Using Ableton Live software package to produce music 1.8

1.8 create default sections of a performance by collecting clips into scenes

The screenshot below shows the session view window of the project that I am preparing as a performance piece.

The master channel indicated by the red arrow on the right hand side of the page shows the names of four different scenes that have been created for this project.

The first scene named ‘intro 16’ for example, has been created to play for the opening 16 bars of the project.

When this scene is triggered, the four while coloured clips along the top row will all begin to play together, in time and at the tempo of 130 beats per minute (BPM), as shown by the green arrow.

Triggering the second scene called ’16 to 80’ would result in all the blue coloured clips on the second row beginning to play on the next upcoming bar. Once again, the clips will all play together, in time and at the tempo of 130 BPM.

The option to begin playing a new scene at the end of the bar currently playing has been set in the control bar option shown by the blue arrow. This could be varied by selecting alternative options as shown in the drop down menu visible in the screenshot.

There are also a collection of orange coloured clips, indicated by the white arrow, that have not been arranged into named scenes in the master track. The clips have been positioned to be triggered when chosen at various points during the live performance. The controls for each individual clip have been set so that the clip will play once when triggered, then stop. Once again, when triggered, these clips will begin playing in time and matching the tempo of the track.

The clips that have been arranged together into scene arrangements mainly tend to loop again and again while the scene is being played.

If you take a look at the track named ‘short clip’ indicated by the yellow arrow, you will see that the track contains a number of clips all called ‘short clip’.

These particular clips, although they contain exactly the same audio waveform, have different control settings and will sound and play differently at different times in the performance. This variation plays an important part in retaining the listener’s attention as the track develops.

The screenshot below shows some of the control variations for the white ‘short clip’ that will play in scene ’intro 16’.

The drop down menu indicated by the red arrow shows three controls that have had variations applied to them. They are all mixer controls. The first controls the volume of the clip. The second and third controls when the output from the clip is sent to a resonator effect loaded into a send and return track on the mixer.

The yellow bar in the drop down menu is currently highlighting the mixer track volume. The pink shaded area to the bottom right of the screenshot shows the volume being adjusted over the sixteen bar length of the scene.

The green arrows indicate the volume level gradually increasing from zero at the opening bar, until full track volume at the beginning of bar nine. Slowly rising and falling volumes are an important factor in this ambient based project. They can create a sense of appearing as if from nowhere. You can’t always be sure when they started, but eventually they can become a central part of the overall sound. Similarly as they fade away again, you can be left listening to remaining sounds in a different way.

This next screenshot shows the contrasting control variations for the blue ‘short clip’ that will play in scene ’16 to 80’. The drop down menu again indicated by the red arrow shows three controls that have had variations applied to them.

This time though, the green arrows can be seen to indicate the volume levels rising and falling over a sixty four bar period. In this case gradually increasing from zero at the opening bar, until full track volume is reached at the beginning of bar nine. This remains until bar nineteen where it begins to fall again down to zero by bar thirty two, rising again to full track volume at bar forty one.