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

I get that Ableton tutorial tune in my head all the time. Including now. Gah!

So I have a question. If I record a clip, I can then change it's pitch easily, but is there any way of changing the pitch of an audio track as you play into it? (I want to experiment muck about with singing in a helium voice or whatever).

AFAIK not using the pitch control in ableton, this only affects recorded clips that have been warped. The way I do this is to run the track through an external VST. One of which comes as an effect (not ensemble) in Reaktor, "pitch shifter" the other I made in Max/Msp (but is buggy as fuck in Ableton for some reason).

Doing pitch conversion on the fly is a bit funny, because diff sounds have diff harmonic content, you really need to analyse the recorded sound to choose the best type of algorithm to use. Altho the characeristic chipmunk sound is a result of bad pitch conversion, so any pitch shifting VST would work okay. The best software package for doing this kind of thing is celemony melodyne, incredible bit of software, can hear it all over recent pop vocals.

(Side note, has anyone got their pluggo plugins to be stable within Ableton?)

thank you jamie, that's really helpful. i have all the separate tracks (with drums all on one wav). the kind of remix im aiming to do is chop out the best vocal hoooks and use those, use a similar template to the original songs but with different drum patterns and synth sounds and melodies. that might be overreaching myself though as i've mucked about with a few audio programs before but have zero knowledge about music theory or playing an instrument. i do have ideas in my head though! as for the song i'm remixing it's a pop synthy track with female vocals, i'll say on this thread when i've finished and i'll email you the original and my remix if you like.

stirmonster, i think you've answered this already on ilx somewhere so sorry for repeating but what program do you use for your own remixes? could you feasibly do everything on ableton alone? the editing, mastering, etc.

that celemony program sounds fascinating, what do you use it for CB?

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=melodyne_theidea

what program do you use for your own remixes?

i use ableton and then everything is dumped into logic for the final mixdown. it is however totally feasible to do everything on ableton alone.

when i was at uni i used it to do just intonation/microtone stuffs. you can adjust the pitch very accuratly, as well as how the pitch changes over time.

another great thing to try is to improvise single note solos, bring into melodyne for pitch/amplitude recognition. then export the midi information along with all the little pitch bends and amplitude envelopes and use it with yer favourite synth. you can really make a synth sing this way.

note: it only recognises pitch from monophonic sources.

i have 8 different wav files, and two with vocals. both wav files have chunks of vocals i want to chop out and use, what's the best way to do this on ableton? will it involve setting up a new instrument rack?

are you taking the piss? hehe, don't set up an instrument rack, read the manual. just the first few chapters. a few hints to help you along.

hint: you dont really chop audio in ableton. make a duplicate copy of the audio in ableton then find the bit you want to use and loop it. repeat for the rest of the wav files and you'll end up with lots of loops. arrange as needed. easy.

hint2: to loop audio in ableton use the controls "position" and "length" under the loop button. if you find it isn't looping in time (you can check against the metronome) your warp markers arn't set up right.

read the manual!

thanks, haha sorry, i've just spent hours going through tutorials and i couldn't find anything about it. i've got the manual up too and *will* go through it, just wanted a short-cut for this!

I really want to start using my own tracks in mixes and stuff, but they come out way to quiet, and with kind of uneven levels, so turning it up a lot is out of the question because the low ends will get really distorted. Anyway around this?

invest in a decent pair of monitors?

do some ghetto mastering? bounce down to one stereo track and do some normalization or compression? and cut some lows if it's still distorting/overpowering on most systems?

is it synth based? sample based? or actual real life recording?

synth based stuff is usually poor synth design. i hear this a lot these days with people wanting to get bell like tones and so they use simple sine wave kinda stuff. with most soft synth kinda stuff you need to beef up the sounds a fair bit. clever layering of sounds is key with purely synth based stuff. booka shade are pretty incredible when it comes to this sort of stuff.

i could go on forever with this sort of thing, if you have conflicting frequencies/tuning issues with bass notes/kick drums- you can get some confusion down below.

dont bother with compressors and limiters and shit like that except for special fx. i only ever use compression/limiters right at the end and its less to do with loudness and more about bringing out some colour by re-enforcing certain frequency ranges, then some real valve compression to make that colour less digital... if you want a rounder sound.

quite the opposite with sample based stuff, you have to be clever with filtering to find some space to add some new stuff. interesting article in sound on sound a few months back on kanye's HBstongerfaster thing, they had nightmares making space in the track to add new stuffs.

if you want some proper advice maybe start an IMM thread and link to a track? i'm sure there are peeps over there that know more about this sort of thing.

monitors shouldn't be massive issue, a decent home stereo system is fine for most stuff, especially if you're really used to listening to stuff on them.

http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/
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http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/
http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/
http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/
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http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/
http://sonictransfer.com/tag/utility-plugin/

but then again based on srose's questions that might be a little advanced.

just start here:

http://sonictransfer.com/tag/ableton-live/

rolling imm ableton live tips tricks sturm drang and beat repeat saturator thread

I think Fruty Loops likes to boost up all the lows. Just turning the kick down made a big difference.

Hooray!

so i'm trying to run Live 6 on Windows Vista and it is sloooow. are there some settings i'm not aware of that i should change?

yes. uninstall vista and install xp instead

http://www.gearwire.com/ableton-warns-vista-problems.html

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58575

I was going to say the same thing but strictly for zing purposes

eghck that's what i was afraid of :(

but thanks for that. v.7 is out now right? does that address the problems w/Vista?

just don't vista

the problems wont stop, ive heard 7 is better but still rubbish. i transfered the license from my old xp to my new laptop and regd it with microsoft over the phone. if you have to chat to an advisor say your tech mate upgraded the components on your old pc and theyll give yu a new password. I literally couldnt believe how rapid my new laptop was once i ditched vista, its handy enough to get all the correct drivers before you reboot. as long as you do a mask disk beforehand you should be able to upgrade to vista in a couple of years when need be (ie theyve sorted all the bugs). If you actually want to use it live you dont have a choice unless you buy 4gb of RAM

Why the hell does the reverb sound more powerful when I play my tracks on itunes?

are you playing the aiff or converting the tracks to aac/mp3 and then playing them in itunes?

it's a wav.

check your EQ settings in preferences

also do you lowpass your reverb?

Not to my knowledge, come to think about it, I'm almost now certainly sure that's it actually, because my problem before was that the lows kept getting boosted up.

so i just got a brand new macbook with logic express but i keep getting this system overload message. i'm not doing anything even remotely taxing, just 4 channels open, and i more than meet the system requirements (i got a second gig of ram installed) the thing is BRAND NEW, literally arrived today. although i'm new to logic i am familiar with pc software of the same level, any idea what is happening? is the laptop fucked?

That's a weird and very irritating bug with Logic - nothing wrong with your laptop. Only thing you can do is set your buffer size larger in the audio preferences, and cross your fingers.

What do people use for their horn sounds? I'm looking to not sound quite so synth-y. Sample packs? Softsynths? (I'm using FL.)

increasing the buffer size doesn't seem to help much. anyone else experience this problem and have tips on getting around it? i'd hate to think £130 worth of software is practically unuseable :/

Give this a go too: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=88777.

trying to do a remix in ableton - i've got a wav of the vocals, a drumbeat set up, a few chords sorted from a soft synth but i'm having trouble putting them all together. i've had a look through the lessons and the manual but there seems to be a LOT of stuff that is irrelevant to what i want to do, i'm at the beginner stage so it's really confusing (if only there was a button to press that pared it all down into a fisher price ableton).

could someone point me towards the relevant lessons, tutorials and sections of the manual for putting a bunch of noises together to make a 3 min song?

ok dude are you serious?

if you send me the files I'll just do it for you

have you ever used music software before?
if you have, you might find that staying in the arrangement window (the one with tracks and bars) and avoiding the session window (the one with columns of buttons) helps. if you haven't, then you should just go through the tutorial. all of it. I am not really kidding.

^^ Tombot might seem like he's being dicky right now, but honestly, there's this line between asking for advice and being like "I don't know how to make electronic music, please tell me how" -- it's a bit like posting to a classical music forum and going "I want to play violin next week, please tell me how" -- and dude, some of your questions really do seem to be toeing that line!

I don't mean to be Mr. Pay Your Dues Guy, but my advice is that if you've never worked with the software before, don't go thinking you're just going to leap in and find some tutorial that explains how to make a remix: you're going to have to start off small, fiddle around, learn how to work with different aspects individually, and so on. It might not even sound that good for a while, but you kinda have to. I've been playing with software like this for nearly a decade, and my stuff doesn't sound nearly as good as Tombot's, but what're you gonna do? You've to sit there playing around with stuff until you figure out how it all works, and no tutorial or scrap of advice is gonna skip around that process.

kind of the worst thing about ableton/logic studio-in-a-box software is that you can go out and get a copy and not even have to take a quiz on what compression is for, what gain staging means (ok not that much in an all-digital environment but definitely so when using more than one dynamics processor in a signal chain), how different studio sounds are achieved with fx staging and returns, AABA, ABABCBA, how to tune a sampled drum by ear so it's right on time, why to cut at zero crossings, oh god.

I will explain any and all of these things but you have to ask about them one at a time

actually don't ask about what compression is for because I misplaced my kiln suit

I'm not really asking 'pls for you to talk me through theory of electronic music and do my remix for me', I just want to know which sections of the tutorials/lessons are most relevant for arranging and putting a song together. I'm sure to you guys this seems like the most basic and idiotic thing in the world to ask as you've been using the program for years. At the moment I'm at the very early stages of understanding Ableton so was hoping someone could help steer me towards the most relevant parts.

I've been using various sound editing programs for years now, mostly DJing live, I have a good knowledge of these programs but Ableton is a step up from the ones I've been using and contains a bunch of new terminology. My situation is that I've been asked to remix a song, which needs to be done in about a weeks time for digital release. I've got the idea for the song in my head, got all the relevant sounds, beats, loops all set up, arrangement scribbled down - it's just the placing them all together that I need to read up about.

I've been dipping into the program constantly over the last month or so, learning bits here and there - if anyone else starting out would like a walkthrough of how to set up a soft synth such as Massive in Ableton then just ask, this took hours to work out but can be achieved in minutes with the right guidance.

I'm sure I would learn how to arrange, and much more besides, if I went through every tutorial, every lesson, read the entire manual, but this would leave little time to stick all the stuff together and I figure I don't really need to learn how to record audio into the program or how to set up midi controllers, I can save that for a later time. As with most programs there is a lot of extra info in there that isn't suitable for me right now and I just want to be able to cut through that.

I do apologise for appearing so clueless about this, perhaps this thread is too advanced for questions like mine. If anyone could recommend a beginners forum that might be best.

This advice of Tomboto is what you need then -----> "stay in the arrangement window (the one with tracks and bars) and avoid the session window (the one with columns of buttons)"

I don't think the tutorials take that long even if you do them all.

Maybe taking the commission was a mistake.

just go through all the tutorials at once, it won't take long at all as they are very succinct

patrick don't say that, i'm already freaking out about it! but yes my plan is to spend all evening going through the tutorials (i've been through most of them already over the past few weeks) and look over the manual. it was probably a silly idea to look for a shortcuts, esp when the tutorials do seem so user-friendly