Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi! My name is Amir Margalit, and today I'm going to give you a quick tour of Ableton Live 9's new features.
I'm going to show you how I make my musical ideas become a piece of music, and relatively- very fast.
So, let's get started!
Some people like to sing in the shower, I do not...
But I do some beatboxing and that's how I get some ideas for cool grooves.
So what I have here, is an audio track and an audio clip I recorded it as soon as I left the shower. Let's hear:
Okay, so what I'm doing is: right-click it and choose: "Convert Drums to New MIDI Track"
This action analyzes the audio information and turnes it into MIDI data,
as it differentiates between Kick, Snare, and HiHats, and even adjust the Velocity to the correct amplutude.
and It saves me a lot of time:
I don't need to write my groove with the mouse and try to restore the "Feel" I have - I just sing it.
I fix only the velocity of the kick and snare so they won't be dynamic.
and I also see that my snare a bit late, then I move it to the grid.
I can now drag the MIDI notes and they are both are free, and snaps to the grid.
So i'll open Live's new browser to find a Drum Kit with a sound that I like.
In the new browser, it's easier to search and find sounds.
I just type-in the first letters, and Live takes my to the right place.
In addition, you can now preview Drum Kits and Instrument Racks inside the browser, without loading them.
It is usefull especially if we are working with big sampled instruments because it takes them a long time to load.
So I loaded this Drum Rack: Acoustified Kit 02, which is one of 3,000 new sound that comes with the Suite edition of Live 9.
I want to send the snare hit to a reverb as an effect, and I'll do it with my hardware controller, just like this:
And I want to continue working with it, and "release" my hand from the ***.
Another great new feature in Live 9, is Session Automation Recording.
It allows you to record movements of parameters in the Session View, and not only in Arrangement View as we knew in previous versions of Live.
So I'll push the "Session Record Botton" and send one snare hit to the reverb with my controller.
As you can see- my movement has been recorded into the clip envelope
OK, nice.
I want to replace the hihat sound to something more interesting, so I'm going back to the browser and typing: hh.
And as I type you can see that Live gives me search results
and the device I'm looking for is this one:
DrumSynth HH which is a Max for Live device.
Max for Live in an add-on product that was introduced since version 8.
And it works in perfect integration with Live and allows you to build
your own instruments, audio effects, MIDI effects and other utilities that extend the capabilities of Live.
Max for Live comes now as a part of Live 9 Suite
with lots of tools, devices and effects which were developed specifically for Live 9, and of course you can build your own, or download from the web.
So I'll take this little device and place it instead of the hihat, and tweak a few parameters.
I want the velocity values to modulate the decay time of the hihat, so I'll get a more interesting and dynamic sound.
Ok, I had an idea recently, for a bassline that I've recorded… I remember I called it: "Amir".
I'll look... here it is.
Now I will turn the recorded audio into MIDI...
Right click -> Convert Melody to New MIDI Track.
and… I'll just fix the notes which I wasn't so accurate at...
There's a good reason why I don't sing in the shower!! :)
I'll also quantize the note so it fits the my groove…. OK.
I want to replace this bass sound to a better one...
As I said before, Live 9 Suite comes with lots of sound packs
So i'll search for the word 'bass'
I can limit my search query to specific packs
and one of my favorite packs is 'Retro Synths'
ok I think it will fit in
This sound is too dynamic, so i'll serch for 'compressor'
i'll hit the 'Enter' or 'return' twice, and here is Live's new compressor.
take a look at this new display
You can see the signal that goes in to the compressor
and an orange line that represents the threshold.
And when I pull the line downwards
you can crearly see how the signal is being reduced, on the designated yellow line. (Gain Reduction)
another thing I want to do
is to compress only the low frequecies of the bass, when the bassdrum hits.
But this time I'll do it using the Multiband Dynamics that now has a Sidechain option.
So let's open the Multiband Dynamics, and open up the sidechain option
set the trigger from the Kick, and tweak the parameters to compress only the low end.
Let's go back to the drums
I'm going to use a brand new compressor in Live 9
it was developed in partnership with Cytomic
This compressor is called: "The Glue"
And is based on compressors from famous British analog consoles from the eighties
It sounds great on drums, but also on other things, such as the Strereo Bus
It really "gluing" the sounds together
I really like this preset on drums- 'Drum Full Paraller' and you can hear imediadley the difference, take a listen...
Now my drums sound good, but they too 'Dry'
and I want to place them in some kind of space, so I'll grab the new Convolution Reverb
which was added in the new version of Max for Live to work with Live 9 Suite
and as we can hear, it sounds awesome! It comes with many impulse responses such as:
churches, special spaces for drums,
plate reverbs, spring reverbs...
and you can even sample your own impulse responses and use it in your mix.
I really like the presents in the "Made for Drums" section. In some fine and gentle tunings- it give a real depth and richness to the drum sounds.
OK, so now we have Bass and Drums that sounds good, but I need some harmony here…
So I'll look for some inspiration in the browser
In Live's new browser, we can add many folders that we use the most
and mark the as our favorites, and find our sounds faster than previous versions of Live.
For example, I remember I recorded a few chords from a composition by Eric Satie
I don't remember the file name, but I know where I saved it.
In my 'Samples-Audio' folder on my hard drive, and it's already in my "User Folders".
there it is
Ok-> 'Convert Harmony to new MIDI Track'
and let's take a listen...
Great. I'll just make a few changes so it'll fit my Drums and Bassline
2 new functions that was added to the MIDI editor are: 'Invert Notes' and 'Reverse Notes'.
Reverse Notes, will reverse the notes horizontally around the center of the selection.
Invert Notes, will flip the notes upside-down
so that the highest note will swap with the lowest note, and the lowest note will swap with the highest note.
If you don't have any notes selected, they'll work on the entire MIDI clip.
So I'll use the 'Reverse' option, and also the new 'Force Legato' option
which lengthens or shortens the note so that it is just long enough to reach the beginning of the next note
I like these chords, but I want to use them in a different way... something shorter, jumpier and "happier".
So i'll just short them a little...
Jumpy chords on the offbeats, is something that I realy like
I'll do the same thing with the next chord
I'll sort the notes in the right timimg
Ok, I see that the chords doesn't really fit the bassline, So I'll try to reverse them… Oh, nice.
So I want to find a different sound, so I'll search in the browser for some kind of an electric piano
Great, I think it'll do for now.
So, I want to work a little bit of this EP sound
So let's grab the EQ Eight, which has been completley re-built
The first thing you notice is the Spectrum Analyser, that it's built-in the EQ Eight
Which helps us to identify problematic frequencies, lower them, and see in real time how the sound responds to our changes.
You can extend it to the main display- to view and edit on a bigger screen.
It's really usefull and precise
In addition to all the filters that were re-desigend, and they sound much better and smoother
the EQ Eight is more CPU efficient
there are 2 new filters that were added
48dB Lo-Cut & 48dB Hi-Cut
You can use them for very sharp cuts on the low or high frequencies
OK, so I want to duplictae some clips, and change them, just to create some variations and evolvement and not getting stuck with just one loop.
The first thing I want to do, is generate some other drum patterns
I'm going to my drum clip, and lenghting it from 1 Bar to 2 Bars long.
I'm doing it with the new 'Duplicate Loop' button that appears in every MIDI clip.
I'll draw some hihats on 1/32
I thing I'll add some claps...
one more clap...
I'll draw down the send automation to the reverb, it's too wet...
Alright! Sounds cool.
One of the things that made me fall in love with Ableton Live, is Clip Envelopes. I use them all the time.
So I want to go back the the Eric Satie sample, and use just a short loop
I'll draw a simple volume evelope
And my favorite new feature here is Curves. It works in clips in both Session View, and the Arrangement View as well.
You can also use Curves in the Arrangement View on any automated parameter.
Ok, now that I a few musical ideas and variations- It's time to record!
As we know from previous versions of Live, it records any action we are doing in the Session View
into the Arrangement View- And now we have a beggining of a musical piece that I can edit and tweak as much as want.
An amazing new feature in Live 9 is, the ability to "grab" a segment of time out of the Arrangement View
and bring it into the Session View as a new Scene. Take a look:
You just highlight with the loop braces, the amount of time that you want to capture as a new secene
Right Click-> Consolidate Time to New Scene.
This will allow us to bring entire sections of our song/track into the Session View for a live performance or improvisation.
For example: I can grab out of the Arrangement View, the bridge and the chorus of a song,
and and take them as 2 different scenes into the Session View.
This action is preserving all the automations and parameter changes over time.
OK, so this was only a quick tour of some of the new features and workflow anhancements in Live 9.
So we talked about Converting Audio to MIDI
Session Automation Recording
I showed you the new browser and some of the new sound packs
The improvements in MIDI and Envelope editing
We've talked a little about Max for Live that comes now as a part of Live 9 Suite.
The anhancements in Live's Audio Effects, and the new Glue Compressor
And Consolidating Time to a New Scene.
Things I haven't mentioned are: the improvements to the Gate Audio Effect, the improved Keyboard Shortcuts
And other few great features and workflow anhancements,
that speeds up our process of bringing a musical idea in our head -> to become a real piece of music.
That's it, I hope you all enjoyed! Thank you very much, bye bye.