1.4 Irene using Ableton Instruments

In my guitar section I used a simpler instrument. This gave my guitar a better sound as without it it sounded too tinny. The operator was used on the glasso-phone and it gave it a warmer ring to it.

Operator used on glasso-phone.

1.1 Irene: Identifying key elements of the sofware

Here are some of the key elements of Ableton Live:

Session view

You can crate tracks in the session view, trigger scenes and clips. It contains the mixer. This is where the main arranging is done.

Clip View

Double clicking the clip will take the clip and show it in the clip view as a wave form or notes. It allows you to change properties of a clip, warp, loop, start and end points etc. It also tells you in the bottom corner in which clip you are on.

File Browser

This is a panel to select from a list of files and folders. It allows you to click on the icon that looks like headphones and allows you to listen to the various selection before bringing them into the project. You can select a list of waveforms to import into the project.

Live Devices

This is a list of instruments including things like operator, impulse, sampler and simpler to name but a few. The audio and midi effects also live here.

Lessons view

This provides short lessons to help get more out of Ableton Live. (interactive tutorials).

Irene: Record/quantise/save midi clips

To get the midi clips in time it is possible to ‘quantise’ (put into perfect set time) and there is a setting for this shown above or you can use a keyboard short cut by pressing Ctrl U. I have done this on the guitar clip, the piano clip, the ‘dreadzone’ and the 2nd keyboard played named ‘6 n analogue’.

You can also use the mouse and drag the beginning or end of a note in the clip view.

Here I have played notes using the midi keyboard to create a guitar rif. You need to press the record button as shown and to get the notes in time you can press control U on your keyboard or the ‘Quantise’ button to automatically quantise the guitar clip.

The notes can be edited. If you press in the ‘notes’ section in the clip review, the notes come up and you can lengthen them, delete them and play new or extra notes in.

 

Irene: Controller keyboard

Here you can see my keyboard control. Starting from the left I had an ‘UP’ button to move the scenes up. Then I have a ‘DOWN’ key to move the scenes downwards. Next to that I have my ‘PLAY’ button to set the scenes playing.

I added some stop triggers on the black notes from left to right ‘STOP VOCALS’, STOP AH’s’ and STOP ‘Pa pa pa’s.

The next set of keys from left to right were to trigger vocals ‘Hey Diddle Diddle (full version), Moon and Hey!

After that the keys from left to right triggered the analogue melodies and after that the keys from left to right triggered the ‘Ah Ah1′, ‘Ah Ah2′ and ‘AAAAhh’ vocal loops,

To stop the whole at the end of the performance I chose to use the mouse to press the large stop button at the top master section.

n.b. These were simply cards stuck on with blue tack.

To set these you need to click on ‘midi’ in the top right hand corner of Ableton.

Click on whatever you want to trigger off, in the above case it was the melodies so each individual clip starter (triangle). A number will appear in the clip. If you look carefully you can make them out 1/C2 etc.

Irene 1.7 Add appropriate effects in send and return mode.

The above shows the vocal effect I used in sends mode. The sends dial is shown turned up (in orange) more than half way to get the desired effect. Too much and it would have sounded to echoed and open. In this case I used voice doubled from the audio effect which gave it a pleasant richness to it.

Irene – What’s happening to my sound?

Graham, our tutor has only just stepped into the lift to leave when things started to go pear shaped . I was Adding an effect on my guitar – a filter delay – and when I went back to listen to them my sound had disappeared again (it happened earlier on too). This time there was no way I could see why it was happening and my co-students had a look too, but no one could work it out..

irene: Area of expertise – Recording in Ableton

First of all, by pressing the i/o button on the right hand side outer buttons it will bring up the input and output section for each track. To record you need to ‘arm’ a track by pressing the record button (you can automatically hear armed tracks). When pressing the record button you can see that all clip slots change from having the usual square shapes to round shapes.

In my piece, I have recorded some midi tracks in the sessions view. Below you can see how this was done.

On the midi keyboard I played the notes for the track and by clicking on the record button, (you can look at the global time line in the top section of the live set and come in on time) I then playing a small section to loop. After that it is possible to go from recording to listening to it straight away by using the clip launch button. I recorded 4 guitar pieces, accompaniments I called ‘melodies’ and a variation on the glasso phone (glass end).

Review/evaluation-finished project agains the original breif.

In my original brief I mentioned that I possibly wanted to use one of my existing songs and by creating something with Ableton, giving it a new lease of life.  I thought I would struggle with things like adding appropriate rhythm and getting things up-beat enough. I just went with the creative flow and did not set many deadlines for the different stages of the performance as it ran on it’s own.

Working on my piece I developed a sound and mood though as expected the production began to twist and turn and flourish on it’s own accord. I ended up getting something totally surprising and  different to anything I had ever expected. It was truly a great experience to let the creative process drag me along this unexpected path (instead of the other way round). I did not use my own piece as it would have been too much work to warp it all, so I opted for composing a new vocal instead. I recorded a my vocal part and sang to the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle, (I had tried to write meaningful lyrics but I couldn’t get the rhythm of this nursery rhyme out of my head, so I decided to keep it there!) I was going to record in the radio studio but I ended up recording it in the AV room here and used a Shure SM58 microphone that didn’t have a pop shield. I tend to have hard ‘S’s but kept it at a good distance to avoid slissing. We put it on a disc and uploaded it in the Sound Forge programme, saved it in my personal folder and put it in Ableton. Making sure it did not clip, I reduced the volume level slightly. This was all it needed so there was not much work involved in the recording process. Also it did not need much to get it in time and for effect I added a double voice effect to thicken it a bit with some reverb. I then took the word ‘Moon’ and looped this in a separate clip which rhythmic effect went perfectly with the rest. I also took another part – just the words ‘Hey Diddle diddle’ and looped this and added reverb so it would echo the ending. In the clip envelope I took the volume down a third into the clip dragging the volume line down at a specific point so that the echoes faded out.

I thought I was going to sing live during the performance, using a head-set mic, but I had enough vocals so it wasn’t necessary it in the end.

Though the whole process seemed slow at first, certainly up till the last few weeks, it left me excited and exhilarated and eager to get my performance played to a crowd.

I created an intro that started subtly and built up in three stages to a peak and in that respect I did achieve the peaks and troughs that I described in the graph that I made. I made it to help me visualise the whole performance from beginning to end and to help me get the structure right: intro, build up, peaks and toughs, bringing it to a finale etc. I think I was afraid of producing something without enough ‘movement’ in it.

The performance took place at the Cotton Factory in Huddersfield and there was a good turn out of people there. The performances were placed in a particular order as there were so many different styles. I was to play at the beginning of the second half, but there was a change of plan and I played at the end of the first half instead.

Things were going well when suddenly my piece jumped back to the beginning again and I was really puzzled as everything went fine in the rehearsals (I played it three of four times over and there were no problems at all). We frantically looked to see what the problem was but we could not see anything at all that would make it take it to the beginning again. Tony and Solo both fiddled about a bit and it seemed that the problem was resolved so I started again after the break. Unfortunately it happened again, though I got a bit further in the piece, I was devastated that I didn’t get to play it to the end as I was looking forward to getting to my favorite parts! I really would like closure on this, so I have been told that I may be able to perform it again next time round.

If I were to do this again, I would not know what to say if I was asked if I would change anything. It’s hard to say – The process is so spontaneous; I don’t think I would change much but to touch the piece on the night of the performance is probably not a good thing as I discovered. Having our separate keyboards was OK but it could have contributed to my technical problem as well.

Ultimately I am very satisfied with my composition and have learned that I can produce a contemporary piece after all! I look forward to doing it all over again.

1.3 Irene: Creating variations on clips

The way to change the start and end points on a clip is shown below by moving the handles accordingly.

In the screen grab you can see where I have moved them to. They are the bottom gray triangles above the time line. This establishes where the clip starts and ends. It is not the loop start and end, as this is done using the (triangles) arrows on the top row.

To make a variation on a clip I decided that by reversing a clip is an easy way to get an interesting sound. The clip plays the sounds backwards. On my piece I have reversed one clip of the piano in the 6th scene and it works well in combination with the drum and the ‘dreadzone’ vocals. It creates a kind of sweeping sound that is similar to the airy vocals in the choir on Dreadzone so it almost sounds as though it is linked together. This was a welcome coincidence!

This was easily done by clicking on the ‘Rev’ setting in the clip box where Edit, Save, Rev Hi-Q fade and RAM is found together with the transpose dial. I didn’t need to make any other change to it as I liked it as it was.

Here you can see the piano clip and reverse piano clip.

 

Irene: Work in progress

Today I added a few new clips to my piece to experiment with and slowly but surely I think I am getting the kind of sound I want, though I am still far from completion. I am learning as I go, as it seems that this is the best way to deal with Ableton and its possibilities. I found a 3 chord rif and decided it would do nicely as an intro instead of the initial piano intro and I wanted some reverb on it, so I did the following to it:

I found a reverb called ‘wide ambiance’ and then I tweaked predecay to get the desired effect, moved the input (graphs) up, changed the decay time and density, and made it a little ‘wetter’. This just made it more echoed and I that is how I wanted it for a ‘wider’, more open sound.

I also made a new folder in the file browser to put my clips in, though I haven’t found out how to put midi clips in yet (they won’t seem to budge for me!). I now have an extra three clips – a 3-guitar chord and ‘part A’ which is a glasso phone and another excerpt from the Dreadzone track which includes a vocal loop.

One of my concerns is that the performance should not sound like a backing tack with my vocals on it. Being used to that set up, I wonder what I will make of this and I hope I can get my head around the spontaneity of the live performance. But first of all I need to work on the sounds of my clips and see if I can come up with some tweeks to make it sound more interesting.