WHAT?

Processors are used in clips to change the way the whole track sounds, unlike effects where they come in afterwards. The way to tell a processor from an effect is that effects have a Dry and wet control where as processors don’t. Some examples of processors are Auto filter, Compressor and the EQs.

I have used a few processors in my track on of which is EQ eight this enables me to take out the frequencies in clip.I have taken the drum part of the track and used the processor to add gain to everything apart from the very high frequencies. This also gives the clip a more mastered feel which is what im looking for.  To do this i have turned down the high a frequencies a tad and turned the mid up a notch.

you can add an EQ by clicking on live devices and selecting the processor you wish to use and drag and drop it onto the channel you want below is the picture of the EQ i used.

As you can see i added gain to the mid band and decreased the high to block out the nasty frequencies.

WHY?

people use the EQ to master the track and also add gain to the track, you can sharpen up a instrument or bass by simply adding gain to certain frequencies.

WHAT?

Warping is a technique that can be applied to audio clips only to sync them in time with the tempo of your project.

HOW?

Before warping an audio clip you must first drag a sample from the file browser, and drop it onto one of the slots on the session view .

double clicking the clip will bring up the clip view as seen below.

In the sample display they will be a warp button, but before turning this on its good to listen to your audio with the metronome on to make your own judgement on how the timing will need to be adjusted. The metronome is an audible beat which plays to the exact tempo of your set to help you keep time. The metronome on/off button is located in the top left of Ableton and will appear yellow when switched on, as can be seen below.

to begin warping, turn on the warp button in the sample display. Above the audio waveform in the clip view, several tempo markers will appear. The process of warping simply consists of changing the position of any of these markers according to the beat timing of your audio. To change the position of a single marker, simple double click it. If you do not double click it first, you will move all of the markers even if you just drag one. If matched correctly, this will change the timing of your audio to suit the tempo of the warp markers and your overall project.

Above is an example of a drum sample warped from the file browser.

I  warped the sample so it was bang on bar with the tempo.

WHY?

I use the warping tools basically to ensure my drumbeat is on bar and sound good and clear, warping is only good for some drum samples and maybe vocal if its recorded on a different tempo to what your working with,but you don’t need to warp on every sample because it might go better with the beat ( some audio clips warped may sound messy).

Blog entries from past courses can be found in this section of the site!

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.

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.

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.

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.

I did many variations of the same tune Sunset before I arrived at the final tune that I performed. I was happy with how the arrangement of the tune progressed but there would still be things that I would alter if I was to do the piece again.

I feel that the scenes could of run a lot smoother  i .e. between one transition and the next. The scene 13 to 14A could have been a lot smoother .The sub bass was good to add texture to the music and also to lift the music up and give it a bouncy feel especially as this worked well as a transition from the intro into the other sections of the music or scenes.

The Vibra Slap at scene 5 added another texture and reminded me of a rattle snake coming into the mix again adding another texture to the music.

The classical guitar played very simple at scene 6 lifted the tune up and moved it away from the Intro into another place in sound the triangle at this scene also drove the music along in a forward direction.

At scene 7 more percussion is added including a crash cymbal still with the guitar latin riff and a sub bass to drive the tune along.

Scene 8 there was another guitar riff added followed shortly by another guitar riff at scene 9.The transition between scene 8 an 9 could have been a lot smoother I felt some what.

I’ve added the sub bass at scene 10 so to lift the melody up and added another melody as a transition into the A section on scene 11.

The melody played on the guitar drops out at scene 12 and here I put only percussion and a guitar that is strummed. Congas and a vibra slap feature more at this scene. This was my breakdown section in the music to give the piece light and shade.

At scene 13 I build the music back up again and added a guitar figure playing a arpeggio section and also a sub bass line to lift the music up again this I used to build the music into the A section and lift the feel of the music up.

The A section is at scene 14 A and the melody on the guitar is the main subject here.

15 A Trem at this scenen the melody of the guitar of the A section is heared again but played on a tremolo with the fingers so to add texture to the music.

Scene 16 is the lead out or the Outtro

How I created the scenes was by adding individual clips to the arrangement of the tune by starting with an introduction which I recorded a guitar part just playing chords i.e. double stops and then I added some drums an percussion i.e. congas, triangle an guiro,darabouka,shakers and a vibra slap to add flavour to the tune. The percussion which I used as individual clips worked very well as a Latin transition into the A section to the tune and I dropped a sub bass line in to lift the tune up also adding reverb and ping pong delay on the effects in insert mode to add a deeper atmosphere to the tune and bring more live into it  so as to make it seem like it was being played in real time by musicians.

I then added a melody that I created on the guitar in to the arrangement to give it a variation and then added various other melodies on the guitar so to keep the music moving.

The ending I placed a clip with the guitar on it’s own and added delay [ping pong and also reverb] so to create a feeling of an ending in the music.

Impulse what is this instrument and how do you use it within the program Ableton Live 7. This is a blank sampling instrument that works with MIDI clips.You load samples into Impulse by using the drag an drop method with the left mouse button. By using this method i.e. drag an drop to load samples into Impulse gives you the luxury of creating a collage of sounds of all types. Short transistents such as percussion and drum hits.

Impulse is mainly used as a drum machine or a drum sampler and can store 8 individual sounds. Each sound is assigned to a box within the instrument and there are 8 boxes in total for storing and editing samples. You will find that the parameters that are used within the instrument Impulse are very similar to that of a synthesizer.

Parameters such as Resonance, Decay, Pan, Volume, Transpose, Frequency and Time are but a few of the parameters that are very similar to the ADSR envelope of a tradition analogue synthesizer of old. The parameters used in Impulse can be applied to the individual samples within the instrument i.e. slot level or they can also be applied on a global level i.e. across the scope of the entire sampling instrument. Impulse is a great tool for loading samples into such as field recordings and noise factor of all kinds. I used Impulse to trigger percussion sounds within my piece.