Music Production in Ableton Live: Learn How to Make and Use Sound Effects

1. Introduction to Sound Effects: Sound effects are the newest addition to the musical family. Sound effects can bring instant visual emotion to a piece of music. And adding the right sound effect can bring your track up to a professional level. That's why in this class, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about sound effects. From the different sounds available to making your own custom sounds, you'll always know the right sound to use. I'm Benza Maman. I have a degree in music composition, and I've been working behind the scenes in the music industry since 2010. I've written and produced songs for countless artists, and I've had the privilege to work with the writers and producers of artists like Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Luke Combs, and Many More. Recently, I've even got millions of streams, views, and some viral videos of my own. And I can't wait to share this decade of knowledge with you. In this class, you'll learn how to make and use sound effects in Ableton Live. We'll cover texture sounds that add instant nostalgia to a piece of music. Think of the vinyl cracks or the sound of rain in ofi, for example. To risers, sweeps and effects that helped guide the energy arc to a dance song or a pop song. Sound effects have become a staple in modern music. Get left behind. This class is designed to equip you with the tools and knowledge to take your music to the next level. Whether you're just starting out or trying to refine your skills, I'm here to guide you every step of the way. And don't worry. We'll keep engaging and straightforward with plenty of practical tips that you can apply right away. I use Ableton Live, but the tools and techniques that I teach in this class can be applied to any music production software. The assignment for this class is to follow along and add sound effects and textures to one of your songs. So if you're ready to explore the world of sound effects, then let's jump right in and get started. 2. Sound Effects Demystified: Welcome to the sound effects chapter. So this chapter is all about sound effects. And the logical place to start with that is what are sound effects? So let's dive in to sound effects. What are sound effects? Well, there are sounds that aren't music that help tell the story. And when I say aren't music, I mean, music goal. They're not necessarily like an A chord or a C chord. There are different kinds of sounds that common, most common in electronic music, but do date back to the Beatles. They can be sweeps, risers, impacts, ambience textures, crowd noises, the sound of a cafe or something, and more. So the most common sound effect is usually in electronic music right during a build. And that could be a sound like this. Or like this. Or like this. There are plenty of different kinds of sound effects, and in this chapter, we're gonna be exploring all of them. 3. Sweeps and Risers: Elevate Your Transitions: Let's talk about sweeps and risers. So sweeps and risers, those are really interchangeable terms. Some people call them sweeps. Some people call them risers. To me, it makes sense to call a sound that's going up a riser. So that's what I tend to do, although I do use these terms interchangeably. The purpose of either is sounds that build and release tension to help accentuate a part and help the listener know, Oh, this is a part that's building. That's why a lot of dance music will do it at the build part right before drop. And then it kind of at the drop to help the exhale, the release of tension. Most commonly sound effects are samples, but you can make your own. So let's dive in. There are all different kinds of sweeps and risers. So here we have a song, and we're going to audition some different sweeps and risers for this song. So, here is a laser sound effect. Dion So this is kind of like a oh it's kind of got a falling laser type feeling. Diaz So, this might be a sound that you would actually want at the downbeat. So I'm turning off the grid, and then this might sound good here. You'll turn it up. Oh, I started even later then. Hey. So that's a kind of descending sound. Let's listen to this. This is a very quick sweep slash riser thing. And also, sometimes I will call a sound like this a sweep just because that's kind of what it sounds like to me. So this is the add tension right before the song drops. Let's try this sound. Similar effect, but a longer start. Let's try this sound. I might call this more of a riser, because this has a rising feel to it. Here we have this sound. Die It's kind of an extreme sound I probably wouldn't really use, but just showing you the wide variety and possibility that we have here. And sometimes you might layer, like, a really long one with a short one. This one do you want. Listen to this. So that was a whole bunch of different samples that I got from some sample packs that are risers, that are sweeps, that are building in tension. And like I've said many times, very common in electronic dance music. You can have the falling down, the release of the breath at the drop. So this is kind of like an exhale from this sort of inhale that we're creating with this sound. Turn this up. With this first laser sound we also had could maybe be paired with something that's rising. So it kind of has like a, you know, like tension rises and then releases. And that's really what we're doing. We're just accentuating what's already happening, 'cause if we turn these off, the song is naturally rising in tension here and releasing that tension at the drop. So we're accentuating something that the music is already doing, which is usually where you want to be with these kinds of sounds. We have all sorts of sweep downs here that we'll audition. Let's say you have a really cool sweep up that you like. We like this short one, and maybe we like this long one, and you can listen to these sweep downs. Sometimes the length of the exhale, the length of the sweep down helps it feel more epic. And you can have some weirder sounds. And that song is actually kind of cool. I would probably want it way more discreet in the song, so not as loud, but it adds a really cool character to that moment. That's a quick overview of the most common sound effects that I tend to use, which are these sweeps and riser variety. I said that they are mostly samples in those examples, but that you can make your own, and we will dive into that in a later lesson. 4. Musical White Noise: Now we're going to talk about musical white noise. White noise. Why? White noise? Well, let's dive right in. So white noise. Yes, we're adding literal noise to the music, and I'll show you why. You can make your track sound full. It can be added to a scenth to give it some texture. You can add it to a sample. It can be added as a sample or a separate synth. It's usually meant to be felt and not heard, but white noise can really add a lot of dimension and character to a song. You can also do the classic white noise side chain to enhance your groove. So let's jump over and listen to what is white noise. Well, this is it. Data, white noise. So why would you want that? Well, it really fills up the space. So you probably wouldn't want it this loud, but listen to what it does to this track when it's quieter. Do It just gives the feeling of the song being very full. So that's what's so cool about white noise is that you can use it to make your songs sound more full. You can also try this technique of side chaining with a compressor, the white noise to a kick drum that's off, which will sound like this. This just adds even more groove. And we've heard this in 1 billion house songs before, but we've heard this because it sounds good. So what we're doing, we're side chaining pretty heavily the white noise, which was just static to a kick drum. We've muted the kick drum so you're not hearing two kick drums, or you could just solo to the kick drum that's already in the song. And now suddenly, our white noise has a groove to it. And the groove is so it sort of will dance with the high because it's on that upbeat rhythm. Now we can pull this down in the mix. And it almost makes the song sound like it's breathing. So this is a really cool technique to enhance your groove and make a part feel more full. We can also use white noise to enhance a synth. So let's go ahead and drag in Instantive Operator. We're going to insert an empty Mini clip. We'll solo it. We're just going to actually go ahead and solo this whole section, and we're just going to play some chords. So we have our synth here. That sounds pretty cool. Let's go ahead and duplicate this and pull a new operator on the scene. Now what we're gonna do is we're actually going to select this white noise oscillator, and we're gonna layer that onto our sinth. That's just straight up noise. So that sounds crazy. Why would we ever want that? Well, okay, hear me out. Let's say these hits were a little shorter. And we'll copy this, paste it down into the white noise, and then we turn down the white noise. Now we're adding some character to the sound, which actually makes the sound stand out a little bit more. So adding a little bit of white noise is cool because it adds some character to your synth. So you could use white noise as a general layer to your whole song. You can use white noise as a layer with some groove, or you can use white noise to just enhance an existing synth to give it a little bit more character. 5. Impacts and Crashes: Add Drama to Your Track: This lesson is all about impacts. So let's talk about impacts. Crash symbols are the original impact. Back in the day with the band and there were no effects, and you just had a band, the drummer hitting a crash symbol was the impact because an impact is a big sound that comes in to, like, sort of announce an important part of the song. So it could come in at the beginning of the chorus or beginning of a breakdown or something where you're wanting the listener to know, this is important. So impact or crash. They're usually big layered samples to add impact using the downbeat of a drop or something. You can also add impact to the downbeat or the first beat of a chorus. It really makes that moment hit. So if you want something to stand out, that's the right time to use an impact. Let's listen to our song here and listen to some potential impacts. Let's listen to this sample. That's a huge sample. Let's listen to this one. This has, like, a little bit of a sweep to it and a slam to it. This is like a whole package. This one. That's more of a crash. And here's another crash. So let's listen to the impact that these impacts have in your song. Like the down sweep, it has that exhale, but it also has that well, impact to let you know that this is an important moment. This one has less of the sweep sound, just more of the hit sound. And you can hear how crass has a similar effect. So depending on the genre that you're working in, you may or may not want to use a crash. If it's a more indie organic sound. You might want to be more of a crash kind of thing. If you have more of an electronic sound, maybe you do want these layered hits. Or maybe you're doing an indie song that does want this layer basi hit, and maybe you're doing a house song, Dan song that wants those crashes. There's no rules, but you can see the variety of impacts available to you. You can make your own impacts by just layering a bunch of sounds all themselves, you know? You can layer different drum hits together, a kick drum, and a tom drum, and a crass all together. And that's what these samples really are. It's nice to use already crafted samples that already sound good, because then you're like, Okay, somebody already took the time to layer a bunch of sounds together, and they sound pretty good. But you can make them yourself if you want to take the time to layer maybe a synthet with, like, a drum and a crash or maybe you don't want a synth because you don't want to tie it to any, like, sort of melody or harmony at all. That's totally fine. And you can have some fun designing your own impacts. 6. Textures: Create Rich Sonic Landscapes: Important not to overlook textures. So this lesson is all about textures. A live band recording has natural texture from being in an actual room and the mics that are recording the band picking up what's happening in the room. Maybe the drummer is moving around in their seat or maybe the bass player kicked something or is, like, touching their base or, you know, it's a real room with human beings and things happen, and we like that. We like the little imperfections and the textures and the realness. So ofi music has actually even gone on to adapt a lot of vinyl crack in the music as a soothing, kind of imperfect texture that they like. Can add just straight up room tone. You can record the sound of an empty room and put that on your song, just in case your song is, like, totally electronic, but it still has that live room feel because you can hear some qualities to it, and it's nice to have that. Nature textures are great. You can have crunching leaves, waves, whooshing, firecrackers, wind, all sorts of things. You can even use the ambience of, like, a cafe or people walking in the street or kids laughing. There's a lot you can use textures to really help paint a sonic picture for the listener. Let's go ahead and listen to some textures. Is there some vinyl crack, with some talking? Here. This is like a pipe or something. Here's a restaurant says Spanish restaurant atmosphere. Burns. And let's go ahead and add these in the song and see how it sounds. This is nice. Awesome. That's pretty nice. I think that's a great addition. Let's listen to this one. Awesome. And, you know, that's pretty cool, too, because it's adding, like, some movement and some dimension to this. You don't really know what you're hearing, but it's got a cool feel to it. So I think both of these sound great. Awesome. Awesome. Subjectively, I think the first two sounded better than this one, but you can hear how adding this restaurant and people moving around is adding a complete vibe to the song. I listen to these birds? Bring up the winners. Awesome. Awesome. So that sounded really good. They were obviously way too loud. But you can hear how adding some subtle textures to your song adds so much dimension. Usually you want the textures pretty quiet in the song, more of like a Did you really hear that kind of moment, but sometimes you want them loud. And I really like textures. This is one of my favorite things about Lo fi music is their incorporation of textures. And I'm hearing more and more all genres of music just embracing the sound of textures. And I love the dimension that the perfect texture can add to a song. 7. Interesting One Shots: Captivate with Unique Sounds: Can't talk about sound effects without talking about one shots. So let's dive into one shots. Interesting one shots. Well, there's Syth bleeps. There's Syth blips. They're unique samples. World sounds. Billy Ils used the sound of her dentist, I believe in Barrier Friend, which is, like, some buzzing sound that she heard in the dentist office. There are sample packs. You have a lonely percussion hit, maybe, some vocals, some weird sounds. It's cool to add something unique to your song. So let's listen to some one shots. We got this sound. That's just like a tambourine. Bug. And that's like a weird vocal. So it's cool when you maybe want to throw your tambourine in a big old Raver. So let's listen to what this sounds like. Boss. Boss. It's not totally in key. So this one we're like, Where does this want to be? Boss. Or maybe you want the lower sound version of it. Aah. Aah. It's just, like, a one effect, like this moment. Like, you hear he? Aah. **** going So it's cool to have these, like, character moments where you're like, What was that? And it's like this one thing that happens one time in the song really catches your ear, and it makes you almost want to listen to the song again just to see what that was that you heard. So it's cool to have these unique little one shots sometimes in the song. You could try this tambourine. Okay. And that sounds pretty good. But what would it sound like in a big old reaver? Let's find out. That's a whole nother vibe, right? This one. Well, that actually layered on top, and that was way too much. Or maybe you want to have, like, a big delay on this or something. So it's cool to have these interesting moments in your songs. You obviously want to have some intention around. It's like, Oh, I don't want to just, like, put some random one shot in a random place. But it's cool if you're like, Okay, we're gonna have this breakdown, and on the downbeat of the breakdown, we're gonna throw in a tambourine hit with a lot of delay, and that's just kind of kind of echo out and give a semblance of vibe or maybe, like, a one shot vocal chop thing and just unique sounds, too. Like, go outside with your iPhone and, like, record the sounds in your actual life in your actual surroundings. And throw a little bit of that in there. Maybe you got a little bit of gravel sound that you can just, like, put in, like, the verse somewhere. It's like, the more unique to you, the sounds are, the better it's going to impact your song, and the better they're going to integrate into your music. 8. Sound Design: Shape Your Audio Identity: What you're thinking. I keep saying we can make your own effects. Well, this is the lesson where we're going to do that. Sound design. We're going to make sweeps, risers, white noise, textures, one shots. You can do it all. Right here in Ableton. So let's go ahead and pull up operator. We have operator here, and we're on this noise white noise wave. So that's what it sounds like. And there you go. We're done. We men an effect. Just kidding. So here we have our white noise. What I've done is you want to turn on this filter. And let's go ahead and show the automation because what I've done here is I'm moving down the filter cut off point, which is creating some movement with our white noise. And the higher our resonance, the more we're gonna hear this. Who. And that's kind of how you make effects. You, maybe turn this resonance way up and have this thing going up and we'll just turn this volume down so it doesn't peak. Who. Maybe you just want a steady rising sound. There's nothing wrong with that, you'll just do this, boom, turn this off off, off and have this be one long rising journey. Or, of course, the exact opposite. Spending some time with the white noise and the filter, and you can change the envelope and the Pitts envelope. This is how you start getting some interesting effects. Alpo. This is really how you can create your own custom sound effects. Making sound effects is the most freeing form of sound design because there's really no gold in mind. You're just trying to make some sound at all. So it's not like, Oh, is this a cool synth, compare it to a different synth that you've heard. It's just like this freeing space of creativity where you're like, What's the weirdest thing I can do? What's, like, the strangest thing I can possibly do to this sound? And then layer a whole bunch of random audio effects on it, too, you know? See what that sounds like? Put reverbs, lays and courses, whatever you want. This is the right time to just go completely experiment crazy and see what kind of awesome sound effects you can come up with. 9. Learning Activity: Create Your Own Sound Effects: Congratulations making it to the end of the sound effects chapter. I have a quick little learning activity, so let's dive right in. Go ahead and open the audio effects learning activity, not the sound effects, but audio effects. So once you have that open, you're going to hear this beat. And the learning activity for you is to either nabton samples or to pull in an incensive operator and add some sound effects to this beat. You can add a riser at the end of the beat and a sweep down at the beginning of the beat. And just try making your own sound effects. Bonus points if you can go out and record some real textures in your actual environment. Like, go record some sounds in your house, bang something, go record outside your window, do something that's very unique to you and use that as a sample for some texture inside of this beat. And I will catch you in the next chapter. 10. Congratulations!: Congratulations on finishing this class. I am so proud of you and I can't wait to listen to your class project. You can say hi to me on Instagram or Spotify at Benza Maman. And if you like this class, please check out my other music classes on Skillshare.