I recently posted a few tips about default presets , this video is a quick refresher about Drum Racks and default presets for those who prefer the videos over the articles. A High Quality version of the video can be downloaded from the Vimeo page.
You're supposed to hear a drum sample in the end, but it got lost when I normalized the audio with my voice. Since its only 2 seconds of the video, it isn't much of a problem.
Ah, there is nothing like a good consistent heat wave to completely kill my productivity. But the weather in western Europe is back to its crappy self, so its time for some action.
During the past few weeks, I've kept on testing my new controller setup which at the moment consists out of a BCR2000 and a custom application.
The application is stable and almost fool proof. I'm very happy with the results.
A storm is brewing! Though not so much in the climatological sense.
I have ignored a lot of problems so far during the creation of my current Live Set and the time has come to process some of the problems and thoughts that are cluttering my mind.
White noise is one of those things we often shy away from in studio production, so I decided to demonstrate a few things that make it useful.There's some beginner, intermediate AND advanced uses in this video, so pay attention! ;-)
After completing my first goals, it is time to set some new goals. My new goal is to make a playable mini set with 2 songs triggered from one scene each. I already have my first playable song and I will aim to be able to control the second song in an identical way.
You want a swoopy sweep, or a synth crash, or just a simple hihat. Where would you turn? Many samplers have white noise samples, but they're just that: Very short samples that need to be looped, which makes them sound fake and periodic.
- done properly. By politely asking an expensive synth to produce it. You can easily plop this sample in everywhere you need white noise, and it should fit the bill.
I don't do this often, and most of the time I just wonder why, and then move on with my life; I don't put up my music anymore, for some reason? Well, things are gonna change, dagnabbit!
This one is a weird one, a small piece in 7/4 time, augmented by 7/4 and 4/4 percussion.
The main theme was done with a particularly convoluted patch on a modular, shown in blurnessness above.
Very moody, but with prog 80s undertones... perhaps.
You'll be able to find many things on the internet, but there is no such a thing as a guide to building a Live Set. A few example Live Sets can be found for Ableton Live, but that doesn't teach you anything about the reasoning behind some decisions that performers make when crafting their set.
One of the most common thing I want to add in my tracks is that little touch of drop bass, or a straight sine wave to double up the bass line or kick. It's remarkably easy to do, and you don't even need a synth to do it in Ableton Live... what? No synth?
Now, you know us, we're all about the video and tutorials, and when it came to my attention that there are virtually NO videos online of these things I *made* Operator B do a little take of him tweaking away on the boxes there.
If you don't know an "ADM" from an "ABL2" , don't worry - I'm just obscure like that. They're in fact vst instruments from a gorgeous little company called http://audiorealism.se/ - B swears by them, and they certainly sound the business. Here's our video, however cryptic and off-the-cuff - after the jump.
Things are going to change around here, that's for sure. I'm delving into a new area with some pretty insane possibilities for the performing musician... I hope to be able to share some more details of what we're working on soon, but until then you'll just have to... guess?
Since Live Clips have been introduced in Live 5, there hasn't been an easy way to store samples that are attached to the Live Clips you wish to store. This has improved in Live 7, but it isn't perfect yet.
But at least its possible. In this video I'll explain how you store samples and Live Clips in Live 7. You'll also see where your samples end up and I will explain why they end up in different folders of your Live Library. A High Quality version of this video can be downloaded from the Vimeo page.
There are many ways to shape a waveform with the Operator, in this video we'll have a look at a method originally posted by Robert Henke. A High Quality video can be downloaded from the Vimeo page.
Now, you may ask yourself: "What on earth do they have to do with each other?" Well, they're both some kind of theme for tiny music videos I've done recently.
Ableton added a cool feature to Live 7, it allows us to determine our own personal default settings for Abletons Devices. I made a list of 10 Tips that explain how this feature works.
This is a brief, wordless walkthrough of one of the ways I zone in on
pitched sounds in seemingly unpitched source material. Hope you find
this useful!
for DjViral and the Ableton Live forum.
- oh, and sorry about the clipping. Twas a quickie.
Lets say you want a note to never end. You could either make an absurdly long clip with a note that is longer then your song. Or play with the attack and release of the instrument to make it sound like a smooth loop.
Neither of these methods really achieves the task we wish to do. Luckily there is a feature in Live just for this reason.
Make the note a bit longer then the loop. And let the loop have a lead-in.
For example: The note starts 1.1.1, Make the loop start at 1.3.1 and let the loop end at 2.1.1. The note ends at 2.1.2, past the end of the loop.
New York Style compression adds extra punch and presence. On the Ableton Forum there has been some debate as to how best to implement the approach in Ableton Live. Here's one take on it - as always go through the links by the video to get to the tasty HD on vimeo :)
And don't forget NOT to blink... this one is QUICK!
After a recent discussion on the Ableton forum regarding the Calvin Harris "sound" I decided to try out some of the techniques involved in that lovely little track Accetable in the 80s.
The following example is done in Live7 using only Analog and a drum rack. Very simple, except for the bass sound, which I found hard to acheive using the overly resonant formant filters in there.
I had a great deal of fun on this, which means I probably ended up "grooving" more than actually reaching the same sound, but here it is, you judge for yourself.
Here's another one of those things that settled with me over the last couple of years. Originally I did this with audio samples, repitching and pendulum looping on an Akai s-950 (yes, I'm old, so what?)
HD version at vimeo - although the message does come across in this smudgy version ;-)
I have always loved the sound of a howling tape delay, and when I first got Live (version 3 at the time) it didn't take me long to start to build some of these routing structures I had previously worked with in hardware, using so called "dub mixing" techniques to send audio to delays and then manipulate the sounds within an effects feedback loop.
^^^ wow, that was a long sentence!
Anyways, I have been rigging my machine to do HD video captures, and I think I finally nailed it. Please add any requests for future videos or comments on the quality/lack thereof, hehe. Click the first link below the video to go to vimeo if you need the HD version - cheers.
This picture, found deep on his website using the brilliant StumbleUpon firefox extension has got to be the most poignant mix of pop culture commentary and old-skool coolness... roflmao'ed and lolled. Oh yes.
My recent trip to New York was a blast - Nick from the Ableton Forum hooked me up with a place to stay (thanks!) and we had a killer session in his apartment studio, with monomes, Lemurs and his new ninja-core mac - yowsa!
Here's a money-shot - large version after the jump!
Did you know that "The Covert Operators" is an anagram for "Over-the-top Creators"? No you didn't, did ya?
Also, "I like Ableton Live" is an anagram for "Lionlike evil beat", which I really dig. Oh, and while on the subject: "I'm sweltering of huge vexation" is an anagram of "the new max five is going to rule"... oh yes.
I just uploaded a cute little picture collage of our ETI 4600 synth to the Meltdown product page . It is a gorgeous piece of kit, and it deserves its own feature, for sure - apologies for not adding this in the beginning (sheesh!)
Hi guys, we're testing out my new blog feature, so please bear with us as I fuck about with the css code here... ;-]
[update; urgh, seems like I don't have the skillz/patience to make the whole comments gimmick thing work on the sidebar here.. I think we'll stick to not having comments in the blog for now... post a comment if you don't like that decision, hehe ]
In the past few years I've written many times about Dummy Clips. Every time a new version of Live arrives, it gets a little bit easier to use them. We have done a small collection of videos that will highlight many of the uses for Dummy Clips, starting with the basics and working our way up.
In most of our recent packs, you'll find racks that look like a maze. Racks with a lot of devices, sometimes for a single purpose. These purposes can be summarized in a collection of tricks and techniques.
In this part we will have a look at the code and what you can do with it.
AMS files are plain text documents with the .ams extension instead of the .txt extension.
Each line of code is a command for the decoder inside Ableton Live that translates these text documents into samples. Some commands are better left unchanged, other commands are used to transmit values of specific parameters.
When Ableton started the public beta test for Live 6, we learned about a new audio file format called "Ableton Meta Sound" or ".ams".
You can read the discussion with Ableton about the meta files in this thread on the Ableton forum.
There is also a link to an experimental max/msp patch created by Robert Henke that can be used to generate these files.
If you read my previous article on the Chain Select Ruler, you are probably hungry for some more tips and tricks concerning this feature.
This trick will show you how you can lower the Audio track count in your Live sets.
What better title for a little chapter on the Chain Select Ruler? I see too many posts on forums, suggesting that Ableton needs to implement program changes for their devices. In a way, they gave us a better solution and that solution is what we're going to explore today.
Dummy clips are either audio clips that do not send any audio or MIDI clips that don't send out any notes. The only thing that dummy clips do, is modulating the effects or instruments in the track.
Rolling drums are a pain to program, but they can be made in a snap when you combine some of Live's MIDI effects. Lets set up a device group that allows you to play a drum roll by just holding one note.
The Covert Operators are proud to present: Espionage! Espionage is a
free selection of presets for Ableton Live 6 and beyond, collected from
our past and future projects.
After a recent discussion on the Ableton forum regarding the Calvin Harris "sound" I decided to try out some of the techniques involved in that lovely little track Accetable in the 80s.
