Add a Process in Insert Mode

A processor is different from an effect because it has no wet/dry dial on the interface. This means the audio that comes out of the processor is changed, where as with an effect the wet/dry dial determines the amount of effect added to the original audio. Example of a processor is compression.

An insert is what you would use if you wanted to add a processor as this changes the audio directly rather than adding something to the sound. A send/return is what you would use if you wanted to add an effect, this allows you to add an effect like reverb to multiple channels by turning up the correct send knob.

The way I did this was to choose the processor I want to use and drag it into the gray box under the session for that channel.

Creating Scenes

A Scene is a result of you dropping audio into clip slots the the session view. I needed to create scenes to move to different sections of my track.

To trigger the scenes you use the small triangle icon on the right hand side of the screen. This will play all the clips you have arranged horizontally in that scene.

Setting up a controller Keyboard

A controller keyboard can be used to allow the user to assign parts of Ableton to the keyboards keys, knobs, sliders and trigger pads.

The reason why I needed to use this is so that could trigger off different scenes and clips live without the use of a mouse.

The beauty of setting up a controller keyboard is its simplicity. You take the USB cable, plug it into the back of the keyboard and connect it to you computers USB slot. Your computer then does the rest by recognizing the hardware and is ready to use.

Review Final Project

The Final Project as a Whole

First of all I have to say this whole project was a lot harder than first thought. When we got told what we had to do, I had so many ideas and to be honest I think I got far too ambitious on what I was going to do. Although I was very happy with my performance I do feel there were a few things I could of done better. Firstly, the amount of time I gave myself, even though I thought I had planned out my project very well, I could of done with an extra week. The reason being that I felt I couldn’t become 100% confident with my project for the performance, and me being me, wanted to change everything at the last minute, which left me a bit all over the place come performance time.

Another thing that I think effected my performance was trying to go too technical with a program I wasn’t familiar with. I did have a lot of clips and effects that I didn’t use in the final performance and it was simply because it was too much to think about.

On the whole I was impressed with how I handled things going wrong. There were times when I pressed the wrong scene, so I had to improvise by going back, then jumping forward which did work a lot better than I first thought. Things going wrong did nothing for my nerves either, normally I have no problem with preforming in front of a crowd but I think not being 100% happy with my project didn’t help from the start.

All in all I do feel my project satisfied the brief, but if given more time I would of liked to of explored and experimented with the software and taken the track further.

Area Of Expertise- Operator

In this blog I will be looking at the instrument Operator in quite a lot of detail. The reason why i chose Operator as my area is because I use it quite a lot in my project and feel I have started to get the hang of it, also I find synthesis’s very interesting. Operator is a very powerful soft synth that works from FM synthesis, the reason for this is because FM synthesis just happens to be one of the best ways to create an infinite variety of sounds with few controls.

Right i’l start on with the general lay out of Operator…

Above you will see a screen shot of Operator, I’m not going to use colored boxes to point bits out in this part as there would be just too many colored boxes for your eyes to handle, so i’l work from left to right.

On your far left you will see four Oscillators labeled A, B, C and D. Operator is made up for Four oscillators. Oscillators are the building blocks of the sound and in Ableton each oscillator has 20 different waveforms to choose from, ranging from your usual sine, saws, and squares but also a few added more unusual ones for a bit more of a different sound. The interesting thing with operator is that each of the four Oscillators can deliver an audio signal or modify the other oscillators. For example, Oscillator D can seamlessly control oscillator A, B or C. Oscillator D can also control C, which can then control B and A at the same time. Moving the other three channels at the same time by manually moving only one Oscillators input can give you a dramatic change to the sound output, great for trying to discover new sounds.

Right, for this example open operator ( Please refer to my blog on how to open instruments) and to keep things nice and simple just have the first Oscillator turned on (A), with a sine wave going through it. Now, on the highlighted tab you will see three knobs, the on to the far left is Coarse, what the course does is move the sine wave up or down octaves, to create a harmonic relationship. Move along one and you will see a knob called ‘fine’, what this knob does is that it finely moves the pitch of the wave, this can be useful when other oscillators are involved to make a ‘fatter’ sound, detuning is a very useful technique when creating synths. Move along and you will see a tiny box named ‘fix’ this is quite simple and all it is, is once highlighted it will not respond to note pitch but in stead will be fixed to one frequency. Lastly the output level, which is quite simply the volume of the Oscillator.

Right now lets move onto something a bit more interesting. Continue to use Oscillator A with the sine wave running. Now next to the oscillators you will see a a big gray box with a few lines and numbers etc etc. You will see some fancy yellow lines, this is the main envelope for the oscillator which controls how the sine wave behaves. Envelopes work by using Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release. They self explain them self’s really, attack is how fast or slow will the sound be ‘Attacked’ to go to full volume, e.ga high attack acts as a fade in, Decay is how fast or slow will the sound begin to fade out, Sustain is how long will the sound stay at the volume the decay has told it to and release is simply how long with the sound stay in after the note has finished. Lets put this into practice…

In the Envelope box move the top left hand box (the attack) to around 133 ms, can you hear how the sound is been ‘attacked’ and is fading in slightly? Put it back to where it was then move it back to hear the difference. Now move the last yellow box on the right, (the release) to around 2.53S, can you hear how the sound lasts a lot longer before, also how different it is to the original sound we started off with, all of a sudden we have quite a nice pad, and that’s the magic of Envelopes. Just remember that envelopes always work in the same way weather it be controlling the pitch, volume or filter.

Right now lets move onto the LFO, which is found just right of the main gray area. Notice as soon as you turn LFO on you will have a new envelope to play with, this one controls how the LFO works. But what is a LFO? LFO stands for low frequency oscillator and is used to alter the sounds frequency or amplitude but at a constant rate. Lets put it into practice. Still using that sine wave from before. Turn the LFO on, straight away you will notice the frequency is moving up and down as the note is played. At the moment it is moving in a SINE WAVE movement, in other words its moving up and down in a constant ‘flow’, this is a good way to understand how wave forms work, if you click on where it says sine and change it to square it will change the way the LFO behaves, so instead of moving up and down gradually it will move just to the top frequency and then straight to the lowest frequency you’ve asked it to move to, play around with the other wave forms to understand how they work. Right now lets move along to the left where it says rate, this will change the speed of the LFO so if you turn the rate up it will move faster and turn it down and it will slow down. Now move to the mod knob and what this does it changes the depth of the frequency’s it plays, turn it to 100% to hear how it works. LFO’s can work with many other things such as filters and volume also.

Now to the filter. Filters, along side a envelope can be very very useful in making your sound behave just how you want it to. Filters work by Filtering out certain frequencies which can make your sound really nice. Lets turn the filter on, again notice how you have a new envelope for the filter. At the moment the filter is set to 12db Low pass which means it will filter out the frequencies above what its been asked. For this example lets change it to 24 db High Pass. Now move the attack on the envelope down slightly and across, and play around with the ‘freq’ knob until you get a sound you like, you should now hear that the sound moves from the higher frequency’s into the more ‘fuller’ sound, add resonance until happy . This is a very good way to add movement to your sound, and is one of the main parts of making a ’sound’, a synth.

Next is the pitch envelope which works just the same as the other envelopes we have talked about but this time with the pitch, believe it or not . Turn it on and turn the ‘pitch env’ up to understand how it works. Add spread which moves the pitched notes into the stereo field. The transpose will move the whole sound up or down how ever many Semi Tones you ask it to.

Finlay the last tab is a global tab, so it will change everything to the sound rather than just a selected part. The Time controls all envelopes rates, the tone controls the timbre of the sound and the volume the over all volume of the sound.

There are a few more features to operator that are quite advanced, but to be honest they are not essential in making a nice ‘fat’ synth. Its all about trial and error when it comes to synthesis but i think it helps greatly if you know what dial you moving rather than just moving it because its there. Try playing around with different wave forms and then try adding more Oscillators to really beef your your synth, trying playing around with different filters and LFO’s an soon enough it should all drop into place.

Reason for being late

Hello there Graham, didnt know how to get hold of you so though blogging would be the best way lol, i can delete once you’ve seen it. Not sure if Laura told you but iv been quite ill these last few days, so iv been doing a lot of work from home. The reason why iv only just published these last three blogs is because iv been having hugh problems with importing screen shots into my blogs from home, there showing up at my end but not showing once i preview them, so i thought i would publish them to prove they have been done, but there are no screen shots (let me know if you can see them), i will do the screen shots once i can get to the comp at collage,most likley Friday, i hope you understand my reasons as i dont want any sort of mark on my final grade to be affected.

All been well i will be in on Friday, Cheers

Steve

Ableton’s Instruments

What are the Instruments in Ableton Live?

There are four instruments built into Ableton, and they are Operator, Simpler, Impulse and Sampler. In this blog il be looking at Impulse and Operator.

How to Set an Instrument up

Its fairly simple to open up a instrument, all you need to do is open up a MIDI track by right clicking in the red box in the screen shot and selecting open MIDI track. Now in the instruments tab in the browser menu choose the instrument you wish to use, in this example I’ll be opening Operator (the green box), now pick up and drag operator over to the MIDI track we made earlier and drop it in, now you notice operator has opened, the blue box.

The instrument is now ready to use. The same process apply s to every instrument.

So What Does Operator Do?

Operator is a very powerful soft synth that is made up of four oscillators, LFO’s and enough envelopes to make your sound as twisted as you want it. If you don’t understand what each of these terms mean, don’t worrie i will be looking at operator in much more detail in my Area Of Expertise blog. In the mean time I will show you how to open up one of the many many presets that operator has to offer. Its easy to find the presets, all you need to do is back track to the start of this blog, where you grabbed operator from the browser menu but instead of picking it up, dropping down the list, here you will see lots of different types of synth, bass, lead etc etc, find lead and then drop that menu down once more. Here there is a list of different lead synths, if you pick up, drag and drop onto Operator the preset will load up, just press your keyboard to double check.

So How Does Impulse Work?

This is Impulse, which a drum machine. The way drum machines work is that you would do the same process as if you was wanting to open up a normal audio file, but instead you drag the sample your wanting to use to impulse and drop it onto the trigger you want, e.g the ‘loop 1′ in the screen shot. Now when you press the note on the keyboard it will play the sample you asked it to. You can also change a lot of aspects of the sample such as the decay time, attack time, pan, volume where the clip starts and how you want it to behave over the cause of the sample.

Clip Variation Techniques

Useful Techniques With Audio Clips

There are many differant things you can do to audio with Ableton, I will be looking a few of them in this next blog. The Techniques il be using will be, Changing the start and end points of clips, changing ‘ launch quantization’ settings, reversing and envelopes. Each of them will be used in some form of matter on most clips, so it is important I understand how each works.

Changing Start and End Points Of Clips

To get onto the clip view double click on the clip you want to edit. As you can see above in the red box there are 2 sets of flags, I will be moving the top set, here I can move these flags to any point i want within the clip, so in this case I wanted to move the left hand flag one beat to the right so that i miss the first bar, and the same on the right hand flag, just so I was left with a 2 beat loop. So now if I play the clip the clip will only play in the highlighted area of the clip.

Changing Launch Quantization settings

What I am wanting is the selected clip will play on the beat i trigger it off, at the moment the Quantization settings are set to trigger off the clip on the next bar, instead of the next beat. To change this i double click on the clip im wanting to edit, then in the left hand corner of the clip view (the red area) i have a small L, i click on it to highlight the L. Now i have the launch settings visible (the blue box) I can change the settings. You will see a title saying Quantization and at the moment it is set to global, which is launch on the next bar. To change this i click on global and select 1/4, so now as soon as i click on the clip while preforming it will launch on the next beat.

Reversing

It is quite simple to reverse, all I need to do is double click on the clip I’m wanting to reverse to bring up the clip view. Now in the sample box (in the blue box in the screen shot) there is a small button labeled ‘REV, as soon as I highlight the whole clip will be reversed.

Envelopes

Envelopes can be used for many many reasons to make the clip a lot more interesting. To insert a envelope onto the clip bring up the clip view and make sure the small ‘E’ in the bottom left corner of the clip view is selected (the red Box). Now i have a new tab within the clip view (the blue box), here i can change the pan, volume and transpose of the clip but i choose what points the value of the pan, lets say, is changed. So if wanted to have the clip hard left at the start of the clip but then slowly move to hard right at the end all i do is click on the pan button and double click on the pink line to bring up a marker, move to marker to the top left (hard left) and then double click on the pink line again to bring up a new marker then move that to the bottom right (hard right). So now when i play the clip it will move from hard left to hard right over the time of the clip, a useful technique indeed.

Adding Effects in Send and Return Mode

Effects In Send and Return Mode

During working on my final project I decided that I was going to add a vocal sample to the start of the first brake down. The vocal sample its self untouched was totally dry, which means nothing has been done to change the sample in any way, it sounds just as it would of done when it was sung.

Now because I want it at the very start of the brake down i want it to blend really nice and to fill a lot of ‘gaps’ that the dry sample wont fill. To do this I’m going to add quite a long Reverb with a nice Delay following it.

So How do I Do This?

First of all i need to check I have sends and returns enabled (in the red box below), once you have send and returns enabled then I’m good to go. First i need to find the Reverb in the instruments tab in the browser menu, and then in to Audio Effects folder (in the blue Box). Once found pick up and drag all the way over to the return section (the green box) and drop in.

Now I have my Reverb enabled to send 1 i can now turn the effect on by turning the send on the track clock wise (in the yellow box), I can now hear the Reverb coming through but its not as long as I’m looking for, to make the reverb longer all i needed to do was turn the Pre Delay up (the little red box in blue box) until i was happy with the length of the reverb. The process was exactly the same but finding delay in the browser menu.

Using Midi Within Ableton

What Is Midi?

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), is an industry-standard protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, computers and other equipment to communicate, control and synchronize with each other.

Why Will it Benefit my Final Project

Midi is a wonder-full thing within the musical world of today. It means i can run instruments through a keyboard for example. It opens up music production because your not limited to just playing samples, with midi I have control of the notes of which I want to play with, and also dependent on the instrument used, you have control of the complete sound. Midi can also allow me to play samples through the keyboard (with ableton live the instrument is simpler) and again lets me change many aspects of the sound it self that wouldn’t be as easy if I was to just do it as a audio clip.

Setting Up Midi In Ableton

Below is a brief explanation of how to set up midi In Ableton Live

First of all I need to find the instrument I’m wanting to use in the browser menu. Its slightly different than loading an audio sample, make sure you have the instrument icon selected which is in the top right hand corner, where the red circle is on the screen shot. Now i have a list in instruments that i can use, iv decided to use operator (in the blue circle). The best way to load up operator is grab and drag over to the midi slot that I wish to use (the yellow circle), now at the bottom on the page i should get the interface of the instrument operator (the green box below)

Here i can change the sound to what ever i want it to be, with different wave forms, filters, LFO’s and envelopes. To use a preset already loaded up in Ableton click on the arrow next to operator in the browser menu. Once i have found the sound i want i can either record myself playing the keyboard or double click on the midi clip in the yellow circle on the first screen shot, and draw in the notes that I desire, example is the turquoise area on the first screen shot.

How do I Quantize Midi If i Recorded it Slightly off Beat?

This is one problem i came about when recording in midi, there were a few notes that were slightly out off beat. To fix this I simply pressed CTRL+U, which will bring up the quantize box
Here i can ‘quantize to’, which once OK’ed will snap all midi to the closest eighth of a bar. Also here I can adjust where the start and end points of the midi note will sit, e.g if i wanted a slightly organic sounding melody I would set the amount to 80% which will move the note that is selected slightly off the quantized point.