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

why do I want to render and re-import, though?

mmm ssl listen mic plug

You want to get a faux sidechain result by combining the flattened limiter submix with the original. Instead of having a buss with the sidechained mix you've got a new audio channel with it. Same diff.

Heh - The first thing I think of with SSL is Tory Scum Phil and his wierd self-invented music notation. It's still a tremendous plugin though. One other thing you could try is getting an oldish compressor plugin that's really crap and maxing it out. I use an old TC Works one from about 5 years ago that's really good at this sort of thing.

oh and where do people get raw material usually? I want more durmz, cheapskate style

learn to play drumz

Find names of popular sample CDs, hit up the torrentz

There's seedy private music torrent sites, but they're the type that demands you upload impossible amounts so aren't really viable unless you've got a constant upload and no fear of the Feds. Plus they're illegal, kids.

The best way to get really good bass drums is to use 2 or even 3 bass drum samples together. Get one thats deep and short and characterless to give you the hit and then something lighter to give the actual tone of it. It helps to clip the envelope of the deep one and turn it into the sharpest thud you can.

Same thing applies to snares, I usually use 1 deep one, 1 snarey one and then 1 sharp one (sometimes a clap).

I've been cannabalizing the garageband loops. the sample chopper feature in 7 looks like something I would find endless uses for

lol I forgot to upgrade to 7, not that I hardly touched 6 in the past year anyway

leaving a set open in the background with the vinyl distortion effect on makes a nice noise

anybody else have 7 with analog and tension and electric etc.? what's worth it/what's lame? I have seriously had no use for sampler btw that thing is totally a gateway drug for them to sell you those retarded instrument packs

come on guys

I'm still trying to learn how to use Live 6 thing as sequencer and finding I just don't quite have the patience I used to have for this stuff. I've had it for a year and other than using it to effect a track, I haven't used it for much, but since I am off till Monday I figured I would give it another go over the next few days.

Quick question...how in midi pattern over dub do you get it to just edit that particular midi clip without starting a new one when it loops around? That is really screwing me up and I cannot figure how to turn it off. I'm used to working on a hardware sequencer where I can loop up a section and just keep adding and subtracting until I get it right and that new clip thing is screwing me up.

Conversely, how can you play say a VST synth in live and not record it as midi and route it back into an audio track? I've been flipping around and cannot quite figure it down. I can slave up a VST synth to my MPC for midi, but I cannot figure how to route the audio to an open audio track within Live 6.

Add an additional auxiliary track and have the audio output to your midi routed to that? you're always going to have to have it recorded as midi in the sequencer until you render the audio to disk as its own sample.

audio output from your midi, I should say.

as for your overdub question I'm pretty sure I've never figured that out either, and yeah, I miss that from my hardware sequencing days sometimes.

haha no actually I just tried it and it works fine for me. it even let me switch OVR on and off while recording and preserved the earlier versions of the loop (dragged the start point backwards and poof there it was)

and audio output from a midi channel can be routed wherever you like, not just to master or aux channels. still going to record as midi notes in the synth's channel though.

btw putting a s+h lfo in charge of (at least) the filter in operator and running it through a reverse gate + hard saturator is the number one ranking random bleep

I can probably learn to live with the weird midi over dub thing. Odd thing is that it seems a bit easier to do that punching in audio than midi. I worked with it a few hours tonight and somewhat got grooving with it.

How different are the mixing controls in the new version? I kind of wish that the mixing controls had a bit more throw, so that you could fine tune them in a bit more. I guess they figure many users will want to push it out to a regular audio editor for finishing and they want to keep it nice clean and German looking.

I like mixing audio on a PC as you get WAY more head room than on the onboard mixing board on my recorders, but I have not gotten to the point where I like tracking to one. I've got a Tascam hard disc record that I have had for a few years and I had an Akai before that one (RIP). I've got quite a few sequences worked up on the MPC, so I am going to work on slaving it up to the PC. Sometimes that stuff is a breeze, sometimes it is a pain in the ass. I figure that I will have to get Ableton to be the master and the MPC slaved up. I'm hoping I can get them to synch pretty tight, as it would be pretty dope to be able to then sequence loops in Ableton on top of some full drum sequences.

If you have loops or sequences on the MPC that you want to throw into ableton I'd just record it as audio and fuck around with the rest in the software. No point in worrying about syncing with ableton unless you're determined to use the MPC on stage in tandem with a laptop (imho)

I'm starting to get over the hump working with Ableton. I think the hardest thing on using sequencers is getting to the point where you can forget about the science and just play the thing. Cool thing is that I am actually starting to be able to do some of the stuff with this software that I wanted to be able to do with Acid like way back in version 1 or 2 ten years ago. I really dig being able to just copy and paste sections around at will and not have the thing bog down like a hog in heat.

I still haven't gotten around to trying to synch up my complete midi tracks yet. I just don't want to get into cutting up a bunch of loops, at least not yet. I've got probably a good dozen full drum sequences rock band songs I want to get recorded out, as I spent quite a bit of time putting them together. After I get those recorded into Live on the laptop, I might start working on trying to use the MPC as a loop box.

My goal for this next year is to actually finish something, put up a website and start posting some music. I've got tracks and tracks of raw demos on three different computers from the past few years. I've mostly working more on learning to play guitar over the past few years.

What is funny is that I was doing a google search on a band name I used for some electronic music ten years ago and found the old CD I had finished and posted on the old MP3.com in some guys web network shared folder. Who had it and where they were at...I have no idea, but I thought it was pretty hilarious.

Oh yeah, one thing I found is that some of the 'synth' effects in the rack on Ableton sound really killer on lead guitar. I liked them better than some of the stuff in the 'guitar' effects rack.

one of the unheralded awesomenesses of live is the fx stacking and racking capabilities - just with the basic version you get pretty much every studio effect other than a vocoder, and it allows you to throw them into a chain any way you choose, to frequently incredible results. I love being able to line up two or three fx in a single channel then route that channel's output into an aux channel with its own chain of fx, which is then mixed into a set of fx on the master output. POSSIBIBIBILITIES

too many possibilities is one reason i'm scared of live

the first thing I did was blow away most of the fx presets and start rolling my own so I had presets I could live with for various things, especially particular effects chains. I generally set the rules for myself right when I start working - I've had the too many possibilities/where to begin problem with other audio software suites and production tools but not Live.

has anyone used Ableton Live Intro and know whether it's worth 99 bucks? from the review on Turntable Lab it seems like it is worth it, the stuff that gets left out compared to the full version seems pretty pr0 and I don't think I would miss it as a new user. (I've never tried any kind of Ableton but the lower price makes me intrigued. For DJing I got Traktor Pro a couple months ago and like it.)

the lighter version of Traktor leaves out something I found totally necessary (ability to record a mix onto the same computer that you're mixing on) so that's why I wanted to check to see if Intro is missing some essential function ...

i got live 8 a few days ago but haven't done much with it yet besides fiddle around with drum sounds and arpeggiators. any general tips and tricks for getting started?

fiddle round with arpeggiators some more

sounds good, it is pretty satisfying.

slice loop to MIDI.

then arpegiate the slices.

i did that with a stretch from a rainbow and curved air and it turned it into happy hardcore.

any1 got live 9, how is it

convert drums to midi

10 announced:

http://www.factmag.com/2017/11/02/ableton-live-10-features-release-date-price/

February the 6th! I was expecting it to be later than that.

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/live-10-coming-february-6/

Doesn't look like a massive change from 9 but i'm not sure one was needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3UlKCqtZrc

10 has more airhorns

A+

It's got CPU issues making it unusable compared to 9 on my aging system (stolen, but I doubt they inserted cpu-related problems as an anti-piracy measure)

https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=229163

I get crackling with basically nothing playing (e.g. 4/4 kick samples), and they don't go away until buffer size is bumped up high enough that you can't even really use the thing.

no really, what's the best controller if what I basically want is the interface from the Yamaha RS-7000

I'm lazy and shitty at searching

I don't really know because I'm an inveterate mouse user, but maybe one of those Arturia Beatsteps?

http://https%3A//medias.arturia.net/images/products/beatstep-pro-black/beatstep-pro-black-image.png

I think I prefer the look of this

http://www.korg.com/us/products/computergear/nanokey_studio/

I'm planning to upgrade from my cheap laptop to a proper desktop PC to make Ableton a bit easier to use but there seems to be a load of people online saying that their 8/16GB, 3.8ghz, hexacore, I7, etc, machines still struggle massively with polyphony in Operator. How much of an issue is CPU load with a relatively decent PC spec now?

nothing helpful to add but that is discouraging

back to fruity loops

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209073129-Enabling-Audio-over-USB-in-iOS-devices

old news but news to me! experiments begin tomorrow

so for the track I hope to make for the ILX quarantine comp I'm running Live 10 Suite on my dinky MacBook Air I bought for school just about two years ago and with only 4 MIDI channels + barely any FX it's already pushing 25% CPU load. This is going to get sporty I think

Freeze tracks whenever possible

What are you using the midi channels for? what vst do you have loaded, or...

are you working completely in the box? or do you have gear attached?

Completely in the box

I’m using the same Mac mini that I’ve been using since 2009 running logic pro seven. I did get a new midi controller though.

for as long as I’ve been doing this I’ve become pretty decent at mixing inside the box except when it comes to vocals. I think because I just barely ever do it but I’ve never really mastered it or even come close.

How many goddam tracks does anyone need anyway?
(caveat I have no idea what Tombot's music is like, maybe you need 10 tracks just for the drums)

choose vst's or patches carefully (some of those wavetable patches are heavy on my cpu) , draw automation instead of twiddling the knob (or at least redraw the curves to mirror the twiddling to get rid of a lot of whatever those little points on the curve are called), freeze as Dan said.

or just "Free-form plague poetry over a VCS3 freakout" as per suggestion in ilm thread.

Live 11 is coming in Q1 2021.

The additions look useful but not enormously transformative. Better CPU performance would be good though.

Comping is very welcome, have been waiting for that for years. Spectral fx looks fun but nothing I haven't got elsewhere. Probability means I will probably never use Renoise again as thats pretty much the main reason I occasionally use it. The macro stuff looks awesome, especially no longer having to piss around with ClyphX scripts and commands.

All in all, looking forward to complaining for a few months then not being able to resist dropping £150 on an upgrade of Suite (again)

I’d love lower latency from the software instruments.