Ableton Live 11 Instrument Tutorial - Learn How To Use Simpler

1. Introduction to this Class: Hi, there is in Alexander. Here are welcome to this Ableton Live 11 Skillshare class. This course will teach you everything you need to know to confidently use simpler. An instrument comes with all editions of Ableton Live. Simpler is a powerful sampling instrument, which has a number since controls. Learning how to use this instrument on not only teach you how to use a sampler, it will also improve your sound design skills and help you to understand many of the other instruments which come with Ableton Live. I start off this class by going over the basics of simpler and the different sample playback modes. Classic, one shot and slice. And then show you the global controls within simpler. And a handy trick which allows you to ensure your samples stay in tune with your track. Later, I go to the different synth controls available in this instrument. We start off with the basics before looking in depth our LFOs, filters and envelopes. These controls are some of the most important parts of understanding how samplers and synthesizes work. The skills are transferable to other instruments and synthesizes soft. This class should not only be confidently using simpler, but you should feel comfortable and using other software instruments or synthesizes. This course has been designed in a way that allows you to follow along step-by-step so you can use what you're learning in a practical way. I go over all of the different controls in context. So again, a strong understanding of how simpler works. By the end of this course, you'll be able to competently use simpler and start creating your own unique cells. I look forward to seeing you in the first video. If you are new to Ableton Live, would like to learn more about the basics of this software. Checkout. My full five-hour beginner's guide to music production in Ableton Live Skillshare class. 2. Simpler Introduction and Classic Mode: Hi there. Over the next few videos, I'm going to be looking at simpler. So simpler is a very powerful instrument that comes with old editions of Ableton Live. I'm going to start off showing you the very basics. So you can start experimenting with this instrument. And by the end of these videos, you should be able to create your own unique sounds. So simpler is a sampler, unlike traditional synthesizer, generate its own tones. Simple, place back pre-recorded audio samples, which can then be manipulated. You can use presets, which will have samples preloaded into it if you choose from the instrument preset menu. But you can also choose any audio file or clip from your browser or set, or even choose audio files stored on your computer or hard drive. So first of all, I'm going to load simpler on this track. Sounds kinda go to instruments simpler. I'm just going to drag this on now. So this is what the instrument should look like when you first open up, the first thing you'll see is the sample display, and that's this window here. This is where you can add your sample and change the playback modes. Right now we don't actually have a sample loaded in, so we can't see any audio. Now if I click on the tab at the top right here, which says controls, will be able to see the synth controls the instrument. In here we can access our filter, our LFO, and our envelopes. These OUs to apply modulation. Okay, now showing you the two main views and it's going to load in a preset. So I'm going to open up the simpler preset many. I'm just going to drag on in C this time, we can see the audio waveform in the sample display. This is the sample simpler is using to generate sound. Cfa choose another preset, will be able to see the sample changes. Now we have a sample loaded in will also be able to expand the view of the instrument. So if you click on this icon down here, this little error will build. See both the sample and the synth controls at the same time. For the moment, however, I'm trained close as fear. So we have three different playback modes in simpler, classic, one shot and slice. I'll explain the differences between these different modes in a following video. But for now, just choose classic. So simple, it does have loads a great preset built-in. But what makes it really fun instrument is that you can import your own audio files, allowing you to create unique sounds. So if I wanted, I could go into my samples and drag and drop any sample n. And this would change a sample that simpler is using. If you have an audio clip in your set, you can drag and drop that in simpler as well. But for now, I'm just going to choose a file that so my desktop. So I'm going to drag it over to simpler and drop it into the sample display. You can now see the audio waveform has changed, showing us our new sample. If a whole denote my keyboard. Now, we'll be able to see in here this new sample playing back. When I let go of the key, it will stop playback. So as you can see that this sample is actually made up of four different notes. So if you don't want to use the whole sample, you can make selection in the sample display to choose which part of the audio file you'd like to work with. To do so, simply click and drag the start or end markers. These markers here. And it's going to cut down these four different notes. So you've got OneNote. You can zoom in and out of the sample display by hovering over it and clicking, dragging when the magnifying glass icon appears. Now can make finer adjustments. You can also scroll along in the sample display. I'm going to zoom out by clicking and dragging upwards. Okay, we've now narrowed down which area of the sample would like to work with. So something you might want to consider doing is normalizing the sample. This will just bring up the volume. So the sample will now be much louder. You can also crop your sample to remove any unwanted audio. So for right-click, I went down to crop sample. We'll just be left with the selection we had made. Its going to press undo. Now in case I want to use the rest of the sample, a turn. Something else It's really easy to do is reverse the sample. So again, right-click and select Reverse sample. Right? So now showing you how to crop your sample, and it's going to go over some of the different modes and the controls at the bottom down here. So classic mode is great for harmonic or melodic instruments. You can play polyphonic Lee, so more than one note at a time. And the sample can be looped. Mean you can hold down costs are notes for as long as you like. So just make sure you're in classic mode and you should have the same options available at the bottom down here. So these allow us to manipulate our sample in a number of different ways. The first thing I want to look at is gain. You can see here set to 12. This because when we normalize the audio file, it increase the gain by 12 decibels. So you can make sample louder or quieter with this control here, just click and drag as exceed the waveform changes in size as we increase or decrease the gain. The next control is a stop percentage. So this allows you to change the start position between your start and end markers. So if I zoom in a little bit now, our sample is going to be starting at the very beginning here, where I stop markers. If I click and drag this icon, you can see here the section of the audio sample is highlighted. Orange has moved. This is where the sample will now begin playback. Say if I bring that back to the star, it goes to the very beginning. You can adjust the length of your selection with this control here. So if I click and drag length will see that the sample is getting shorter. So having these options allows you to make fine adjustments even after you've selected your start and end markets. The next thing I want to look at is this loop icon here. So if you're using classic mode and you hold down for longer than the length of the sample, you can actually loop the sample round and round. So with the off, if I press and hold and out. You can see there if when I'm holding the note, the sample isn't looping. Once I click on this loop icon, the sample begin to loop. You may notice this little area of the sample display is highlighted blue. Now it's showing us the section of the sample that will be looped, that can be adjusted with the loop control over here. So if I bring it to a 100 percent, the whole length of the sample will be looped. And if I bring it back down, we can reduce the selection that is looping. One thing I should mention, the section of the song plays highlighted orange is a portion of the audio file which will be played back. The blue highlighted area is looped section. So as you can say, if a correct loop for loop section disappears. So as you may have noticed, when I was looping this section here, it wasn't very seamless. It sounded like the note was being pressed over and over again. This is where the fake control can come in handy. So if I click and drag this, you can see there we're getting so a fade in and fade out marker in the sample display for play a note. Now, we're not getting the attack of the note each time the sample is looped. So playing with Desk make the looping more seamless. One thing I should mention now, if you're fake control is grayed out. That's because warp is active. You need to make sure warp is not activated. To be able to use the fade option. I'll briefly go over warping later on. Next I would show you is this Snap icon here. I'd usually suggest leaving this icon illuminated as it helps remove clicks and pops by slightly adjusting the loop start and end positions to a 0 crossing point. So if I zoom in a bit more, if I click the Snap icon here, we'll be able to see the stop point has moved slightly exceed our sample now starts at the 0 crossing point here. If it wasn't activated, it's possible we could get a click or a pop when the samples played back. So I'd usually just leave the activated. Right now it's one show you voices. So at the moment, if I try and play a chord, a three notes were only able to hear one note being played back. This is because Voices has been set to one. So the instrument will be monophonic. We can change this all the way up to 32. So you can play the instrument polyphonic way. Now on to quickly show you wore. So with warp enabled, able to in real time stretch the audio sample to ensure it doesn't change speed when a different pitch note is played back. This can be especially useful if working with percussive sounds or vocals, for example. So now with warping off, if I was to play a low, say it, say it takes quite a while to move through the sample. But if a went up a couple of octaves, you can see that it's playing through the sample much quicker. Now if I turn warp on, when I play back a loan out, playback at the same speed as a high note. So with warp enabled, able to mealtime structured sample, so it maintains its original length. However, listening back to the high note, you may be able to notice we get some strange artifacts when using wall. So with this box here, you can actually choose from a number of different warp options which can help produce these artifacts. We have Beats, Tones, texture, read, pitch, Complex and Complex Pro are generally trial beats, tones and texture first. As the other warp modes are more useful for creative sound design. You can also change the speed that your sample is paid back with these controls over here. All right, The next option I want to talk about is re-trigger. Having retrieved activated can help reduce the CPU load on your computer. As re-trigger notes that have already been played, rather than creating a new voice. So if you compute this ever struggling when you're playing lots notes with simpler, just activate, re-trigger, and reduce the CPU load. Okay, so that's the main controls that are available when we're in classic mode. Next, I'm going to look at one-shot mode. Thanks for watching. 3. One Shot Mode: Hi there. In this video I'm going to look at one-shot mode in simpler. So just to reminder, contact mode is great for harmonic or melodic instruments. He can play polyphonic Lee, so more than one note at a time. And sample can be looped, meaning can hold down courts or notes for as long as you like. In one shop owed, the sample will only be played back once. It will not loop. One-shot mode is great when working classes sounds such as drums. And it's going to create new track and load in sampler instruments. Just going to choose a default of simpler once again. And this time I'm going to load in a sample search can choose this one here and drag and drop it into the sample display of simpler. So if I turn simpler to one-shot mode, you'll notice we have far less controls available. Gain and Snap are exactly the same. So again, is used to adjust the volume of your sample. And snap, will snap the stone and markers to 0 crossing point. The rest of the options have gone, and this time we have triggered AND gate. So by default, trigger mode is selected. So when I play a note, once the whole length of the sample will be played through. If I choose gate mode, the sample only be played back for as long as the NO is being held. As I mentioned a moment ago. And one-shot mode, the sample will never loop. So if I hold down the note for longer than length of the sample AND gate mode, it doesn't loop. The same with trigger. Just like classic mode, we can adjust the start and end positions. So I can click and drag and choose an area of the sample I'd like to work with. So in this situation, I could use simpler to play back the snare drum at different pitches. Now something else you might notice when I swapped between classic and one-shot mode. Say the partner here. These controls attack, decay, sustain, and release, disappear. This is because every time, you know, is triggered in one-shot mode, it'll simply play the sample the whole way through making the ADSR envelope useless. Therefore, if you don't know what an envelope is at the moment and going to be going over envelopes in a future video in lot of detail. I just wanted to make you aware that these two controls here, fade in and fade out will actually affect the sample. So I'll just make this its original length once again. Now if I adjust the fade in-control, you'll see here we're getting fade at the start, the sample. Again, it's the same with the fade out. Again, what mode is available in one-shot mode if you don't want the sample to change speed depending on the pitch. So you can see there is playing back at very different speeds without what mode, the if enabler. So one scan, classic mode is grave, playing back harmonic or melodic parts as you can loop the sample and play polyphonic easily. One-shot mode is good for drum samples or single hit musical parts. Again, you cannot play polyphonic Lee. So even if a play three notes packet once the sample only playback one of these pictures. Okay, so that's one-shot mode. In the next video, I'll have a look at slice. Thanks for watching. 4. Slice Mode: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to be looking at in the next sample playback mode in simpler, which is called Slice. Servers can load Simpler onto this track here. And now I'm going to drag in an audio sample of got one on my desktop. So this time I'm going to select slice mode. Now as you can see here, it looks a little different too one-shot in classic mode. You may notice we have these different markers throughout the audio file. And these are slices. Slice mode is a quick way of cutting up your sample in small snippets. It's a little more complicated than the other modes, but can be very powerful. It works particularly well with drum loops as he can cut up the different drum hits and maps them across the keyboard. Alternatively, you could use it to create interesting sounding instruments with the chopped up vocal recording, for example. So these different slices, we maps your keyboard starting from the Note C1. I should also mention that in slice mode will be no pitch shifting applied to the samples. As I say, the slices are mapped to specific notes on the keyboard. Playing a note which doesn't have a slice mapped to it will not play a pitch shifted version of the sample. Nothing will be heard. If I open up the meeting note editor and pay back the note C1, you can see that the kick drum slice is being played back. And if we go back to this, when we can see this portion of the sample is being played back. Now if I play back C2 or know about that, we're not actually going to hear anything being played back. This is because nothing is being mapped these nodes. So in this situation, I could build up a drum part using gestures, Simpler instrument. Let's quickly go over some of the options. So just like one shot, we have our trigger and gay options. But again, I tend to find myself leaving on trigger mode most of the time. The first new option in sliced Modelica is sliced by. So here the default is selected transient. So in transient mode, simply cut up the audio file into different slices determined by the transient in the audio file. This works well in situations like this. When I'm cutting up these drum samples, the sensitivity can be reduced with this slider over here on the right. This can be useful as simple as added any unnecessary slices. So as I pull down the sensitivity, less slices will be mapped to the keyboard. Now if we go back slice by options, if we choose beat mode, MPI mode, the sample be cut up into different slices determined by musical beat divisions. Let's grab a different sample for a moment. So as you can see here, this sample is being cut up into quarter note beat divisions. We can change the beat division in this drop-down box here. So in this sample, I have four nodes, each one bar in length. I can call this sample up into one boss lysis. And each of these nodes will be their original length. Again, I could cut this up into many different slices. So if I chose 16th note, for example, we've got loads of different slices. And this way we've got loads more notes mapped to the keyboard. This can be useful in a creative situation, for example. But again, remember, this sample will not be pet shifted. If I play a very low note, there'll be the same pitch as a very high note. Next motor wants to look at is region. So in this mode, it will cut up the audio sample into equal divisions. These can be chosen from menu just to the right. So we can go from 64 all the way down to these will always be equal length divisions. They just won't be determined by musical value. Finally, we have manual mode. So in this mode, it allows you to draw in slices in the audio sample manually. You can do so by double-clicking in the sample display to move a slice, click and drag. And you can delete your slices by right-clicking and selecting Clear slices. We also notice we have this playback option here. Right now it's set to mono. So I'm just going to add a few more divisions. So at the moment for play down more than one note, we're only hearing one time asked because we're mono mode. We also have poly mode. So you can play multiple notes at once. Again, the voice box will appear, so you can play up to 32 notes, the ones. And finally, we have this through Mode. So what this will do is play the slice that you've played and then continue to the end of the audio sample. One thing to mention when in through Mode, simpler will be monophonic once again. Okay, says all of the different playback modes and the controls we have available in the sample display. Just a quick reminder, classic mode is great for harmonic or melodic parts. You can loop the sample, play polyphonic Lee, and play notes any length you wish. If loop mode is active, one-shot mode would just play the sample back once it will never loop, will always be monophonic. And slice mode is used to cut up your audio sample into a number of different slices, which are then mapped across your keyboard. Just going to drag these drum samples and once again, to choose slice by transient, leave sensitivity as it is. And in here, you'll see we've got a few different midi notes thrown in, written in across the area that are slices are mapped to serve a playback this loop now, just gotta make sure it's actually in polyphonic mode. So I'll go back to playback, select polyphonic, then press Play. You can see that we've got a drum part being played back using just one simpler. So thus the different playback modes and how to manipulate your sample. In the next video is I'm going to be looking at all the different synth controls. Thanks for watching. 5. Global Controls and Tuning Samples in Simpler: Okay, so now we've gone over how you can import an edit audio samples. I'd like to start showing you some of the synth controls that we have in this instrument. So similar to a synthesizer, we can manipulate the audio with a number of different modulators. In simpler, we have a filter, LFO, and envelopes. First thing I'll show you, however, is a global controls. So just to make sure you're looking the same as me, go back to the sample View and make sure you've got classic mode selected. Then go back to the synth Controls tab. So the global controls is this small area down here, just between the envelope controls. Vessel we have panning. So this allows us control wherein the stereo field, the sound is. So if you click and drag down your plan, the left. And if click and drag up, it'll go off to the right. You can reset it to the center by double-clicking. Just to the right to this, we have the random pattern control. So if you increase this, it'll tell simpler to randomly vary the planning of the instrument. On the bottom left we have spread. If you enable this, simply will duplicate any voice is being played and slightly de-tune them, which will give the instrument of wide sounding effect. The more you increases the white of the instrumental sound. You'll see there it gives it a kind of phase effect. Next, we have the velocity volume control. With this down at 0%. The velocity will not affect the volume of the notes that are being played by this instrument. So if I play note softly, and the planer heart is going to play back at the same volume. If I increase this to a 100 percent, a note played with the low velocity will be played back quietly. And if it's played hard, it will be much louder. If you're not very good at playing keyboard, nice struggled to play notes consistently. You probably won't want to have this up a 100 percent. However, increasing it's slightly can make the instruments sound more natural. The default is 35 percent. Now, just to the right, we have some global pitch controls. So you can tune the instrument up or down in semitones with this control here will sense with this one just below. Now this brings me on to something that's extremely important to realize about simpler. So whenever you import a tune sample, so for example, a voice, so any other harmonic part? Simple map it to the keyboard, assuming is the note C. So suddenly I always recommend you do when importing a harmonic sample in simpler is make sure it's in tune by using these pitch controls. I'll just show you a quick way you can check this. So what we need to do is go to Audio Effects. Go to utilities, and drag the tuna onto your midi track. Okay, so when I played the note C on my keyboard, we should be able to see the note C being displayed in the tuna. See that when I press the note C, C was being displayed in the tuna. Now this is because the sample that I imported in simpler was the note C. It's going to load a different sample is time. Since notes E flat. So this note that I've imported is actually no E-flat. Rather than see. I'm just going to crop this down a little bit. Okay, so now when I play the same note on my keyboard, this tuner won't be displaying the note C. So if I was to try and play along with my son, this instrument is actually going to be out of tune. This is because simpler as assumed, that the sample is loaded in is the note C. So when it's been mapped to the keyboard, is the number of semitones out. So all we have to do to fix this is go back to the synth controls. And then it just the transpose control until the note you're playing on your keyboard matches with the note displayed in the tuna. Great, So now when I play a C on my keyboard that's being displayed for play an E. You can see they're simpler, is playing back the correct pitch. If the sample wasn't perfectly tuned, you could also use detuned control to finally adjust the pitch. The detuned control is measured in cents rather than semitones. Okay, the next globe control that I'd like to look at is Glide. So if we turn on chloride mode, this allows us to introduce pitch bend between our notes. So I'm just going to select glide. Now when I play this pop back today, you can hear the pitch bending between our different notes. So one thing to mention, when you're in glide mode, you cannot actually play polyphonic CLI. So if I press a few notes at the same time, we're only able to hear one being played back. Whereas if we choose portmanteau, this actually allows us to introduce pitch bend and still play polyphonic CLI. We can adjust the length of the pitch bend using the time control here. The time control works in both portmanteau and glide mode. Now the final thing I want to look out, which isn't actually in the globe controls area is just blow. But it's the volume control. This controls the output volume of simpler. Okay, so that's how to make sure you simpler is Intune and also the global controls. Thanks for watching. 6. Filter: Hi there. In this video I'm going to show you the filter in simpler terms can quickly load up Simpler onto this track here. I'm going to drag in a sample this time from the browser. It's going to choose asset meltdown, C4, crop samples slightly and lipid. I'm going to go back to the controls tab and increase the spread slightly so it sounds a bit softer. So I've just got this basic pad part here. I'll play it back so you can hear what it sounds like. Okay, so the filter is this area here. On the left-hand side. It can be turned on and off with this yellow icon at the bottom left. So what we can see here is a frequency spectrum with some controls underneath. So a filter is basically a simple EQ. Right now it sets, has its default, a low-pass filter. So the cutoff tiled terms of frequency that the filter slope becomes active. This is measured in hertz. So at the moment, as I say, we have a low-pass filter. So if I pull down the frequency, this is going to be cutting out all the high frequencies that the audio signal says here that when has adjusting the cutoff dial, I was either increasing or decreasing the amount of high frequencies that we get here. Now, the next style, once lambda is resonance. So this allows us to add a little bump at the cutoff frequency. So you can see that as I increase it, we get a little peek at the cut-off point. Here. There it gives it kind of nasal sound. Something else to mention, instead of using these $2 here becomes simply click on the orange node in the display. Here we can click and drag up or down to increase or decrease resonance or left and right to adjust the cutoff. So this allows you to make changes quite quickly. Next, I want to look at these two numbers at the bottom here. This determines how steep the slope is. So it's 24 decibels per octave, but you can change it to 12 decibels per octave. And this is a less severe filter. So let's move on. I just that when I'm playing back, Sazzy get here, even with the same cutoff position, the 24 decibel filter cuts out the highest more severely than the 12 decibel slope. This drop-down box here allows us to change the filter type. So we've got low-pass, high-pass band notch. I'm almost slightly different, one called morph. I'll just show you the high-pass next. So now when we just felt cutoff, we can cut out the lowest frequencies, grouchy going up to the highest. With bandpass, we can cut out the high and low frequencies. It can be quite interesting adjusting the resonance when in this mode. Next we have notch, which will cut out one specific area of frequency spectrum. You can make really thin when adjusting resonance. Now we have the mouth mode. This is little difference at rest. It gives us enough control, this morph control here. This allows us to blend between the different filter types. So as you can see, they can come up with some really creative sounds using a morph control. I'm just gonna put back on the low pass mode. Next you want to look at is a circuit type. So if we click on this box down here, we see we've got a number of different options. Firstly, we have clean and then we have our ISR, MS2, SMP, and PRT. These modular sound of classic analogue filters, which can subtly affect the sound by altering filled shape and adding saturation. Over here we've got this velocity control. What this does is allows the velocity of the notes being played back to vary the cutoff frequency for the filter. I'll just turn the velocity volume control down to make this example more obvious. So right now if I play a note with a soft velocity and then hard one, There's no change in the filter cutoff point. But if I increase this to a 100 for play soft note, the cutoff frequency of the filter has actually been brought down. And the harder I play, the higher cut-off frequency obey. Now final control I'd like showing the filter says key control, sometimes known as keyboard tracking. So what this does is adjust the filter cutoff frequency depending on the pitch of the note played. For example, with set to a 100 percent. If I play a low note, the filter cutoff we brought down slightly compared to a high note. If I bring keyboard tracking down, no matter what pitch I play, the filter cutoff will be at the same frequency. Now the last thing I mentioned quickly is we actually have this box down here and this will open up the filter envelope. I'll be looking at that in a future video. I just wanted to mention this case you'll fill to look different to mine. Okay, so that's the filter. So it's really useful. But when we start bringing in more modulation, such as an LFO, we can really create some interesting sounds. Thanks for watching. 7. LFO - Low Frequency Oscillator: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to look at the LFO and simpler. So LFOs stands for low frequency oscillator. This is a type of modulator. Modulators are used to change parameters over time. They're commonly used in music. And something you may have heard in the past is a wobbling baseline. This effect is often created using an LFO. The very important in synthesis and can really help you make interesting sounds. So the LFO is this section down here. You turn it on and off with this yellow icon at the bottom left. So as it is, ethno is active, the LFO won't actually have any effect. This is because we need to assign it to a certain parameter within the synth. To do so, you're just one of these controls here. So if I assign an LFO to the filter, this will modulate the filter cutoff. What it's doing is modulating the filter cutoff. So it's opening and closing up the filter. If we assign it to the pitch, is modulating the pitch. Panning, it will do the same to the panning. Can assign to the volume. We don't have to modulate the maximum amount. You can just do a little bit, a few on. And modulation won't be as intense. So we can adjust the speed of the LFO with this box at the bottom right. At the moment, it's set to hertz. So this is cycles per second. At one hertz, the LFO will cycle once per second. We can speed up or slow it right down. Now suddenly it's really useful about the allophone simpler is we can sync it to the temp of a project. Well, you have to do is click on this box here. Now the speed is measured in musical increments. So one is one bar and we can set its quarter notes or many other beat divisions. Now we have a number of different wave shapes which you can choose from, which all give slightly different sound. We have sine square, triangle, two different sawtooth and sampling hold, which is like random wave. I'll just play through the different modes sacred hear how they sound definitely. So sine is very smooth. Then we have square, which is far more abrupt. Triangle, Sawtooth, sawtooth up and sampling hold. Okay, So that's a basic controls, the LFO. Now I'm going to look at some of the more advanced controls. So up here we have this little box with an R on them. This is re-trigger. So when re-trigger is not selected, the LFO will be continuously cycling. It's going to change the speed. So I can show you this example. We're also going to assign it to the pitch rather than the filter. So when re-trigger is not enabled, the LFO will be continuously cycling. Now when I play back these courts, each time I play them back, we won't necessarily be starting at the same point. The LFO. Get it for us to play a chord. Belt. Tell sometimes when I press a note will be rising and pitch, and sometimes we'll be folding in pitch. Now if I engage, re-trigger, each time I play these chords back, they start off rising and PECC, this is because the LFO has been triggered each time and now it's been played. So it starting from the beginning. So one thing to realize, if re-trigger is selected, each time you play a note, It's really triggering an LFO. So if I play a chord, but play the different notes at different times, you'll notice that each of these notes will be rising, affording him pitch individually. This is because every time a new note is played, a new LFO has been triggered for that note. Says kid their notes for rising and falling and pitch at different times. Whereas if I turn off free trigger, you'll notice that all of the notes were rising and falling and pitch together. That's because with re-trigger off, one LFO is continuously cycling. So each now I play will be linked up to the LFO. Now, next thing I want to look at is phase offset. One thing to note, this option is only available when re-trigger is selected. So when I play these chords, you hear them rising in PECC first. But if I just offset, we can change the point at which the LFO begins. This is represented on the graph. So with it's set to a 180 degrees, will now be folding and PECC first. And I can bring it round all the way to 360 and it will be rising in pitch once again. Next thing I want to look at is attack. It's going to change some settings to show you an example. So I'll assign it to the filter cutoff once again. And I'm going to increase the rate. So the attack control allows us to fade in the intensity of the LFO. So if I increase the attack time, you'll notice that the intensity of the modulation who gradually build up until it reaches its maximum amount. To set it to a few seconds. Since you can hear there, it takes little while for the LFO to build up to its full intensity. Now, vaccine will show you is k. So that's this here, but the top right. What this does is allows the pitch of the incoming meeting notes to affect the rate of the LFO. So if I increase k up to a 100 percent, play a low note, the LFO will be at a slow rate than if we play a high note. So this can sometimes be nice as it introduces an element of randomness to the LFO. However, if you only allow for it to be a consistent rate, no matter which pitch of note you play. There are just recommend leaving this off. Okay, So that's all the different controls we have available in the LFO. Remember this is a modulator and it's used to modulate different parameters of the synthesizer. Hope you found this video useful. 8. Amp Envelope: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to have a look at another modulator, the amplitude envelope, that is this area down here. So the controls are at the bottom, attack, decay, sustain, and release. And this display here shows us the envelope. If you can't see this. First of all, make sure in classic mode as the amplitude envelope will only be active when this mode selected. Next Cove controls. Then make sure the amplitude box is selected in this window. We can still adjust the controls. But if you'd like to see what they're doing, strongly recommend displaying the amplitude envelope in this window. So if you've not used an envelope before, I'll explain what they are quickly. Envelopes are used in synthesis to allow you to sculpt you sounds like you'd be assigned to many different parameters. So the attack is how long it takes the envelope to go from the lowest point to the highest level. The decay is how long it takes us to go from the highest point down to the sustain level. The sustain allows you to choose the value which we maintained until the note is released. And the release is how long it takes the envelope full from the sustain level back down to 0 after know is being released. So attack, decay and release are time-based controls, whereas sustained sets level. So after this is the amplitude envelope, the envelope values control the amplitude or volume of the instrument. So just give you a bit of context. The TAC is how long it takes instrument to go from silence to its maximum volume. The decay is how long it takes to fall from the maximum volume to the sustain level. The sustain allows us to set the level that we'd like the instrument to maintain while a notice still being held. And the release is how long it takes the instrument to fate silence once now it's been released. I'll just play a chord with the settings we have at the moment. So I'm alone. We've got very fast attack time. So soon as I play note, we here at jump up to its maximum volume. If I was to slow down the attack time. You'll note that takes a while for the instrument to rise up to his full volume. Now just to show you a couple of examples and going to adjust the setting slightly. So at the moment, we've got very short takt time, 0 milliseconds. So if I was to play a chord, now, as soon as I play a chord, the instrument is jumping up to its maximum volume. Now if I was to increase the attack time, it takes wealth couldn't shrink to build up in volume. Now the decay is how long it takes instrument to fall from its highest volume to the sustain level. But you'll notice if I adjusted to k time now, we don't actually hear any difference. This is because it's controlling how long it takes for us to fall from the maximum volume to the sustain level. Asl sustain itself all the way up to 0 dB. The sustain level is the same as our maximum volume. So now if I pull the sustain down a bit and shorten the decay time, you'll hear the instrument jumping up in volume slightly and then folding back down to the sustain level. And is going to increase the attack time slightly for this example. So we hit the instrument ramping up in volume and then dropping down suddenly. Increase the Decay time. It more gradually falls down to the sustain level. I'll bring up the sustain a bit more so it's less exaggerated. So you can hear there, it ramps up in volume and then gradually falls down for short. And the decay time, it ramps up in volume, then suddenly jumps back down. And now release time is how long it takes us to fade to silence once I let go of the notes. So 50 milliseconds sounds just like this. But if I increase the release time, you'll notice that the instrument keeps ringing out even after I've let go of these notes. But if I pull release back down to one millisecond, it will suddenly stop soon as top-line cord. Now just couple of quick tips as adjusting these values with the dials of bottom here. But if you look at the graph, you'll notice we have these little nodes. These allow us to adjust the attack, decay, sustain, and release. This first note, you can drag left and right, and not just the attack time. The second node, if we drag this left to right, that just the decay time. But if we pull it up and down, just saw sustain level. And finally this note here is for the release. So adjusting these controls can help you come up with an instrument that suits the style of music you're working with. You can also come up with very creative and interesting sounds. Just remember if you're not in classic mode, the attack decay, sustain release options will disappear. Instead you'll see a fade in and fade out dial of bottom. We looked at these in an earlier video. You'll notice this is actually now the pitch envelope that's being displayed. The fade in and fade out. Laci control a fade in and out on the sample. So this isn't quite the same as a standard ADSR envelope. So just remember, you can only use these amplitude envelope controls when in classic mode. Okay, so that's the basic controls, the amplitude envelope. The next video, I'll continue looking at envelopes. Thanks for watching. 9. Amp Envelope Modes: Hi there. In this video, I'm just going to go over the different envelope modes. We have an amplitude envelope. So by default, the envelope is activated or deactivated with midi note on and off signals. Well, I mean by this is when I press a note, the envelope will begin going through it, status, attack, decay, sustain. And when he let go of the note, it'll go through the release stage. The different modes allows the envelope work differently rather than the length of time it takes to go through the envelope being determined by how long you hold a note for. We can set how long it takes to go through the envelope with the time value. I'm just going to justice settings slightly for this example. Sounds can shorten the attack and decay time. So if I play a chord now, you'll see we only go through the release stage once I release the note. Now if activate one of these modes, say loop for example. You'll see this time value appears a 100 milliseconds. So now if I hold down a note for longer than the time set in this box, simple, we'll go through the amp envelope. Once again. See the envelope is repeating while I'm holding down a note. We can adjust the amount of time. Let's make it quite a lot longer. But suddenly it's really great, is we can actually set the time with musical values. So in this setting, you can create pulsing sounds with the instrument. The next setting we have is sink. This is almost identical to beat mode. However, if the set is playing back, the envelope will be quantized, so its entirety of your project. This is especially useful for live performance. And finally, we have trigger mode. This is little bit different as it doesn't repeat the envelope. With trigger mode, the envelope behaves as if a note is being pressed and let go of instantly. So the instrument goes through all of the stages of the envelope as quickly as it can. So even if I hold down this chord, the notes will not be sustained as it's gone through all the stages of the envelope. For us to increase the release time and increase the attack time slightly. And press now quickly, will slowly go through each stage of the envelope are defined that this trig mode tends to be most useful when I'm creating drum sounds with simpler. Okay, so that's all the different modes. We have. An amplitude envelope. Thanks watching. 10. Pitch Envelope: Hi there. I'm now going to show you the pitch envelope. If you haven't yet, please go and watch the amp envelope video. This will explain the basics of envelopes. So the pitch envelope works in a very similar way to the amp envelope. However, this envelope is assigned to the pitch of the instrument. So what that means is it modulates the pitch to access the pitch envelope. Just make sure you go to controls and select pitch. If you're in one shot or slice mode, you should be able to access it by default. Now, this time, the controls for the pitch envelope are over here at the bottom of the amp envelope. So by default, if you make a change to the pitch envelope, we weren't actually hear any difference in the sound. This is because you need to sign the amount. To do so, click and drag on this amount icon at the top right. I'm going to drag up 12 semitones. So this envelope will be making any changes to the volume of the instrument. It'll simply you making changes to the pitch. As I've said, the amount, 12 semi-tones. The takt time is how long it's going to take us to reach his maximum pitch bend amount. So for placode back now, you can hear there a slight amount of pitch bend. If I was to pull it back down to 0 milliseconds. The effect is slightly less obvious. If I was to pull down the attack and the decay time. The effect would be extremely subtle. This is because it's reaching its maximum amount very quickly and then dropping down to the sustain level very quickly. At the moment the sustain is set to 0%. So the sustain is the original pitch of the instrument. I'm just going to adjust these slightly so I can show you some examples. So if I increase the attack time, Let's make it about a second. You'd hear the pitch of the instrument rising at 12 semitones over the attack time. For us to increase the Decay. We here at rising up and here it's slowly falling back down. So obviously this is very extreme example and doesn't sound very musical. However, with most subtle settings, you can make your instruments sound really nice. And it's going to adjust these settings slightly. Now, the next thing once look at is the sustain. So in the pitch envelope, this determines the pitch of the note. There'll be maintained while the note is still being held. So as I said a moment ago, if this is set to 0, the pitch that is maintained will be the original pitch of the note. If we increase the sustainable, the pitch I'll be maintained will be higher than our original note. You can also reduce the sustain amount to a minus percentage. And finally, we've got the release time. So the release is how long it takes to move from the sustain level to the original note that was played. If you're sustain is set to 0, you weren't actually hear any difference when you just release time. Now something else to mention, when working with pitch envelope, you'll need to make sure that the amp envelope release is set as long or longer than the release time of the pitch envelope to hear any effect. So right now we can't hear a bit of a difference. There's a slight bend at the end. But if I am police time, it was really short. The instrument will be fading silence before we can actually hear the release stage of the pitch envelope. So if I increase the release time of the amp envelope once again, I'll make it a few seconds and then increase the release time of the pitch envelope. We should be able to hear a very obvious pitch bend after release note. So what's happening there is after we let go of the notes, It's gradually bending back down to its original pitch. So as you can see, you can come up with some pretty wild sounds using a pitch envelope. But if use it more subtly, it can help give you instrument a bit more character. Now something else to note. When choosing the amount. You can pitch bend upwards of 48 semitones, but you can also go downwards. So instead of bending up in pitch, it will bend down in pitch. I'll just increase the attack time to make it more obvious. Okay, so that's a pitch envelope. If you ever want to turn it off, you can always click on this icon at the top left, or just double-click on the amount, set it back to 0. This will no longer have any effect on the sound of the instrument. Thanks for watching. 11. Filter Envelope: Hi there. I'm now going to look at the filter envelope in simpler. Again, if you haven't already, I would first recommend watching the amp envelope video or gave the basics of envelopes before watching this. And it's going to quickly adjust the settings on this instrument to make the examples more obvious. So to access the filter envelope, we need to go to the fill section and click on the Envelope box. Again, we have attack, decay, sustain, and release controls. So what the filter envelope does is modulate the cutoff frequency of the filter. Just like the pitch envelope, the filter envelope will not actually have any effect on the sound until you assign it. To do so, click and drag on the amount icon in the top right here. Again, you can use both negative and positive values. So positive valley will open up the filter cutoff point, a negative value, we'll bring the filter down. So in this situation, the attack is how long it takes for the envelope to reach his full effect. Its full effect is determined by the amount selected in the top right here. So if I play note with the amount set to 0, we can't hear any effect. If I bring this up in here, there we getting bit of a spike in the high frequencies. Now if I increase the attack time, you'll hear the filter gradually opening up and closing back down again when it goes through the decay stage. Again, the decay time and the situation is how long it takes to fall to the sustain level. Up a moment with the sustain level set to 0, the filter cutoff will be maintaining its cutoff frequency. But if I bring the sustain up a bit, you can actually hear there the filter going back down through the release stage to its original cutoff point. If I was to turn the envelope off now you'll really be able to hear the difference. Again, just like the pitch envelope. To hear the release stage of the filter envelope, you need to ensure that the release time of the amp envelope is long enough to build here the release style make any difference. So if asked to bring the release time of an amplifier envelope back down. If apply cord now and adjust the release time of the filter envelope. We can't actually hear any difference. This because instrument has faded silence before we could hear the release stage of the filter envelope. So if I bring up the release time of the amp envelope, you can hear the filter slowly closing back down through its release stage. So as you can see, once you've got head around envelope controls that really aren't that confusing. You've just got to be aware that these envelopes are types of modulator. And remember, different modulators can work together at the same time. If you ever get stuck and can't work out, why are creating certain sound, you can bypass some of the modulators. They have active, and this will allow you to work out exactly what each modulator is doing. So simpler is a very powerful instrument, even if at first it doesn't seem so. If you get your head around how this instrument works, especially the controls, it really helped you to understand how many different instruments work in able to live. The synth controls that I've talked about are common in most types of synthesiser. So if you can grasp how envelopes and LFOs work, you should have a good understanding of how other instruments work. On now recommend going away, playing with simpler to create your own sounds. This will help you reinforce what you've just learned. Thanks for watching. 12. Class Project: Hi there. I hope you've enjoyed this class and you now have a good understanding of how to use simpler in Ableton Live. For this class project, I'd like you to create three different instruments. One using one-shot mode, one using Classic, and one using slice mode. Try to make a harmonic part using Classic Mode. You sliced, make it creatively part, and use one shop for your drum part. Try to also use a different self-controls to modulate your sounds in an interesting way. If you feel confident, tried taking this to the next step and go away and create your own basic song using just the instruments simpler. Once you're finished, upload a link to your song in the Projects and Resources page of this class. If you'd like to know more about basics of Ableton Live, please check out my full five-hour beginner's guide to music production in Ableton Live Skillshare class, or take through all the basics of music production in Ableton Live 11. Thanks for watching.