, scenes or devices in Live the

There are eight factory templates ready to use the others

The Editor software is a free download for Mac or PC, and is a

Thanks to the Editor, the Launch Control can take command of

For controlling plug-in instruments and effects inside Live you

To control external hardware, youll need to create an empty MIDI

Your messages go straight through Live and out to the hardware.

MAGAZINE June 2015

MT Feature A bluffers guide to acoustics

Although a purchased full

MT Feature Music Technology

THE BLUFFERS GUIDE

he most important piece of equipment in your studio is not your

Ride the wave