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

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

Learning to use the "Consolidate" command effectively made my first remix in ableton MUCH easier, I can say that.

as far as arranging goes, actually, I can probably honestly state that most of it is setting up the full loop - what generally winds up being the fade-out A section at the end or wherever - and then using cut, paste, consolidate, and just clicking and dragging. That's like 90% of the arrangement work (if 5% of the work on the whole track, since mixing and effects and sound design take much more effort and time).

(the other 10% of the arrangement work is little touch shit like fills and fade-ins/outs and writing the bridge)

informal survey: how many of you do full-track listens of your work in progress far more often than is healthy? *raises hand*

oh I wait until it's finished and rendered to disk and then I listen to the goddamn things over and over and over in iTunes like a pathetic fanboy. I hardly ever listen to a track all the way through before it's done

I think because the only way I know a track IS done and no longer in progress is when I can listen to it all the way through. otherwise there's going to be something I have to stop and fix.

I try not to listen to things too much at one time. It distorts your perspective.

The trick is to get the general idea down and then let it sit for a couple weeks. I find that I make better decisions when I have a bit of distance from the music. It doesn't feel like it is mine anymore and I don't have any ego/emotional attachment to the music.

It is the same reason why you don't mix a record immediately after tracking.

^^^OTM.

This thread makes me glad I'm in a heavy live playing phase.

Sometimes sitting around mixing or feeling guilty for doing something else while I should be editing tracks is about as fun as writing college essays.

struggling to find a good bass sound for a discodancepop track, can anyone recommend a good thick rich one built in to ableton, or as a vst?

the operator DX100-alike is a good start. chorus/saturator/delay is all on you

thanks tomboto.

another problem - ive got a 2 sec sample up as a midi clip. playing at c3 gives the original sound but when i go to d# the increase in pitch makes it speed up so its 1.5secs or so. how do i get it to increase in pitch but remain the same length? can ableton do this or is it something i need to do in an external sample editor?

can anyone reccommend some fm soft synths, i'm looking for some tasty bell sounds

if you just drag your sample into an audio clip instead of playing it back as a hit in impulse or whatever it'll let you stretch it, pitch it, and I think 7 has also allows pretzel knots

lol can't write today. too early for me

r1o n.: operator. operator. operator.

Some free FM VSTs:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/download.asp?ID=71
http://www.oxesoft.com/
http://rekkerd.org/gtg-synths-releases-gtg-fm-4-and-updates-gtg-k-1-and-gtg-dpc-3/

Never used any of them though.

Native Instrument's Massive has some amazing sounds on it, great layout too.

asked about this on here: what drum machine did prince, sheila e and colonel abrams use?
but i figure here is probably better, is the Linn LM-1 available for ableton?

and if not as a kit to load up directly is it straightforward to convert a bunch of wav samples of the linn into a drum kit?

the linn lm-1 isn't available for ableton as far as i know. i can email you the lm-1 soundbank if you like?

aw damn, is there some legal reason why it's not? but yes the soundbank would be great, thanks a lot! ( nicheian AT gmail dot com )

I like the ILM threads where peeps are still dead helpful.

ok i made a remix and im pleased with the sounds used and the layout but the resulting mp3 sounds dreadful when set next to proper songs. how do i make it sound so much louder, bigger, cleaner, crisper, sharper? i understand this is all in the mastering but what are the main things to work on? i keep hearing about compression being very important. anyone know of a good online guide to mastering an mp3 in ableton?

for starters, you don't master an mp3.

for seconders: http://www.tweakheadz.com/mastering_your_audio.htm

for thirders, compression and mastering might make your final mix louder, but if the mix is crappy then it won't help it sound clear/clean/etc.

4therz

Spend time learning how to EQ. That is how you make things sit in the mix

5therz

don't work with pre-mastered audio when you are just starting out. It is a bitch you make all that sit in a mix correctly and then try to master it again.

Make some of your own loops and try to get them to sit in a mix with nothing but EQ. Don't mess with compression and limiting just yet.

Don't worry about making it huge or loud, just make it sound decent in the first place and go from there.

EQ in the master channel is for mastering engineers trying to deal with something that's already mixed down IMO. when I've got every part of all my signal chains two clicks away in live I just go back and adjust the filters on things etc etc.

my mastering channel usually just has the Apple AU multiband compressor with some custom tuning, preceded by a very dry Saturator with barely any drive at all.

Anybody else ever stick their hand out in front of their monitors' bass ports to check if the drums are doing what you want them to? My speakers are too close to me to really be able to hear the long wavelengths right

the correct volume of air displacement being very necessary for proper jacking of the house obv

I have done that a bit but it doesn't really help that much. The thing that really helped me the most was making friends with the people that run the local dance club and a set of DJ with their own rental sound system.

There was a time where I used to wait outside of Plush and walk through the doors the second they opened. The staff was very cool with letting me play a few different mixes of my stuff on the system full blast before people showed up.

I recently played my first live set off a laptop through a set of 1500 watt mackies and that was a nightmare. The last time I did a set was in the 90's and I was using hardware through a mixing board and there was a great deal more control. I made the mistake of rendering and mastering my loops ahead of time and dumping them into a playlist. This really hamstrung me because I did all my mixing and compressing on a set of alesis monitor speakers and I lost a lot of control over the sound because of this.

I also did not have a decent set of monitors and this made doing a live mix a hell of a lot more difficult.

If I have learned anything from the experience it is to not even mess around with multi-band/single band compression. I think my life would have been a lot easier if I hadn't compressed the shit out of everything.
It sounds great at home, doesn't sound so great through a system. That is the big thing, learning how your music reacts to big systems. Your studio monitors are not an accurate representation of what will happen in the real world.

I think the real key is a residency at a club and weekly refinement of your material.

i dunno bout that. club systems are rarely accurate. club rooms normally sound pretty horrible when they're empty. the 1500 watt mackies you're talking about were probably those active pa speakers, they make most music sound shite.

to everyone talking about compression and crap like that, unless you're using it as a special effect, why bother with it? if stuff is coming out too quietly, especially if you're working with soft synths, it'll be your synth programming and layering thats rubbish, work on that. a quiet weedy kick drum won't become big and fat with some compression, you need a new kick drum! or two!

i don't even think about eq and compression until i've mixed everything down to individual audio tracks. and even i'd only use them very carefully. the only time i'll compress something is when i want it to sound warmer, so i stick it through an external valve compressor and record it back in.

the only way you'll get that big studio sound is if you go to a big studio and work there with the outboard equipment. it *is* possible doing it all digital but you'll need a fairly flat room and a decent amount of controllers to play with. you really need to be hands on, ears on, eyes off when doing that sort of thing.

for monitoring i use some studio monitors and a sub. this is also the system i use for listening back to any music. if you can listen to, and enjoy good sounding music on your system, you should be able to mix to that same standard. i used to mix on a pretty average hifi that i knew had this sweet spot where if i turned it up enough it would distort in a pleasant way and i could hear everything and it sounded nice. so when i mixed i just made sure my tracks did the same thing

use as many outputs from your soundcard as you can. route into a mixer.

...when playing live, don't do any mastering or mixing, use raw material and mix it live.

(pressed submit too early!)

CHALLENGING OPINIONS

I have to admit I love the idea of compression as a "special effect" in 2008. this is what happens when you raise kids on Justice

Anybody else ever stick their hand out in front of their monitors' bass ports to check if the drums are doing what you want them to?

describe to me what wavelength means, subwoofer man

or maybe you just mean people who make music in bedrooms shouldn't post here

i dunno if i get what you're on about, need some sort of lol/zing filter on ilx. but the justice sound you refer to surely does use (over) compression as a special effect. earlier i was on about people using it on all of their sounds to make them louder/better. its like what happened when reverb went digital. 'just stick some reverb on it'.

well, the wavelength is the length of the soundwave. most decent pa systems can reproduce 35hz fairly okay which'll be about 10 meters.

challenging opinions, listening with your hands