ILM music making thread for techno and other Ableton/Reason/Reaktor/whatever based questions and chat

Has anyone got any advice for starting to program stuff myself in Ableton? So far I've just been relying on the presets and stuff with a lot of my own tweaking and dial turning.

I mean, what's the ground floor as such with programming in Ableton, do I open operator? Where to from there? I've read your guide to ADSR above Nabisco, I'm just not sure where to apply it or how to apply it really.

Also is it worth reading a book about frequencies and stuff? I don't really understand how to place sounds in different parts of the sonic field even though I know this is a major deal in making stuff sound professional. Any recommendations?

Sound on Sound is a good mag to read to find out about this stuff. The "Secrets of the Mixers" feature is good for learning about EQ, compression settings for drums and so on...

The best way to learn to programme synths and fx is just to fanny about with them. There are some good, free synth and fx VSTs linked to from this thread: VST freebies & cheapies, what do you like?

I wish I had the money for this kind of software... I'm too lazy to go to the trouble of stealing it.

I always used to make music with a dl'ed version of FruityLoops on a now defunct PC when I was a kid.

Fannying about is indeed a good way to learn, especially in the case of FX

fannying about can only get you so far IMO, you need to know what you're doing or have some sort of starting point to actually abandon presets.

i have a little book on subtractive synthesis i can send you (um, like i did the dvd oops)

but, you know this is where reaktor comes into its own

well, I am using absynth a little now.

reaktor is incredibly difficult!

Operator's interface is a pain in the butt, IMO. If you don't have Reason (I can't remember if you do or don't), and only have Operator, you probably want to start with a preset--in general, the curve on the screen determines the way the sound starts, continues, and ends. (sorry if this is basic.)

To make a sound that's hard-hitting (i.e. begins as soon as you hit the key or trigger a note--like a monosynth or a drum sound), like Nabisco said, you want to, you want to draw a curve like the picture I'm including.
http://www.sequencer.de/pix/ableton/FM-bass_tutorial8.gif In this picture, the attack is immediate (the "attack" marker is touching bottom left of the screen.) Then it peaks high, then decays slowly, and then there's a little release. If I saw this curve, I would say, ok, immediate attack, and then some sustain, and then it doesn't have a long release after I picked up my finger from the key or stopped triggering the note. So it doesn't work like a slow pad that swells up, nor will it ring out very long afterwards.

That's different than this picture:
http://www.futuremusic.com/news/images/abletonoperator.jpg
Here, I have no idea what sound it would make, but the attack is not immediate(the first marker on the left, is NOT touching the bottom left, so it may take some time after you strike the key before a sound is made.) I think I'm right, although, again, I don't like Operator's interface.

Anyhoo, tweaking is actually a good way to mess around--but nothing beats having to create a sound from scratch. So, the curve only tells you what the sound's path will be (does it swell, does it stop dead after you hit it, etc.)--depending on what oscillator you choose--that's the setting under "wave" under the curve drawing area.

Operator is weird 'cuz it has four oscillators that can be strung together in any number of ways, and so if you're not paying attention, you can be tweaking and tweaking, only to find that you're not tweaking the oscillator that generates the sound, but the one that multiplies or divides the originating source or even something else.

http://www.sequencer.de/ableton/fm_bass_operator.html is a good tutorial, but honestly, I like Reason much more for learning. It's much simpler and you can make stuff faster. Hope that wasn't too confusing!

Sorry, that should read, depending on what oscillator you choose (sin, sawtooth)that's the setting under "wav" under the curve drawing area--and how you combine them (under destination)--you can get different "sounds."

great info, jubalique!

Yup, exactly, that's the window that ADSR information is for. (And yeah, the Operator interface is a bit fiddly.) So yes, Ronan, just open up a preset and start playing some notes. Then turn those four oscillators off and on (the A/B/C/D buttons) to see which ones are doing what. Notice that each of those four oscillators brings up a different panel with a different ADSR envelope. Your best bet is just to read the Operator section of the manual to figure out what everything does, but here's some stuff to play with anyway:

1. Fuss with the envelope, per that ADSR explanation above, to sort out the shape of the sound.

2. Click the lowest box on the right -- "algorithm." Notice you can set up the four oscillators to feed into one another in a bunch of different configurations, each of which will sound very different.

3. The second box down on the right is the filter. A low-pass filter lets low freqencies through and cuts off everyone above a certain frequency; a high-pass filter does the opposite; a "notch" filter pulls out some center frequency. You can set the relevant frequency, the "resonance" (i.e., how much of the cut frequency gets through -- you'll recognize the sound this makes), and an ADSR envelope for the "shape" that filtering takes.

4. The top right box is an LFO -- an extra oscillator that can affect something else. Notice the "destination" section -- you can set the LFO to affect any of the four main oscillators OR the filter. You set the shape of it (a sine wave, a saw wave, random noise), the rate/speed, and the amount/width of the modulation.

Just toy with any of these things -- e.g., make a filter, then set up the LFO to modulate the filter. What makes this fun and easy, Ronan, is that you already listen to a lot of electronic music, so as you play with these things, you're likely to keep thinking "OH, that's what makes that sound" -- you've heard countless amounts of filter resonance and LFO sweeps in your life, so it should be somewhat transparent when you turn a knob and realize so-and-so is probably turning some similar knob in your favorite track.

One question: do you have a MIDI keyboard? It's not strictly necessary, but they're not really expensive (less than $100 for a two-octave one), and getting one with physical knobs can be a help here. If you have one, you can press the "MIDI" button in the top right to turn on mapping, click on any Operator value, and just turn a knob -- it'll assign the knob to that value. Then you can turn off the map and record yourself making the synths fluctuate in real time.

the behringer bcr2000 is your friend here

if you're starting out, i strongly reccommend you try using a program like fl studio. it's especially good for learning the basics of sequencing, automation etc.

Just a quick comment about this. I almost wouldn't recommend FL Studio at this point. It's gotten more and more complicated as features have been added over the years. I've recommended it to friends and they just walked away from it, confused and frustrated. People who have a background with the software have grown with it. To new users it probably makes less sense than an easier program like Reason.

I feel like FL Studio has made it harder for me to learn other programs, because it works in a pretty unorthodox way. It's more like a mod tracker than a Cubase/Logic/Digital Performer type of program. FL Studio made me lazy, really. The sound is inferior, but I knew it well, so it became a sketch pad. Only problem is that because it sounded like shit, and works so differently from other programs, I could never really figure out how to move my "sketches" to other software. So I used to have like 300 one-to-two minute loops sitting around instead of songs. I also hate sequencing whole songs out in FL, so I would tend to just listen to the loops over and over until I got sick of them and couldn't finish the song.

I'm no hater of FL Studio. I love it. I think it's gotten clunky with too many features, and the automation and full song tracking functions leave much to be desired.

Thanks Maccallan--just to add to that, FL Studios is def not the place to start, even though I love it dearly. It generates very different music, for me, than using Logic or Reason or Ableton or Reaktor. And I think it's safe to say that sexy software (i.e. Max and/or Reaktor) aren't always the easiest or the best software to make music with.

Ha, I'm not sure why my explanation keeps saying "and now, RONAN, you will see" like some kind of crazy old lady, RONAN.

heh, it's ok Mrs Nabisco, just can I have some chocolate if I make a track?

Great advice again above, from N and Jubalique also, thanks.

I have a decent Midi Keyboard yeah, I bought it about a year and a half ago and didn't use it until the last 2 months or so, am really glad I have it now.

This is great, I'll take a look at Operator now after printing out the above advice.

One last thing, when I asked about frequencies I meant more, is there a good book or webpage that will explain to me how to lay tracks out. I know with previous tracks people have said "this is good but all bunched together" or "try panning that sound" and stuff. I mean, on my latest thing I'm working on I've been basically panning everything except the kick, working on the assumption that if I don't pan them all in the exact same way or the same amount, everything will be in a different "place".

But I know that I don't fundamentally understand sound here, I mean you have bass, treble, mid, and panning left to right, but how or whether there is a relationship between any of these is a mystery to me (but something I feel is pretty important to know)

So any good resource or would a book on this just be insanely complex? Sorry for so many questions but I am not working full-time at the moment so figure any moment where I'm not doing an article I might as well spend time on Ableton.

I'd be interested in that too, but I feel most books specifically on frequencies would be fairly heavy on the science. I have a friend who's studying audio engineering at SAE in London, and I popped in last night to say hi (and get shown all this awesome, but basically obsolete gear, like a HUGE Neve desk). Some of the guys there were talking about this exam where they're played some sort of non-musical noise, then particular frequencies are boosted or cut and they have to identify them. They all failed.

Anyway, I'm useless at this myself, but when we were mixing stuff for our band at a friend's studio, he would do this: If two things were getting in each other's way in the mix, he would solo one of them, then put a very deep, steep cut in a parametric EQ (i think, you would use EQ4 in ableton anyway) and move it around until he made the sound pretty much disappear. He would then get rid of the cut and put a cut in the EQ of the other track at the same frequency, but obviously a lot less deep. That way, if you've got, say, a live bass drum, with a broad frequecy spectrum, you just take away the little bit of it that is getting in the way of, say, the bass guitar, or a synth bass line, without having to drop the volume or affect the sound of the drum that much.

This is probably "mixing for idiots part 1" to you lot, but it was a revelation to me. Similarly, if the cymbals or hats are sounding harsh, you can just put a big dip in and slide it around till you find the errant frequency, then make it smaller and adjust the steepness till it's sounding good.

Here's a couple of useful things about EQ, which is one of the main ways along with panning (space) and reverb (depth) to get things out of each others way:

http://www.recordingeq.com/Subscribe/tip/tascam.htm

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/mar95/eq.html

Synth 1 is a good free soft synth that would be nice to learn on and will provide an alternative to Operator. I wouldn't fuck w/Absynth or Reaktor too deeply just yet. You can get it here:

http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/index.html

That sound on sound article is really good, although like my witterings above, it is aimed at live recorded stuff. If you're using all electronic instruments, it's a LOT easier, or at least the difficulty is making it sound great, not just in stopping it sounding awful. (Although you can create some wild synth noises that need taming)

Is there any free equivalent to that Synth 1 for Mac? All these free synths (and plug-ins generally) are for windows, it seems.

You can do a search here for free Mac synths (and effects):

http://www.kvraudio.com/

I don't know if there are many though as I don't use a Mac.

KVR is worth a general poke around for anyone who makes computer music, if only for links to hoover up freebies.

I've searched before (although I'm not sure if it was there) and drawn a blank, but thanks.

There are some:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=results&st=adv&soft=i&type%5B%5D=0&f=0&fe=0&osx=1&free=1&sf=0&receptor=&de=0&sort=1&rpp=100

Crystal is good!

free synths I enjoy using:

- Green Oak Crystal (very complicated, but still fairly intuitive. as with any synth, studying how the presets are set up is the key to learning your way around it, and once you do that, you can make some pretty interesting sounds.)
- alphakanal Buzzer2 and Automat (I think these may be only available as Audio Units. they sound good, though. Buzzer2 is a pretty straightforward subtractive synth. Automat I haven't really gotten into yet, but it seems to have lots of modulation possibilities, which I'm a sucker for.)

oh man, I forgot about u-he's Zoyd. that's a weird one, kind of a pain to work with IIRC... but Urs makes good stuff, so I'm sure it's worth a shot.

Cool!

I have to say I am amazed how enjoyable this all is.