willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Feb 27, 2010 02:01:15
Please, shoot me if there is a similar topic up already - the search feature has failed me yet again, though whose fault that is I am not sure.
I intend for this thread to be a repository of all levels of knowledge specifically for ableton specifically for psy trance - if you have a really basic technique that works well for you, post it! if you have a really advanced idea, post it!
I will start out with two tricks that are fairly basic but have an incredible impact, at least for me. The first one is blatantly stolen from Tom Cosm (and if you dont know his website and you use ableton, do yourself a favor and check it out)
Filter Delay trick - this adds a very small (1-10 MS works best for me) delay on your sound, your mind is not able to separate the delay from the original sound, and the primary effect of this is to give your sound more space, and on certain sounds it will slightly change the pitch. I pretty much throw it on anything that feels thin and weak. Takes all of 30 seconds to set up - add filter delay, change L and R delay to "Time" instead of Sync, and make them slightly different MS amounts (I usually do 1 MS and 10 MS), then drag the band pass filter so that the areas dont overlap much (or else you get unwanted feedback style stuff). Also remember to turn off the L+R middle channel.
CLIP MODULATION! I saw someone post this on the psymusic forum and I wasn't really sure what it meant until right now. What I *had* been doing was doing all my automation in the timeline arrangement view. For a different approach, double click on a midi clip, then in the lower left hand corner click the little "E" for envelope.
Now, in the envelope box thats opened up you have a couple of choices - I assumed that this was only useful for modulating the 3 big buttons - Pitch Bend, Pan, Volume. However, if you look above Pitch Bend there are two drop downs - top one is the machine that hosts all the parameters (for me, Ableton's Operator synth) and in the second dropdown select the parameter you want to modulate - made it much, much easier for me to automate a buildup in one of my leads. try it!
Will continue to update this post with fun things that I find and I encourage others to do the same!
geekhorde
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Feb 27, 2010 04:58
Adding a grain delay and two stacked beat repeats with subtle settings (I recommend starting with Microfillz or Semisubtle presets) is always fun for making a little glitchy madness. Do the unlinked envelope trick on the delay, feedback, wet/dry and pitch parameters of the grain delay. Resample. I do this sort of thing on my leads sometimes to spice things up.
Another trick I like: I group my bass and kick, then add an audio track with this chain of effects. First, a vocoder, set to enhance with noise as the carrier. Second, a bandpass filter set high in the freq range, with a long LFO on it, so it changes slowly. Third, a pingpong delay set to about 40 milliseconds, medium feedback and wet/dry settings, then another pingpong delay set to whatever setting seems best. Set the vocoder to receive audio from the kick/bass group. This makes very nice almost highhat like washes of sound.
willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Feb 27, 2010 07:35
Small break buildups:
Works best on pads and other sounds that have been in the background
chop a hole in your kick/bass a bar or two (or however long you want the break to be), then insert a frequency shifter on the things you want to accelerate
automate a rise in frequency from the beginning of the break to the end of the break, then have it drop back to normal. also can play with different LFOs on the frequency shifter for more interesting effects
creates a rise in energy, also can add emphasis to a lead sound if a prominent part plays inside the break
willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Feb 27, 2010 11:51
awesome video showing off analog making ridiculously cool formant/stretching sounds
willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Feb 28, 2010 00:23
Been experimenting with using sidechain compression on a return track for making cool one shots really rip through the mix...just insert compressor side chained to an FX track on a return, then automate that for really subtle ducking
willsanquil
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Posted : Feb 28, 2010 01:09
sideFXed
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Feb 28, 2010 12:10
what I like about ableton is the ability to take snap shots.
for example, look into chains and their automation with dummy clips. you can start up instantly really complex setups of effects, route them wherever you want anytime you want without interruption.
lemme try to give an example. It's really hard to control a complex effect like beat repeat or glitchy plugins you can find over the net. But if you get a nice effect going, you just drag it out to your templates folder in ableton. Drag it in again to a audio effect rack into a separate chain in every ableton track you created or create from now on... this gives you all these settings back. WOW, no reconfiguration, no rerouting if you stick to a certain buildup (track template)... and now the fun starts, twist them up and export the settings again. drag them back again... a simple sequencer just isn't capable of that.
now set up your midi-controller for these chains, some cc's controlled in realtime... it's so amazing to have everything you ever created (sound FX wise) back in every project you want.
try to route send effects back to a control group in cubase pre V 4... it's not possible. for example I like to route delays and reverbs as send effects, so in the actual tracks of the single synths I have a pretty dry signal to export. if you want to have send effects and run them through a filter, try that. it's so easy with ableton. it was hard with older versions of cubase. like controlling the volume of the synth and having that result on the effect chain in one go... headacke time before.
I think why I love ableton so much is because I've started with trackers. With trackers, every note on or note off information had the possibility to control ADSR and so much things on top very easily. This ability came back with ableton. When trying to do complex edits very quickly with other sequencers, I had to open this track, open this sub-editor and yadda yadda. These edits got locked to exactly this part of the sequence. (if you worked with separate midi tracks for midi automation, one could do that too, but it got messy real quick)
In Ableton, you create several midi tracks controlling the same synth. One contains the note, another controls the release of the notes or whatever you feel like. You can play these automationes on every sequence you created, disregarding the exact point of time in your composition. You can use the actual midi track or a dummy track, thinking of that, ableton never really intended this functionality!
I'm sure you can do that with every sequencer with the right amount of work. It just never came so fluently like I was used in a tracker (and ableton).
I really recommend shifting to a clip based setup, controlled by a grid controller like apc40 or novation launchpad. creation of music was never that intuitive. But frankly, lots of people made better sound with much more limited gear. it's just such a joy with ableton for me...
In the end, I realize - no actual tips in my post. But I really feel obligated to recommend everyone into looking into tracker based music creation and the fast-forward thinking of pattern based creation instead of the silly timeline everyone is so used. Use the piano roll - lots of nonse sence - but there's much to gain from sites like
meh, I can't find most of the links I've collected. Luckely they went by heart pretty quick
feel free to ask, I like to give my limited knowledge to anyone keen to demand soundcloud.com/epsylohm
Scolopendra
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Posted : Feb 28, 2010 14:20
Nice iniative for post! Interesting tips! Keep'em coming=)
willsanquil
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Posted : Mar 2, 2010 22:56
This technique has served me well when analyzing songs that I like and has taught me a good deal about arrangement/song structure:
Find the song you want to learn about, find the BPM, chuck it onto your timeline. Go through the song and label the major parts and transitions, breakdowns, lead 1 enters lead 2 blah blah
Once you're done w/ the general arrangement layout, time to get more specific - whats the bass pattern? Most of the time it is hard to discern the pattern from looking at a raw waveform, so put an auto filter or an EQ on the track, adjust it so that you can *only* hear the bass or whatever piece you are trying to analyze.
Freeze the track, create a new audio track underneath, copy the frozen body to the new audio track - presto chango your waveform now reflects only what was passing through the filter - most of the time the bass pattern will jump right out at you, or lead, or whatever
this is great because say you always liked this one lead, but it comes at you so fast its hard to see how many notes are in it. apply a band pass filter to the original waveform, zero in on the lead. freeze and bounce, now play just a bar or two at a time and look at the waveform - should be able to clearly see if its 16th or 32nd notes, etc...
willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Mar 2, 2010 22:57
oh the freeze bounce technique, if you didnt know....just freeze a track and if you copy that track and paste it into a audio track, you will get the processed waveform instead of the MIDI notes or whatever. Much more time efficient than changing the routing and recording into a new audio track. However, freezing doesn't work with side chain compression so :\
dija
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Mar 3, 2010 04:13
Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements.
antidentity
Started Topics :
7
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38
Posted : Mar 3, 2010 04:29
Quote:
CLIP MODULATION! I saw someone post this on the psymusic forum and I wasn't really sure what it meant until right now. What I *had* been doing was doing all my automation in the timeline arrangement view. For a different approach, double click on a midi clip, then in the lower left hand corner click the little "E" for envelope.
Now, in the envelope box thats opened up you have a couple of choices - I assumed that this was only useful for modulating the 3 big buttons - Pitch Bend, Pan, Volume. However, if you look above Pitch Bend there are two drop downs - top one is the machine that hosts all the parameters (for me, Ableton's Operator synth) and in the second dropdown select the parameter you want to modulate - made it much, much easier for me to automate a buildup in one of my leads. try it!
look up "dummy clips" on google. there is an ableton wiki all about dummy clips if you google it. dummy clips modulate anything you wan't on a clip, much like the envelope of the actual clip, only you can use many different dummy clips for one real clip, so its not just one envelope setting repeating over and over, and you can use the same dummy clip on any clip you want ore more than once at once etc. if clip modulation is an area of interest to you, dummy clips are you're best friend.
Zoopy
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Mar 3, 2010 04:35
Quote:
On 2010-03-03 04:20, fractal fields wrote:
A free tool to enhance workflow in ableton.
Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements.
This is only for Ableton 7 and hardly works on 8.
Axis Mundi
Axis Mundi
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Posted : Mar 3, 2010 05:43
Racks are my friend in Live 8. Especially with the APC40, you can create really complex macro knobs to automate the hell out of your instruments.
