Ableton Live 12: curso completo para principiantes

1. Welcome to this Class: Hi there. It's Ian Alexander here and welcome to this Ableton Live class. I'm going to show you everything you need to know to get started creating music in Ableton Life. If you're a complete beginner, these videos should be perfect for you. I'm going to start off by giving you a brief introduction to the software so you can start to understand the layout of the interface and the workflow. Next, I'm going to go over some of the essential settings so you can set up your audio interface or Midicontroller with the software. I'm then going to show you how you can use Midi to start building up musical ideas. As I start off with the very basics, I'll show you how to create clips and load instruments before taking through how to write and edit Midi. In the Midi no editor, I'll go into loads of detail showing you shortcuts and showing you features such as scale, which can help when learning how to produce music. Recording is an essential part of music production process. So I go into loads of detail showing how to record Midi. I'll show you how to utilize many of Ableton's time saving features such as recording quantization and overdub recording. After you've got grips with Midi, I'll start looking at audio. I'll show you how you can record and edit audio for covering features such as audio quantization. Once we've built up a number of musical ideas, I'll show you how you can structure these ideas into a song using the arrangement view. And show you some advanced recording methods such as comping and loop recording. These videos have been put together in a way that allows you to follow along in a step by step manner so that you can use what you're learning in a practical way. By the end of this class, you will have created your first song and you'll be able to confidently use Able To Life, I'll see in the first video. 2. Ableton Live Basic Overview - Session and Arrangement Views: Hi there. In the next few videos, I'm going to go over the very basics of how Ableton Live works to give you an understanding of the interface and workflow before we begin creating music. The first thing I'll mention is at the bottom left of Ableton is a hint panel called the Info View. You can show and hide the info view with a little eye icon at the bottom left of the screen. When you have the mouse over a control or function, the info view will provide some information about the feature. If you're a complete beginner, I'd recommend leaving this feature open while you get to grips of the software. Okay, next let's have a look at the main interface of Ableton Life. Ableton has two main views. We have the session view and the arrangement view. Currently, we're looking at the session view. You can flick between the two different views by pressing a tab key on your keyboard. This is the arrangement view. I'm going to focus on the session view first, which is this window here. Looking at the interface of the session view, we can see how different tracks list horizontally across the screen with a grid of cells below. Each one of these columns represents an individual track as displayed with a track title bar at the top of the screen. Tracks Ableton Live Hold clips, which store short musical phrases, sounds or loops such as audio recordings, samples, or programmed Midi parts. Clips can be triggered individually or together as a row, giving you a unique approach to writing music. The session view works alongside the Arrangement view. Ableton Live allows you to record your performance from the Session view directly into the Arrangement view, allowing you to further refine your ideas or composition. Let's go back to the arrangement view. The arrangement View is Ableton Life's traditional linear timeline that allows you to structure your ideas. Playing back clips in the session view is a really intuitive way of creating music. However, you will need a way of storing these ideas so you can turn them into a song. You can do this by structuring your ideas. Within the arrangement view, we're currently looking at an arrangement that previously recorded from the session view. In the arrangement view, you'll be able to see that the tracks now listed vertically down the right hand side of the screen, and our clips are positioned along the timeline. The timeline is measured in bars from left to right. During playback, you'll be able to see a black line moving along the time line. This is the playhead which indicates the current playback position of the project. We can position the playhead anywhere along the time line and listen back to a section of the arrangement. When you're in the arrangement view, you can organize your clips into a specific order on the timeline to structure a song. This is different to the session view, where clips can be played back or looped in any order. In the next video, I'll continue showing you the basics of this software. Thanks watching. 3. Launching Clips, Clip View and the Device View: Okay, now I've gone over the two main views. Let's have a look at the session view in some more detail. As you can see, the software is split up into a number of different areas. Each of these areas have different uses in the music production process. The first area that I'd like to talk about is the browser. The browser is this area to the left. If you cannot see your browser, you can open it by clicking on this icon. Here, the browser stores all of your instruments, media effects, audio effects, and samples. It gives you convenient access to all of these files, which you can then drag and drop into your project when creating music. Next, let's have a look at the clip view. If you double click on any clip in this session view, it'll open up the clip view. The clip view allows you to view and edit the contents of the chosen clip. If you select a Midi clip, the clip view will display the mid no editor. This is where you can manipulate Midi information to come up with the musical parts. If you select an audio clip, the clip view will display the sample editor. The sample editor gives you a visual representation of the audio sample that is stored in the clip, and this is where you can edit audio. Next, let's have a look at the device view. To open up the device, click on this little arrow down here. I'm just going to close the clip view as well. If an audio track is selected, the device view will display any audio processing effects that have been applied to this track. If a Midi track is selected, the device that is loaded onto the track will be displayed. This is where you can make changes to the sound of your software instrument, the device. You also shows any middy or audio processing effects that are currently loaded onto the track. I just want to show you some of the playback controls to give you an understanding of how to launch clips before you start creating your own parts. To launch clip, press a play button. This will start playing the clip back. If you want to play back a whole row of clips, press play on one of the scene. Launch buttons. That's one of these buttons over here. A row of clips is called a scene enabled to life. You can stop individual clips from playing back by pressing the Clip Stop button at the bottom of any track. If a clip has been launched, when you resume playback, the clip will begin playing. Once again, you can tell a clip has been launched. If the play button has lit up green, playback can be resumed by pressing the Space bar or launching another clip. All clips can be stopped playing back by pressing the Stop All Clips button over to the right here. See, none of my clips have been lit up. Now, next or show the mixer. The mixer is this area here. This gives you a number of controls which allow you to adjust the volume of the track, adjust the panning or mute or solo the track. The mixer area is also where you can select the tracks, inputs and outputs. Right, Let's jump back to the arrangement view by pressing Tab on the computer's keyboard. You can also click on this icon at the top right here at the bottom of the screen you'll be able to see. You can also access the clip and device views from here. If you click on this icon at the bottom right hand of the screen here. You can also open up the mixer in the arrangement view. One thing to mention, if you do not like the idea of making music in the session view, you can simply use Ableton Live as a traditional door by just using the arrangement view. However, personally I feel like if you do not use the session view, you're missing out on the main aspect of Ableton's excellent workflow. In the next video, I'll show you how you can record clips into the arrangement view. Thanks watching. 4. Making a Basic Song in the Session View and Recording Into the Arrangement View: Hi there. Now we've covered the interface of A to life. I'm going to create a basic song, giving you an idea of the workflow that I'd recommend when using A to life. I'd also like to mention that I'll be covering all of this in far more detail later on. Although if you're new to music production, this should help give you a better understanding of the software before we get stuck into the main section of the course. If you already understand the workflow, I would like to start learning the ins and outs of the software, feel free to skip this video. Let's crack on. So I'm just going to start a new project by going out to file and selecting new live set. A really quick way to get started making a track is by using loops. Ableton comes with a number of samples and loops, which are audio files that you can use when creating music. To access them, go to the browser, which this area here and select samples. All available samples will be listed here on the right. You can use the filters tab to narrow down your search. For example, under type, I'm going to choose a loop. Then I'm going to choose drum loop, and I'll select full drum loop. I can now scroll through and preview some different available options. You can pause a preview with the space bar. Okay, I quite like the sound of this loop. So the next thing I need to do is drop this loop onto a track. Audio samples are audio files, so I'm going to drag and drop it onto an audio track. This will create a new clip. You can view the contents of a clip by double clicking on it. We'll now see a visual representation of the audio file in the sample editor. Okay, next, I'm going to add a harmonic loop. So I'm going to go back to the browser and press clear to reset the search filters. This time, I'm going to select loop, and I'm going to choose guitar and plucked. Let's have listened to some. Okay. This time, I'm going to drag, drop the sample onto another audio track. This means I can have one track for my drums and one for the guitar, allowing me to hear back both parts playing at the same time. Okay, let's listen to them together by pressing the scene launch button over here on the right. You can pause play back with the space bar. So far we've created two different clips using audio samples from the browser. Let's now create a midi clip. So when working with Middy, you need to load a software instrument from the browser onto a midi track. So I've got two middy tracks here. So let's go back to the browser once again. And this time, I'm going to click on the instruments tab and use a search feature to find a sound that I've used before. So I'm just going to search for basic silk corns. I'll now drag and drop this preset onto a midi track. I working with Midi, you need to create a clip by either writing in or recording musical ideas. To create a new Midi clip, double click on an empty clip slot on the track. This will open up the Md No editor. I'm going to write in a base part. One thing I'll mention, make sure that this headphone icon is illuminated blue as this will allow you to hear back any notes that you write in. To draw a note, double click in the MD No editor. To delete a note, you can double click on it. You can change the note pitch or position time by clicking and dragging the center of the note. And to change the length of the note, click and drag the end of it when this icon appears. So this clip is currently 1 bar in length. We know this because we can see the different numbers at the top of the bar. Bar one beat one, B two, three, beat four. I want this clip to be 8 bars in length, so I'm going to press duplicate over here until it is 8 bars in length. So we now have an eight b loop. I'm just going to change the pitch some of these notes to create my base part. Let's now have a listen to our clips together. I'm going to play them all back by pressing the scene launch button again. Okay, great. I'm just going to add in one more part before we move on. Once again, I'm going to use a midi track, so I'm going to go over to the browser and choose a preset sod. We press clear to clear my search. This time, I'm going to use a preset from the instrument meld, so I'm just going to find meld in this little menu here and have a look at the presets. Okay, I like to sound of this one. So once again, I'm going to drag and drop this onto an empty midi track. Now, instead of writing in media information, this time, I'm going to record it. When recording, I'd recommend using the count in feature, which can be activated using this icon in the toolbar. I'd recommend choosing 1 bar. So to record median to eclipse, record selected track by making sure that this icon is ilumind. I have a midi keyboard plugged into my computer to enable me to record Md. You can also record Midi using your computer's quote keyboard if you enable a feature using this icon in the toolbar. Now, to commence the recording, press the circle record icon in an empty clap slat. You can stop play back by pressing the space bar. Do not worry if you're struggling to follow along at the moment. I'll be going over all of these features in more detail later in the course. The purpose of this video is to give you an understanding of the workflow and to quickly get you started experimenting with the software. So the session view allows you to experiment playing back clips in any order to help you come up with an arrangement. Let's give it a go. First of all, I'm going to press the stop all clips button down here to unlach all of my clips. This will enable me to play back individual clips. Okay, that sounds all right, but I just want to create a little variation by adding in a different base part. So I'm just going to right click on the clip on my base track and press duplicate. I'll also give it a different color by right clicking once again. Now I'm going to open up the clip and change some of these notes. Let's hear this all back. Ture So now we have a bit of an arrangement. The next thing I want to show you is how to record your session into the arrangement view. So the first thing I'd recommend doing is stopping all of your clips for the stop clips button. And then make sure none of the tracks are armed. Now, all you have to do is press the arrangement record button in the toolbar and start playing back your clips. I would actually recommend holding shift before you press the arrangement record button, as Ableton will now wait for you to play your first clip before the recording commences. So that's this icon up here. See how it's illuminated red. It's now ready to record. So as soon as I play my first clip, the recording will begin. Ct. Instant Its I When you finish the recording, press the stop all clips button and the spacebar. Once you've finished your recording, jump over to the arrangement view using this icon up here. To listen back to your recording, you'll need to press the back to arrangement view button. That's this icon here. Notice when I press this icon, the clips and the timeline will no longer be grayed out. Press the play icon in the middle of the tool bar here to hear back your arrangement. You can stop with the stop icon here or with the space bar. So once you have ideas in the arrangement review, you can further refine them and structure them into a song. But I'll be covering this later on. Don't worry if you're still intimidated at the moment. I'll be going over all of this again in more detail in future videos. I just want to get familiar with the workflow first so you can experiment with ideas as you're learning the software. Thanks watching. 5. Recording into the Arrangement View: Now just one last thing I'd like to show you before I start building up a song from scratch is how to record your session view into the arrangement view. I'm just going to jump over to the arrangement view and delete what I already have in here. I'll press Tab and the press command A on a Mac or control A on Windows and press Backspace. Now I'll jump back to the Session view once more with Tab, I'll first recommend stopping all of your clips with a Stop All Clips button at the bottom right, then make sure none of the tracks are armed. Now all you have to do is press the Arrangement Record button in the toolbar and start playing back your clips. I'd actually recommend holding shift before you press the arrangement record button as Ableton will now wait for you to play your first clip before the recording begins. Okay, so once you've recorded in your idea, go back to the arrangement view by pressing tab, now we'll be able to see what we've recorded. The final thing you have to do, which is vital to hear back your recording is press the back to your arrangement view button at the top right here. Notice now the clips are no longer grayed out. You can now listen back to your recording. That's how to record from the session view into the arrangement view. You'll probably want to do this whenever you're trying out new ideas in the session view now, don't worry if you're a little intimidated at the moment. I'll be going over all of this again in more detail in future videos. I just want you to get familiar with workflow first so you can experiment with ideas while I teach you the ins and outs of the software. In the next videos, I'll show you how to set up your Midi and audio devices with Ableton Life. Thanks for watching. 6. Setting Up Your Audio interface: Hi there. In this section. Before I start taking you through how to use the software, I just want to go over a few settings so you can make the most out of this course and able to live. In this video, I'm going to quickly look at how to set up your audio interface. If you have one on a Mac, go to Life and down to Settings, or in Windows, go to Options and Preferences. Navigate to the audio tab and we'll see our audio settings. First, we have an audio input device. If you're using an audio interface with an XLR microphone, you should select your interface here. If you're using a USB mic, you can also choose it here. If you do not have an external microphone, you can choose your built in microphone. For example, on a Mac it may say Macbook Pro microphone or built in input. Next we have an audio output device. If you do not have an external audio interface, you can leave this on the default settings. This could be your computers, built in speakers, an Aso device, or a pair of headphones, for example. If you have an audio interface that you'd like to use as the output for your system, choose it here. Using an audio interface allows you to use studio monitors when playing back audio. Okay, so that's the basics of the settings. I'll see you in the next video. 7. Computer Midi Keyboard: Hi there. In this video I'm going to show you the computer Midi keyboard feature. When writing music, you'll probably want to be able to play notes with a keyboard to try out ideas and record Midi into the software. If you have a Midi keyboard or a Midi controller, I'll show you how to set that up with Ableton Live in just a moment. But if you do not own one of these devices, you'll still be able to use a really handy feature, which is a computer Midi keyboard. This allows you to play musical notes using your computer's quirtyekeyboard. Just click on this icon at the top right of the screen and it'll activate it. You can also use the shortcut M on your keyboard to be able to hear anything. You'll need to make sure that arm record icon is selected on the track that you'd like to use. That's this one here. And ensure that it has an instrument loaded onto it from the browser, the middle of your computer's keyboard. So the letters A all the way over to L will be the white notes on a musical keyboard. The letters W, E, T, Y, U, and are the black notes. From musical keyboard, you can lower the octave with Z and increase the octave with X. This is a really handy feature that you can use even if you don't have a Midi keyboard to input notes into the software. Thanks for watching. 8. Audio Vs MIDI Summary: Before we get into music creation in Ableton life, let's first talk about the difference between audio and Midi. These terms might be confusing if you're new to music production, So I'll quickly go over what they are and their differences. If you're not completely new to music production and you understand the differences between audio and Midi, please skip this video. Audio refers to recorded sound waves that have been captured using a microphone or other recording device. This can include pre recorded sounds or samples that come with Ableton Live or those that are found online, as well as audio that you record yourself. For example, vocals, guitars, a bass, or an external synthesizer. Midi stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, Ableton Live Midi is used to control virtual instruments. You can program notes in the Midi No editor, which a software instrument can then play back. You can also record Midi notes with a Midi device like a keyboard. Midi allows you to create complex arrangements without needing physical instruments or musicians, and is a huge part of music production in modern digital audio workstations. Okay, so now I've gone over some of the very basics and shown you how to set up. In the following videos, we'll start building a song from scratch. Thanks watching. 9. Setting The Tempo of the Project: In this section, I'm going to start taking you through the steps involved when creating music Ableton Live. I'm going to start off with a very basics, creating clips and writing in Midi, and gradually move on to building your ideas into a song. If you haven't already, I recommend watching the overview of Ableton live video in the previous section, as this will give you some understanding of the software's workflow. I'm going to open up a new set so we can start from scratch, go up to file new live set. The first thing I'd like to do is set the tempo of my project. The tempo is the speed or pulse of music. Different tempos can change a feel of music. Different styles and genres will have different tempos. The tempo is measured in beats per minute, often referred to as BPM. To hear the speed of the current tempo, we can activate our metronome by clicking on this icon here in the transport bar. When activated, it will be illuminated orange. If you then press the play button or Space bar, you'll hear the metronome or click as it is sometimes called, pause. Playback, hit the Space bar or stop icon. You can adjust the tempo by clicking and dragging this icon here. You can hear the speed of the metronome changes when it adjusts the project's tempo. Another way to change the tempo is to use the tap tempo. This is a really handy feature which allows you to tap at the speed you'd like your tempo to be set to. For example, you can listen to a reference track and tap your mouse cursor in time with it to match the tempo. This will estimate the tempo and set the Ableton project to match the speed Round eight clicks on the tap icon will usually be enough for Ableton to detect the tempo. Please note, setting a tempo like this will start playback in Ableton. Again, you can just pause this by pressing the Space bar. The final, and arguably most simple way to set the tempo is by clicking on the tempo and typing in a number. If I just click here, I can type in a number. If you know the genre of music that you'd like to create, you have a good idea of what tempo to use. I'm going to be making a synth wave song, so I want the tempo to be 100 BPM. Press Enter, and your tempo will be saved. Okay, that's how to set the tempo of your project. I'll see you in the next video. 10. Loading An Instrument From the browser: Now we have the tempo of our song set. Let's start looking at writing Midi. Using Midi is an essential part of the music production process. Allows you to write in, record, and manipulate musical ideas in the Midi note editor. Which can then be played back using virtual instruments. Virtual instruments can play back a wide variety of sounds such as drum kits, synthesizers, or strings. Let's first choose a virtual instrument from the browser. If for some reason your browser is closed, you can reopen it by going up to view and scrolling down to browser. You can then resize the browser by clicking and dragging when this icon appears in the browser to choose the software instrument, scroll down to the Instruments tab. Click on this, and the browser will display all of the instruments that are available on your edition of Life. If you're using Intra standard, you may not have as many instruments as I do here. However, for this part of the course, I'm going to try and stick to using the instruments that are available in all editions. So you can follow along if you wish. If you click on the drop down arrow next to the name of an instrument, you'll open up a list of available presets. The different instruments enableton can provide a wide variety of sounds from which you can choose to preview a sound. Click on one of the presets. If you can't hear anything, make sure the little headphone icon is selected as this will enable the preview. So I'm going to scroll through a few. If you want to pause the preview, you can press Space Bar. Okay, I like the sound of this to load onto my track. I can either double click or drag it onto the track from the browser. You'll see that the track now looks different. This is because now that the track has a software instrument loaded onto it, you'll be able to generate sound without a software instrument loaded onto a Midi track. You won't be able to hear anything when writing or recording Midi. The software instrument can be viewed at the bottom of the screen in the device view. The controls on the instrument allow you to manipulate the sound. We'll look at how to do this later on, but for now I'm going to stick to using presets while we learn the software. Okay, we're nearly ready to start writing a Midi. The next thing we'll need to do is create a new clip, which will show you in the next video. Thanks for watching. 11. MIDI PT 2 Changing Clip Lengths: So let's draw our bass part. I'm going to draw in the Ne, E. I'm going to change the length so it's one full bar. I want this part to be an octave lower as it's going to be our base part. The short cut to move a no up or down an octave is hold shift on the computer's keyboard and press it up or down arrow. Okay, that's fine. But you'll notice that this clip is currently only 1 bar in length by default, whenever you create a new clip, it will only be 1 bar in length. If I play this back when it reaches the end of the 1 bar cycle, it'll loop back and play from the start. Once again, by default, clips will repeat when they reach the end of their loop. This is what makes Ableton unique in how you create Music. If for some reason you do not want the clip to loop, you can deselect the loop. Switch with this icon in the clip panel and the left of the Midi editor. If I now play back this clip when this icon is deselected, it will stop playing when it reaches the end of the loop. This feature can be useful in some situations, for example, when using Ableton Fly performance. However, while you're learning the software, I'd recommend just looping your clips. I just wanted to point this out so that you know how to troubleshoot if any of your clips stop looping. So just make sure this icon is orange. Currently, my clip is 1 bar in length. We can see this by looking at the end of the loop marker at the top of the timeline. We can also see that the loop length is 1 bar. If we look at the loop length marker over here in the clip panel, that's this number just here. I'd like my base to be 4 bars long. So I need to extend the length of the loop. There are a number of ways to do this, However, I find the best way to do so is by pressing this duplicate button in the clip panel. This will double the length of the clip after pressing it. Once the clip is now 2 bars long, some's going to duplicate it once more and it will become a four bar loop. Click and drag can end marker at the top right of the mid no editor. However, I find duplicating the clip far quicker. If like me, you've already drawn in some Midi notes, these notes will also be duplicated. We now have a four bar loop. I'm just going to change a pitch of these notes to complete writing in my bass bar. Okay, if we listen back to this part now, we'll be able to hear the four bar bass clip. I think I want to change a pitch that last note, so I'm just gonna bring it down to the D there. Okay, that sounds fine. Always double check the length of your clips and ensure they finish exactly at the end of the bar. If the loop isn't set correctly, your clips will go out of time with each other as a loop. This is why duplicating clips rather than manually extending the length is often a better option, as it does make it harder to make this mistake when creating music. Generally, you want your clips to be 12 or 4 bars in length. If you go beyond 4 bars in length, I'd recommend using clips which are multiples of four. For example, 812 or 16 bars. Most modern music is structured in this way. While you're learning how to write music, I'd recommend keeping things as simple as possible. Now while we have the mid, no editor open, I'll just show you a couple of zooming shortcuts which can help when working with Midi. You can adjust the horizontal zoom by using the key commands plus and minus, Minus zooms out, and plus zooms in. Or if you hold your mouse over the clip view selector, you'll turn into a magnifying icon. If I click and drag down, it'll zoom into the mid no editor and drag upwards will zoom out. Okay, we now have our first clip. In the next video, I'm going to start writing in another part. Thanks watching. 12. Scale Awareness Feature: The previous video, I created this simple baseline. If you already have some music theory knowledge, you can come up with your own parts. However, if you're a complete beginner, feel free to copy mine. I'm going to use my next free Midi Trek here and choose an instrument preset. This time I'm going to use Drift again. You can use any sound you like, so feel free to choose another instrument or preset. I'm just using this as it's available in all editions available to live. So you can follow along if you like. Once again, go to your browser and under the Instrument tab, select an instrument. I'm going to have a listen to a couple of presets. Okay? I'll like the sound of this preset, so I'll drop it onto my second Midi track. Now we have a new track with an instrument loaded onto it. Let's create a new clip by double clicking on an empty clip slot. Now let's talk about music theory quickly. When writing music, you need to be aware of which key you're in for this song. To keep things simple, I'm using the key of minor. This key only has one sharp if you do not have any music theory knowledge where you do not know which notes work in a scale. A great feature you can use is scale awareness. If we go up to the tool bar in the top left of life, we can turn the scale awareness feature on. Currently. As it's highlighted purple, we can see it is already active. When I turn off and turn it back on again, you'll be able to see that all of the notes that are in C major have been highlighted in the Midi. No editor see the highlighted purple down here. As mentioned before, I'm going to be using the key of E minor. I'm going to select the note here, I'm going to select minor in this drop down box here. All of the notes that are in minor have now been highlighted purple in the mid No Editor. The scale awareness mode can also be accessed in the mid No editor here there are many other scales to choose from, but generally in Western music you'll either be using a major or a minor scale. If you select the highlight scale box at the top of the mid no editor, you'll be able to more clearly see the notes of the scale. The root note is also made more obvious, as you can see down here. You can also hide any notes that are not within the scale by clicking on this scale icon here. I'd like to leave all of the notes visible. But feel free to turn this feature on if you wish. As I've just explained, the scale awareness feature helps show you which notes fit into a specified scale. However, it is far more powerful than this. There are a number of Midi effects and processes that link up with the specified scale. For example, we can generate chords, melodies, scales, and arpeedios, which will all be linked with the selected scale. If this feature is active, you can even adjust the pitch of previously written or recorded Midi notes to fit the current selected scale. Some instruments such as Meld also link up with the scale awareness feature, allowing you to link the scale with oscillators and filter. These features are fairly advanced for now. I'm just going to leave the scale awareness mode active while I write in a new part. Right, let's get drawing in a new part now. I'm going to select all of these notes by pressing command A on a Mac or control on Windows. And I'm going to extend them out to the one full bar in length. Again, I'd like to make this clip longer. This time I want it to be a two bar loop. So I'm going to go to the left of the Midi editor and click on the dupe button. I can now move some of these notes to change the, I'm just going to move this down to a D. I'm going to move this A down to a G. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to go into any detail of music theory at the moment, but feel free to copy these chords if you like. If you want to learn more about music theory. We have a whole section later on in this course. As you can see, duplicating your clip like this can save a lot of time when programming in Midi notes. Let's listen back to the base part along with the chords to play back both of these clips at the same time, I can press the Scene Play button at the right hand side of the session view. Ableton Live calls each row of clips the scene suppressing this button will play back any clip that's stored in this row. Okay, great. We now have a four bar base part and a two bar chords part. Thanks for watching. 13. Grid Settings: This video, I'm going to go over grid settings. I'm just going to open up a new Midi clip. When you look at the middy note, eda, you'll be able to see the vertical lines on the timeline that represent the different beat divisions. In some situations, changing the grid spacing can be beneficial when writing in or editing Midi. The grid spacing refers to the distance between each grid line. Currently, as you can see from this number here, the grid is set 16th notes. Changing the grid spacing allows you to snap Midi notes to particular beat divisions. The grid settings can be accessed by clicking on the drop down arrow. Here in here, we can see a number of different options. First of all, let's have a look at the fixed grid settings with a large grid setting such as a bar. When I draw in a note, it will be the length of a full bar. If I change the grid setting to a quarter note, any note that I draw in will now be a quarter note in length. If I choose any other grid setting, the new notes will conform to it. Now, the grid setting also determines how notes snap to the grid. For example, if I adjust the length of this note, you'll be able to see the end of the note will snap to each 16th division of the bar. This applies to any note that is selected or drawn in. We also have another option in the grid settings here, and that's triplet grid. If you ever want to draw in triplets, you can do so. For example, if I change a grid now to eighth note, we'll be drawing in eighth note triplets. Okay, I'm just going to go back to the normal grid by disabling the triplet mode. Next, let's have a look at the adaptive grid settings. I'm going to choose a wide option. I'm just going to delete all of these notes, command a and backspace. Now, while I'm zoomed all the way out, the smallest note increent that I can draw is an eighth note. I'm just zooming in using the plus key on my computer's keyboard. If I zoom in even more, again, we can draw in finer note increments. Now I want to zoom back out. You'll be able to see once again, if I draw in a new note, I can only draw in an eighth note. While we are fully zoomed out, the grid setting was set to eighth notes. As we zoomed in, we're able to draw in finer note increments. The most appropriate grid setting will vary depending on the type of musical part that you're writing or editing. This is why adaptive grid is often a good option as it allows you to snap to the grid more accurately when zoomed in. But you can make broader changes while zoomed out. In the following videos, are we changing the grid setting where necessary? So you'll be able to see some examples of when you might want to choose certain grid settings depending on the situation. Thanks for watching. 14. MIDI Note Editor Shortcuts and Key Commands: Hi there. This is just a quick video where I'll go over some of the Mid No Editor features and shortcuts. I'm also going to attach a downloadable PDF to this video so you can reference back to these shortcuts at any time. To open up the mid No editor, just double click on a clip or an empty clip slot. You can open and close the Midi No Editor with this arrow at the bottom of the screen. If you have scale mode activated in your project, you'll have the option to check the highlight scale box. This shows which notes work in your chosen key. You can change the key in the tool bar or on the left hand side of the mid no editor. When using the standard cursor, you can draw in a note by double clicking. You can re size by clicking and dragging at both ends of the note. You can delete by double clicking. You can choose your grid setting with this drop down arrow at the top right of the Midi editor. Your notes will then be snapped to the selected grid setting. You can quickly narrow the grid setting by pressing command one on a Mac or control one on Windows. This allows you to write in finer, no increments, or you can widen the grid setting by pressing command two on a Mac or control two on Windows. You can duplicate a note by holding option on a Mac or controlled on Windows. You can make a selection of notes by clicking and dragging with a mouse. The shortcut to duplicate any selected notes is command D on a Mac or control D on Windows. You can select all of the notes in a clip by pressing command on Mac or control on Windows to copy a selection of notes is command on a Mac or control C on Windows. This allows you to then click anywhere in the clip and paste. By pressing command V on a Mac or control V on Windows. You can adjust the length of your clip by clicking and dragging the loop end marker. You can do so back or forth in time, or you can double the clip length by pressing a duplicate button over here. This will also duplicate any notes that are in your clip to zoom horizontally. In the Midi editor, you can use the plus and minus keys on your computer's keyboard. You can also use the mouse to zoom. Either click and drag on the small window at the bottom here, or you can hold command on a Mac or control on Windows and scroll to zoom vertically. Hold option on a Mac or alton Windows and scroll with your mouse to reset the zoom of the Midi editor. So you can see all of the notes in the clip. Press shift and to reset the zoom. So you can see vertically, press shift and H. If you do not have the computer Midi keyboard feature active, you don't actually have told Shift while using these shortcuts. One last thing, never forget to regularly save your work. You can use the shortcut command on a Mac or control S and Windows. Or you can go up to file and save As and save your set under a different name. Okay, so that's a bunch of useful shortcuts and features that I thought I should mention. Thanks for watching. 15. Draw Mode and Mixer Basics: Hi there. In this video, we're going to be writing in a drum part, as we've already used the two Midi tracks that were opened by default. Let's add a new one. So go up to the Create tab at the top of the window and select Insert Midi Track. Once again, let's choose an instrument from the browser. This time I'm going to choose the drum rack. I'm just going to collapse this drift folder and go to drum rack. The drum rack is an instrument that's designed for drum programming, which can hold a variety of different percussive sounds to create drum beats. When you click on this instrument, you'll see a list of different presets. Again, you can scroll through the browser to audition the different available options. I already know the drum kit that I'd like to use, so I'm going to use a search at the top of the browser to search for subtle electronics kit. I'm going to drag this onto my new Midi track. Now on the device view, you'll be able to see that this instrument has appeared. The drum rack allows you to write and playback parts for a full drum kit using only one Midi track. Later in this course, we have a video showing you how to create your own drum kits and manipulate drum sounds using this instrument. However, to keep this course moving, I'm just going to use this preset as it is for the moment. Again, to create a new clip, double click on an empty clip slot, and the Midi note editor will open. This time. At the left hand side, you'll be able to see alongside each note, there is a description of the drum sound. This makes it quick and easy to know what sort of sound you'll be triggering when you draw in a Midi note. Writing in Midi drums works in the same way as writing in harmonic parts. However, I prefer using a different mode. When doing so, select the draw mode by clicking on this icon at the top right of the screen here. You'll be able to see when the mouse is over the middy note editor, the cursor has turned into a pencil. You could toggle this mode on and off using the shortcut on your computer's keyboard. The draw mode allows you to draw in a note by clicking once with a mouse. You can resize the note by hovering over the start or end of the note and clicking and dragging. You can delete a note by clicking on it once. One thing to mention, when writing in drum parts using the drum rack, Midi notes will trigger a sample that is stored within the drum rack. These samples are known as one shot samples. When a Midi note triggers a sample, the full length of the sample will be played back, no matter the length of the note that has been drawn in. Let's get started drawing a simple drum beat. This is where a fixed grid setting can be really useful. I want to draw a drum on every beat of the bar, so I'm going to choose a fixed grid setting of a quarter note. Now using the cursor and draw mode, I can click and drag across the length of the bar, and that will draw in four kicks. Next, I'm going to draw the snare on beats 2.4 of this bar. Now I want to draw a high hat on every eighth note of the bar. Once again, I'm going to go to my grid settings, and I'm going to choose an eighth note here. I'm just going to find my high hat. And I'm going to click and drag all the way across the bar. Okay, let's listen back to that again. I'm going to press play on my scene over on the top right here. I'm just going to widen the grid setting back to a quarter note. So I can also draw in a ride symbol part. This time I'm going to use a shortcut command on two on a Mac or control two on Windows. And I'll be able to see there that the grid setting has changed again, I'm going to click and drag along the timeline to draw in this ride symbol. Again, I'm going to play this back, this time with the Space Bar. While playing back, I laid up the snare with some clap sounds. Obviously, this drum part still needs some work. We'll come back to this shortly. But now that we have a few parts, I'll just go over a couple of the different mix controls. If you cannot see your mixer, just press this icon at the bottom right of the screen, down here, to adjust the volume of the track. You can do so with this fader here. You can deactivate a track by clicking on this orange icon here, and that will effectively mute it. You can solo a track with this S icon down here. We also have a pan dial and two Sens. Panning allows you to move a signal left and right in the stereo image. The two default Sens allow you to add reverb or delay to your tracks. I'll go over the mixer in far more detail later on, but for now, let's carry on with basics. Next, I'll show you how to record Midi inoclipse. Thanks for watching. 16. Recording MIDI into a Clip: You should now have a basic understanding of writing and editing Midi. Next, let's have a look at Recording Recording. Midi is a huge part of music production as it allows you to quickly input musical ideas into Ableton Life. Recording middy gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to correcting, editing, and building upon musical ideas. Once again, I'm going to add a new track at the top of the screen. Click on Create, and select Insert Midi Track. Now I'm going to go to the browser and I'm going to use Instrument Drift. Once again, I'm going to scroll down and there's preset down here that I've used before. Trinidad plucks just once again, drag and drop this onto your new track. As always, feel free to go through and choose any preset you like. Okay, now that this track is active, let's go over how to set up to record. If you have a middy controller, I'd recommend connecting it now. Once connected, go to live settings under link Tempo Midi. Just make sure this track icon is checked. You should now be able to use your Midi keyboard. If you do not have a Midi controller, you can use the computer Midi keyboard. Just remember to activate it. Click on this icon in the toolbar at the top right of your screen. This allows you to use the keys on your keyboard as a musical keyboard for recording. Just double check that it's working by pressing a couple of keys on your keyboard. Back to recording. Make sure the track that you want to record Midi into is selected. And ensure that arm recording icon is highlighted red. You should now be able to hear this track producing sound. When your track is record armed, the square clip stop icons should have turned into circular record icons, if I turn this off and on, go from square to a circle. All right, next thing is the metronome. If you'd like to hear metronome when you're recording, click on the metronome icon at the top left of the screen and the tool bar. This will play back a click while you're recording to help you keep in time. I would also recommend activating the counting. The counting is a feature that provides a specified number of clicks before recording commences. 1 bar will give you four clicks and 2 bars will give you eight clicks. I advise using one or 2 bars as they should give you enough time to get a feel for the pulse and prepare yourself for recording. I'm just going to choose 1 bar now. When I press record, I'll hear four clicks from the metronome before my recording commences. The recording will continue until you press pause or stop. I'm going to record a four bar clip. So I'll press the Space bar after 4 bars. When you're ready, press the record icon in the clip that you'd like to record into, you can pause, play back with a Space bar. If you ever make a mistake like I did just then, you can press undo it's commands D onomaor controls Ed on Windows and it will delete the clip. That's just been created. Something else to note. If you want to hear the other clips while you're recording the clips must have already been launched. Just press play on any clip that you'd like to hear before recording. Then you can pause, Play back with the spacebar. After your counting, those clips will play back once again, if you do not want to hear any other clips when recording, you can press the Stop All Clips button, then just press record on your clip. I actually want to hear everything in the scene, so I'm going to press the Scene launch button, then I pause. Play back with the spacebar. Okay, let's try once more again. Press the clip record icon and the counting will commence before recording. Okay, great. Let's have a look at the middy by opening up the clip. As you can see, we have a four bar clip. Again, always check the endpoint of your loop as sometimes the loop end marker may not be positioned at the end of the bar minus fine as it ends at the start of bar five. Okay, so let's how to record middy into a clip. In the session view, we'll start looking at editing recordings very shortly. Thanks for watching. 17. MIDI Quantizing: As you can see, when I played in these notes, they weren't perfectly in time with the grid. So we have a couple of different options here. We can manually go in and move these notes so that they're more in time. Or we can use a feature called quantizing, which will automatically snap these notes to a specified grid setting and save loads of time. It's very common in electronic music to quantize media recordings to remove timing imperfections and tighten up the rhythm. If you use the keyboard shortcut command you on a Mac or control you on Windows, you can quickly quantize your notes to the current selected grid setting that is selected in the Midi editor. My grid setting there is set to one 32nd. As you can see, it's snapped to the closest 32nd note on the grid. If you have chosen appropriate grid setting for your musical part, quantizing like this works 90% of the time, 32nd note isn't quite appropriate for this part, however. So I'm just going to press undo and show you some of the quantiz settings. To access Quanti settings, go up to Edit at the top of the screen and scroll down to Quanti settings. You can also use shortcut command shift on a Mac or control shift or Windows. This opens up the Quantiz menu in the clip panel. Let's have a look at some of the controls at the moment current grid is selected. This means the notes, we snapped the close speed division that is defined in the Midi. No editors grid setting. Let's change the setting of this to 1 bar. Now, when I press the Apply button, that's this tiny button here down at the bottom right. You'll see all of our notes have been snapped to the nearest bar. I'll zoom out a bit. Obviously, this is incorrect, so I'm just going to press undo this time. I'm going to choose a quarter note as my snap setting. You'll see here my notes have been snapped to the nearest quarter note. I'll just change my grid setting so you can see that they've all snapped to the closest quarter note. I know this melody should have no overlapping nodes. Even before listening back, we can tell that this is not an appropriate quanti setting. This is why it's important to consider the rhythm of your musical part whenever quantizing. A good way to estimate the best snap setting by looking at the shortest notes in your pattern, I'll just press undo these two notes. Here are eighth notes. I can tell that if I change the grid to an eighth note, I know that this could be an appropriate snap setting for this situation. Now if I go and choose eighth as my snap setting, we can see there all of the notes have snapped the closest eighth note. Even with the most appropriate quantize setting selected, sometimes notes will be snapped to the wrong division on the grid. Just listen back to your clip and if anything sounds wrong, you can use your mouse to reposition the notes. As you can hear, all of the notes are starting perfectly in time. Let's have a look at some of the other Quanti settings. Down here we have the Quanti note end option. If this is selected, the ends of the notes will also be quantized, stretching the note to the nearest selected beat division. I'll just zoom in a bit so you can see this better. Want to press end now, the notes of all snapped to the nearest eighth note. The next control we have is the amount dial at 100% Midi notes will be snapped exactly to the grid. If we bring this amount dial down, notes will not be fully quantized. This can sometimes be beneficial to give parts more of a natural or human feel. If you're ever working with triplets, we have a triplet option here, this snaps notes to the nearest triplet. Now one last thing to note. The settings that you choose in this menu will be stored as this is the case, I tend to leave the settings at current grid without the no end option selected. This means I could change a grid setting to whatever I feel is most appropriate for the situation. Then simply press the quanti shortcut. As I say, this works 90% of the time for me. But see which settings work best for you. Just a quick reminder, the quantum shortcut is command or control you on Windows to open up the quantum settings. It's command shift on a Mac or control shift on Windows. That's how to use the Quantiz feature en Ableton Life. Thanks for watching. 18. Velocity PT 1: Hi there. In this video I'm going to look at velocity. Velocity determines the intensity or force with which a musical note or sound is played. For example, if you have a Midi keyboard, you'll notice a difference in loudness and tone depending on whether you play a note softly or with more force. When using Midi, the velocity of notes can be used to mimic the natural variation in human performance. And add a motion to music. Let's have a look at how you can edit velocity in the middy note editor. In the previous video when I recorded this part in, I use a Midi keyboard, or modern Midi keyboards will input velocity data. When playing Midi notes, we can view the velocity information at the bottom of the mid no editor in this window, it's just down here. If you cannot see this window, click on the little icon at the bottom left here and make sure velocity is selected. These little bars represent the velocity. You can adjust velocity by moving these nodes up or down. As I mentioned before, increasing and decreasing velocity will change both the volume and the timbre of the sound. If I put the velocity to the maximum for this first note, it'll sound very different when it's all the way at the bottom, mainly. That's far quieter in this pattern. The velocities vary throughout. This is because I recorded it with my Midi keyboard. When you draw in Midi notes or record using the computer Midi keyboard, the velocity of each note will be identical until you make a change, as computer keyboards cannot distinguish how hard or soft you play a key. Let's have a look at our drum pattern. As I program these notes and manually, the velocity of every single drum hit is the same in many situations. Just like this, varying the velocity can make your music more interesting. As you can see here, every single note has the exact same velocity. Let's start adjusting velocities, as we have multiple Midi notes with the same velocity stacked on top of each other, we can currently only see one velocity node. When you click on the note, the velocity of the chosen note will be selected to change the velocity of a note. Simply left click and drag the velocity node up or down. Something that can give drums more of a natural feel is reducing the velocity of the offbeat. I'm going to select every other high hat throughout this pattern. I'm going to do so by clicking and holding on a note and holding shift. See here I've just selected every other high hat. Now what I bring velocity down, you'll see it's bringing down the velocity of the other high hats. All right, I want to do something similar with the ride symbol, so I'm going to click on every other ride. Once again, bring velocity down. See there, those two are both being brought down. I also don't quite like the tone of the right symbol. Have listened back. I'm going to select all of these notes and bring down the velocity of them together. I've just made a selection there, and I'm going to pull the velocities down. Let's listen back once more. Okay? It's only a subtle difference, but many subtle differences like this make a big difference together when producing music. As mentioned before, varied velocities can give music emotion and human feel. But in some situations, I find consistent velocities can actually be beneficial. For example, I usually like my bass part to be very consistent, so I'm not going to be adjusting the velocities of these notes. I'm just going to open up my lead part quickly as the velocities were very varied. So I'm going to balance them out a little. Any notes that are much louder or much quieter than the rest, I'm just going to pull down to balance out. Okay, so that's the very basics of velocity. I'll be looking at this again in a little more detail shortly. But next let's have a look at another feature. Thanks for watching. 19. Arpeggiate Feature: Hi there. In this video I'm going to create an our Petro part from some chords we already have in the song. I'll be coming back to velocity in just a moment. After I've created this part, I'm going to go to this chords track here, right click on it and select Duplicate. This will duplicate the track and any clips stored in the track. I'm also going to solo it. I'm going to select all the notes in the Midi. No editor Down in the transform tab, I'm going to choose alpegiate. This middy function chops up cords to create an alpegio. To create a very simple alpegio which just uses the notes of the provided chords, choose zero on the distance, style, and under style choose up. I'm also going to change the rate to a 16th note. The arpeggiate feature can be a lot of fun. I'd recommend playing the style gait and rate options, but for now let's leave this as it is and look at velocity once again, also something I did mention briefly earlier, If you have the scale feature active when you create an arpegio like this, able to live will ensure that all of the notes stick to your chosen key. Let's just have listen back to it. I'll see you in the next video. 20. Velocity PT 2: Hi there. Let's now have a look at some more velocity controls. If you access the draw mode by pressing B on your computer's keyboard, you can quickly click and drag to draw in the velocity for multiple notes. But now, listen back. You'll notice that in this example, only the tone of the instrument has changed and the volume has remained consistent. This is something to watch out for when working with certain instruments en Ableton. If we go over to the device view and look at the instrument settings, look for this velocity volume icon. When this is set to zero, the velocity of the notes will not affect the volume of the sound it produces. I'll turn this out to 100% and play back the clip once more. You will now notice the velocity is affecting the volume. Just bear this in mind whenever you're working with velocity, as this can be easily missed. All right, let's get back to some of the other features. I'm just going to adjust the velocity of all these notes. I'm going to click and drag to draw them all around the velocity of 70. I'm going to exit the drawer mode by pressing B. Not only can we manually adjust the velocity of notes, we also have a number of other controls at the bottom of the velocity editor window. Let's first look at randomize. The box to the right of the randomized button allows you to select how much you'd like to randomize the velocity value of the middy notes. I'm just going to deselect all my notes. It measures 1-127 with one being the least amount of randomization and 127 being the most. If I increase this all the way to 127 and then press Randomize, the velocity of all of the notes will be heavily randomized. If I now bring this number down, you'll see the amount they're being randomized is being decreased. Next let's look at ramp. For this feature to work, you need to select all of the notes that you'd like to effect in the middy, no editor. So I'm going to press command A to select all of my notes. Ramp effectively allows you to create a crescendo or a diminuendo. You can control how much by increasing and decreasing. These two controls, if I start really low ending really high, this part will gradually get louder. Let's have listen back. Or obviously you could start with it loud and make it go quieter again. The tone of the instrument will also be changing, not just the volume. Okay, I'm going to pull these back down so they're around the midpoint. Next, let's have a look at deviation again, for this feature to work, make sure you've selected all of the notes that you'd like to effect. Deviation is another random control. As they increase this number, you'll be able to see the highlighted area in the velocity window. Whenever a note is played back, it'll be randomly assigned of velocity value within this range. If the notes start off with a lower velocity to pull all of these down, an increased deviation, the amount they'll be randomized is increased. Okay, That's all of the velocity controls covered. I'm just going to make a couple of changes to this part before I move on. I actually quite like the sound of this instrument where the velocity varied the tone but not the volume. I'm going to go back to the device view and bring the velocity volume control all the way back down. I'm just going to go back to my middy, no editor. I'm going to turn deviation all the way down to zero. I'm going to make sure all of my notes are selected. And then we're going to hit Randomize. Okay, let's have a lesson back. Okay, great, so that's velocity. Thanks for watching. 21. Record Quantization: The next feature that I want to show is record quantization. This is a very useful middy feature which will automatically quantize anything you play in. It can be particularly useful for those who are not very good at playing the keyboard or if you just want to get an idea down quickly. So I'm just going to unsold this track and duplicate this melody part. Right click and duplicate. I'm just going to delete the clip. I'm going to solar this part too to activate the record quantization feature. Go up to Edit and scroll down to Record Quantization. Here you can choose your quantization value. The fastest notes that I'm going to be playing in will be eighth notes. I'm going to choose eighth note quantization. Once again, to get a feel for the tempo, I'm going to make sure my counting is activated with a drop down box next to the metronome. I'm also going to solo the drums by holding command on a Mac or control on Windows so I can also hear them. While I'm recording, I'm going to make sure that the correct track is record armed. So that's this one here. Now all I need to do is hit the record icon. Right? Let's give it a go. I'm going to hit record and we'll have a 1 bar counting. You may have noticed that even though I play that very badly, you could see the notes snapping to the grid while it's performing. Let's have a listen back. Even though it's played really badly, it's all perfectly in time. One thing to note, be careful which quantization setting you select when using this feature. For example, if I was playing in a 16th note part, if the eighth note option was selected, the recording would not be quantized to the correct position. You may not always want to have this feature enabled, and sometimes you won't want your parts to be perfectly in time with the grid. However, it can be a great time saver when recording middy ideas. Thanks for watching. 22. MIDI Overdub Recording: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you one last media recording feature, and that's Midi overdub recording. Let's open up the drum part that we wrote earlier. I'm just going to make the Midi note editor a little bigger. I'm also going to double the length of this clip by pressing the duplicate button over here on the left. Having longer drum patterns allows you to add more variation, which can help. If a part sounds too repetitive. Sometimes it may be too difficult to play multiple parts at once. For example, playing multiple different percussive parts. Like this. Midi overdub recording allows you to layer Midi notes on top of existing clips. This means you can listen back to the clip on repeat and build up upon your ideas. To speed this process up. I'm also going to use a record quantization feature. I'm going to go up to Edit Record Quantization. And this time I'm going to choose 16th note Quantization. To use the Recording quantization feature, make sure the clip that you'd like to record into has been launched. And also make sure the correct track is selected and record armed. Now what we need to do is go up to the tool bar and press icon up here. This will start playing back the clips and activate Midi overdub recording. Okay, so as you could see there, I could gradually build up this part while as playing back. So as you can see, using a number of these different middy features together can really save you a lot of time when writing music. I've gone into a lot of detail, so there is a lot to remember. But feel free to come back and watch these individual videos at any point. If you need a reminder of how these features work, you should now have a good understanding how to write and record Midi. So it's time for us to move on. And in the following videos, I'm going to start looking at audio. Thanks for watching. 23. Audio Clips: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to give you a brief introduction into Audio Eclipse before we look at recording. Up until this point, we've only been working with Midi. It's really important to get your head around Midi because it allows you to be extremely flexible with how you manipulate sounds and ideas. However, working with audio is also a vital music production skill in music production. Audio refers to recorded sound waves that have been captured using a microphone or other recording device. This can include pre recorded sounds or samples that come with able to life or those that are found online, as well as audio that you record yourself. Midi clips hold media information that's converted into sound with a software instrument, whereas an audio clip holds an audio sample. An audio clip can hold any type of audio sample. Be that an individual snare, hit or kick drum, a piano playing chords, a vocal recording, or a lot percussion part. Unlike Midi track, you do not create a new clip by double clicking on an empty clip slot. Instead, you either record directly into a clip, which will show you in the following videos, or you choose a sample from Ableton and drop it into an empty clip slot. I'm just going to go into the browser and find a loop that will suit this song. I'm not going to choose a harmonic part, like a bass or synth loop, just something percussive in the browser, navigate samples, you can use this drop down arrow here to access the filters. I'm going to use this to narrow down my search, to make this bit bigger so we can see more. I'm going to choose Loop. At the top here, I'm after a shaker, I'm going to go down to percussion and choose Shaker. Here we have a few different shakers that we can audition. Now, something you may notice, these different loops have different tempos. Fortunately, audio files will be automatically times stretched to fit the tempo of your project. When you drop the file into an audio clip, it will conform with the tempo of your set. If I drag and drop the shaker onto this audio track here, I'll do the same with another part. Now when I play back these different clips, you'll hear that they have all been warped and are now in time with my project. Okay, now I've briefly gone over audio clips. In the next video, we can start looking at our settings so we're ready to record audio. Thanks for watching. 24. Setting up your Interface to Record Audio: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to go over the steps involved when setting up for an audio recording. If you watch the setting up your audio interface video earlier in this course, you should already be set up to record. However, I'd still recommend watching this video and checking through your settings to ensure everything is set up correctly. If you have an audio interface and an XLR microphone, you can set these up to record with enable to life. You can also use a USB microphone or even the built in mic on your computer. However, I wouldn't recommend this last option as the audio quality will be poor. If you do have an audio interface or USB microphone, make sure to turn it on and plug it into your computer via USB. Now, just get you going quickly. I'm going to skim over how to set up your microphone as your audio input we need to go into our preferences. We could do so by going to Live and Settings on a Mac or on Windows. Go to Options and Preferences. Now navigate to the audio tab. Here we have some options under audio input device, you need to choose what you'd like to be your input. If you're using an audio interface with an X R microphone, choose your interface here. I'm going to be using this one. If you're using a USB mic, again, select this as your input device. If you're using the built in microphone of your computer, you can also select it here. If your device does not appear in this list, go to the manufacturer's website and download any appropriate drivers. Okay, that's the input setting sorted. Now if you're using an external interface, plug in your microphone into input one and turn up the gain to about halfway. If you're using a condenser microphone, make sure phantom power is turned on on your interface. There's usually a button with a plus 48 volt icon near the input gain dial. With some interfaces you'll need to download the driver to turn on panto power within this software. If you want to record a guitar or an external instrument such as the synthesizer, plug this in. Instead, if you're using USB mic, make sure the gain dial is turned up. If you're using the built in mic in your computer, go into your sound settings and make sure the mic's input volume is turned up here for anyone using an audio interface. If you'd like to use your studio monitors for listening back, select your interface as audio output device. It will be in the struck down box here. If you are not using an external interface, choose your appropriate output here. This could be an Aso device you're built in. Speakers or external headphones. Okay. Your audio device should now be set up. 25. Setting up Your Live Set to Record Audio : Okay, now we have our interface sorted. We need to set up our life set, choose an empty track, or create a new one. I'm just going to use this track here. If you're going to be recording a microphone, I'd recommend using headphones now rather than playing audio through your speakers just to avoid the input signal feeding back. Right. The next thing we need to do is choose the input that your microphone or instrument is plugged into. The audio input for a track is selected in this box here. If you'll mix, it is not currently visible. Go down to this icon at the bottom here, which will open or close it. If your inputs and outputs are not displaying, you can show or hide them down here. If you are recording a single microphone, you should choose a mono input, for example, input one or input two. A mono signal consists of a single audio channel. For example. Vocals will almost always be recorded in mono, as you'd use a single microphone to record your voice. A stereo signal consists of two separate audio channels. If you were recording an external synthesizer with a stereo output, you could choose to record in stereo by selecting a stereo input. For example, input 1.2 only choose a stereo input if you're recording a stereo input signal. If you record a mono signal into a stereo input, the audio signal will only be heard in one side of your speakers. I've plugged my electric piano into input one of my audio interface on the track that I'm going to be recording on. I'm going to choose input one as my input. The next thing I need to do is make sure I've pressed the record R mic on at the bottom of the track here. Now you should see movement in this meter here when you talk into your microphone or play your instrument. If you cannot, please turn up the gain of your microphone or rewatch the previous video if you're still having issues. Let's next have a look at the monitor options. Monitoring options allow you to choose whether you would like to hear the incoming audio signal through able to life. Being able to monitor incoming signal can be useful to help you sing and tune with your project. It's vital if you're playing something like an external synthesizer so you can hear what you're actually playing. If you're recording with the microphone and you do not have headphones or you're listening back through computers built in speakers, I'd recommend leaving monitor off as it's very likely that you'll create a feedback loop. I usually like to leave monitor on auto mode. As generally, it is useful to be able to hear what you're recording through your headphones or speakers with auto selected. You'll be able to hear the incoming signal whenever the record R icon is selected. I'm just going to choose auto. Now as you can see the incoming audio signal is green now rather than being graded out. If you choose on, even when the track is not record armed, you'll still be able to hear the incoming audio signal. This can be useful in some situations, but as I say, I'd recommend using auto mode most of the time. The last thing we need to do is set up the input gain. This is usually done with a dial on your audio interface or USB microphone. If using your computers built in microphone, you can adjust the input gain in the sound settings. Some USB microphones also require the input gain to be set in the computer sound settings. To set the gain appropriately, you want the incoming audio signal to be at its loudest when it's reaching around -12 DB. That's about 75% of one of these meters. I'm just going to set the gain of my interface now. Okay, that's just about right. When you're setting the levels, just do a little test performance and turn up the volume until the loudest point of recording is reaching around -12 This is important as if the signal ever reaches 100% it will clip and cause unpleasant sounding distortion. This will not be able to be removed from the audio signal. This is why it's a good idea to allow yourself some additional head room as the actual loudest peak may increase when you perform. So as you can hear there, that's digital distortion and it sounds horrible. Okay, that's about right. We're finally ready to record, I'll see in the next video. 26. Recording Audio and Trimming Clips: Recording audio follows the same steps as recording midi. I'd recommend turning the metronome on with this icon at the top to help keep you in time when recording Again, I'd advise you to set the count in to 1 bar so you can get a feel for the tempo and have a moment to prepare for recording. Double check that the correct track is selected, record armed, and make sure the correct input is chosen. When you're ready, press record on an empty clip slot. The recording will commence after the count in. Okay, great. We've recorded our first audio clip. Again, just like working with Midi, Ensure your clip is the correct length so it loops in time with your project. I want this to be a four bar loop and it looks fine. If you're not happy with your recording, you can delete your clip or record into new one. This one wasn't great, so I'm going to press undo and try again. Remember, if you want to hear other clips in your set whilst you're recording, just make sure you've launched them prior to hitting record. I'm going to play back this scene and pause it now. When I record into this clip, the other clips will be heard. Now, something else to mention. Just like recording Midi, you can record into the clip indefinitely. Which allows you to play your idea over and over again until you get a take that you're happy with. Let's have another go. I'll do a few takes until I'm happy with one. Okay, so I did a few takes of this idea and I think the last one was the best. So what I can do now is move the clip start point so that it starts at the beginning of bar nine. Just click and drag this marker to weigh it like its start. Now when I listen back to this clip, this section will be looped. You can also write, click on the clip Start marker and select Set 1.1 0.1 here. This is good practice as it makes it easy to see where the loop should end. As always, be careful to make sure that the clip start and end markers are placed on the bar. If you are happy with the take that you've chosen, you can write click in the sample editor and select Crop Sample. This remove any audio from the clip that is not within the loops start and end markers. That's the most basic way to record audio. Eclipse into Able to Life. Being able to record interclips like this allows you to experiment with ideas and choose your favorite takes very easily. The next video, we'll look at some basic audio editing features. Thanks for watching. 27. Quantizing Audio and Warp Markers: Just like Midi. We can also quantize audio. Just be aware it's not quite as flexible as quantizing Midi. If your audio is really out of time and it has to be heavily quantized, it can add some undesirable audio artifacts. If you've not yet watched my grid settings and Midi quantizing videos, please do so now. As I'll give you a good understanding of how to quantize en Ableton live. I'm just going to record another part in show an example of how to quantize audio. I'm going to record it into the same track here. Okay, let's go down to the sample view and have a look at what you've recorded. Again, just like Midi, you can access the quanti settings by pressing command shift on a Mac or control shift on Windows. Over here on the left, we can now see our quantiz settings. We do have less options than when working with Midi, but we can still choose a beat division and the amount. So I'm just going to click on Eighth Note and press Supply and see how well this does. I'm just going to solar this track so we can hear it with metronome. We've also got to turn the metronome on up here. Okay, other than the second note there, it's done quite a good job. Now let's just talk about warping for a moment. Whenever you quantize audio enabled to life, it'll analyze a file and add Warp markers where it detects transience. The warp markers of these little orange marks up here. Transients are spikes in audio waveform where a sound has been generated. If we zoom into the sample edit to here, we can see here the spikes in audio are the transients. That's pretty much where Ableton has placed the markers. Ableton allows you to quantize wart markers to the grid, meaning you can quantize audio. Sometimes Ableton won't correctly analyze the file. If a situation like that arises, you can manly add or remove wart markers to make quantizing more accurate. To delete a wart marker, you can write, click on it and select Delete. To draw one in, I'd recommend zooming right in and then double click where you'd like to place the marker. When you're happy that the work markers are accurately positioned, you can try quantizing once again. I'm going to choose a different grid setting, this time as eighth notes didn't work properly. So I'm going to select quarter note and press Supply. As you could see there, a new work marker has been added. It looks a bit funny, but let's listen back and see how it sounds. As you can hear there, with this work marker, the rhythm doesn't sound quite right. I'm just going to try deleting this marker. Now that does sound a bit better, but you can actually hear an audible artifact there. Something else I'd like to talk about quickly before I move on, or the different warp modes. Ableton will do its best to try and analyze the audio and process it in the most subtle way, but sometimes you'll hear these artifacts. There are actually a number of different warp modes you can choose from, depending on the type of audio that you're working with, which can help reduce these artifacts. The different warp modes can be accessed in the audio tab of the sample editor over here to the left. See here under this Warp icon, we can see beats when working with percussive parts is often best to choose beats if working with a musical part such as melody, vocal, or bass line tones can often be best suited. I'm just going to try that now. Okay, that has actually solved our problem. We also have a number of other modes such as complex and texture, and these can be more appropriate for more complicated sections of audio. I'd recommend experimenting with these different options to see which work best in different situations. Okay, there's quite a lot of information to take in throughout this section, but recording and editing audio is a big part of music production. So I wanted to cover some of the basics early on. Next, I'm going to be looking at how you can use the session view of Ableton Live to start arranging your musical ideas and building them into more of a song. Thanks for watching. 28. Duplicating and Arranging Clips + Clip Lengths: Up until this point of the course, we're focused on recording and editing Midi and audio. These are essential techniques that are required to produce music. Obviously, you're going to need to expand on your ideas and turn them into a composition. In this video, I'm going to show you some essential features of the session view that allow you to build upon and experiment with your musical ideas. You can move clips into different clip slots in the session view by simply clicking and dragging. You can also move clips onto different tracks. Midi information will be played back by whichever software instrument is loaded onto the track. This can be a good way to try different ideas with different sounds. You can select multiple clips by holding command on a Mac or control on Windows. And clicking using this shortcut allows you to make a selection by clicking on individual clips. You can select a run of clips by holding shift and clicking. But please be aware if you drop a clip onto another clip, it will delete the clip that has been placed on. So I'm going to press under. Now, something else that I'd like to mention now is that many shortcuts are transferable between different sections of the software. When working with clips in the session view, a lot of the shortcuts are the same as when working with Midi in the mid no editor for example. To duplicate a clip, you can hold Option on a Mac or Alt on Windows and click and drag. See this plus icon appears. You can also duplicate a clip by pressing command. This will duplicate the clip, all clips which are selected the clip will be duplicated into the clip slot below. Let's press under a few times now, just like any other software, you can cut or copy the shortcuts, command C or command X. You can paste with command V. Again, on Windows it will be control. Just remember when you're pasting a clip, select the clip slot that you'd like to paste into. If you right click on a clip, all of these shortcuts will be listed. If you want to delete a clip, just select the clip and press the backspace or delete key. Now one last thing I'd like to mention before I move on, is that you can deactivate clips. Deactivating a clip means it will remain in your session, but you'll no longer be able to launch the clip. To deactivate, select the clip and press zero on your computer's keyboard. You can see here that they've been graded out and you can no longer launch the clips, even if I launch the scene over here on the right. The lead and slow up will not play. To reactivate a clip, select it and you can use the shortcut zero once again. Alternatively, you can right click and go down to activate clip. Okay, let's now have a quick look at the scenes over on the right. If you click and drag on a scene, you can move it up or down to another row. We also have the same shortcuts to duplicate, copy, paste, and delete a scene. If you right click, you'll be able to see all the different options. You can insert a scene by right clicking on a scene and pressing Insert, or using the shortcut command I. That's control on Windows. Right. Let's now have a look at tracks at the top here. As you have probably guessed, you can move, cut, copy, paste, duplicate, and delete tracks just like clips. Just make sure to click on the relevant track title bar to select it. To deactivate a track, click on the orange icon down here in the mixer. Now one last thing that I wanted to mention in this video is clip lengths. You'll notice that all of our clips are looping continuously. But remember, some of the clips are different lengths. Take a look at the shaker compared to the base. The shaker is 1 bar in length, whereas our base is 4 bars long. I'll play back all of our clips now. But while I do pay attention to this area here at the bottom of the track, this is a track status display. The figure on the left shows how many rotations the current clip has completed. And the figure on the right shows the length of the clip in beats. I'll just play once more so you can see that again, notice how the shaker pie chart completes four rotations in the time the base clip completes. One next, let's start using the session view to jam out some ideas. Thanks for watching. 29. Performing in the Session View: Hi there. Since the last video, I've gone away and built up this song idea with a number of new parts. One of the most special features of Ableton Live is being able to perform your ideas in the session view. In this video, I'd like to go over the playback controls so you can start jamming out ideas. Obviously, you can play a clip by pressing a clip launch button. And you can stop a clip by pressing any stop button on a track. You can also press the clip stop button at the bottom of the track. You can pause and resume playback of any launch clips by using the Space bar. Launch a couple of clips. If you launch another clip, any clips that have not been stopped will also be launched. You can stop all clips by pressing a Stop All Clips button. This will unlaunch all clips. A scene is an entire row of clips in the session view. I'd recommend launching a scene by selecting a scene and then pressing Enter. This will launch the scene and then select the following one. You can then launch the next scene by pressing Enter Once again, when you reach a scene that contains no clips, all other clips will be stopped. Now please note, whenever you launch scene, any clips that are not within the selected scene will be stopped. So we have three clips that have been launched, but if I now play another scene, these three clips will be stopped. Now one last tip I'd like to mention is a capture and insert feature. I'm just going to stop all of my clips for now. If you were to launch a number of clips and you liked how they sounded together, you could create a new scene with the selection of launched clips. For example, I'm just going to play back a number of clips across a number of different scenes. If I like the sound of these clips together, I can now go over to a Scene, right click and select, Capture and Insert Scene. You'll see that all of the clips that I had selected have now been grouped together in a new scene. Now one final thing I'd like to mention, if you ever notice material from the arrangement view also plays Back when you play your clips, just press the Stop all clips button and try again. I'll be covering this in more detail later on, but that's a handy troubleshooting tip I thought I should mention now. Okay. That's a few tips on how to use this session view. I'll shortly be showing you how to record your session view performances into the arrangement view. Thanks for watching. 30. Recording From the Session View into the Arrangement View: Okay, so now we've got our ideas. We need to finally turn them into a song. We need to do this using the arrangement view. Some people prefer to just use the arrangement view to write music. This is how many other digital audio workstations work. However, using clips in the session view is a great way of writing music and a big part available to life. Now let's have a look at how to record your session view performance into the arrangement view. First of all, have a look at the Global Launch Quantization menu. I'd recommend choosing 12 or 4 bars. I'm going to choose 4 bars this time to allow me more time to start and stop clips during playback. Now make sure none of your tracks are record armed by clicking on any record arm icon that is illuminated. Make sure to scroll through all your tracks to make sure nothing is lit up like this. Finally, make sure the loop switch at the top of the tool bar is not selected. That's just this icon here. Make sure it's not lit up orange. Now we have a couple of ways that you can commence the recording. You can press the arrangement Record icon up here and able to begin recording instantly. Or if you have a counting activated once the current selected counting passes. Alternatively, you can hold Shift and then click on the Arrangement Record button. When recording like this, Ableton will not commence recording until you launch a clip or a scene. Again, if you have a counting selected, the counting will be heard first. So when I play my first clip or scene, the recording will begin. As you would have noticed there, we had a count in just before the recording commenced. Now when you finish your recording, press the Space bar to stop playback. Let's have a look at our arrangement. So I'm going to click on the icon up here. As you can see, the clips have been recorded into the arrangement view in the order that they were played back. Instead of our tracks being listed horizontally, they're now listed vertically down on the right hand side. If I try to play back the arrangement, you'll notice even though we can see the playhead moving along the timeline, we won't actually be able to hear anything. This is because we need to press the back to arrangement view button. When I pressed the back to arrangement view button, you'll see that the icon disappears and that the arrangement on the timeline will no longer be graded out. We'll now be able to listen to our arrangement. The time line is measured in bars and beats along the top and in minutes along the bottom. Just like the middy. No editor. We can zoom in and out by using keyboard shortcuts plus and minus on your computer's keyboard. We can choose where on the timeline to listen back to from by clicking once anywhere on the time line. Okay, so that's my favorite way of getting my ideas from the session view into the arrangement view. There are a couple more ways that you can do so, which I'll show you shortly. But next I want to show you how the session and arrangement views interact with each other, as this can cause some confusion when getting to grips of the software. One last thing I'll mention now, currently, the way I've structured my song, moving down through the scenes makes sense. However, you can experiment playing back clips and scenes in any order to come up with an interesting arrangement. Thanks for watching. 31. Using the Two Different Views: Let's now have a further look at how the arrangement and session views work together. Long story short, in this video I'm going to show you how to swap play back between the arrangement view and the session view. If you want to listen back to only material in the session view, press the Stop all clips button. If you want to listen back to only material in the arrangement view, press the back to arrangement view button. Right? Let's now go into this in some more detail. As working with the two views can sometimes be a little hard to grasp. We previously pressed the back to arrangement view button, allowing us to listen to the arrangement. Let's now jump back to the session view and play some clips. Now when we go over to the arrangement view again, you'll notice that the tracks that are launched clips on, have been graded out. See the drums, bass, and the lead here. Now when I play the arrangement, the tracks that are graded out will be playing back material from within the session view. If you want to flip individual tracks back to the arrangement, you can do so by clicking on the single track. Back to Arrangement button on the right hand side of the window here. You could see there during playback, you could hear each part stop playing when I flip them over to the arrangement view, as there is no material on the time line. Let's now go back to earlier in the song. When you're in the session view, you can access the back to arrangement view button from the bottom right. Or you can use a short cut ten on a Mac computer, you may need to press function F ten. Okay? Currently at the bottom of each track, in the track status display, we can see a miniature view of the arrangement. When I press play, you'll be able to see a mini timeline ruler on each track. That's this line here. And it will look like it's moving through. As you can see there, we have a visual representation of the tracks that are playing back material in the arrangement. If I now jump backwards to a different section of the song, have a look at the track status display. You can see the miniature display shows us the clips that are currently playing back in the arrangement. Let's now launch a few different clips in the session view. As you can see, these tracks are now displaying the pie chart icon showing us that these clips are now looping. Pay attention to the Tom's base and lead tracks as they'll be grade out in the arrangement. Now if we were to play back in the arrangement view, these grade out tracks will be launched in the session view. This is because they are now playing material from within the session view. You may have noticed that stopping clips in the session view also has the same effect as launching. As you can see there, we've got loads of grade out tracks. As you can see, Ableton allows you to be extremely creative in the ways that you compose music. For example, you could jump to a section of the song to audition different clips over different sections to build upon your ideas. Just remember, anytime you want to listen to material from the arrangement view, hit the back to arrangement view button. If you only want to listen to material in the session view, press the Stop all clips button. Ableton can get a little bit confusing when you start working with these two different views. First, I'd recommend keeping things simple by working entirely in the session view or entirely in the arrangement view rather than using a combination of the two. As you become more confident, feel free to get creative and experiment. Next I'll show you another way to move your eclipse from the session view into the arrangement view. Thanks for watching. 32. Moving Clips into the Arrangement View: Previously I showed you how you can record your clips into the arrangement view. That's my favorite way to build an arrangement, but it's not the only way to move clips from the session to arrangement view. The next way I want to show you is by simply dragging and dropping clips directly from the session view over to the arrangement view. Just grab a clip and click and drag it over to the arrangement view icon. You can then drop it onto the track. In the arrangement view, just make sure to select the correct track. Another very similar way of doing so is by clicking and holding on a clip and pressing a tab button. If I just get the kick layer here, click and hold and press Tab again, I can then drag and drop it where I'd like on the timeline. You can also do this with multiple clips. To select multiple clips, click and hold control on Windows or Command on Mac. And select any clips that you'd like to copy over. Then you can either drag them over to the icon and drop them in. Or you can click and hold and press Tab. As you can see there, I've dropped them into the arrangement. Another quick way to move clips into the arrangement view is click on the one that you'd like to move over and press copy. That's just command on a Mac or control set on Windows. Then go to the Track and Paste, right click and press Paste. Another handy feature is using scenes to copy clips over. Just like moving over individual clips, you can drag an entire scene. Just make sure to hover the mouse over the top track in the arrangement view so that the clips are dropped onto the correct tracks. As you can see there, every clip that was in that scene has been copied over again. You can also copy and paste scenes. I'll go over to this scene here, right click and go down to copy. Go over to the arrangement view and I'll paste on my top track. Okay, now you know how to record and move your ideas from the session view into the arrangement view. Next, I'm going to start looking at the arrangement view in more detail. Thanks for watching. 33. Editing in The Arrangement View: Loop Region, Grid Settings and Moving Clips: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to look at the arrangement view. We've previously looked at the very basics, playing, pausing, and navigating around the time line. Just a quick reminder, you can choose where you want to play a song back from by clicking anywhere on the time line. You can play and pause with a space bar or with the buttons at the top here. If you hove your mouse at the top of the timeline, when this icon appears, you'll be able to start play Back from this point, I'm just going to zoom out slightly with a shortcut minus on my keyboard. Now something I want to show you is the Loop region. Looping sections of a track allow you to make edits and build upon ideas, among other things. To activate the loop region, make selection by clicking and dragging on any track or tracks. Just make sure that the mouse pointer icon is visible rather than the hand or the bracket icon. Now press command L on a Mac or control an L on Windows. And you'll see this loop region has appeared. Now when I play back my arrangement, this section will loop. To turn off the loop, simply use the shortcut command L or control L once more. Alternatively, you can click on the loop switch icon at the top here. When it is orange, it is enabled. You can change your loop region at any time by creating new selection and then pressing command and L once again, as you can see there, to make my selection. This time all I did was click on a clip within the timeline. You can also reposition your loop. If you hove your mouse over the center and click and drag, you can re size by hovering your mouse over either end when this bracket icon appears. Next, I want to show you how you can move clips around the time line to move a clip. Hover your mouse over the top section of a clip. When this hand icon appears, you're able to click and drag the clip left or right, moving it forwards or backwards in time. If you select a clip and press the left and right, Arizona Computer keyboard, you can also move a clip back and forth in time. You may notice when moving clips left and right, the clip snaps to the current grid setting. Just like when working in the mid no editor, Ableton will snap the clips to the specified grid setting. You can change the current grid setting by right clicking on a blank area on the timeline. Just like in the Midi No editor. You can choose between an adaptive or fixed grid, both with a number of different options to choose from. You can also use the shortcuts command one or two on Mac or control one or two on Windows to narrow or widen the grid setting. Generally, I like to use a narrow adaptive grid setting as this allows me to make finer adjustments when more zoomed in. Occasionally, you may want to move clips without them conforming to the current grid setting. The shortcut to turn the grid snapping on and off is command on a Mac or control four on Windows. You can see the timeline changes there. Alternatively, you can temporarily disable grid snapping by holding command on a Mac or control on Windows When you're moving a clip, generally you'll want your clips to snap with the grid. However, this can be useful in some situations. For example, moving an audio sample which is slightly out of time or splitting up an audio clip between beat divisions. Thanks for watching. 34. Creating Tracks and MIDI Clips in the Arrangement View: Obviously, once you've started working in the arrangement view, you may have new ideas and need to add in different parts to add a track. In the arrangement view, go up to the top of the window, select Create, and choose Insert Audio or Midi Track. Again, you can load any instrument from within the browser onto a new Midi track. You can just click and drag anywhere on that track, you can reposition the track by clicking and dragging on the track title bar. You can also create new Midi clips in the arrangement view. My favorite way of doing so is to make a selection on the timeline by clicking and dragging where you would like to create a clip. Then write, click and select Insert Empty Midi clip. You can also use the shortcut command shift and M on a Mac, or Control Shift and M on Windows. This will create a new Midi clip which will be the length of the selection that you've made. You can now draw in a new Midi part. You can also record Midi and audio into the arrangement view, but we'll be showing you how to do so later on. Now, before I do move on, I'll just cover one more topic. When moving clips around, you'll notice that you can also move clips onto different tracks. If you move a Midi clip onto another Midi track, just like in the session view, the Midi information that you have moved will now be played back by the software instrument on the track that has been dropped onto. If you move an audio clip onto another audio track, this track will play back the audio information with any processing that may be on that track. If you drag any clip to the bottom of the timeline, down to where it says Drop files and devices here, this will duplicate the track that the clip originated on. Now we'll have an exact copy of this track. The new track will have all of the same settings, including any plug ins which are loaded onto it. I'm just going to press undo to get rid of all this. Now one thing to mention, you may remember this from when we were looking at the session view. You cannot move Midi clips onto audio tracks. However, you can move audio clips onto a Midi track. If you do so, Ableton will attempt to convert the audio information into Mid. I'm not going to look at this for the moment, but I just wanted to make you aware. 35. Basic Editing In the Arrangement View: I'm going to show you some basic editing features in the arrangement view. You can select multiple clips by holding command on a Mac or Control on Windows. And clicking this shortcut allows you to make selection by clicking on individual clips. You can select a run of clips by holding shift and clicking. This will select any clips between the two points. Making a selection of clips allows you to edit, delete, move, and copy multiple clips at once. For example, I could select a whole segment of my song and move it along 8 bars to add in a new section. This allows me to move every clip in the selection right. Next, let's look at copying pasting and duplicating. As I mentioned a moment ago, many shortcuts are transferable when working with clips in the arrangement view. A lot of the shortcuts are the same as when working with the Midi note editor. Working with clips in the session view. To duplicate a clip, you can hold option on a Mac or Alten Windows, then click and drag. See, when I hold Alt, this plus icon appears. You can also copy clips onto other tracks if you drag them up or down. You can duplicate a clip by selecting and then pressing command D on a Mac or control D on Windows. The clip will be pasted at the end of the current selection. If I make a selection which finishes past the end of the clip and duplicate, you'll see the clip will be pasted at this point. Here again like in the session view, you can copy or cut with the shortcuts command C and command x. Paste with command V. Just make sure to select where on the timeline that you'd like to paste. If you write, click on a clip. All of these shortcuts will be listed. In case you ever forget to delete a clip, select it and press backspace or the delete key. Right, let's look at some more ways you can edit clips. Rather than selecting the entire clip, you can select a portion of it. This allows you to edit just a segment. For example, I might want the base part to drop out 1 bar before the main chorus section. I can select there and press Delete. If you want to split a clip into multiple selections, you can do so by clicking once on the lower half of the clip and pressing command in E. See here. This solid line has now appeared. This clip has now been chopped up into four sections. In some situations, you may want to join clips together. If I select this Midi region by clicking and dragging, I can use the shortcut command and J on a Mac or control J on Windows to join. See there the entire area that I selected has been joined into a new Midi clip. The next thing I want to mention is deactivating clips. This can be useful if you're trying out different ideas, as the clip will remain on the timeline but will be muted. To deactivate a clip, select it and press zero on your computer's keyboard. See how these clips have been graded out. The clip will be graded out, but it will remain in the arrangement. To reactivate a clip, use a shortcut, zero, once again, one thing to mention, these features work both on audio and Midi tracks. Now one final editing feature I'd like to mention, this video, is how to loop a clip. All you have to do is hove your mouse over the end of a clip, and when this bracket icon appears, click and drag. The clip will now be looped. You can also do it from the left hand side. You can also shorten the clip in the same way. Okay, so that's quite a lot of information in a short space of time, but I just wanted to take through most of the different editing features that can be used in audio and Midi clips. Again, if you forget any of these shortcuts, just right click and the drop down box will remind you with the information you now know, you'll be able to go away and start arranging your ideas on the timeline. Thanks for watching. 36. Audio Editing Features - Fades, Time-stretching + Reversing: Hi there. In this video I'm going to show a few features that are specific to audio editing in the arrangement view. First of all, let's look at fades and cross fades. So these are something you can use on audio elipse in the arrangement view. They can be used to blend between two Audio Eclipse or they can be used just to remove any clicks or pops at the end of your audio clip. If we look at this Audioclip we have down here, you may be able to notice when a ho, the mouse over it, we get these boxes in each corner. Now, you may also be able to tell there's a slight grade out section at the beginning and end of the clip. This is just showing us that that's where our fade is. By default, fades are automatically added to Audio Eclipse on the timeline. This is just, stop them clicking or popping, right. If I play this back, we'll be able to hear this note. Something gets cut off. Now if I have my mouse over this box in the top corner and click and drag over the audio clip. You'll see there, we've changed the length of the fade now. If I play back, you could hear there it was more gradually fading out. If you want to change the shape of the fade, you can do so using this little node in the center. I could have it very gradually fade and then drop down suddenly, or the opposite. You can just click and drag this round and find a shape that you like. Now, if you want to change the endpoint of your fade, you can do so using the box in the bottom corner. If I click and drag on this little box, we can have the fade ending earlier or later. One thing to note, this is different to changing the length of your clip when this bracket icon has appeared. If I were to click and drag and change the length of the clip, now you can see there, the fade was actually moving with the clip. I'll just press undo. Whereas if I do it with a little box at the bottom, you'll see there the start point of the fade hasn't actually moved depending on what you're doing. Having the flexibility to be able to do both of these can be very useful. Now if you go to the start of this audio clip, you'll be able to see we have the exact same options. If you want to increase the length of the fade, click and drag the top box. You can change the shape by using this node in the center. Or choose the starting point in your fade with a box at the bottom. I'll just press under next. I just want to show you how to use a cross fade. I'm going to cut this clip into two. I'm going to click to make a selection on my clip and press Command or Control on Windows. And it's cut this clip into two. Now I'm going to change the length of it and drag these two parts near to each other. If we play this back, we're jumping suddenly between the two different notes. A cross fade allows you to do this more gradually. A quick way to create cross fade is select the clips that you'd like to make a cross fade between. I'll click on one to make a selection, then hold shift and click on the next clip. Then if I write click on the clip. I can select Create Cross fades on clip Edges, or you can use the shortcut command option on a Mac or control Alt and on Windows. Now this is created a cross fade, it's only a very short cross fade. At the moment, you can change the length of your cross fade just like a normal fade. So I'll do a quiet, long cross fade. This time I'll play this back so we can hear it gradually blending between the two notes. Listen to how different that sounds to when it's a really short cross fade. These can be really useful if you want to seamlessly blend between two clips. You can also create a cross fade in a different way if your clips are right next to each other, like this. See here, we've got the fade out and the fade in, and the two separate clips. If I click and drag this fade out over to the next clip, that also creates a cross fade. This will only work if the clips right up next to each other again. I can do it the other way by clicking on the fade in and dragging it back over to the previous clip. Also, don't forget, you can change the shape of a fade by clicking and dragging on the node in the center. That's a handy editing tip. I was going to press to undo a few times. This clip goes back to how it was. Now something else I want to show you is how to time stretch an audio clip on the timeline. Now the first thing you need to do is open up your sample editor and make sure Warp is selected. If it is, it'll be lit up orange. Now all you have to do is hove your mouse over the top corner of one of your clips and hold shift. Now when you click and drag it, it'll actually times stretch the audio. If I click and drag it all the way over here, this clip will play back at twice the speed for a press undo. You can see there, it's time stretched and it still sounds pretty good. You may need to play around with a different warp mode depending on the type of audio you're working with. However, for now, that sounded fine. Thomas will have a video on Warping later on in this course. Again, if you want to slow something down, just hover over one of the top corners, then click and drag. It's a really handy creative editing feature that you can use in the arrangement view enabled to live. Now one final editing feature that you can use in the arrangement view is reversing ordinary clips. I'm just going to shorten this clip once again. I'm going to make it really fast, this time, right? To reverse an ordinary clip, simply select the clip that you'd like to reverse. Then hit the letter R on your computer keyboard, or you can reverse it back again if you like. You can reverse just a small section of an audio clip. Just click and drag over the lower half of an audio clip, then use the shortcut R, and it reversed just this section, you'll see there. It's actually cut this up into two different clips. This doesn't sound particularly interesting on this simple bass note, however, if you have recorded a guitar or a vocal reversing, it can sound really good. That was just a few quick audio editing features that you can use in the arrangement view in Ableton Live 11. In the next video, I'll be taking you through the steps involved in arranging a song and I'll be using many of the features that I've spoken about in the past couple of videos. I'm going to go through, make some changes to this arrangement and finalize these ideas into a song. If you already feel confident with the arrangement, view editing features that I've spoken about and you're not following along, creating the same song as me. Then feel free to skip the next video as I will not actually be covering any new features of Ableton Live 11. I'll be arranging this song using some of the features that I've shown you in the past couple of videos. Thanks for watching. 37. Introduction to the Mixing Section: Hi there. In this section of the class, I'm going to be going over the very basics of mixing. I've recorded some vocals into this project, and I've added a link to the Ableton Live set in the resources section of this class if you'd like to download the project to follow along. As this is just going to be a quick view of mixing, I'm not going to be able to go into a lot of detail, but I'm going to try and show you the essentials so you can improve how your song sound quickly. There's a number of things that you can do to audio were mixing. In this section, I'll look at the first main concepts that you need to understand. I'll be looking at things such as levels, panning, EQ and compression. I strongly recommend that you wear headphones or use a pair of speakers to listen to these videos. Some of the changes that we'll be making will be quite subtle, so I would not recommend listening on your phone or built in laptop speakers. If you do, you may struggle to hear the differences. Learning how to mix effectively doesn't happen overnight. There's a number of tricks and tips that I'll give you. However, this is just the start of you training your ears. Over time, mixing becomes easier as you'll have a better understanding of the processes, and you'll be able to hear the differences that these make more easily. See in the first video. 38. Levels: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to start looking at levels. So as simple as it may seem, getting the volumes of your different tracks to a suitable level is one of the most important things you can do for your mix. Even if you perfect the art of compression and EQ, if your levels aren't quite right, your mix is never going to sound great. So I have been adjusting the levels as I've added in new parts. So I've got a very rough mix, but it's still a lot that could be improved. So the first thing I'm going to work on is my drums. And I'm going to create a loop in one of the busiest sections of this track. So this part over here. So I'll highlight it and press Command L to create a loop. And now, I'm actually going to go to the session view. If I press play with a space bar, it will start playing back my loop section on the track. When you got to dream, you got to keep going for it. So we're going to start with the drums. But one thing you may notice, if you look over here at our drums track, we only have one track for the drums. So I like me, you've used the drum rack for your project, you can actually separate out the drums and mix the different parts of your kit individually. To do so, click on this little drop down arrow here in the session view. You can't actually do this in the arrangement view, unfortunately. So you want to click on the arrow here. It just makes a box smaller. So, as you can see, we've got loads of different tracks for our drums. We haven't actually used all of these, so I'm just going to organize these slightly. Off the top of my head, I know we use the kick. So this one here, the snare. So I'm just going to drag the snare over to this second slot. We definitely had the high hats, so it's this closed high hat part here. And we had a few more parts such as the symbol. So I'm just going to start playback and see which of these tracks light up so I can organize these, so it's easier to mix. I'm going to press solo on the drums track, so we'll be able to hear all of the drums together. Okay, so that's all of our drums over here. Right, so now I'm trying to get a good balance between the different parts. I'm going to start off with the kick snare and high hat. So, the kick, I'm going to leave as is for the moment and blend the other parts in to work with the kick. So, way I like doing this is soloing the part that I'd like to hear. So I want to hear the kick. Now, when I want to add in another part, I'm just going to hold down command on a Mac or Control on Windows to also solo this next track. So the kick and snare seem to be at a suitable level together, but that high hat is just a bit too loud. Okay, that sounds better. The way I like to blend in parts is by pulling the volume all the way down and then increasing it till it sounds about right. If you're unsure of how loud different parts should be, try listening to a song in the same genre as the track as you're creating. To give you a good idea of appropriate levels. I'm going to start blending in the next parts. Again, this room shot seems a bit too loud. So I'm going to pull the volume all the way down and blend in with the rest. Okay. Go to hold down command and press the solo button once again. Okay. That sounds about right. I just moved the hand cup over as it's doubling the snare part for most of the track. Now let's add in the next part, these Mas. Okay, so once you've got what you think is a decent starting point with your drums, I'd recommend moving on to the next parts. So I'm going to these tracks just by clicking solo on one of the tracks. And I'm going to down this folder as I don't want to see all of these drum parts in the session view at the moment. So the next thing I'd recommend you do is blend in your base with your drums. This time, I'm going to solo all of the drums and the base. See here, we've got the base audio and the midi base track. So I'll start with one and then blend in the next. So again, I hold down command on a Mac or Control on Windows, so we can solo another track along with the drums. I'm going to turn the base track all the way down, then blend it back in gradually. Okay, that sounds appropriate. The next thing I'd recommend you do is start blending in the rest of your parts. So I'd work with the harmonic parts such as the chord and Pad next and then blend in the guitars, the arpeggio, and the melody. And you can do this really quickly. When I'm going to blend in the vocals last. But something I want to talk about quickly is if you've already got automation on one of your tracks. So here on the peggio track, if you look down at this, that's showing us that we actually have volume automation on this track. So if I was to adjust the volume of this track, I'll do so now. We'll be able to see that the little red dot has been graded out. But as the dot is still there, we know automation has been applied to this parameter on this track. So, what I'd recommend you do now is go over to the arrangement view. So if we look at pego track now, we see that the little dot is graded out. I'm just going to open up the automation view by pressing A on my keyboard. So as we can see here, we had some automation, but it is graded out. Now, if I adjust the volume of this track, we'll be able to see this dotted line. So this dotted line is the level that the track is set at at the moment. Now, in this situation, I've got to fade in at the start of the song and a fade out at the end of the song, and I want to keep this. So to keep my automation, I'm going to re enable it. To do so, just right click on the parameter and go down to re enable automation. Now, if we hover our mouse underneath this automation line and click and drag. We'll be able to adjust it across the whole length of the track. So I'm is going to play a song back and adjust the level of this track in this way. So, just bear this in mind whenever you're adjusting the levels of your tracks. If you've got any automation, it will be overwritten. Right, so off camera, I'm just going to spend a couple more minutes adjusting the levels of the rest of my tracks. I'd recommend spending a good amount of time getting your volumes to a suitable level as it's the foundation of yours. Thanks for watching. Okay. 39. Panning: So another basic principle of mixing that's extremely important is panning. So what panning allows us to do is choose where in the stereo image each of our parts sit. So in a mix, you will want certain parts, such as the kick, snare, and vocals to be in the center of the stereo image. But you may want other parts, such as a shaker or other percussion to be in the left or right hand side. It's important to get a nice stereo spread in your songs as it can make them sound wider and also make different parts of the song sound more interesting. So adjusting panning is very easy. We can do it in the arrangement view with this slider here. But again, I do find it easier to go back to the session view. So again, I'm just going to start with the drums. So I'm going to open up the drums and solo them. So, as I mentioned a minute ago, there are a few parts that you should generally leave in the center of your mix. So the kick and snare I'm going to leave in the center. Very occasionally, you may want to pan these parts to different positions, but in almost all commercial music, the kick and snare will stay central. One other thing to note. In a lot of genres of music, I would usually pan the high hats to one side. However, in trap, high hats are very important part of the music. So I'd recommend leaving it in the center. So now we've narrowed down a few parts, I'm just going to pan some of the other percussion. One thing to note, the pan control goes 0-50. 50 r is all the way to the right. 50 L is all the way to the left, and if you double click, you can set it back central once again. Okay. Okay, so having those parts panned out to the sides can help give a bit more interest and leave a bit more space in the middle for the central parts. So let's just listen back with the rest of the track. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for. One thing you may notice. See how the Macca part seems to stick out of the mix quite a lot now. This can sometimes happen when you apply panning. So if this is the case, just go back and adjust your levels once again. When you got a dream, you got to keep for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it, even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press you got to live. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle. Okay, I think that sounds a bit more appropriate now. Now, another tip for when panning. What can work quite well is panning things in pairs. So if you have two parts that take up similar areas in the frequency spectrum, you could pan those left and right. For example, we have these two different guitar parts in the brake section here. And it might sound nice panning them slightly left and slightly right. So, let's give that a go. I'm just going to do it from within the arrangement view this time. So when I look up to the stars daily. Men wash you not a star baby, but I got to wake up 'cause money don't sleep while you got your eyes closed, and I never go to sleep. 'Cause when they're chasing, I'm running in while they wait, and I'm a call it rain 'cause I'm spending an got patience on. So as these parts are vaguely similar, having one pan to the left and one pan to the right doesn't make the mix seem unbalanced. If one of these was way louder than the other, or one was much basier and the other was much brighter, this might not work so well. But as they are similar parts in the left and right speaker, it doesn't draw your attention to one side too much. So I've just soldered them both there. You got your eyes closed, and I never go to sleep, 'cause when they're chasing, I'm running while they're waiting, I'm a call it rain 'cause I'm spending an got patients on. See how the mix sounded quite a lot wider when we had those parts panned left and right. So again, I'm just going to put these back to 25 left and 25 right. Now, you may have noticed that I didn't pan these all way to the left or all the way to the right. This is because I want to make the chorus the widest section of the song. This is a common trick that people use when making chorus the biggest section of the track. So again, I'm going to find two parts that are similar in terms of frequency. So these two parts here, the peggio and the melody are both quite high parts. So, I feel like these will probably be a good pair to pan left and right. As I said before, I want to make the choruses the widest sections of the track. So I'm going to pan these all the way to the left and all the way to the right. That's where you're presa. Yeah. You got to live. You got to key. Okay, that sounds pretty good to me. Again, the track doesn't sound off balance. Now, something else we've not looked at yet is the vocals. So we've got our lead vocals for the chorus section here. But then we've got a number of backing vocals. So these two parts here are very similar. And so are these two. Let's just have a listen to them. I just want to know. I just want to blow. So these are pretty much a perfect pair. So I'm going to pan these to the left and to the right. And these two vocals at the bottom. I just want to know. Again, these are the same parts sung twice. So I'm going to pan them to left and right. Now, if you listen to this section. I just want everything in life, everything in. I just want everything in move. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to See there, we've got a lead vocal in the center keeping our focus in the middle. But then when we've got these harmonies, the pan left and right, giving the track a wide stereo image. Now, something I'd recommend you do is listen through to your whole track after you've made these panning decisions. Because at some points, there may be a section of your track which sounds unbalanced. So remember I panned that peggio and melody left and right earlier, because in the choruses, they're both playing at the same time. But if we go to this section here and listen back. So look to the star daily animals not a star baby, but I got to wake up Mm hm. The melody is playing on its own and it's panned all the way to the right. So this could be pushing the mix off balance. So in the sort situations, I'd recommend using automation. So I'm going to open up my automation lanes by pressing a, and I'm going to click on the pan control. Now we can adjust the panning with automation. So I'm going to click and drag to make a selection of the area I'd like to change. And I'm going to pull down this automation line and bring it close to the center. Let's have listen to that. While you got your eyes clothing. I never go to stave 'cause when they're chasing I'm bruning while they're waiting I'm hear call it rain 'cause I'm spending an got patients on. That's why you're funding. That's why I think I prefer it in the center like this. You can right click to edit the value to set it back to zero if you wish. So it's going to be central through the brake section and then pan for the rest of the track. Okay, we now have a good foundation for our mix. Most of the levels and panning seem appropriate. You can always go in and make changes to the volume and panning decisions anytime if you feel it's necessary. Sometimes when you start queuing, it may make certain parts stick out the mix, so you may need to adjust the levels. Thanks for watching. 40. Adding Audio Effect Plugins: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can add an audio effect plug in onto a track in Ableton Life. So, when mixing, you'll often want to use plug ins which need to be loaded onto a track. Plug ins are audio effects that can be many different things. For example, we have Qs, compressors, reverbs, distortion or delay. So each of these plug ins are audio effects. The audio signal from the track goes through any audio effect that I placed on a track, and this will change a sound depending on the type of plug in you've chosen. So it's really easy to add an audio effect to a track ableton. We just go to our browser and select audio effects. And here, we've got a list of the different types of effects that are available. So these folders contain different types of effect. In dynamics, we've got things such as compressors and gates. In drive and color, we've got saturation or distortion. I've got delays in delay and loop, and we've got reverbs down in this folder here. So, to choose one, simply find the type of effect you'd like to use and drag and drop it onto a track. So if I listen to this track now with an auto pan plug in loaded onto it, We could hear there the effects it's having on the signal. So you can load multiple plug ins onto a track. So I'm going to find compressor this time and drag it on. As you may be able to tell, you can actually change the order of the effects that you have loaded onto a track. One other thing to note. We cannot actually put an audio effect plug in before an instrument. This is because the instrument is turning the middy signal into audio. I am going delete one of these so you can do so by clicking on a plug in and pressing back space. Or you can right click and go down to delete. Now, one thing to note, you'll be able to see in the browser here, we have our folders with the different types of effects listed. And you may be able to see that we have a number of different presets for each of these effects. So, occasionally, you may want to use a preset rather than a plug in on its default setting. There's loads of different plug ins that come with Ableton, so I'd recommend going away and having a look at some of the ones that are available to you. I'm using Ableton Life Suite, so I may have more audio effect plug ins than you, but don't worry. Some of the plug ins that come with some of the more basic additions of Ableton are really good. And I'll be focusing on those for this section. See in the next video. 41. Using Groups: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you a handy feature before we start applying processing to our tracks. So what we're going to be looking at is using groups. Groups are really great way of organizing your tracks and speeding up your workflow when mixing. So I'm going to show this example on the backing vocal tracks. So what we can do is create a group for a number of different tracks. So I'm going to select all the tracks that I'd like to create a group for. So I'm going to click on this first backing vocal track here. Hold Shift and then click on the last one. Now, these four tracks are selected. Now, I just need to right click over here and go down to group tracks. You can also use the shortcut Command G. Now, notice this new track has appeared called group. So having tracks and groups allows us to do a number of things. Firstly, it keeps the session more organized as we can close down the different tracks into the group. So just by clicking on the group. But it also allows us to process these tracks together. So, for example, I could solo this group now. C. I just want to blow. I don't want to. So the audio signal is now coming out of these tracks, and instead of going straight to the master, like all of the other tracks, they are now going into this group before going to the master. What this means is you can now apply processing to all of these tracks at once. So you could apply plug in such as EQ or compression to the group, which means all of the tracks will be processed together. So if I wanted, I could just grab an EQ, drag and drop this onto the group. Now, any EQ changes I make will process these four tracks. Oh, I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life. You can rename and color your group just like other tracks. So I'm just going to right click, go down to rename and call this backing vocals. I give it a different color. So, this is an easy way to get a session nice and organized and can really help speed up the mixing process. I'd recommend doing this to similar parts. So, for example, I might want to group all of my harmonic parts together. So the lead guitar all the way up to this arpeggio part. So I've held shift, clicked on the top and bottom track. Now, when a right click. Go down to group tracks. Now we can close all of these harmonic parts down into our group. So I'm just going to rename this one Synthes. So, I wanted to now, I can solo just these parts. I just want everything. Okay, sir, it's just a handy feature. I wanted to show you. In the next video, I'm going to start looking at EQ. Thanks for watching. 42. Introduction to EQ: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to start looking at E Q. So, in case any of you, I have never used an EQ before, I'm just going to go over the very basics of what an EQ or equalizer does. So first of all, I'm going to go over to my browser and select an E Q. So I'll go to audio effects, EQ and filters and I'm going to choose Channel EQ. There are more advanced E Q, such as E Q eight, but Channel E Q is available on all versions, and it's more simple for beginners to understand. I'm not going to open up a preset. I'm just going to drag this plug in in in its default state. Just going to put it on my drums track for now. So this down here is a channel E Q plug in. So what an E Q allows you to do is increase or decrease the volume of certain frequency areas within an audio signal. So an example of an EQ that you've probably already used before would be the base or treble dial on a ipi or home sound system. So the Q on a ipi, you could either boost or cut set frequencies within your sound system. You'll probably know these as treble base and med controls. So Ableton Lives EQ works in a similar way, but gives you more control over the frequencies you're boosting or cutting. So I'm just going to solar my drums. Now, when I play this track back, you'll be able to see a visual representation of the audio that's going through the plug in. So the grade area was displaying the frequency range that we're hearing. Now, let's have a look at some of the controls. You'll be able to see down here, we've got a low amid and a high band control. You can use these to increase or decrease a gain of these frequency bands. So turning one of them down to the left will decrease and turning over to the right will increase. Double clicking will set it back to zero. So I'll just place something back and make some changes. Notice how it sounds a lot brighter now we've boosted the highs. And a lot darker when we've cut them. Now, let's look at the low band. Notice when I turn down the low band, the base of the kick drum is really being cut out. But notice there when I increase it, the base run becomes very powerful. So it's a low and high bands, and that's the only controls we have for those. You may notice above the mid band, we have a frequency control. So if I increase the mids now, and then click and drag this number, we can change the area that we're cutting or boosting. So I play that back so you can hear the difference. So as you can see there, you can really change the sound using this Q plug in. Now, another control we have is this one here. And what this is is a high pass filter. I'm going to set that back to zero. So all the high pass filter does is cut out the very lowest frequencies. So it's allowing the highs to pass and it's cutting. The difference might be quite subtle here, but you may be able tear it in the kick drum. If you're listening on headphones or a set of speakers, you should be able to hear the kick drum has lost some of its power. Now the final control we have in this EQ plugin is this output dial. All this does is adjust the volume coming out of the plug in. So sometimes, if you're adding lots of big boosts, the volume of a signal may increase quite a lot. So you can just bring down the overall level with the output dial. Again, if you add lots of cuts, you might need to increase the output. So, that's the Channel EQ plugin. In a future video, I'll be showing you how you can use this to improve the sound of your tracks. Thanks for watching. 43. Introduction to Compression Part 1: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you how the compressor works in Ableton Live. If you already understand how compression works, feel free to skip this video. Right. So I'm just going to load in the compressor plug in. You can find it under audio effects, dynamics. And then it's this top one here compressor. There are some other different types of compressors, but this one is available on all editions of Ableton Live, so I'll be demonstrating with this. So I'm not going to choose a preset. I'm just going to click and drag this onto my vocal track. So compression is used to reduce the dynamic range of an audio signal. So for example, in this song, we have some phrases in the lead vocal that are quieter than other sections. So let's play back this little section here. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, You may notice a couple of the words are louder than others. If you look at the waveform, we can see that. This word here is quite a lot louder than this word over here. So what we can do with compressor is reduce the amount of dynamic range and make the audio signal more consistent. Okay. So the first thing I'd recommend you do is change a view of the compressor to the collapsed view. That is with this icon here. This is just a good way to start getting your head around how a compressor works. So the first control that I'd like to talk about is the threshold. So the threshold determines the point at which the compressor will start to compress the signal. At the moment, the threshold is set to zero dB. This means the audio signal will only be compressed if it reaches zero dB. I'll just play back this phrase. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream. So, you may have noticed, we're not actually getting any gain reduction. Gain reduction is displayed on this meter down here. So, the audio signal was never actually reaching the threshold. I'll pull this threshold down to about -30 and play it back once again. So to adjust the threshold, just simply click on this little arrow and drag it down. Right? I'll play it back once more. Yeah. Uh. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. So as you may have noticed there, you could actually see we're getting a good few desk bells of game reduction in this meter here. The number at the bottom shows us how much game reduction we're actually getting. Yeah, uh. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. So, we're getting up to around eight or nine desplls of game reduction there. So, the threshold is being reached almost at all times. You may have also noticed the audio signal is now quieter. Yeah, uh. When you got to dream. Yeah, When you got to dream. So, that's because this compressor is turning down the volume of the vocal. If I pull the threshold all the way down to minus infinity, Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to key. Absolutely, every bit of this audio signal is exceeding the threshold. So we're getting game reduction at all times. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is the ratio. So what the ratio does is determine how much game reduction is applied once the threshold has been reached. So at the moment, with a ratio of four to one for every four Desbels that exceeds the threshold, only one will be allowed through. If we change this to a ratio of two to one, For every two desplls that exceed the threshold, only one will be allowed through. So the higher the ratio, the more extreme the compression is. If it went down to a ratio of one to one, We wouldn't actually get any game reduction. As for every desk bell that exceeds the threshold, one will be allowed through. Even the threshold, all the way down to minus infinity. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to. We're not actually getting any game reduction. Now, if I increase the ratio, you'll start to see we're getting more game reduction. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing. So we could barely hear anything there with the really extreme ratio and really extreme threshold. I'll just set this back to the default. So just to reiterate, the threshold determines the point at which compression is applied, and the ratio determines how severe the compression is going to be. Now, the next thing I'd like to look at is the output gain. So that's this control here. So what this does is allows you to compensate for the game reduction that the compressor has applied to the audio signal. So I'll set this to about -31 again and play the section back. Yeah, uh When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it, even when the road blocks. If I bypass the compressor with this orange icon here? Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing. You'll notice there that the audio signal is quite a lot quieter when the compressor is active. And that's because all it's done so far is reduce the volume of the loudest peaks. So what we can do with the output gain is balance it back out. So the loudest points will become quieter. Then when we turn up the volume, the volume of everything will come up, reducing the dynamic range and increasing the volume of the quietest sections. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come. Yeah. You may notice now the audio signal seems a lot more consistent. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for a. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got when applying gain, we want the track to be at around the same volume as it was before the compression was applied. If you look at your gain reduction meter, you can work out roughly how much output gain to add. So the general rule of thumb I like to use is look at the maximum amount of gain reduction that has been applied, then half this number and increase the output gain by that amount. Yeah, uh. When you got to dream, you got to keep going for it. So we're getting about 13 D bells again reduction at most. So I'll try increasing it by around six or seven D B. Yeah, uh. When you got to dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come, even when it gets hard. That's when you're pressing. You got to live love. You got to keep climbing. So as you hear when I play that back, the vocal sounds a lot more consistent. The quieter sections have been brought up, and the loudest words are no longer sticking out as much. If we listen to that with the mix as well? Yeah. When you got it. You got to keep it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Deep when the broad blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press arder you got to live up. You got to keep climbing, get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because the view different. Man, I push because I'm built different. That's the main controls. You need to get your head around and working with the compressor at first. In the next video, I'm going to look at some of the other controls we have in this compressor plug in. Thanks for watching. 44. Introduction to Compression Part 2: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to continue looking at some of the controls we have on this compressor. So the next two important controls that I'm going to look at are the attack and the release. I'm just going to load a compressor onto my drums track now for this example. So I'm going to delete this plug in on my vocal track by selecting it and pressing back space. And now I'm going to drag and drop the compressor onto this drums track. So, first of all, let's look at the attack. The attack is how long it takes the compressor to compress the audio signal once it has exceeded the threshold. I'm going to go back to this original view and pull down the threshold, so we're getting a lot of game reduction. I'll just solar the drums, too. Okay, so as you can see there, we're getting a fair amount of game reduction. About 11 decibels. Now, if I change the attack time, so it's much slower, let's go all the way round to 1 second and play back. You'll be able to see there, we're getting far less game reduction. Also, listen to how different it sounds. With a very slow attack time, we're hardly getting any game reduction because the drum hits are not over the threshold for long enough to be compressed. With a fast attack time, as soon as the drum hit reaches the threshold, the compression is applied. But with the slower attack time, the audio signal isn't over the threshold for long enough to really get any game reduction. Now, I'm just going to swap over to the activity view to show another example. So this is just another way to view the compressor. Instead of seeing a game reduction as a bar, the game reduction will be displayed with this orange line here. So I'll set the attack back to default and play some audio. So as we could see there, the downward spikes were showing the game reduction we were getting on each drum hit. So we're getting quite sharp spikes here. Now, I'll adjust the attack time while playing back. So with a much slower tack time, we're not really clamping down on any of those transients. They're being allowed to pass through the compressor unaffected. I'm just going to load the compressor onto the vocal track once again to show another example. This time, I'm going to pull down the threshold from this control here. So we can see that blue line there displays our threshold. I'm just going to solo the vocal once again. And reduce the attack time, so it's really fast. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for a. Notice how the game reduction appears quite spiky. Now, if I slow it down. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for a. You see that we're still getting some compression, but there's quite a big delay on how long it takes us to reach maximum gain reduction. So the faster the attack, the more the transience we clamp down by the compressor. Right. The next thing I want to talk about is release. So I'm going to go back to my drum track once again and show you some examples in this display. So the release is how long it takes to stop compressing the audio signal once it's fallen below the threshold. So I'm going to set my attack so it's reasonably fast, and then just play back this audio. Yeah. I'll just make sure I've sold my drums again. So as we can see there, the line is moving up quite quickly until we had no game reduction once again. Now, if I slow down the release time, You can see there that orange line was never actually reaching zero dB. So there was compression being applied at all times. This is because the release time is so slow that the still gain reduction when the next transient plays. Listen to how different it sounds with slow and fast release. We a really slow release, the audio signal just seems much quieter. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is this auto control here. So this disables the release dial and will automatically adjust the release time depending on the audio signal that's going through the compressor. So if you're a complete beginner, I'd recommend just leaving the auto release on until you get your head round the other controls. So no matter what the release time is, if auto is set, the compressor will determine its release time automatically. So that's a brief introduction into how a compressor works. It can be quite overwhelming at first. So for this reason, I'm not going to go over any of the other controls at the moment. You'll still be able to greatly improve how you track sound by just using a threshold ratio attack and release controls. In a later video, I'll be showing how to use a compressor in action so you can learn how to use appropriate settings when using compressor. Thanks for watching. 45. EQ and Compression in Practice Part 1: Hi, there. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can start improving the sound of your track using EQ and compression. So the first thing I'm going to do is apply some Q to the lead vocal. So I'm going to go to EQ and Filters, channel EQ and drag and drop this onto this track. Now, the first thing I'd recommend you do when you're mixing your vocals is apply the high pass filter. So this just cut out the lowest frequencies which we don't need for a voice. Now let's have listen back and see what else's vocal might need. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it, even when the road blocks. Now, one thing you might notice is this vocal doesn't sound particularly present. As in, it's not really poking out the mix at all, and it's a little bit hard to understand. Something we can do to fix this is boost the high frequencies. So I'm going to play back and increase the high frequency band. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it, even when the road blocks come, even when it gets. That's when you're press. Yeah. You may be able to notice that the vocal is now a lot more present and is cutting through the mix. I'm just going to solo it for a second, see how it sounds. Yeah, uh. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for. Okay, so now we've boosted the treble. The vocal actually sounds quite thin. So it might boost the low frequencies just a little bit. Yeah. Uh. When you got a dream, you got a key going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for. Even when the road blocks come. Even when it gets hot, that's when you're pressing harder. So I'm just bypassing the plug in now to listen to the difference that the EQ is making. Yeah. Uh. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come, even when it gets hot. That's when you're press harder. You got to live up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because the. So now, the voice sounds a bit more powerful, and it's a lot more upfront with that high frequency boost. Again, let's check this, see how it sounds in the mix. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press Sara. Yeah. You got to live love. You got to keep climbing, get your hustle up. Okay, that sounds pretty good to me. But we've still got one more band of EQ, this mid band. What I'm going to do this time is just boost and cut in different areas of the frequency spectrum to see if anything makes a vocal sound a bit better. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets. That's when you're. You got to live up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because a few diff push because I'm bill differ. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the broad blocks come even when it gets hard. That's when you press Sara you got to live up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because the few diff push day because of bill differ. So there, I've put a very slight cut in the high frequencies at 7.5 kilohertz. So, as I've made the voice quite a lot brighter, it was sounding a little bit harsh. And this subtle cut here has helped to balance it out. The voice still sounds nice and pleasant, but it doesn't have that same harshness. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come when it gets hard. That's when you're press sar you got to live. Okay, it's a subtle difference, but it's certainly a good start. Next, I'm going to look at using compression. So I'm just going to open up my dynamics and choose compressor. Again, I like to use the collapse view when looking at this compressor as it's the most simple view. Now, as I mentioned before, if you're a complete beginner, I'd recommend just using the auto feature for the release. This just helps reduce the amount of decisions that you have to make at first. When choosing a ratio, I'll look at how dynamic the part is. If it's really, really dynamic, I'll tend to use a higher ratio. But if there's not a huge amount of dynamic variation, I'd use a lower ratio. So a high ratio, I'd consider anything from about five upwards and a low ratio, anything below three. So this vocal isn't extremely dynamic. So ratio of four to one should be fine. Generally, you'll be able to get away with using ratio of about four to one for vocals almost all of the time. Now, let's start playing back the vocal and reduce the threshold so we're getting some game reduction. With the lead vocal like this, I'd never really want to get more than about ten deplls of game reduction because that's quite heavy compression. Somewhere up to around six to eight desplls should be optimum. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the bro blocks come even when it gets high. That's where you presa you got to level up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the topic a few mit So, once again, our vocal is much quieter now, so let's increase the output gain to level it out. Yeah. When you got to dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press Sara. Yeah. You got to level up. You got to keep climb, get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because the view different. Men are pushed day because of but different. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press Sara. Yeah. So there was fine tuning the threshold. So, on average, we're getting around six desplls of game reduction. This is usually a good starting point when mixing a vocal. Again, I was just adjusting the output gain and bypassing the plug in to make sure we're at a similar level to before. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for. Even when the road blocks come deeper. Listen to the difference that it makes when it bypass and re engage these two plug ins. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for. Even when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's when you press. You got to live love. You got to keep climb, get your hussle up. See, within just a few minutes, we've managed to get the vocal sounding a lot more upfront and clear. So I've only done this very quickly. It's not a perfect mix of the vocal, but it's a good starting point. Next, let's start doing this to some of the other tracks. This time, I want to apply some processing to the backing vocal group. So I'm going to apply compressor and drag it onto this group. You notice here, I already had an Q which I had added previously. I'll just delete this and show you again from scratch. So I'm going to go to audio effects, Q and Filters and choose Channel EQ. Right, let's listen to a section where all of these backing vocals are playing. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life, everything in life. So first of all, I'm going to work with the compressor. So let's go back to the collapse view and pull down our threshold. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life, everything in life. These vocals are quite quiet in comparison to the lead vocal. So I'm having to pull the threshold a lot lower. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life. Everything in life. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life. Everything in life. Okay, it might be a touch too much output gain, but these vocals now sound a lot more consistent. Again, the ratio I'm going to use is four to one, and I'm going to change the release time to Auto. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. Something you might want to do with the vocal is actually slow down the attack time slightly. So I'll try something around ten milliseconds. If the attack time is too short, it can clamp down on the transient and take the life out of a vocal. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life. See there, the vocal sounds a little bit more natural with a slower attack time. Again, this is something I could do with my lead vocal. So I'm going to solo this and see if it makes positive difference, changing the attack time. Oh. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come. Even when it gets hot. That's when you're pressing harder. Yeah. You got to live up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm trying to get to the top because the few different. Man, I push day because I'm built different. If you're just learning about compression, you may struggle to hear the subtle differences between fast and medium attack time. So, if you're not sure where to start, I'd recommend staying between about five and ten milliseconds. This will work for most audio sources. As you train your ears and your skills improve, you want to fine tune the attack and release times more carefully. But as I say, as a beginner, I'd stick to something between around five and ten milliseconds. Alight, let's go back to the backing vocals and apply some E Q. I just want to know. I just want to know. Once again, we can cut out some of the low frequencies. I'm also going to give them a bit of a boost in the highs. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything in life, everything in life. Now, you see here, I've made a cut around 200 hertz. So what this is doing is clearing out some of the low mid frequencies to allow more space for the lead vocal in the chorus. Again, I could even reduce the low frequencies a bit to make these backing vocals sound a bit thinner. At the moment, we've got four different vocals, so the low frequencies are really going to build up and start making the mix sound a bit messy. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to blow. I just want to know. I just want everything everything. I just want everything in. I just want to know. I want to know. Now, listening back with the rest of the mix, I feel like these vocals sound a bit too thin. So I'm going to reduce that low frequency cut, and I'm going to reduce the boost in the highs a little bit. All right, let's listen back again. That's what you want to know I want to know. I just want. Okay, that's sounding a bit better, but I'm just going to turn up the volume of all the vocals just a little bit. So this time, I'm just going to turn up the volume of the backing vocals group. I'll just turn this up by about 2 decibels. That's what you have. Okay, great. Now what I'm going to do is just copy the settings that we had on our lead vocals from the verse onto our chorus vocals. Doing so is really easy. It's going to right click on the Channel EQ and select Copy. Then go to this vocal part. Right click and select Paste. Now I'll do the same with the compressor, right click copy and then paste. Let's have listen to this section now. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want everything in life, everything in life. I just want everything. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want everything in life, everything in life. I just want everything. Yeah. When you got to dream, you got to keep going for Okay, the tracks now starting to sound quite a bit better. I've only applied basic EQ and compression to the vocals. There's still a lot more that can be done. So in the next video, I'm just going to apply some processing to some of the other parts. Thanks for watching. 46. EQ and Compression in Practice Part 2: Hi there. In this video, I'm just going to give you a couple more examples of using Q and compression in a mix. The next thing I'm going to do is apply some Q to some of our synths. One thing you may notice, when we listen back to this song, it still sounds a bit messy. So there's quite a lot of low mid frequency energy, which is making it sound a bit muddy. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it even when the road blocks it. So what I'm going to do now is apply an EQ to the synth group to try and get a bit more clarity in the mix. So I'll go to Q and filters and drag and drop channel Q on the synth group. So once again, this group is the output for all of these different synth instruments. So if we look at all the instruments in the group, you can see the track output is going to synths. Whereas, the bass and drums, for example, are going straight to the master. So this means the audio signal is going from these tracks into this and then to the master. So any processing you apply to this group will affect each of the tracks in the group. So to add a bit of clarity, what I'm going to do is reduce some of the low frequencies. Our base parts are not in the synths group, so we don't need to worry about cutting out the low frequencies of our base. So first thing I'm going to do is add this high pass filter. So that's just going to cut out the really low frequencies. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to There's not a massive amount of really low frequency content in these parts. So the next so I'm going to do is make a bit more of a cut with this low band. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come even when it gets high. That's when you press up. So right now, we're reducing those low frequencies. But when we're listening to the whole mix, we can barely hear a difference. Let's solo them for a moment. It's subtly cleaning up these parts. But again, it's not made it sound too thin, so I'm going to reduce the lows even more. Next I'm going to do is reduce the low mid area with this mid dial. So I'm going to find the frequency area, which I think sounds messy. Okay, there does seem to be a lot of energy around here. So I'm just going to cut it by a few Desels. So, you can probably hear there. The difference is quite subtle, but it's just helping clear up these tracks. I'm going to add a high boost, just a couple of death bells, though, to make them sound a little brighter. I don't want to be boosting the highs too much as otherwise, we'll start to bury the vocals behind the other parts. Right, let's listen to the home. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come even when it gets high. That's when you Okay, the difference is subtle, but it's starting to sound a bit clearer. Let's now apply some compression to this group. This helps to bring up the quietest parts of our different instruments. Again, I'm going to reduce the threshold. This time, I only want a few death bells of game reduction. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come even when they. Something else I'm going to do this time is ease off on the attack slightly. So I'm going to have a slur attack around 30 milliseconds. I just want to apply gentle compression to all of these parts. Nothing's really sticking out of the mix is just going to help glue them together. Again, I'll put release on auto mode so we don't have to worry about that for the moment. With the ratio, I'm going to bring it down to about three to one. As I said, we just want quite subtle compression. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it, even when the broad blocks come even when it gets hot. I just want to know. I just want everything in everything. I just want everything. I just want to know. I just want to know. I feel like the lead guitar part is sticking out of the mix a bit too much as it's quite loud. So I'm going to turn down the volume by a couple of death bells. I just want to know. I just want everything in life. I just want everything in. Yeah. When you got a dream, you got to keep doing for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it deep when the roll blocks come deeper when it gets. That's when you're presa. Yeah. So now after I've started making some changes, I've realized certain parts need the volumes adjusting. So it's perfectly normal to go back and make changes to the levels of your different tracks. The lead vocal just seemed far too loud now. So, this is by no means a perfect mix. But as you can see, you can quickly start making it sound better by just using EQ and compression. There are many other processes that we can use when mixing, but I'd recommend going away and practice using compressors and Qs to build your confidence. I hope you found this video useful. 47. Using The Default Reverb Send: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to very quickly show you how to use reverb enable to life. So, earlier in this class, you may have seen me adjusting one of these sends. So this send on the left by default is a reverb send. And this one here on the right is a delay. So let me just explain what a send is. I'll go back to the session view. If we look at one of our tracks here, for example, the lead vocal, we can see here we've got our two sens, A and B. So they're represented as dials in the session view, and they're just little boxes in the arrangement view. What we can do is actually send some of this audio signal to one of our sens. So here we have our reverb send and our delay send. So, at the moment, we've got reverb plug in on this channel and a delay on this channel. So, if I send some of my vocal to this channel, we'll just be blending in some reverb with this track. I'll solo it and let you see. So we'll start off with no reverb. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come, even when it gets hot. That's when you're pressing. You got to live. So, as you can hear there, as I increased it, the vocal seems to have a sense of space. This is really important when mixing. So we can really quickly send some of our tracks to a reverb. This will just help the mix sound a little bit more exciting. You don't want to go crazy with this and apply loads of reverb to every part, but a little bit on certain parts can make them sound much nicer. Firstly, I'll start with the vocals. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, you got to keep pushing for it. Even when the road blocks come even when it gets hot. That's when you press. Yeah You got to let up. You got to keep climb. Get your hussle. I'm trying to get to the top because a few different men So, a general rule of thumb when applying reverb is turn it up until you can hear the reverb and it starts to sound quite nice and then turn it down a bit. It's very easy to get carried away as adding reverb to a part tends to make it sound nicer. But as you add reverb to more and more parts, your song will start sound messier and messier. I'm just going to add some reverb to the chorus vocals. So this time, I'm going to use a send in the arrangement view. I can turn it up to around the same point as the other one, so it's about -15. I'm just going to add some reverb to the backing vocals. But this time, I'll use the group. So this will be applying reverb to all four of these channels at once. That's what I want. I just want to. I just want everything. I just I just want to. See all the vocals seem to be sitting in the mix a little better. Okay, now, I'm going to quickly over look at our reverb. So I'm going to click on our reverb track down here. And down at the bottom, we have this reverb plug in. So as you can see, this reverb plugin can be a bit intimidating. I'm only going to go over one of the main controls for the moment. See here we have our decay time. So with this, we can control how long our reverb is. So I'll just solo our lead vocal. Now, when I play it back. That's why you're filing nerve. You can hear the reverb bringing on for a little while after the vocal stops. That's why you're fiing nerve. If I increase this. That's why you're filing nerve. You can hear a reverb bringing out for ages. That can be great as a creative effect. But if you're trying to sit the vocals within a mix, I'd recommend using a reasonably short decay time around 1.5 seconds. That's why you're falling off. You can often get away with adding a touch more reverb if the decay time is quite short. Right, let's just have listen to our mix as it is. When you got a dream, you got to keep going for it. When you got a dream, pushing for deeper when the road blocks come deeper when it gets hard. That's where you press der you got to live up. You got to keep climbing. Get your hustle up. I'm. Okay, great. It's not a finish mix, but it's definitely starting to sound a little better. As you can see there, just taking these simple steps, you can really start to improve how your song sound. Thanks for watching. 48. Class Project / Outro: Hi there. I hope you've enjoyed this class and you now have a good understanding of how to create music enable to life. There's still a lot to learn, but you should now be comfortable navigating away around the software. For this class project, I'd like you to create a song using the techniques that I've taught you. If you feel confident, please go away and create your own song. However, if you like, just try to recreate the song and do a mix of your own. When you're finished, upload a link of your song in the resources page of this class. Thanks for watching.