IntroductionWelcome| 00:03 | Hey, I'm Yeuda Ben-Atar,
also known as sidebrain.
| | 00:08 | Welcome to Ableton Live for Live Performance.
| | 00:11 | To me, music is about playing, and the
digital environment of Ableton Live can allow us
| | 00:16 | to be irresponsibly creative and experiment in
a way that would be nearly impossible using
| | 00:21 | conventional hardware music gear.
| | 00:23 | That said, it's important to take advantage
of as many ways as possible to detach ourself
| | 00:28 | from the computer while performing live.
| | 00:31 | Throughout this course I'll show you dozens
of cool live performance techniques, whether
| | 00:35 | you're a deejay, songwriter, or a producer.
| | 00:39 | I'll start out by helping you choose the
right MIDI controllers for your Live setup, then
| | 00:44 | I'll show you how to deejay with Ableton Live by
emulating a deejay booth with two decks and a mixer.
| | 00:50 | Next, we'll see how to map a MIDI controller
to Ableton Live, then I'll show you some more
| | 00:56 | modern deejay techniques, such as looping
and cuepoint juggling and how to use them
| | 01:02 | in your Live deejay set.
| | 01:04 | I'll also show you how to perform
live with you own original material.
| | 01:09 | (music playing)
| | 01:14 | And finally, I'll show you some alternative
performance techniques, like live looping
| | 01:18 | and live sample cutting.
| | 01:24 | Traditional musicians are different from computer
musicians in that they play acoustic instruments
| | 01:30 | and create sounds in real time.
| | 01:32 | For us, the sounds already exist in the computer, and
we can control where, when, and how they will be heard.
| | 01:39 | Let's explore some powerful ways you can
prepare your Live set and maximize your creativity
| | 01:43 | on stage with Ableton Live for Live Performance.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | This course is about live performance and is designed
for DJs, music producers, and any other musicians.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to assume that you have a basic
knowledge of Ableton Live and have access
| | 00:11 | to at least one MIDI Controller, such as the
Novation Launchpad or a standard MIDI Keyboard.
| | 00:17 | If you need a refresher on using Live, you
can check out Ableton Live 8 Essential Training
| | 00:22 | or my Up and Running with Ableton Live
course on the lynda.com online training library.
| | 00:28 | Additionally, having a basic working knowledge of
the MIDI Protocol will help you in understanding
| | 00:34 | of the topics covered in this course.
| | 00:37 | That said, I created this
course to be accessible to everyone.
| | 00:40 | If you're new to live performance or making
music with your computer in general, I hope
| | 00:45 | that the techniques I'll be sharing with
you will be informative and inspirational.
| | 00:49 | Other than that, all you need is the passion and desire to
take your live performance with Ableton Live to the next level.
| | 00:59 |
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| Using the Live Pack exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium Member of the lynda.com
library, or if you're watching this course
| | 00:05 | on a DVD, you have access to the
exercise files used throughout this title.
| | 00:09 | I've created the exercise
files for each corresponding video.
| | 00:14 | Each Chapter has its folder, and inside the folder,
you can find ALS files, which stands for Ableton Live Sets.
| | 00:23 | I've also added an extra MIDI Track for each
project, renamed it Info and added MIDI Clips
| | 00:30 | with basic guidelines of what
you need to do in this exercise.
| | 00:34 | If you don't have access to the exercise
files, you can follow along from scratch or with
| | 00:39 | your own Ableton Live Projects.
Let's get started.
| | 00:46 |
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1. Choosing a ControllerChoosing the right controller| 00:00 | As a computer musician who aspires to
perform live music, the first thing you need to do
| | 00:05 | is to get to know the different types of MIDI
Controllers that are available and to decide
| | 00:09 | which one best meets your needs.
| | 00:11 | To do that, you've got to
ask yourself the right questions.
| | 00:14 | What kind of musician are
you, a deejay or a live performer?
| | 00:17 | What kind of controls do you want,
keys, knobs, faders, and pads?
| | 00:22 | And what's more important to you in a MIDI
controller, durability, flexibility, or mobility?
| | 00:28 | My own personal answer is I'm a
live performer. I play the Keys.
| | 00:32 | I like all kinds of controls
like knobs, faders, and pads.
| | 00:36 | And most important to me in a MIDI
controller is flexibility and durability.
| | 00:41 | I can do without the mobility.
| | 00:42 | In the next video, we'll take a look at two controllers
that have been specially designed for Ableton Live.
| | 00:47 |
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| Using controllers designed specifically for Ableton Live| 00:00 | Let's take a look at two controllers, one from Akai Professional
the APC40, and one from Novation, the Launchpad.
| | 00:08 | Both specially made and co-designed with
Ableton Live to bring hands-on control and workflow
| | 00:13 | flexibility that works best with
Live's unique view, the Session View.
| | 00:18 | If we look at the Session View and then we look
at the Controllers, we can begin to understand
| | 00:22 | the concept of how they work.
| | 00:24 | The button matrix on each controller emulates
the session view in Ableton Live and by doing so,
| | 00:29 | gives us a visual representation of
exactly what's going on in a Live Set.
| | 00:35 | You can use these controllers to control all aspects
of Live, including launching and stopping Clips,
| | 00:39 | mixer and track controls, adjusting
your scenes, and even playing the MIDI nodes.
| | 00:46 | Of course, I'll be showing you how to do
all of those things later on in this course.
| | 00:51 | These two controllers communicate with
Ableton Live using a Control Surface Midi Script to
| | 00:56 | give you ultimate control over Ableton Live.
| | 00:59 | Control Surface Midi Scripts are lines of
code that allows the controller to control
| | 01:03 | elements of Live that are not available
through the regular MIDI mapping mode.
| | 01:09 | If you use controllers with visual feedback
and button matrix control, they can free you
| | 01:13 | from having to touch or even look
at your computer during a live show.
| | 01:18 | Let's see how these two controllers can be
used in this way. I'm going to launch clips.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to control effects, and
I'm going to control track volumes.
| | 01:26 | Let's check it out.
| | 01:28 | (music playing)
| | 02:12 | Now, button matrix
controllers are only one option.
| | 02:15 | Next, we'll take a look at a
few third-party controller options.
| | 02:20 |
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| Using third-party controllers| 00:00 | Now that we've seen the APC and the Launchpad, it's time
to look at few other kinds of specialized MIDI Controllers.
| | 00:07 | Let's start with Keyboard MIDI controllers.
(music playing)
| | 00:13 | Some popular models include the M-Audio Axiom,
Novation SL MkII, and the Akai MPK.
| | 00:19 | Many of these include a keyboard section and a controller
section with various types of controls, knobs, faders, and pads.
| | 00:27 | On almost every keyboard controller we can
find a modulation wheel and a pitch-bend wheel.
| | 00:34 | Let me demonstrate.
This is the pitch bend.
| | 00:37 | (music playing)
| | 00:39 | And for the modulation, I've added effects that will be turned
on once I turn on the modulation. So, this is without.
| | 00:45 | (music playing)
And this is with.
| | 00:47 | (music playing)
| | 00:49 | If you're not a keyboard player, you may want to consider
different kinds of controllers such as Pad controllers.
| | 00:56 | (music playing)
| | 01:00 | Some popular models are Native Instruments
MASCHINE, Akai MPD, Korg PadKONTROL,
| | 01:07 | and M-Audio Trigger Finger which is now
discontinued, but you can still find them.
| | 01:11 | There are also knob controllers, fader
controllers, and if you are a guitarist or other types
| | 01:17 | of musician who needs to keep his hands free,
you might want to consider foot controllers like
| | 01:22 | the McMillen SoftStep, the Behringer FCB1010, or
a simple sustain paddle from M-Audio or Yamaha.
| | 01:29 | There are also tablets and smartphones which allow
you to build your own interface to control Ableton Live.
| | 01:37 | Popular Apps are ToudhOSC,
Liine Lemur, and Beatsurfing.
| | 01:40 | Next, we'll look at the controllers that are hand-built
and repurposed to be used as Midi Controllers.
| | 01:47 |
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| Utilizing alternative and DIY controllers| 00:00 | In addition to commercial MIDI controllers, we can
also use alternative controllers like the Monome.
| | 00:06 | The Monome was the first grid
controller design for music and media.
| | 00:10 | All modern button matrix controllers like the
APC40 and the Launchpad are based on its design.
| | 00:16 | A few other boutique controllers are 60 Works,
Moldover-MOJO, and DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter.
| | 00:24 | Another option is to build
your own controller like this one.
| | 00:29 | It's important to note that this process might
take some time and require knowledge in electronics
| | 00:34 | and in some cases also
experience with programming.
| | 00:38 | Finally, you can also take old video game
controller and repurpose them to be used as MIDI controllers.
| | 00:45 | If you look at the computer, you can see a Max
for Live window, which is the visual programming
| | 00:49 | language built into Live that allows
us to build new devices and effects.
| | 00:54 | In this case, I've created a converter that translates
the messages the video game controller sends into MIDI.
| | 01:04 | (music playing)
| | 01:17 | Let's check another one.
| | 01:19 | (music playing)
| | 01:36 | It's up to you to choose the
controller that serves you best.
| | 01:39 | With today's growing number of live computer
musicians, I would recommend choosing a unique
| | 01:44 | controller or maybe even build your own
to help you stand out from other performers.
| | 01:48 | So as you can see, there are many ways to
control Ableton Live, with MIDI controllers,
| | 01:54 | hand-built controllers, and
even old video game controllers.
| | 01:58 | The next chapter focuses on deejaying with Ableton Live, and I'll
start by giving you some tips for organizing your song library.
| | 02:09 |
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2. DJing with Ableton LiveChoosing songs for a DJ set| 00:00 | Creating your own original music in
Ableton Live is easy, intuitive, and fun.
| | 00:05 | Another way that many people use Live is to deejay.
| | 00:08 | In this chapter I'll show you how to build
a better Live DJ set using Ableton Live.
| | 00:13 | The art of deejaying is about song selection,
even a deejay with poor Mixing and Scratching
| | 00:19 | skills can still rock a
party with a good song selection.
| | 00:23 | When you are deejaying, it's all about carrying
the energy of a crowd throughout your set.
| | 00:28 | In order to known what songs work best
together, it's important to get organized.
| | 00:33 | As a deejay, you are going to find yourself with a very
large library of songs, and a good organization is vital.
| | 00:40 | The two most relevant methods for categorizing your library
are beats per minute, or BPM, and the key of the song.
| | 00:48 | First, let's see how we can detect the
beats per minute, the BPM of the song manually.
| | 00:53 | I am going to go into iTunes.
For this DJ set, we are going to use three songs.
| | 01:00 | I already categorized two of
them, let's categorize the third.
| | 01:03 | I am going to play this song, go into Ableton Live,
and click the TAP tempo button with the
| | 01:10 | time of the song, set the BPM, turn on the
metronome using these two dots and hitting the
| | 01:17 | spacebar to start the metronome.
So let's do this.
| | 01:21 | (music playing)
I am tapping, 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 01:35 | I can see the BPM is around 92, let's change
it to 92, turn on the metronome, I am going
| | 01:43 | to hit the spacebar when the music
and bar comes in 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
| | 01:51 | I am going to listen to the
metronome and check that it's on time.
| | 01:59 | (music playing)
| | 02:04 | I can listen that the metronome is
slower then the BPM of the song.
| | 02:08 | So, I am going to set the BPM to 93.
Let's see now, 3-4, 1-2-3-4.
| | 02:18 | (music playing)
Excellent.
| | 02:24 | Everything is on time, and
now I know this song is 93 BPM.
| | 02:32 | In iTunes I am going to right-click,
go to Get Info, and add 93 BPM.
| | 02:39 | I am also going to add a 93
in the BPM box, hit OK.
| | 02:44 | And if you want to see the BPM column, we
are going to right-click on the Title, and we
| | 02:50 | are going to choose the
Beats Per Minute, very nice.
| | 02:54 | Now if you don't want to manually detect the
BPM, you can use BPM Detection Software, like
| | 03:00 | Free BPM Detector for Windows, or BPMer for Mac.
| | 03:05 | Another very important method
to categorize your song is Key.
| | 03:10 | We're going to manually detect the Key by
playing the song and playing along with it,
| | 03:15 | with an instrument in Ableton Live.
| | 03:17 | So, first let me load an instrument from the
Instrument browser. I am going to drag it to the drop area.
| | 03:24 | Let's see that everything works, very nice.
| | 03:28 | Go back to iTunes, I am going to play this
song, and I'm going to hit keys on my Keyboard
| | 03:33 | and see which notes works with
the song, and which one don't work.
| | 03:38 | (music playing)
So, let's see.
| | 03:43 | (music playing)
| | 03:44 | This works, works, this doesn't work so
good, let's try this note. This works, okay.
| | 03:59 | Now I know the key of this song is C minor.
| | 04:04 | Let's go back to iTunes, again, I am going to
go to Get Info, and I am going to add C minor.
| | 04:17 | If you don't have prior knowledge in music theory,
you can use key detection software like mixedinkey.
| | 04:24 | Important to note that this software will not always be
accurate, but it's definitely a good place to start.
| | 04:30 | Mixedinkey is important if you want to create
smoother transitions and avoid dissonance from song to song.
| | 04:37 | This can be difficult if you don't have
prior knowledge in music theory, but you can use the
| | 04:41 | Circle of Fifths to help you make
mixes that fit together musically.
| | 04:46 | Find the key of the song you're styling
from and then for your next song you can choose
| | 04:51 | to move around the circle or
in and out from major to minor.
| | 04:55 | For example, if you start at C
major, you can mix in the song in F.
| | 04:59 | or G major or move
inwards to any minor, and so on.
| | 05:03 | You can always find the BPM
in the key of the song online.
| | 05:07 | Take your time categorizing between shows and
keep your library updated to make endless
| | 05:12 | variation of a DJ set on the fly.
| | 05:15 | In the next video, I'll show you how
to input the songs into Ableton Live.
| | 05:20 |
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| Importing songs into Ableton Live| 00:00 | In this video I'll show you how
to import files into Ableton Live.
| | 00:04 | Live support WAV files, AIFF,
MP3s, Rex Files, and Acid Loops.
| | 00:11 | First, let's add a music library into Live.
| | 00:15 | In the browser I'm going to hit Add Folder,
I'm going to browse into my iTunes library,
| | 00:21 | and I'm going to hit Open, then I'm going
to see the folder in our Live browser.
| | 00:30 | Let's go in it, let's search our
songs, we find our songs.
| | 00:36 | Now let's hit Create to add an Audio Track.
You can also hit Command+T or Ctrl+T.
| | 00:43 | Next, I'm just going to drag the file onto
one of the empty clip slots in our Audio track.
| | 00:48 | Alternatively, we can also go into iTunes
and drag the song directly from iTunes. Nice.
| | 00:56 | Next, let's double-click on the clip, and
we'll see the Clip View where we can see all
| | 01:01 | of the contact of the clip, in this
case its audio. You can see the Waveform.
| | 01:05 | To the left we have two boxes, we have
the Clip box, and we have the Sample box.
| | 01:11 | In the Clip box we can see the name of the
clip, we can change the color, we can change
| | 01:17 | the time signature, and we can add a groove.
| | 01:20 | In the sample box we can see the information
of the clip, sample rate, and bit depth, we
| | 01:25 | can Edit, Save, Reverse, put it in high
quality mode, add fades, or load it into the RAM.
| | 01:32 | You can also transpose and change the Gain.
Live's most unique feature is the Warp engine.
| | 01:38 | The Warp engine allows us to change the
speed of the song without changing the pitch.
| | 01:43 | As deejays, it'll allows us to take two songs that are
completely different in BPM and mix them together.
| | 01:50 | To do that we will have to prepare each song
for our DJ set. Let's turn on to Warp engine,
| | 01:56 | let's zoom in by just dragging just to make
sure this song actually start at the beginning.
| | 02:03 | I can see there is a small silence gap into
beginning of the song.
| | 02:06 | Let's create a Warp marker here by just double-clicking,
right-click on it and choose Set 1.1.1 Here, nice.
| | 02:14 | Next, let's right-click on it again and choose
Warp From Here (Straight), I am going to change
| | 02:21 | to BPM, since we already categorized the
library in the last video, and we can see it's 93 BPM,
| | 02:26 | so let's set it to 93, and I'm going to launch
the clip by hitting the Play button right next to it.
| | 02:33 | (music playing)
| | 02:35 | Let's turn on the metronome, with the two dots, let's take the
BPM up, very cool, and let's take it down to check, very nice.
| | 02:55 | Just to make sure, let's create another
warp point towards the end of the song.
| | 03:00 | I'm going to go to the end of the song, zoom
in, I'm going to create a warp marker by
| | 03:06 | just double-clicking anywhere on the grid and just
adjust it slightly to the grid, and that's it.
| | 03:14 | The last thing to remember is Live has
six different algorithms for warping.
| | 03:19 | In this case we are using Beats, which is
more intended for arithmetical loops.
| | 03:25 | We're using a whole song, so let's
change algorithm to Complex.
| | 03:30 | We need to go for this percolation stage with all
of our songs before we begin deejaying with Ableton Live.
| | 03:36 | In the next video I'll show you
how to build your DJ decks in Live.
| | 03:42 |
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| Building your decks| 00:00 | In this video we'll see how to
build our DJ Decks in Ableton Live.
| | 00:04 | We can look at Ableton Live as a fully
forward DJ shop where we can take samples, decks,
| | 00:09 | and effects and use them in our DJ set.
| | 00:12 | Let's see how to build
our decks in Ableton Live.
| | 00:14 | First, I'm going to create another Audio track by
going to Create and choosing Insert Audio Track.
| | 00:22 | Next I'm going to rename the audio tracks by
right-clicking on the Title and choosing Rename.
| | 00:28 | Let's call this Deck A,
and let's call this Deck B.
| | 00:36 | Let's color the decks by right-clicking on the Title
again and choosing a Color just to keep it nice and neat.
| | 00:45 | In the last video, I showed you how
to warp a song and prepare it your DJ set.
| | 00:49 | I took the time and warped two additional songs, and
you can see them here already prepared for DJ set.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to move one of the songs to
Deck B, so we can mix between the two decks.
| | 01:01 | On each audio track we have the Mixer device.
| | 01:04 | We have Volume, Panning, which will take
the audio to the left or to the right,
| | 01:12 | Track Activator, which will Mute the audio, and
Solo button, which will solo the audio track.
| | 01:19 | We also have a Recording button which will
allow as to the record audio, but we are not
| | 01:23 | going to cover that in this video.
| | 01:26 | Next I'm also going to color the
clips according to the track color.
| | 01:30 | Let's color these two, I'm going
to hold Shift and choose both clips.
| | 01:35 | I'm also going to color the second track on Deck B.
| | 01:39 | Next, we need to find a way
how to mix between those two.
| | 01:43 | Ableton Live made it easy for us and
they made crossfaders especially for DJs.
| | 01:48 | To see the crossfader we need to click
on the View Selector that's marked with X.
| | 01:53 | We can see the crossfader, and we
can see Track Assignments with A and B.
| | 01:58 | Let's assign Deck A to A and Deck B to B.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to launch a clip on Deck A, and
I'm going to launch clip on Deck B by clicking
| | 02:07 | on the Play button next to each clip.
| | 02:09 | (music playing)
Deck B And Deck A.
| | 02:14 | And now using the crossfader, we
can mix between those two songs.
| | 02:19 | (music playing)
| | 02:25 | Very cool. In the next video I'll show you how
to add an EQ and a Gain to emulate a DJ mixer.
| | 02:31 |
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| Using EQ and gain to emulate a hardware DJ mixer| 00:00 | In this video we'll add an EQ and a Gain
knob to our Live set to emulate a DJ mixer.
| | 00:06 | If we think of a DJ mixer, it will
have three EQ knobs, low, mid, and high.
| | 00:12 | That will give us more control and will
allow to make smoother mixes with songs that are
| | 00:16 | heavy on Bass, or will have a lot
of high-frequency information.
| | 00:20 | In a DJ mixer, we also have a
Gain knob, you might know it as Trim.
| | 00:25 | This will allow us to control the final volume of the
song, and then turn it down if the song is too loud,
| | 00:31 | or turn it up if the song is too quiet.
| | 00:35 | In the last video, I showed
you how to add the Crossfader.
| | 00:38 | In this video we'll see how to add EQ and Gain.
| | 00:41 | For that we first need to
move to Live's other bottom view.
| | 00:45 | This is the Clip View if you remember,
and we have the waveform of the clip.
| | 00:50 | If we go to the bottom right corner, we
can click on the second tab that will take us
| | 00:55 | the track view where we're
going to drop all our audio effects.
| | 00:59 | Let's go to the browser, and under Audio Effects, let's
drag EQ Three to Deck A and another EQ Three to Deck B.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to play one of the clips by
hitting the Play button next to the clip and adjust
| | 01:15 | the EQ just to listen to how it sounds.
(music playing)
| | 01:19 | I'm going to turn down the low frequencies.
(music playing)
| | 01:25 | You can hear that it lost all the low frequencies
information, let's bring it back up.
| | 01:31 | I can reset any parameter in Live by just
hitting the Delete key. I'm going to do it right now.
| | 01:36 | And let's take out the high frequencies
just to listen to how it sounds.
| | 01:41 | (music playing)
| | 01:43 | Nice. Hitting that Delete key again, we can also use the
Kill knobs to instantly kill the band of frequencies.
| | 01:51 | (music playing)
| | 02:00 | Very cool. Next, let's add our Gain stage.
| | 02:05 | To add the Gain stage, we're
going to use the Utility device.
| | 02:09 | Let's scroll down in Audio Effects and drag
a Utility to Deck A and a Utility to Deck B.
| | 02:15 | We are going to use this Gain knob to turn down the
volume or turn up the volume of the song if we need to.
| | 02:22 | Again, I'm going to hit Delete to
bring back to its default state. Nice.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to play the clip by
launching it using the Play button.
| | 02:32 | And then I'm going to launch the second clip
in the track by hitting the Play button next to it.
| | 02:37 | But notice that it is not going to play
immediately once I click it to Play.
| | 02:41 | (music playing)
| | 02:46 | It only starts after a couple of beats, and
in the next video we'll see exactly why.
| | 02:51 | We'll see how to use Live's
Global Quantization Engine.
| | 02:56 |
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| Quantizing with the Global Quantization Engine| 00:00 | In this video we'll see how to use
Live's Global Quantization Engine.
| | 00:05 | Quantization is an automatic alignment function that allows
us to correct human timing error according to a musical grid.
| | 00:12 | If we go into Ableton Live and turn off the
Global Quantization Engine using this
| | 00:19 | dropdown menu and choose None, I'm going to
launch a clip by hitting the Play button next to
| | 00:24 | the clip, and then I'm going to launch the
second clip in the same track and see what happens.
| | 00:28 | (music playing)
| | 00:32 | Let's also hit the Stop button.
As you can hear everything happens instantly.
| | 00:37 | If we change the Global Quantization Engine to, let's say
1 bar and launch the clips again, see what happens.
| | 00:44 | (music playing)
| | 00:54 | So as you can see, everything that I do in
the session view, which is launching clips,
| | 00:59 | stopping clips, and starting recording
clips will be quantized according to the
| | 01:04 | Global Quantization Engine, which right now is set to 1 Bar.
Let's change it to 16th note, just to see how it sounds.
| | 01:10 | I am going to do the same thing just
launching both clips and then stopping them.
| | 01:14 | (music playing)
| | 01:20 | So we can everything happens much more instantly but still being
corrected by the Global Quantization Engine to the next 16th note.
| | 01:29 | Why should we use the
Global Quantization Engine?
| | 01:31 | Well, it allows us to be always on time and think about
other things, maybe take our DJ set to the next level.
| | 01:37 | But if you don't want to use the Global
Quantization Engine, you can set it to None and then mix
| | 01:42 | the old school way, by just beat
matching the two decks using headphones.
| | 01:46 | In the next video I'll show you how to use
headphones and why not to use headphones
| | 01:51 | if you're going to use the
Global Quantization Engine.
| | 01:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Deciding whether or not to use headphones| 00:00 | One of the deejay's most important
tools is a set of headphones.
| | 00:04 | To use the headphones with Ableton Live, you need to
connect them to an Audio Interface like this one.
| | 00:13 | Let's set up the audio
interface in Ableton Live.
| | 00:17 | Let's go to Live Preferences, under Live > Preferences.
If you are on Windows, it's going to be under Options.
| | 00:25 | Under Channel Configuration in the Audio tab,
we're going to hit Output Config.
| | 00:29 | My audio interface headphones output is 7/8,
so I'm going to choose 7/8 and hit OK.
| | 00:35 | Next, we need to see the inputs
and outputs in the Session View.
| | 00:40 | So we're going to hit the View Selector marked
with small I and a small O, for inputs outputs.
| | 00:46 | We can see the Audio From and Audio To, and under the
Master track, we can see the Cue Out and Master Out.
| | 00:51 | Let's change the Cue Out to 7/8.
| | 00:54 | We can see that the solo button has changed
to headphone icon. Let's look at it again.
| | 00:59 | Solo, S for solo, and headphones.
| | 01:04 | Now, if I click on the headphones and play
the clip, even though the crossfader is on
| | 01:10 | the other deck, we will hear
it in the headphones, very cool.
| | 01:20 | Next, to have more control on the Cue buttons in
each track, we can map them to our computer keyboard.
| | 01:25 | It's very easy to do in Ableton Live.
| | 01:28 | Let's go into the Key button right here,
which will take us to the Key Mapping mode.
| | 01:32 | Each section of live that is
highlighted, we can map to a computer keyboard.
| | 01:37 | I'm just going to click the first deck Cue
button and hit the Number 1 on my computer keyboard.
| | 01:44 | I'll do the same think with Deck B,
with Number 2 on my computer keyboard.
| | 01:49 | Let's Exit key mapping mode by hitting the
Key button, and now every time I hit 1 on
| | 01:53 | my computer keyboard, it will turn on
and off the Cue and same thing for Deck B.
| | 02:00 | So if I play a song from Deck A.
(music playing)
| | 02:07 | I can audition it the next song in my headphone, decide where
I want to bring it in, say around here and start mixing it in.
| | 02:19 | (music playing)
| | 02:32 | Very cool. So if you don't want to use the Global
Quantization Engine, you can set it to None and mix in the
| | 02:37 | old-school way, by beat matching the two decks
using Cue outs and Headphones and then mixing
| | 02:42 | the two songs relying on
your own sense of rhythm.
| | 02:46 | If you do want to use the Global
Quantization Engine, you may not want to use headphones
| | 02:50 | since everything will be automatically in time.
| | 02:53 | Even if you make a mistake,
Ableton Live will make the correction.
| | 02:57 | We also saw how easy it is to map Live's functions to
the computer keyboard, giving you even more flexibility.
| | 03:05 | In the next chapter, we'll see how easy it is to map MIDI
commands, so you can control Live from any MIDI controller.
| | 03:14 |
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|
|
3. MIDI MappingSetting up MIDI controllers in the preferences| 00:00 | Now that we know how to build the Live set
for deejaying in Ableton Live, it's time to learn
| | 00:04 | how to control Live with a MIDI controller.
| | 00:08 | We looked at many different kinds of
MIDI controllers in the first chapter.
| | 00:11 | Now all MIDI controllers should be set up
the same way unless it's specified in the
| | 00:16 | controller's manual or on
the manufacturer's website.
| | 00:19 | If you have any specific questions about connecting your MIDI
controller, you may want to consult one of these resources.
| | 00:27 | Let's go up under the Live's
menu and go into Preferences.
| | 00:31 | Again, if you are on Windows, it's under Options.
| | 00:34 | We are going to hit the MIDI
Sync tab, which is the third tab.
| | 00:39 | In the Apple section of the screen, we can
see the control surfaces dropdown menu, which
| | 00:43 | we will cover in detail in the next movie.
| | 00:46 | For now, let's take a look at the bottom
half of the screen, we can see the MIDI inputs
| | 00:50 | and outputs for the controllers that
are currently connected to the computer.
| | 00:54 | Right now, we can only wee the SL MkII which
the Novation keyboard, and I'm going to connect
| | 00:59 | the Novation Launchpad, and we'll
see it appear in the list, nice.
| | 01:06 | Each MIDI controller has at
least one input and one output.
| | 01:10 | For each input and output, we
have three MIDI communication options.
| | 01:14 | Track receive and sends MIDI notes, Sync receive
and sends MIDI clock, if you want to synchronize
| | 01:20 | between two computers, and Remote receive and sends MIDI
messages that we can map to Live's MIDI mapping mode.
| | 01:28 | To use a MIDI controller in a DJ set, we only need to
turn on Track and Remote. Why only Track and Remote?
| | 01:35 | Well, we turn on Track because we're going
to use samplers, and that means we're going
| | 01:39 | to want Live to receive all MIDI notes.
| | 01:42 | We do not need to synchronize with any other
computer at the moment, so we don't need sync.
| | 01:47 | And lastly, we want to be able to use Live's MIDI
map mode, and that's where remote comes into play.
| | 01:52 | So even more options in the MIDI Sync section,
we can expand each MIDI input and output,
| | 01:59 | and we can change the Takeover mode.
| | 02:01 | The Takeover mode changes the behavior of the MIDI controllers
that sends absolute values. Let's see a short demonstration.
| | 02:07 | First, I'm going to set
the Takeover mode to None.
| | 02:11 | None sends values immediately when Lives
receive them, I'm going to exit the Preferences,
| | 02:16 | and I'm going to go into MIDI map mode by
clicking on the MIDI button right here.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to click on the track Volume, and I'm
going to move one of the faders in my keyboard, nice.
| | 02:26 | I can see it mapped.
Let's exit MIDI map mode.
| | 02:31 | Now if I change the value in the software and not
change it into my controller, it will have to pick it up.
| | 02:36 | Right now, the Takeover mode is on None,
which means it will instantly jump into the value
| | 02:42 | that is in the controller,
again, it jumps to it.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to go back to Live Preferences and under MIDI
Sync Takeover mode, I'm going to change it to Pickup.
| | 02:53 | Pickup sends no values until the hardware
control equals the value of the software parameter.
| | 02:59 | So once again, I'm going to change the
value in the software, and I'm going to move the
| | 03:03 | fader in my MIDI controller,
and we can see it picking it up.
| | 03:08 | Let's do it again, and the value won't change until
we pick it up. Awesome. Back to Live Preferences.
| | 03:19 | You can also use Command+Comma, or Ctrl+Comma,
for a shortcut, and let's go to Takeover mode and
| | 03:25 | change it to Value Scaling.
Value Scaling is my personal preference.
| | 03:31 | It calculates a smooth convergence between the
hardware and the software values. Let's check it out.
| | 03:37 | I'm going to change once again the value in
the software, and I'm going to move the fader,
| | 03:43 | and we can see it moves
relatively to the position of the fader.
| | 03:46 | Once again, moves relatively, very nice.
| | 03:52 | In the next video we'll take a look at the
Control Surface's section of the Preferences
| | 03:57 | window and set up our own specific controllers.
| | 04:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding control surface scripts| 00:00 | In this video we'll see how
to use Control Surfaces Script.
| | 00:04 | Control Surfaces Script are lines of code that will automatically
map your controller to Ableton Live. Let's check it out.
| | 00:12 | In Live, I'm going to go Live
Preferences menu using Command+Comma, or Ctrl+Comma.
| | 00:17 | Under the MIDI Sync tab, we're going to see
the upper section of the screen which will
| | 00:22 | be the Control Surface's Script.
Let's search our controller from the dropdown menu.
| | 00:28 | I'm using the Novation
Launchpad and the Novation 25 SL MkII.
| | 00:33 | So first, let's choose the Launchpad.
| | 00:37 | Let's set it up in the Input and Output,
we're going to choose the Launchpad.
| | 00:40 | We can already see on the Launchpad, that
lights went up, and we can see a red square
| | 00:49 | that indicates where we
are in the bottom matrix.
| | 00:52 | Let's also set up the keyboard.
| | 00:54 | I'm going to scroll down and choose
Remote SL, set it up in the Input and Output.
| | 01:01 | If you remember from last video, we also
set up the Track and the Remote. Very nice.
| | 01:12 | If you don't see your controller in the dropdown
menu, you might want to check out the manufacturer
| | 01:16 | website for possible download.
Okay, let's see how it works.
| | 01:22 | I can Launch Clips, can control Track
Volume, Mute, and even Device Control.
| | 01:34 | Same thing with the Launchpad, Volumes,
launching other Clips, Panning.
| | 01:48 | (music playing)
| | 01:52 | Nice. You can write your own scripts in Python or
achieving the same functionality in Max for
| | 01:56 | Live, but it does require prior knowledge.
| | 02:00 | If you are using dedicated controllers for
Ableton Live, you should definitely use the
| | 02:04 | Control Surface's Script, since they are
going to give you more options that you are not
| | 02:07 | going to get with regular MIDI mapping.
| | 02:10 | For our purposes, we're going to manually
map the MIDI controller to Ableton Live, and
| | 02:14 | we're going to start of with
the Crossfader in the next video.
| | 02:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mapping the crossfader| 00:00 | In the previous movie, I showed you how to use Control
Surface Scripts with Ableton's Specific Controllers.
| | 00:05 | Throughout the rest of this course, we're
going to focus on manually mapping our controllers
| | 00:10 | for even more customization and flexibility.
| | 00:13 | First, let's start by turning
off the Control Surface Script.
| | 00:16 | Again, I'm going to go Live > Preferences, under MIDI Sync,
I'm going to turn of the ControlSurface Script, nice.
| | 00:27 | Next, let's start by mapping the Crossfader.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to go into MIDI map
mode, using the MIDI button.
| | 00:36 | Everything that is highlighted in
purple, we can map to our MIDI controller.
| | 00:39 | I'm just going to click on the parameter, the Crossfader
in this case, and move our fader on my MIDI keyboard.
| | 00:47 | We can see it on the left where the
browser use to be, we can see it appear here,
| | 00:51 | the newly mapped parameter. Nice.
Let's exit MIDI map mode.
| | 00:56 | Check that everything works, very cool.
Let's launch some clips to see what it does.
| | 01:01 | (music playing)
| | 01:11 | Very cool, nice. Next, let's see what happens if I
map a key to the Crossfader. So again, MIDI map mode.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to delete this mapping by just
hitting Delete, I'm going to hit one of the
| | 01:25 | keys on my keyboard,
doesn't really matter which.
| | 01:31 | Exit MIDI map mode, I can also use Command+M
or Ctrl+M, and now if I hit the key, you can
| | 01:37 | see it jumps instantly to the opposite
position, which can be cool, but for our purposes we
| | 01:44 | want complete control, so
we're going to use the fader.
| | 01:48 | Go back to MIDI map mode and map the fader.
| | 01:53 | While we're here, let's also map the
track Volumes for Deck A and Deck B.
| | 01:58 | For Deck A, click on the parameter and move the
fader, also for Deck B move a fader, very nice.
| | 02:07 | Let's exit MIDI map mode.
Let's see how they work.
| | 02:12 | Right now we have a problem, because if I
turn the fader all the way up, we can see
| | 02:17 | in Ableton Live, it reaches 6 dB, which is above 0 dB,
which in some cases can create distortion and clipping.
| | 02:25 | I'll show you how to solve
this problem in the next video.
| | 02:30 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mapping EQ and gain| 00:00 | In the last video a problem came up when
we moved the fader all the way up, and in the
| | 00:05 | software it passed 0 dB, which in some cases can
create clipping and distortion, which we want to avoid.
| | 00:12 | To solve this let's go back to MIDI map mode.
| | 00:18 | On the left we can the MIDI Mapping browser,
and here we can see the minimum and maximum
| | 00:23 | values that we can set for each parameter.
| | 00:26 | If you cannot see this, just
expand the MIDI Mapping browser.
| | 00:31 | Let's set the maximum value to 0 dB, I'll
just click in it here, and now if we exit MIDI
| | 00:38 | Mapping mode and move the fader, it goes
all the way up to 0 and not past that, which
| | 00:44 | is great, that's exactly what we want.
Next, let's map the EQ Three and the Gain.
| | 00:51 | Let's go back to MIDI map mode, Command+M
or Ctrl+M, I'm going to click the Gain Low,
| | 00:57 | and this time we're going to map it to a Knob.
| | 01:01 | Mid the knob next to it and High, let's
also map the Cue buttons and the Gain.
| | 01:13 | Let's exit MIDI map mode,
let's check that everything works.
| | 01:18 | We can see that the Gain goes from -35 dB
to +35 dB, which is way too much right now.
| | 01:26 | So let's go back to MIDI map mode and
adjust it to +3 dB and -6 that should do it.
| | 01:36 | Let's also set the maximum value of the EQ
to 3 dB. I don't want them to go all the way
| | 01:41 | up to 6, that might be too much, excellent.
Let's do the same thing for Deck B.
| | 01:56 | Cue and Gain, same thing, adjust the
minimum and maximum value, -6 and +3 for the Gain
| | 02:07 | and +3 for all the EQs.
Exit MIDI map mode. Excellent.
| | 02:17 | You can also map Track Activators, Panning, Tap Tempo,
Global Tempo, Transport Control, and much, much more.
| | 02:26 | One of the coolest mapping in
my opinion is to map the clips.
| | 02:30 | Let's go into MIDI map mode, and I'm going to map
the clips launching and stopping to one of the keys.
| | 02:35 | So let's map this click to this key, stop
button, and this clip, and stop button.
| | 02:48 | So if you remember, we mapped the Crossfader,
and now I also have control over the clips.
| | 02:52 | (music playing)
| | 03:18 | Our DJ set might consist of a lot of clips,
and we have only so many keyboard keys.
| | 03:23 | To solve this, we'll have to use scenes,
which I'll show you in the next video.
| | 03:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding scenes, scrolling, and launch features| 00:00 | In the last video we saw how to launch
clips and stop them using our MIDI controller.
| | 00:05 | But once again, our DJ set could easily
have more clips than our keyboard can handle.
| | 00:10 | Let's see how we can solve this using scenes.
| | 00:15 | Scenes are located on the Master
track and each scenes will launch a row.
| | 00:20 | Once I launch a scene, it will launch all
the comments in that row, which means Play
| | 00:25 | buttons and Stop buttons.
So let's see how it works.
| | 00:29 | (music playing)
| | 00:31 | Turn down the BPM, and
let's launch the next scene.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to take the Crossfader to the middle just so we
can hear both decks and launch the next scene, very cool.
| | 00:50 | We can see that we launched the scene, but
the previous song stopped, and that's not
| | 00:54 | what we want, because we
want to mix between them.
| | 00:57 | So we need to remove this Stop button.
| | 00:59 | We can do that by simply right-clicking on the
empty clip slot and choosing Remove Stop button.
| | 01:05 | Let's do that for all our
scenes that have songs in them.
| | 01:10 | Now if we launch the
scene, let's stop this clip.
| | 01:15 | Let's launch the scene.
(music playing)
| | 01:23 | Let's launch the next scene, and we can see our song
is still playing because we removed the Stop button.
| | 01:31 | Now we can mix between them.
Let's launch another scene.
| | 01:39 | (music playing)
| | 01:50 | Very cool. So now if we have more and more
clips like so, we can remove the Stop button
| | 02:02 | and simply launch the scene which will
launch the entire row, and that's great.
| | 02:07 | The only thing we need now is to navigate between the
different scenes and launch them through our MIDI controller.
| | 02:13 | To do that let's go into MIDI map mode, and
we're going to see four hidden MIDI commands.
| | 02:19 | Check it out again, take a look here, and we
can only see them when we're in MIDI mapping mode.
| | 02:26 | We have long scene, navigate
up, navigate down, and scroll.
| | 02:32 | Well, let's map them to our MIDI keyboard,
launch scene, navigate up, navigate down, and
| | 02:40 | I'm also going to map the
scroll to one of the knobs.
| | 02:44 | Let's Exit MIDI map mode, and now we can see,
we can navigate between the scenes, launch
| | 02:51 | them, and even scroll between them if we want.
Let's launch the next scene and crossfade, very good.
| | 03:16 | Because we can navigate endlessly, we can
basically have as many clips as we want and
| | 03:24 | still be able to launch each one of them
separately with the ability to crossfade between them,
| | 03:29 | which is exactly what we wanted.
| | 03:31 | Another cool thing about these scenes is we can
add some BPM commands and Time Signature commands.
| | 03:39 | So first let's rename the scene, right-click
choosing Rename, I'm going to call it the name
| | 03:44 | of the song, and I am going to
give it the BPM, which is 93 BPM.
| | 03:51 | Once I hit Enter, you are going to see
the Play button turn into orange, very cool.
| | 03:57 | Now it means it has BPM
information inside the scene.
| | 04:01 | So let's change the global BPM, and now when I
launch the scene, take a look at the global BPM,
| | 04:06 | it's going to change according
to the scene, which is awesome.
| | 04:14 | Let's also give it a color. I might give
it a different color because this pink might
| | 04:20 | be too bright, it might take away the
attention from all the other colors.
| | 04:24 | I'm going to give it white, I'm going to do
the same thing with other scenes, rename them
| | 04:31 | and give them the BPM, give them a color,
rename the last one, and add the BPM, very cool.
| | 04:43 | Let's save this project, Save Live Set As,
and I'm going to call it Live DJ Set.
| | 04:54 | Nice, up until, now we learned how to import
songs, warp them to prepare them to a DJ set,
| | 05:00 | adding a crossfader, adding EQ and Gain, mapping
a MIDI controller to Ableton Live, and finally,
| | 05:08 | using scenes to launch and navigate clips.
| | 05:10 | In the next chapter we'll see some more
advanced DJ techniques using Ableton Live.
| | 05:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. DJing TechniquesCreating cue points| 00:01 | Up until now, I showed you how to emulate
an analog DJ setup to decks, which can be
| | 00:05 | turntables, or a CD player and a mixer.
| | 00:08 | We saw how to create audio tracks
and rename them Deck A and Deck B.
| | 00:12 | Assigned the Crossfader, adding EQ and Gain, how to create
new scenes, and we mapped our MIDI controller to Ableton Live.
| | 00:21 | Let's see how to achieve more modern feature that are
commonly seen in dedicated DJ software like Traktor and Serato.
| | 00:28 | In this chapter, I'll show you how to create
Cue points, looping, create your own custom
| | 00:34 | effects, samplers, and sketching.
Let's start with Cue points.
| | 00:39 | Cue points are markers in the song that
we can jump to with a click of a button.
| | 00:44 | We do not have a built-in cue point feature
in Ableton Live, but it's very easy to achieve
| | 00:48 | similar functionality.
Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:51 | We'll have to duplicate the clip and
start from a different starting point.
| | 00:55 | To do that, first I'm going to create another
scene by right-clicking on the scene and choosing
| | 01:01 | Insert Scene, or Command+I or Ctrl+I.
Let's do that two more times.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to choose all the scenes and
color them with the same color, nice.
| | 01:14 | Now let's right-click on the clip and
choose Duplicate, or Command+D or Ctrl+D.
| | 01:20 | Again, I'm going to do this two more times.
| | 01:23 | Now, we're going to double-click on the second
clip which is going to be our first cue point,
| | 01:30 | and I'm going to drag the starting
point to let's say the fifth bar.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to do the same with the
second cue point or the third clip.
| | 01:39 | We can also drag it from here, to number 5,
and let's start from the second beat of the bar.
| | 01:47 | So if you remember we got bars, beats at 16th.
| | 01:52 | Let's do the same with the third cue point,
but this time I'm going to start somewhere in
| | 01:56 | the middle of the song, maybe here.
| | 01:59 | Now, if we launch the first clip, we'll
start from the beginning of the song and then I'm
| | 02:04 | going to launch the last clip which is the
third cue point, which is the middle of the song.
| | 02:10 | (music playing)
| | 02:16 | Very cool. Let's MIDI map the cue
points to our MIDI controller.
| | 02:20 | I'm going to go into MIDI map mode, I'm
going to click one of the clips and hit the keys,
| | 02:27 | same thing with other clips, very cool.
| | 02:32 | Now we can launch them using our MIDI controller.
(music playing)
| | 02:38 | As you saw--and you remember we talked
about the Global Quantization Engine--
| | 02:42 | right now all the clips are quantized to 1 Bar.
Let's change that to 16, and that will allow me
| | 02:47 | to achieve a thing called cue
point juggling, let's check it out.
| | 02:52 | (music playing)
| | 03:08 | Very cool. We can also return to 1 Bar global quantization
engine and change the quantization for each clip individually.
| | 03:18 | We do that by double clicking on the clip,
going and clicking on the view selector that's
| | 03:24 | marked with small L on the bottom left of the
screen, right here, and changing the quantization.
| | 03:30 | The track now is on global which means 1
Bar in our case, to--we can do at 16th.
| | 03:37 | Let's also change the other two cue points.
I'm going to hold Shift and choose both of
| | 03:43 | them, change it to 16th, and now if we scroll
the scenes, and we launch clips that are quantized
| | 03:51 | to the global quantization engine, they will
be launched on 1 Bar, for example,
| | 03:57 | also Deck B and our cue points
would be quantized to 16th.
| | 04:07 | (music playing)
| | 04:13 | Very cool. Dedicated Ableton controllers like the
Launchpad are very useful with cue points.
| | 04:17 | button Matrix controllers allow us to
create an unlimited number of cue points navigate
| | 04:22 | through them, as opposed to a keyboard
where we have a limited number of keys.
| | 04:26 | In the next video, we'll see how to create build-ups
and special effects like stuttering using looping.
| | 04:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looping using Beat Repeat| 00:00 | In the last video we saw
how to create Cue points.
| | 00:03 | Let's continue taking our DJ set
to the next level by adding Looping.
| | 00:07 | Looping is very popular in dance music to create build-ups
and will help us create a common effect known as stutter.
| | 00:14 | Looping is very common in DJ
softwares like Traktor and Serato.
| | 00:18 | Let me show you how easy it is to
achieve that functionality in Live.
| | 00:22 | In Live, to create Looping we have two options.
First, let's do them with Cue points like we do in the last video.
| | 00:28 | I am going to right-click on
the scene and choose Insert Scene.
| | 00:31 | I am going to do that two more times with
Command+I or Ctrl+I, and I am going to color
| | 00:36 | the scenes the same color by
holding Shift and choosing all of them.
| | 00:41 | Let's duplicate the clip by right-clicking,
choosing Duplicate or Command+D or Ctrl+D two more times.
| | 00:47 | I want to double-click on the second clip,
go into clip view, I am going to turn Loop on,
| | 00:52 | and I am going to set the Start
position, and I am going to set to End position.
| | 00:59 | I'll just go like this and set the End
position to 1 beat. See how that sounds.
| | 01:07 | (music playing)
Very cool.
| | 01:11 | Let's do the same thing with other
clips, we will just make a shorter loop.
| | 01:16 | So again turn on the loop, set the ending
point, setting the start point, let's zoom
| | 01:21 | in by just dragging down, adjust the starting point
and adjust the end point and make it shorter by half.
| | 01:31 | So first we have beat or a quarter note, then we
have an 8th note, and now I am going to do 16th note.
| | 01:44 | Turn on loop, adjust the end point, let's zoom in, again,
by dragging, and we have 16th, we can also see here.
| | 01:55 | Once again, bars, beats and 16ths,
so let's check it out.
| | 02:01 | (music playing)
| | 02:04 | Now once again, we can map
them to a MIDI controller.
| | 02:07 | Let do that, go into MIDI map mode,
click on the clip and hit one of the keys.
| | 02:18 | Let's change the quantization to each one
of them individually, I am going to choose
| | 02:22 | all of them because I know I want
quantization to be on 16th for each one of them.
| | 02:26 | I am going to open up the Launch Books
menu with the View Selector marked with L,
| | 02:31 | and I am going to change the quantization to 16.
| | 02:35 | If you notice, the title of the boxes are striped.
This just indicates that we chose
| | 02:39 | more than one clip, in this case three clips, and
any changes we we'll do will affect all three clips.
| | 02:45 | So let's do a demonstration, I am just going
to map the first clip, I forgot to map, go
| | 02:49 | back into MIDI map mode, hit it and map it one of the
keys, exit me to Map mode, and let's see how it works.
| | 02:58 | (music playing)
| | 03:13 | Very cool. This is how to create looping with cue points.
| | 03:19 | We wouldn't want to create looping with cue
points, because it takes longer, and we have
| | 03:23 | only so many keys on our keyboard.
| | 03:26 | Another way to create looping is
using a device called Beat Repeat.
| | 03:30 | Let's see how to do that.
| | 03:32 | In Ableton Live, let's go to the browser >
Audio Effects and choose Beat Repeat.
| | 03:36 | I am going to drag the
Beat Repeat on to the Deck B.
| | 03:40 | if you remember, we have two bottom views, we
have the clip view, which show us the waveform,
| | 03:45 | if it's an Audio clip and the MIDI editor
if it's a MIDI clip, which we will see later
| | 03:49 | on in this course, and the track view, where we can see a
signal chain and here we will drop all the Audio Effects.
| | 03:56 | Let's drag the Beat Repeat before the Gain,
because we want the Gain to be last in the
| | 04:00 | chain just to make sure we have full control
on the volume. This is the Beat Repeat.
| | 04:05 | It would take the audio and will record it
and will stutter it according to the parameters
| | 04:10 | that are right here.
Let's see how that works.
| | 04:12 | First, I am also going turn Chance all the
way down, because we want to manually trigger
| | 04:17 | the repeat, which is
with this button right here.
| | 04:20 | Now let's play the clip and see how it works.
| | 04:23 | (music playing)
| | 04:33 | We heard the Stuttering or the
Beat Repeat in the original song.
| | 04:37 | That's because Beat Repeat has three modes,
Mix, Instrument, and Gate.
| | 04:42 | Let's switch it to Instrument, so when we turn on
the Beat Repeat we only hear the repeats, like so.
| | 04:46 | I am going to play the clip
again and turn the Repeat on.
| | 04:50 | (music playing)
| | 05:00 | Next, we want to change the grid size to change
the speed of the Stuttering or the Beat Repeating.
| | 05:06 | We can change it to, let's say 8,
and now it will sound like this.
| | 05:12 | (music playing)
| | 05:19 | So you can already tell that if we map the
right parameters to a MIDI controller, we
| | 05:23 | can have full control and the exact same looping functionality
as we had with the Cue points. Let's check it out.
| | 05:30 | Let's map the grid, I am going to go into
MIDI map mode using Command+M or Ctrl+M.
| | 05:35 | Hit the grid, I am going to map
it to one of my knobs, very cool.
| | 05:40 | I am going to map the Repeat button to one of my keys
on my keyboard, doesn't really matter which. Very nice.
| | 05:52 | Now we have control over the grid,
and we can turn the repeat on and off.
| | 05:59 | We will check it out again.
| | 06:01 | (music playing)
| | 06:15 | If you noticed between 8th note and 16th note,
you also have 12th note which is a triplet.
| | 06:22 | We usually don't want to use triplets,
especially in dance music or if you are playing in the
| | 06:27 | club, so let's hit the No Triplets
mode, so it will skip the triplets.
| | 06:30 | Let's hit another Beat Repeat to Deck A,
with the same position I had before the Utility,
| | 06:36 | which is the Gain stage,
and map the same controls.
| | 06:39 | First, let's turn No Triplets on, let's
pull the Chance all the way to 0, go into MIDI
| | 06:44 | map mode by hitting Command+M or Ctrl+M,
mapping the Repeat. We can map it to the same button
| | 06:49 | if we want or different button or key and
the Grid, same knob or different knob and
| | 06:59 | Exit MIDI Map mode and don't forget to
change the mode of the Beat Repeat to Instrument
| | 07:03 | just so we will hear only the Repeats,
and not the repeats mixed with the song.
| | 07:08 | As you can see, on each deck
now, we have three effects.
| | 07:11 | In the next video I will show you how to
group them and how to make your own special effects.
| | 07:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building a custom audio effect rack| 00:01 | Another way to take your sound to the next
level is to create your own unique effects.
| | 00:05 | To do that, we use Audio Effect Racks.
| | 00:09 | Let me show the one that
we're going to build together.
| | 00:14 | (music playing)
| | 00:38 | So, as you can see on the screen, we have a device that
has only eight knobs, but we control multiple effects.
| | 00:45 | Let's open it up, and let's take a look.
| | 00:48 | Let's see how we build one of those, so I am
going to delete this, and let's build our own.
| | 00:52 | I am going to go into Audio Effects, in my
Live browser, I am going to load up the effect
| | 00:57 | that we used so far, which is EQ Three, I am just
double-clicking, a Beat Repeat and Utility for the Gain.
| | 01:07 | I am going to select the Effects by holding
Shift and clicking on them, then I am going
| | 01:12 | to right-click on one of the device's titles, and
I am going to choose Group or Command+G or Ctrl+G.
| | 01:17 | that's going to place them
inside an Audio Effect Rack.
| | 01:21 | The Audio Effect Rack has three View Selectors,
Macro controls, the Chain list, and a Device list,
| | 01:29 | which will show and hide
the devices that are in the rack.
| | 01:32 | Now we need to decide which parameters we
want to map to the Macro controls.
| | 01:37 | We can map multiple parameters to each control.
| | 01:41 | So first I am going to map
the Low, Mid, and High of the EQ.
| | 01:44 | I am going to right-click on the parameter, and
we're going to choose Map to Macro, in this case 1.
| | 01:51 | Same thing with Mid, let's map it
to 2, and High, let's map it to 3.
| | 01:56 | I am going to set up my Beat Repeat like we
did in the last video, no Triplets, turn the
| | 02:03 | Chance all the way down,
and put it on Instrument mode.
| | 02:08 | I am going to map the Repeat, let's map it to Macro 5,
and I am going to map the Grid, let's map it to Macro 6.
| | 02:15 | I am also going to map the
Gain, let's do it in Macro 4.
| | 02:19 | Now if I move these Macro knobs, we
can see it also change in the device.
| | 02:26 | But once again, we have a problem with the Range, it's
going too far down and going way louder than we want.
| | 02:32 | So like we did with the MIDI mapping mode,
also in the Audio Effect Racks, we can go
| | 02:36 | into Map mode, and, as you can see, it's
Macro Mapping and not MIDI mapping, and here we
| | 02:42 | can also set the Minimum and
Maximum value. Let's do that now.
| | 02:50 | And for the EQs, I am
going to set the Maximum at 3.
| | 02:55 | for the Grid size of the beat repeat, we
make it smaller, let's do 1/32 and 1/16, and for
| | 03:06 | the Repeat I am going to change it to 1 and 127,
which means every time that the knob
| | 03:11 | is not on 0, it's going to turn on the Repeat.
Let's see how that works.
| | 03:22 | First, we can tell all the EQs are down, let's
reset them, if you remember, we just hit Delete,
| | 03:26 | and it's going to Reset to the
default value, Low, Mid, and High.
| | 03:33 | The Gain is too much, let's
set it to 0, and now the Repeat.
| | 03:40 | Every time that's not on 0, turning on the
Repeat, and we can also change the Grid size.
| | 03:45 | (music playing)
| | 03:48 | Next, let's add a couple of more
Effects because we have two Macro controls.
| | 03:52 | I am going to add two Auto-Filters,
one for low-pass and one for high-pass.
| | 03:56 | I dropped it outside the Rack, which
means we cannot map it to Macro controls.
| | 04:04 | I will need to drag it inside the Rack and then
I can map the parameters to the Macro controls.
| | 04:10 | Let's change this to High-Pass, take it all
the way down, and I am going to map both Filter
| | 04:16 | Cutoff Frequency to Macro 7 and Macro 8.
| | 04:21 | I am also going to map the On/Off buttons
for each device, because whenever we don't
| | 04:27 | filter, we don't want the device to
be turned on, so Macro 7 and Macro 8.
| | 04:35 | After we map the Filter Cutoff Frequency,
the name of the Macro knob is going to change
| | 04:40 | to Frequency, because that
is the name of the parameter.
| | 04:43 | Then if we want to map another parameter to
the same Macro, we'll see the name that we
| | 04:48 | last mapped to, in this case, Frequency.
| | 04:51 | So we won't see Macro 8 or
Macro 7, we'll see Map to Frequency.
| | 04:55 | Next, let's go back into Map mode and
adjust the Minimum and Maximum value.
| | 05:01 | So once again, I want the device to be only
turned on when I use it, so for the low-pass
| | 05:06 | I am going to put it on 127 Minimum and 126.
And for the high-pass, we want to do 1 and 127.
| | 05:16 | So once again, only if it's on 0, it will be turned off, and
all the rest it will be turned on. Let's see how it works.
| | 05:24 | If we look here, when the low-pass filter
is all the way up, it's turned off, and once
| | 05:29 | we start taking it down, it turns on,
and let's scroll up a tiny bit to
| | 05:34 | the right, and we see the same thing with
the high-pass. Only when we start using it,
| | 05:38 | it's going to turn on,
that's exactly what we wanted.
| | 05:42 | Let's fold everything by closing
the Device list and the Chain list.
| | 05:46 | I am going to rename all the Macro
controls by right-clicking and choosing the Rename
| | 05:53 | or hitting Command+R or
Ctrl+R, let's call it Low.
| | 05:58 | I am hitting Command+R or Ctrl+R, Mid, Hi.
| | 06:06 | Gain is good, we leave it like that, Repeat
and Grid are also good, Frequency the first
| | 06:12 | one, we'll call it LP for
low-pass, and HP for high-pass.
| | 06:17 | Now, that we've built an Audio Effect Rack,
let's save this by hitting the small icon
| | 06:22 | to the top right of the device and
calling that DJ Effect Rack. Very cool.
| | 06:30 | Now that every time we want to use it, we
can load it up through the User Library.
| | 06:35 | Let's also load up one Deck B, I
don't need these devices anymore.
| | 06:39 | I am holding Shift and selecting them, deleting, and
loading my DJ Effect Rack. I am just going to double-click.
| | 06:49 | Let's MIDI map these controls by going to MIDI
map mode, hitting the controls, and mapping them.
| | 07:04 | I am going to map the filters to
faders because it's more comfortable for me.
| | 07:08 | I am going to Exit MIDI map mode, Command+M
or Ctrl+M, and let's see how it works.
| | 07:13 | I am going to navigate
the scene and launch a clip.
| | 07:18 | (music playing)
So we got EQs Low, Mid, and High.
| | 07:25 | We got the Gain if we need to turn it up or down,
we got the Repeat, we can change the Grid size.
| | 07:31 | (music playing)
| | 07:34 | Very cool. And some filters. High-pass, very nice.
(music playing)
| | 07:50 | Let me show you my personal Audio Effect Rack
that I've built, which is called Baduda's filters.
| | 07:57 | As you can see, I colored everything just to
keep it nice and neat, I am going to rename it.
| | 08:01 | If I open it up, you can see it consists of a lot of
different effects that each knob controls multiple parameters.
| | 08:09 | And by doing so I am
creating my own unique effects.
| | 08:12 | Let's just take a listen just to demonstrate.
| | 08:16 | (music playing)
| | 08:24 | Very cool. Let me open up the Effects,
just so you can see what it does.
| | 08:29 | (music playing)
| | 08:38 | I am going to delete that.
| | 08:40 | I hope this inspires you to create your own effects
using multiple effects inside an Audio Effect Rack.
| | 08:47 | Basically, you can be irresponsibly
creative to make your own unique sound.
| | 08:52 | In the next video we see how to use samplers
and how to launch one-shots on our keyboard.
| | 08:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the drum rack to play one-shot samples| 00:01 | To add even more character and creativity to
your DJ set, I'd like to show you how to use samplers.
| | 00:06 | A sampler is a tool that allows you to play back any short
or long audio files that you might have on your computer.
| | 00:13 | This might be vocal samples, music
samples, special effects, or even instruments.
| | 00:18 | Most samplers give us the feature such as
ability to change pitch, change length, looping,
| | 00:25 | adding affects such as filters, and using synthesis tools such
as Envelopes and low frequency oscillators, or LFO, for modulation.
| | 00:34 | While there is a place for third-party
hardware or software samplers, Ableton Live samplers
| | 00:39 | are very powerful and CPU efficient, because
they're built in. Let's see how to use them.
| | 00:48 | As you can tell, I also added colors to Audio
Effect Rack just to keep everything nice and
| | 00:52 | neat, and it also helps in scenarios where you
play in the dark space like clubs and parties.
| | 00:57 | First, we need to do is to add a new track,
in this case it's a MIDI track, because we're
| | 01:01 | going to use instruments and not audio files.
| | 01:04 | So let's go to Create and choose Insert MIDI Track,
or Shift+Command+T or Shift+Ctrl+T. Nice.
| | 01:11 | Next, let's go to our browser, under Instruments
let's choose the Drum Rack, I'm just going
| | 01:17 | to drag and drop onto a newly created
MIDI track, we can see it on the bottom.
| | 01:24 | This is the pad view of the drum rack.
| | 01:26 | Each pad correspond to a key on our
keyboard, we have C1, C#1, D1, and so on.
| | 01:34 | Let's make sure that a track is armed with
this button right here, and if I play the
| | 01:38 | keyboard, you can see the drum rack
correspond to our keyboard playing, very cool.
| | 01:45 | Now all we need to do is just drop audio
files onto the pads, so let's go to our browser
| | 01:52 | again, let's scroll down Exercise File > Sample >
Processed > Crop, and I'm going to choose Slice 2 to 5.
| | 02:04 | I can just drag and drop them one by one , or I
can choose multiple samples by just holding
| | 02:10 | Shift and selecting, let's drag all of them.
| | 02:15 | Now once again, I need to make sure the
track is armed using this button right here, and
| | 02:20 | I can play the samples using my keyboard.
| | 02:22 | (music playing)
| | 02:25 | Very cool. As you can hear that samples that I cut
from an old soul song. You can use whatever samples
| | 02:30 | you want, once again, vocal samples, music,
special effects, or whatever comes to mind.
| | 02:36 | If we double-click on one of the samples,
and we see something that's similar to the
| | 02:40 | Audio Effect Rack we saw in the last video,
but in this case, it's an instrument rack,
| | 02:45 | which can also consist of
instruments and not only effects.
| | 02:49 | In this case we're using simpler, which is one of
Live's two samplers, which is called Sampler and Simpler.
| | 02:57 | Into simpler we can change the pitch, we
can change the volume, we can change the start
| | 03:03 | of the loop, the end of the
loop, add filters, and so on.
| | 03:07 | Let's check out how it sounds.
| | 03:08 | So you can see we already have map for vocal controls
for the Pitch, Volume, Filter, Sample Start, and Release.
| | 03:17 | This is the default preset for dropping
samples into the drum rack. You can make your own
| | 03:21 | presets, but we're not going
to cover it in this course.
| | 03:24 | So if I play a sample.
(music playing)
| | 03:27 | I can change the pitch.
(music playing)
| | 03:31 | I'm going to hit Delete to
return to a default state.
| | 03:33 | I could change the Gain, I can add Filter,
and I can change the Sample Start, very cool.
| | 03:46 | If I played a sample consecutively, we can
hear it plays up to three times, and I don't want that.
| | 03:52 | We can change that by going to
Voices, and we see 3, we can change that to 1,
| | 03:58 | and now it only plays 1, very cool.
Let's change them to the other samples.
| | 04:06 | (music playing)
Nice.
| | 04:10 | (music playing)
Very cool.
| | 04:14 | (music playing)
Awesome.
| | 04:17 | We can also change the Release time of the
sample, which we can see it's marked with
| | 04:22 | a green dot, which means it's mapped to macro
control, so let's go to macro control marked
| | 04:27 | with the Release, and now if we change that,
we take the Release all the way down the sample
| | 04:34 | will cut itself once we release the note.
(music playing)
| | 04:40 | And to give us more control over playing the sample,
let's see how it sounds when I play a song.
| | 04:47 | (music playing)
| | 04:54 | Change the Release on all of
them just to have more control.
| | 04:58 | (music playing)
| | 05:20 | Very cool. Of course, you can add as many samples
as you want, up to 127, and you don't have only
| | 05:27 | this octave, which you can see it goes up
to C2, we started at C1, you can also take
| | 05:34 | the sidebar and scroll up for more
slots and scroll down for even more.
| | 05:42 | If you don't want to be worried about
arming the track in your Live Show, and you know
| | 05:46 | you're going to use the samples every time,
you can open up the inputs/outputs using this
| | 05:50 | View Selector right here, and setting the
Monitor to In, which will input any note that comes in.
| | 05:57 | So now we don't need to worry about arming
the track, we still can play anytime we want,
| | 06:02 | and that will come really useful when we start adding more
MIDI tracks, or we want to record audio into our Live Set.
| | 06:09 | In the next video we'll see how to use the Drum
Racks to emulate a scratching sound in Ableton Live.
| | 06:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scratching| 00:00 | In the last video, we saw how we can
use Drum Racks to add one-shot samples.
| | 00:05 | Each sample in the Drum Rack is its own simpler.
| | 00:08 | Let's see how we can imitate Scratching
Sound using White Noise and a Sine Wave.
| | 00:12 | Now, I know it's not turntables, and it's not actually
scratching, it's more of a controller that's scratching.
| | 00:19 | But you can get the feeling of Scratching
using this technique. Let's check it out.
| | 00:23 | First off, I'm going to rename our MIDI Track
just to keep things organized, right-clicking,
| | 00:30 | choosing Rename, let's call it Samples.
Also, I'm going to give it a color, cool.
| | 00:37 | Next, let's load our Samples into the drum rack.
| | 00:41 | In my browser, I'm going to scroll down, go to
Exercise Files > Samples, I'm going to load the White Noise.
| | 00:48 | Nice, let's play that.
(audio playing)
| | 00:51 | You can hear it's only noise, a very long noise.
| | 00:55 | But let's take the Release down
like we did in the last video.
| | 00:59 | And now if I play it--
Let's play from my keyboard. Nice.
| | 01:06 | Another thing I want to do is I want to
take down the Velocity all the way to 0.
| | 01:11 | If it is on 100, it's going to be the most
sensitive to my hits, which means if I'm going
| | 01:16 | to hit the key soft, it's
going to play low volume.
| | 01:19 | If I'm going to hit it hard,
it's going to play in high volume.
| | 01:21 | And I don't want any changes in volume,
so I'm going to set the Velocity to 0.
| | 01:26 | (audio playing)
Great.
| | 01:28 | To achieve the Scratching Sound,
we're going to use the Filter.
| | 01:32 | We can see the Filter right here.
| | 01:33 | This is the Filter section in the simpler,
and we've the Frequency Cutoff and the Resonance
| | 01:38 | mapped to macro controls.
So, we can control them from here.
| | 01:42 | Let's take the Resonance all the way up.
(audio playing)
| | 01:45 | And play with the Filter Cutoff.
| | 01:48 | (audio playing)
Very cool.
| | 01:52 | Let's map the Filter
Cutoff to our MIDI keyboard.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to go to MIDI Mapping mode by
hitting Command+M or Ctrl+M, clicking on the Filter
| | 02:00 | Cutoff, moving one of the
knobs on my MIDI keyboard.
| | 02:07 | Let's also set the Minimum/Maximum values, so
we won't reach values that we don't really need.
| | 02:12 | Let's set it to about 1.4 kHz and maybe 16.
| | 02:20 | Let's check it out.
Exit MIDI Map mode.
| | 02:25 | (audio playing)
Very cool.
| | 02:34 | This is how we achieve
Scratching Sound with White Noise.
| | 02:38 | Let's check it with Sine wave and then we demonstrate both
of them on one of the beats, we'll play in our DJ set.
| | 02:43 | So, this is a Sine Wave.
(audio playing)
| | 02:46 | Once again, very long sample.
Let's take down the Release.
| | 02:49 | (audio playing)
Very cool.
| | 02:52 | Let's take up the Pitch, because right now it's a quite
low, so take it up by 12 semitones, which is an octave.
| | 03:00 | Once again, I'm going to take down the
Velocity because, I don't want any sensitivity.
| | 03:07 | Let's take up the Gain because, it's too low.
(audio playing)
| | 03:12 | Now, to achieve the Scratching
Sound, we need to change the Pitch.
| | 03:16 | (audio playing)
Automatically, we can do it in two ways.
| | 03:21 | First, we can use LFO, which is a Low
Frequency Oscillator. Let's turn it on.
| | 03:27 | And we can think of an LFO as a
waveform to take the Pitch up and down.
| | 03:31 | So, if we take the LFO meter
right here, we take the amount.
| | 03:34 | Let's take it up at about 60.
| | 03:38 | And now, if we play it.
(audio playing)
| | 03:41 | It's going up and down, up and down.
| | 03:44 | Every time I trigger the Sample, it's
going to start from the same point, because the
| | 03:50 | LFO right now is re-triggering itself.
| | 03:52 | If we turn off the Retrig, it's
going to move freely all the time.
| | 03:56 | So, if I trigger the sample.
(audio playing)
| | 04:00 | We can control the speed of
the LFO through the frequency.
| | 04:04 | (audio playing)
| | 04:09 | And we can control the
amount using this box right here.
| | 04:13 | (audio playing)
Very cool.
| | 04:18 | Another way to achieve the Scratching Sound using the Sine
Wave is turn off the LFO and using the Pitch Envelope.
| | 04:23 | In Simpler, we have 3
Envelopes, Volume, Filter, and Pitch.
| | 04:28 | Let's go to Pitch, turn it on, and take
the Attack about half a second, or 500 milliseconds.
| | 04:35 | When you turn the Pitch Envelope on, you
can see that Env modulation box enabled.
| | 04:41 | So, let's take it up.
(audio playing)
| | 04:45 | And let's take it down.
(audio playing)
| | 04:47 | So you basically need to control this box.
Let's map it to our MIDI Controller.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to go to MIDI Map mode--
you already know how--and map it.
| | 04:57 | Exit MIDI Map mode.
And now we can see the Range is still wide.
| | 05:02 | Let's go back to MIDI Map mode and
adjust the Minimum and Maximum value.
| | 05:06 | Let's do -24--it's up to you--and +12, that might be my
comfortable range, but you can change it to your likings.
| | 05:14 | (audio playing)
| | 05:23 | It's important to remember that White Noise is
simply noise, it will work with any kind of material.
| | 05:28 | But if you're using Sine Wave, you might
want to adjust the Pitch according to your song.
| | 05:33 | So, let's check it how it sounds on songs.
I'm going to turn it down a tiny bit.
| | 05:37 | Just so we can hear the scratching sound.
| | 05:40 | And once again, this is not a real
scratching, it's only controller is scratching.
| | 05:45 | (music playing)
| | 06:21 | You can apply this technique to other sounds
like Vocals, Trumpets, Guitars, or any other
| | 06:26 | instruments that come in mind. Be creative.
Let's sum things up.
| | 06:30 | So far, I've shown you how to create a DJ
set in Ableton Live, how to input your own
| | 06:35 | songs and how to warp them, how to make your
own unique sounds using custom-built effects,
| | 06:40 | and how to achieve some of the
functionality that can be found in deejay softwares.
| | 06:45 | All of the techniques you'll see throughout the rest
of the course can certainly be applied to a DJ set.
| | 06:50 | But starting in the next chapter, I'm going to show
you how to perform live with your own original songs.
| | 06:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Performing Live with Original SongsOrganizing your tracks| 00:00 | We've seen how you can deejay by inputting
songs into Ableton Live and create a DJ set.
| | 00:05 | In this Chapter we'll see how we can take
original tunes and create a live performance.
| | 00:11 | The first thing I'm going to show you is
how to group the different elements in your
| | 00:15 | songs and export them to
your computer as audio files.
| | 00:19 | Take your time with this process.
| | 00:20 | It might be the longest step
in preparing your live show.
| | 00:26 | In Ableton Live, I've loaded one of my projects.
Let's take a listen.
| | 00:32 | (music playing)
| | 00:44 | As you can see, we're in a
different view that we've been so far.
| | 00:48 | This is called the Arrangement View.
| | 00:50 | This is where we're going to arrange our
ideas after we lay them down in the Session View.
| | 00:55 | If you want to switch between two views, you
can hit the Tab key, or you can use the View
| | 01:00 | Selectors to the upper right of the screen.
| | 01:04 | First, let's start by marking the
different segments of the songs by adding Locators.
| | 01:10 | To add a Locator, I need to right-click on the Play
bar and choose Add Locator. Let's call this Intro.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to move it by
dragging it to the start.
| | 01:21 | Let's add Locators the
other sections of the song.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to call this Part A,
Part B, Part C, and Outro.
| | 01:37 | Next thing we need to do is to group
the different elements of the songs.
| | 01:40 | For me, I'm going to group into 4 groups,
Kick, Bass, Music, Snare & Percussion.
| | 01:46 | You can also group into Instruments, Vocals,
Effects, or anything that comes in mind. Let's do it now.
| | 01:53 | To group, I'm going to choose the tracks that
I want to group by clicking on them, holding
| | 01:57 | Shift, and selecting.
Right-click and choose Group Tracks.
| | 02:02 | Let's rename them by clicking Command+R or
Ctrl+R, and I'm going to call this Music.
| | 02:07 | The bass and kick are on their own
tracks, so we don't need to group them.
| | 02:11 | And let's group the snare, hi-hats,
percussion, and beat loop tracks.
| | 02:15 | Again, by holding Shift and selecting,
right-clicking, choosing Group Tracks.
| | 02:21 | We can also use Command+G or Ctrl+G.
| | 02:23 | Let's call this Snare & Perc.
Let's fold the groups.
| | 02:28 | Go ahead and just click
the Fold button next to them.
| | 02:32 | Now, I'm going to right-click on the
first Locator and choose Loop to Next Locator.
| | 02:36 | Next, I'm just going to click on the loop
bracket, and then I'm going to go to File > Export.
| | 02:43 | Under Rendered Tracks, we're going to choose
All Tracks, which is going to export all the tracks,
| | 02:48 | including the tracks that are inside the groups,
Return Tracks, and the Master Track.
| | 02:52 | So, there might be some
unnecessary files we will have to delete.
| | 02:56 | Under Audio, choose your
favorite format, WAV or AIFF.
| | 03:01 | Sample Rate, I'm using 44100, you might be
using a different Sample Rate, as well, you
| | 03:06 | might be using a different
Bit Depth. I'm using 24.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to turn on Create Analysis Files,
because, that's going to make the process
| | 03:13 | of importing the song later on to our newly-
created project a lot faster. Let's hit OK.
| | 03:20 | Go to the Desktop.
I've created a folder called Live Show.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to create another folder in it,
naming the name of the song with the BPM.
| | 03:31 | And name of the file, I'm going to call it
the name of the Locator or the segment of
| | 03:35 | the song, which is in this
case is Intro. Let's hit Save.
| | 03:41 | Let's go to the Finder window.
| | 03:44 | And here we can find all our audio files
that we've exported as well as ASD files, which
| | 03:49 | are the Analysis files.
Let's go and sort everything by Kind.
| | 03:53 | Scroll down, and let's choose all the
unnecessary files such as Return tracks.
| | 03:58 | I'm going to hold Command and select other Return,
beat loop, hi-hat, perc, Samples, Snares, and Intro.
| | 04:06 | So, we only remain with the default
groups we exported, exactly what I wanted.
| | 04:11 | We can also delete the ASD files if you
want, but they did not catch too much space.
| | 04:15 | So, I'm not going to delete them right now.
Let's go back into Live.
| | 04:19 | Now, let's export the second section.
| | 04:21 | I'm going to right-click on the Locator >
Loop to Next Locator, hit the loop bracket,
| | 04:26 | and once again go to File and Export.
| | 04:30 | Now, I've shown you how to
export one segment of the song.
| | 04:34 | Of course, you need to repeat this
process for each segment of the song.
| | 04:37 | Export it to a folder in your hard
drive and delete unnecessary files.
| | 04:41 | In the next video, we'll create a new
project and start building our live performance.
| | 04:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new set| 00:00 | I have taken the time to export all of the
different segments of my song as individual audio files,
| | 00:05 | one for each of my four groups, Kick,
Bass, Music, and Snare & Percussion.
| | 00:12 | As you can see, I decided to name the
segments using more traditional song structural terms
| | 00:16 | like Intro, Verse, Chorus, Chorus 2, and Outro.
| | 00:21 | You are free to name your
segments anything you like.
| | 00:24 | So the first thing I am going to
do is to create a New Live Set.
| | 00:27 | Let's go, click File > New Live Set.
| | 00:31 | Let's delete the two MIDI tracks
because we don't need them at this moment.
| | 00:34 | I am going to click on the
title and hit Delete, Delete.
| | 00:37 | I am going to create two more audio
tracks by hitting Command+T or Ctrl+T twice.
| | 00:43 | Let's rename all the tracks according to our group
names, Kick, Snare & Percussion, Bass, and Music.
| | 00:52 | Let's go back to my Finder window. Now I
am going to import everything, Intro, Verse.
| | 01:05 | Right now everything is imported to one track.
| | 01:07 | If I hold Command, it will
import to all the tracks.
| | 01:11 | Let's import to Chorus, holding Shift,
selecting all Audio files, holding Command,
| | 01:18 | let's go to Chorus 2 and go also on Outro,
let's select all tracks and expand them.
| | 01:29 | Let's narrow down the
browser, just so we can see more.
| | 01:34 | Let's expand the Master and rename the
scenes just like we did in the DJ set.
| | 01:37 | We got Intro, Chorus, Verse, Chorus 2, and Outro.
| | 01:43 | Let's organize the clips.
Everything is organized, that's correct.
| | 01:48 | I am going to color the tracks,
it's very important in your Live Set.
| | 01:52 | In the next video we'll see a lot more clips,
because I am going to going to import all
| | 01:55 | the other songs that I exported, and the
colors will keep everything organized.
| | 02:05 | Let's also color all the scenes in the same color,
because we are using the same song. White would be good.
| | 02:10 | Next, let's go into each clip by double-clicking on
it and just making sure they are warped correctly.
| | 02:16 | We can see the Segment BPM right here,
it's on 120 and the song is on 90.
| | 02:20 | I will change this to 90 just to make sure the
other clips are warped correctly. Very good, nice.
| | 02:42 | Now we have to need to export our other songs,
but I am not going to do it in this video.
| | 02:46 | Let's' go to Live Preferences and
prepare our Live Set for a live performance.
| | 02:52 | We can change the Zoom Display of everything
in Live. All the windows in Live will change
| | 02:57 | proportionately, according to
their percentage we click here.
| | 03:00 | So for example, if we put it on 80%, everything will
be much smaller, which would give us more screen space.
| | 03:06 | For now I'll go with 85.
| | 03:09 | Let's go to Record Warp Launch tab, and on
the bottom we can see three options,
| | 03:14 | Select on Launch, which will select each
track if you launch a clip in it.
| | 03:17 | Right now, for me personally, it's turned Off.
| | 03:21 | Select Next Scene on Launch, every time you
launch a scene it will select the next scene
| | 03:26 | and Start Recording on Scene Launch turned off, because
we don't want to record anything in our live performance.
| | 03:32 | In the next video, we'll see how to add instruments to
our Live Set, so we can play them using our MIDI keyboard.
| | 03:38 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding instruments and samplers| 00:00 | Now let's add instruments to our Live Set.
| | 00:03 | The sounds of the instruments don't have to be the
same sounds you used when you produced the track.
| | 00:08 | This can give you the opportunity to play a
different version of your song in a live performance.
| | 00:12 | This is especially important in an electronic music, since
the production and the Live version are often very similar.
| | 00:19 | You can keep your audience entertained and
give yourself more creative space on stage.
| | 00:24 | Let's see how to add MIDI instruments in Live.
| | 00:29 | So I am going to add a new MIDI track by
clicking Command+Shift+T or Ctrl+Shit+T.
| | 00:36 | Then I am going to go and I am going to
add the drum rack we used in the DJ's chapter
| | 00:41 | just so we have those samples, check them out.
(music playing)
| | 00:45 | Next, I am going to add an
instrument, maybe a synthesizer.
| | 00:49 | I am going to go to Live browser > Instruments,
under Operator, I am going to choose one of the presets.
| | 00:57 | Let's go to Synth Lead, and here I
can preview the different presets.
| | 01:01 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | I like this sound.
Let's load it to a new MIDI track.
| | 01:08 | I am going to, again, Command+Shift+T or
Ctrl+Shift+T, and I am going to drag it.
| | 01:16 | Let's make both tracks smaller to save
screen space, and I'll see how it sounds.
| | 01:20 | (music playing)
Might be too loud, let's just turn it down.
| | 01:25 | I want to turn one of them and they
are both selected. Very cool.
| | 01:31 | (music playing)
See how it sounds with the music.
| | 01:35 | (music playing)
| | 01:53 | Let's add couple more instruments.
| | 01:56 | I am going to go to my User
Library and add my own presets.
| | 02:00 | Let's' add two more MIDI tracks.
| | 02:02 | Once again, Command+Shift+T or
Ctrl+Shift+T, let's hit it twice.
| | 02:06 | I am going to load one bass patch, and I am
going to load another drum rack, this time
| | 02:15 | load it with drum samples.
(music playing)
| | 02:21 | The drum samples I want to play with my Dreamcast
Arcade Stick and the bass, I want to play with my Keyboard.
| | 02:27 | So we need to set it up, so the MIDI tracks
would receive only signal from the keys and
| | 02:32 | the drum rack would only
receive signal from the Dreamcast.
| | 02:37 | To do that, I am going to open up the Input
Output View Selector, we can find to the right.
| | 02:43 | Next, in the Bass MIDI track, I am going to
choose MIDI From and my keyboard which is SL MkII.
| | 02:49 | I am also going to add another MIDI
track to add the Max for Live device.
| | 02:54 | This is only for my Dreamcast Arcade Stick
to be able to talk with the computer.
| | 02:58 | You don't have to do that if you
use the regular MIDI controller.
| | 03:01 | Go into Max for Live and add in my Max for Live
device that will allow me to play the Dreamcast.
| | 03:07 | Then I am going to set the drum rack with
the drums MIDI From and the newly created MIDI.
| | 03:15 | Let's rename everything
just to keep it organized.
| | 03:28 | Well, if I arm in both tracks by
holding Command, I can play both of them.
| | 03:33 | (music playing)
| | 03:54 | I also want to map the arming tracks to my MIDI
keyboard so I have full control on which instrument
| | 04:00 | I am playing at any time.
| | 04:01 | Right now, the arming track is exclusive, which
means if I press one, all the rest will be turned off.
| | 04:08 | We can cancel that by right-clicking on
one of them and turning off Arm Exclusive.
| | 04:14 | Now every time I am arming the track, it
won't be exclusive and will just turn on, which
| | 04:19 | is great when we are
dealing with multiple instruments.
| | 04:24 | Now that I have added instruments, I am
finding myself scrolling through my Live Set a lot,
| | 04:28 | which will consume time on stage and will
force me to touch the computer, which is not
| | 04:32 | always good in a Live situation.
| | 04:34 | In the next video, I'll show you how to
set up multiple instruments on one track.
| | 04:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up multiple instruments on one track| 00:00 | In an earlier video, we
talked about Audio Effect Tracks.
| | 00:03 | I like to show you how to use another kind
of rack, an Instrument rack which will allow
| | 00:07 | you to group multiple
instruments on a single MIDI track.
| | 00:10 | This can conserve both
CPU power and screen space.
| | 00:15 | By using Instrument racks, you'll have more
control over your Live set and minimize the
| | 00:19 | actual numbers of tracks you
need to interact with on stage.
| | 00:25 | In Live, I've created four MIDI
tracks with instruments on them.
| | 00:29 | I've also created an another track, but
they are just to communicate my Dreamcast with
| | 00:34 | Ableton Live using Max for Live device.
| | 00:36 | So, I can narrow it down,
because I don't need it.
| | 00:39 | The four tracks I'm going to
categorize into the two categories.
| | 00:44 | One, the instruments that I play with my keyboard,
second, the instruments that I play with my Dreamcast.
| | 00:49 | The Samples and the Vinyl Kit I'm
going to play with my Dreamcast.
| | 00:53 | And the Lead and the Funky Bass, I'm
going to play with my MIDI keyboard.
| | 00:57 | To put them on the same track,
first let's go to the Samples.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to choose the Drum Rack, right-click on
the title, and choose Group, or Command+G or Ctrl+G.
| | 01:06 | This will create an Instrument rack, which
is exactly like the Drum Rack and the Audio
| | 01:10 | Effect Rack we saw earlier, but in this case,
we can also add instruments and not only effects.
| | 01:16 | Let's open up the Chain List
using the second view selector.
| | 01:19 | Here, we can add more
instruments using more chains.
| | 01:22 | Let's go back to the Vinyl Kit.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to click on the
Instrument, right-click, and choose Cut,
| | 01:30 | go back to our Sample track, and
paste it to the Drop Zone right here.
| | 01:35 | Now, we have both instruments on one track.
Let's arm the track so we can play it.
| | 01:40 | Let's get the MIDI from the Dreamcast,
and now when I want play it...
| | 01:45 | (music playing)
...we can hear both instruments play at the same time.
| | 01:50 | That's because, we'd still
split them into different zones.
| | 01:54 | We have three types of zones we can split them to:
| | 01:56 | Key, if you think of a keyboard, we can do
a split keyboard, which one side will play
| | 02:01 | the Drums and one side will play the Samples.
We'll see it with Instruments.
| | 02:05 | Velocity, which will split the keyboard by
velocity, which means if I play the keys
| | 02:10 | softer it will play one instrument,
| | 02:12 | and if I play them harder, it
will play the second instruments.
| | 02:15 | And Chain, which will basically split the
instruments into different zones, and we're
| | 02:20 | going to use that right now.
| | 02:21 | So, I'm just going to drag
the Zone Selector to number 1.
| | 02:25 | The first one is on number 0.
So now they won't play at same time.
| | 02:30 | The Samples, and if I drag the Chain
Selector, this orange line right here...
| | 02:34 | (music playing)
...we get the Drums, which is excellent.
| | 02:38 | Now, we only need to control this
Chain Selector using our MIDI keyboard.
| | 02:42 | So, let's map it to our Macro Control.
| | 02:45 | Let's open up the Macro Control using this View Selector,
right-clicking on the Chain Selector, and choosing Map to Macro1.
| | 02:52 | Now, we can scroll all the way to 127, just
like the MIDI protocol which goes from 0 to 127.
| | 03:00 | But we don't need that
because we only have 0 and 1.
| | 03:03 | So, let's go into Map, Macro
mapping and adjust the Maximum to 1.
| | 03:09 | Now, we can play the Samples.
(music playing)
| | 03:14 | And with the twist of the
knob, we can play the drum kit.
| | 03:20 | We can also map this to my
MIDI keyboard. Let's do it now.
| | 03:27 | Let's delete the unnecessary MIDI track, and let's do
the same with the Lead Instruments and the Funky Bass.
| | 03:34 | Once again, I'm going to click on the track title,
right-click, and choose Group, or Command+G or Ctrl+G.
| | 03:41 | Open up the Chain list, going to the Funky
Bass, right-clicking on the device, Cut,
| | 03:50 | go into Lead, and in the Drop Zone, pasting.
| | 03:53 | In this case, because it's Instrument,
and I'm going to play from my keyboard,
| | 03:57 | let's use the Key Editor to split the keys.
| | 03:59 | So, I'm going to put the Lead in the upper
octaves and the Bass in the lower octaves.
| | 04:07 | Let's arm the track, so we can play it.
| | 04:10 | It's important to note that if you
don't arm the track, it won't receive MIDI.
| | 04:15 | So just make sure the arm is
tracked and then you can play it.
| | 04:18 | (music playing)
So, we've got Lead.
| | 04:21 | (music playing)
And we've got Bass.
| | 04:25 | If you want to keep them like that, but you
want to change what notes they're playing,
| | 04:29 | you can use the Pitch MIDI Effect.
| | 04:31 | Under Live browser, go to MIDI Effects, and
drag the Pitch right before the Instrument.
| | 04:36 | So, for example, right now we have the Bass.
(music playing)
| | 04:41 | And we can play the same note on our keyboard,
but output a different note in Ableton Live.
| | 04:46 | Let's take it down -12,
which is an octave below.
| | 04:49 | (music playing)
So, same note.
| | 04:53 | But we're outputting a
different pitch in Ableton Live.
| | 04:56 | Pitch MIDI Effect is very
useful for this kind of purposes.
| | 05:00 | Let's delete the Funky Bass,
because we don't need it anymore.
| | 05:03 | And we can see in the Mixer device, that is
different and they are just to indicate that
| | 05:07 | this MIDI track has no instrument on it.
| | 05:11 | Let's give them colors just
to keep everything organized.
| | 05:14 | As you already know, I love
to keep everything organized.
| | 05:19 | In the next video, we'll talk about
playing Keys in a live performance.
| | 05:22 | If you don't have music theory knowledge, you can
use the Scale MIDI Effect to always play in Key.
| | 05:27 | So, even if you are not a keyboard player,
you can still work the Keys in Ableton Live.
| | 05:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Scale MIDI effect to play in key| 00:00 | Now that we have added instruments and
grouped them in an instrument rack, you might find
| | 00:04 | yourself saying, but I am not a keyboard player.
| | 00:07 | Well, in Ableton Live,
everyone is a keyboard player.
| | 00:10 | I am going to show you how to use the
Scale MIDI effect to filter out unwanted notes.
| | 00:15 | And by doing so, you will always stay in key.
Here is how it's done.
| | 00:20 | Let's go to the Live browser, MIDI Effects, and drag
and drop the Scale MIDI Effect before the Instrument.
| | 00:30 | It's important to note that MIDI effects go before the
Instruments, and Audio effect go after the instruments.
| | 00:37 | The Scale MIDI effects will help us filter out unwanted
notes, and correct them to the notes that are in the key.
| | 00:43 | So, right now if I play the keys on my keyboard, they
will correspond to the boxes in the Scale MIDI effect.
| | 00:50 | (music playing)
| | 00:56 | For example, if I take out C sharp, it won't
play even if I press the key, in any octave.
| | 01:08 | We can also correct it by
let's say putting it in C.
| | 01:12 | So now every time I hit C sharp, it will play C.
(music playing)
| | 01:18 | Or any other note for that matter,
like maybe E. Which is amazing.
| | 01:27 | So let's build a C major scale.
| | 01:31 | So, it doesn't matter which note I
press, it's going to play C major.
| | 01:39 | (music playing)
That's amazing.
| | 01:46 | You can always use the Scale
presets to load up different scales.
| | 01:51 | You can search for Ableton Scale presets
online, and find all the scales you need.
| | 01:55 | They are called Ableton Live Scale MIDI
Effect Presets, and you can download them for free.
| | 02:01 | If you are not sure which key you are playing,
you can use deejay technique and use softwares
| | 02:06 | like Mixed In Key or search
online for the key of your song.
| | 02:10 | Using MIDI effects can
inspire and improve creativity.
| | 02:13 | Let's add another one.
| | 02:15 | This time, I am going to choose the Random
MIDI effect, and drop it before the Scale.
| | 02:21 | I am going to turn Chance on,
and change the Sign to Bi.
| | 02:27 | Every time I will hit a note, it will send
a random note into the scale, and the scale
| | 02:31 | will correct the note to the key.
| | 02:33 | So, it will create endless
variations of melodies in the key.
| | 02:38 | (music playing)
| | 02:42 | So, it's only up to you to decide what kind of rhythm
you want to play this melody and make endless melodies.
| | 02:49 | Experiment with other MIDI effects, especially
the Arpeggiator, it's really powerful.
| | 02:54 | Taking your time in preparing your Live
Set for live performance might be the longest
| | 02:58 | and most important step towards your next
successful show, especially with deciding
| | 03:02 | which songs to play live, exporting the different
segments of the song, and setting up your Live Set.
| | 03:08 | In the next chapter, we'll see how we
can use effects in a more creative way.
| | 03:13 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Live Performance TechniquesCreating a bus track for master effects| 00:00 | Earlier in this course, I showed you how to
create custom effect tracks and place one on each deck.
| | 00:05 | But when performing live with your original
multi-track productions, you will likely have
| | 00:09 | a lot more than two tracks, and it will be
overly complex and time-consuming to place
| | 00:14 | and map an audio effect
track on each one of your tracks.
| | 00:18 | One solution would be to insert
some effects on the master track.
| | 00:22 | But what I'd like to show you in this
video is how to set up a regular audio track to
| | 00:26 | act as a pre-master track, or bus track.
| | 00:30 | You can have all of your audio tracks to this
new Bus track and insert your effects there.
| | 00:37 | In Live, let's create another audio
track by hitting Command or Ctrl+T.
| | 00:43 | Let's drag it to the end, renaming it Bus.
Let's give it a color.
| | 00:53 | Now, let's route all the tracks to this Bus
track by changing the Audio To, Audio To > Bus.
| | 01:02 | Let's do the same for all the tracks. Nice.
| | 01:13 | Right now, if we play the music, we won't
hear anything come out from the Bus track.
| | 01:19 | That's because we need to arm it.
(music playing)
| | 01:23 | But we don't want to worry about
arming the track every time we perform live.
| | 01:27 | So, we can set the monitor on In to
always receive audio for more loud tracks.
| | 01:36 | Let's place some Audio Effect
tracks on top of that.
| | 01:38 | I am going to use my own Audio Effect tracks.
But you can find them in the exercise files.
| | 01:47 | We can map the marker
controls to a MIDI controller.
| | 01:50 | But if you have a dedicated MIDI controller,
and you see the blue hand, that means it's
| | 01:55 | automatically mapped to your
controller, and you can start moving knobs.
| | 01:59 | If you see the blue hand is on Baduda's FX
Kit right now, and if I select Baduda's filter,
| | 02:06 | the blue hand moved out, and it's
automatically mapped, which is great.
| | 02:11 | So, let's play some songs.
| | 02:13 | I am going to scroll down, and
choose the filled song. Let's play it.
| | 02:20 | (music playing)
Nice.
| | 02:23 | Let's start some effects.
(music playing)
| | 02:31 | I am going to choose with my mouse the second
audio effect track, so the hand will be there.
| | 02:36 | Let's control that.
| | 02:40 | (music playing)
Nice.
| | 02:45 | As you can see, it's much more efficient to
control effects using a Bus track than to put
| | 02:50 | them on individual tracks
and control them that way.
| | 02:54 | In the next video, I will show you how to
control effects parameters using a special
| | 02:58 | kind of clip called a dummy clip.
| | 03:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using dummy clips| 00:00 | Up until now, we saw how to add effects and
how to control them using the mouse, a computer
| | 00:06 | keyboard using Key Mapping mode, or
MIDI controllers using MIDI Mapping mode.
| | 00:11 | We can also control effects using clips.
| | 00:13 | I will show you how to create
dummy clips using clip envelopes.
| | 00:18 | In the last video, we created an audio track, renamed
it Bus, and routed all the audio tracks to that bus.
| | 00:25 | To create dummy clips, we'll first
have to create an empty audio clip.
| | 00:29 | To do that, we have to
make sure the track is on.
| | 00:32 | Let's also make sure none of the
clips are playing by hitting Stop Clips.
| | 00:39 | Then let's hit Record button
on one of the empty clip slots.
| | 00:43 | It's up to you how long you want the clip.
That's enough for me.
| | 00:49 | Now, let's go to the Clip Envelope by
clicking on the View Selector marked with E.
| | 00:56 | If you are familiar with automation with any
other DAW or with Ableton Live, you know you
| | 01:00 | can control parameters on the timeline.
| | 01:02 | We have the same functionality in the Session
View in each clip, but this is called Clip Envelopes.
| | 01:07 | We can choose the
parameter from the dropdown menu.
| | 01:11 | Let's choose the first audio effect track called Baduda's
Filters, and then choose one of the marker controls.
| | 01:17 | I will choose the first one titled Sun Filter.
| | 01:21 | Let's add a dot in the Clip Envelope by just
clicking, and add another dot, again by just clicking.
| | 01:26 | Let's drag it to make a curve.
I am going to set it to the beginning.
| | 01:33 | I actually don't want it to go all the way up to
127, which means all the way to the end of the knob.
| | 01:39 | So, I am going to take it down.
| | 01:41 | We can also add a curve by holding
Option and using the Curve tool.
| | 01:45 | Well, let's see what
happens when we play the clip.
| | 01:48 | I am going to play the clip, and I
am going to move to the Track View.
| | 01:52 | Let's also launch a couple of clips
just so we can hear what we're doing.
| | 01:56 | So, I am going to launch the scene.
(music playing)
| | 02:01 | Go to the track view.
Play the clip.
| | 02:08 | (music playing)
| | 02:15 | As you can see, the sound filter will just
automatically do a sweep up, and will repeat
| | 02:22 | the process because the clip is also looping.
| | 02:25 | We can go in the clip and turn looping off
if we want the sweep to only happen once.
| | 02:32 | Now, when you play the clip...
| | 02:35 | (music playing)
| | 02:42 | ...we can see the parameter stayed on
the last value from the Clip Envelope.
| | 02:45 | So, if we don't use looping, we've got to make sure
that the end of the envelope will return it to zero.
| | 02:52 | Go back to Track View, launch the clip.
| | 02:56 | (music playing)
| | 03:01 | Very cool. There are two other ways to choose parameters
in the Clip Envelopes instead of the dropdown menu.
| | 03:08 | We can simply click on them,
and then move to the Clip View.
| | 03:12 | This time I am going to use Shift+Tab.
| | 03:14 | We can see that the last selected parameter is
chosen, again Shift+Tab, or we can right-click
| | 03:21 | on a parameter and choose Show Modulation which will
take us to its Clip Envelope that we're ready to adjust.
| | 03:28 | We don't have to use Clip
Envelopes only in dummy clips.
| | 03:31 | In the next video, we will see how to use
Clip Envelopes to automatically turn on an
| | 03:35 | affect only on one specific song.
| | 03:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using unlinked clip envelopes| 00:00 | Clip Envelopes are great for automating actions
that we would rather avoid during a performance,
| | 00:05 | like Effects that need to
be turned on just for one song.
| | 00:08 | Again, this is another example of a way
that you can prepare ahead of time and minimize
| | 00:13 | the need to touch the computer during a live show,
so you can interact with the crowd and focus on the music.
| | 00:20 | First, thing I am going to do is I am going
to turn off the input-output View Selector
| | 00:27 | just to make more screen space.
| | 00:29 | Next, I want to add a compressor just
on my second song titled Nintendo-Hop.
| | 00:35 | So let's add a compressor
to the music audio track.
| | 00:38 | Under Browser > Audio Effects, and I am going
to drag the Compressor to the music track.
| | 00:43 | I am going to adjust the Compressor
and set it to Side Chain from the kick.
| | 00:48 | Which means every time the kick will play,
the volume of the music track will drop down.
| | 00:53 | We are going to adjust the Threshold,
the Ratio, and the Attack and Release.
| | 01:02 | Next, I want the compressor to only be turned on, on
Nintendo-Hop, which is these two clips right here.
| | 01:08 | Let's double-click, and let's choose Device On.
| | 01:13 | Let's go back to the Device and turn it Off,
so it will be turned off at all situations
| | 01:20 | except when we tell it to, so a clip Envelope.
| | 01:24 | Create a point and turn it On
and same thing for the second clip.
| | 01:28 | I only have two clips in this song, but you
will have to repeat this process on as many
| | 01:34 | clips as your song might have.
| | 01:36 | Now, if we go back to the
track view and play the clip
| | 01:39 | (music playing)
| | 01:40 | We can see the Compressor will turn On, and
if we play a different clip from a different
| | 01:45 | song, you can see it turned off.
| | 01:48 | Now if I play the clip with the kick, we
can see the volume drop down every time the
| | 01:59 | kick comes in, and that's exactly what I want.
It will add more dynamic movement to my song,
| | 02:04 | and I want it only on this specific song.
Nice, let's stop all clips.
| | 02:10 | I also want the song to gradually go
up in volume along let's say 32 bars.
| | 02:17 | To do that I will create another dummy clip
on one of the cold one, that's enough, nice.
| | 02:25 | Hit the Spacebar to stop transport, I am
already in the clip view, click on the Envelope box
| | 02:31 | just to make sure we are under the clip envelope,
let's make sure we are under the right parameter
| | 02:35 | which is Mixer and track
volume, exactly what we want.
| | 02:41 | Let's create a point, and let's create
another point and drag it, and we can see it's on
| | 02:45 | 0 dB, and I want to gradually Gain it to 3 dB.
| | 02:49 | Right now, if we play this, we can see the
volume go up and repeats itself, because this
| | 02:57 | clip is only one 1 bar.
| | 03:00 | So the clip Envelope is linked to the clip
length, we can unlink the clip Envelope and
| | 03:06 | choose the length if we want,
regardless of the length of the clip.
| | 03:10 | So let's set it to 32.
| | 03:12 | I am just clicking and holding and dragging.
Next, let's just adjust the point.
| | 03:19 | Now if we play the clip, the envelope would
gradually go up over 32 bars, although the
| | 03:26 | clip itself is only 1 Bus, if we want, we
can also un-loop only the clip envelope, which
| | 03:32 | means the clip will continue to loop,
but the clip envelope would only run once.
| | 03:38 | Let's again set it to 32 bars, and we
can see it running, which is great.
| | 03:43 | And the point distinction I want to make between
automation and clip envelopes is that automation
| | 03:47 | is locked to the timeline in the arrangement
view, and we automatically perform mix moves
| | 03:52 | for your bounce or mix down.
| | 03:54 | Clip Envelopes allow you to automate mix moves
to your live performance just like those things
| | 03:59 | that samples might do during a show, such
as raising and lowering levels, switching
| | 04:04 | effects on and off, adjusting the fact parameters,
switching instruments on a song to by song basis, and so on.
| | 04:12 | Basically, using Clip Envelopes is like
having your own samples inside of Ableton Live.
| | 04:18 | Let's take a look at another technique we can
use with Clip Envelopes and the Clip Launch Box.
| | 04:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating momentary effects| 00:00 | In previous chapters we have seen how to use
the Clip Launch Box to change the individual
| | 00:05 | quantization of the clip which allows
you to override the global quantization.
| | 00:10 | Let's go back to the launch box and see how we can change
the launch mode of the clip to achieve momentary effects.
| | 00:17 | First, let's load another
effect on to the Bus track.
| | 00:20 | I am going to go to Audio Effect
and choose Auto Pan.
| | 00:26 | I am going to set the Auto Pan so we can achieve
a gate effect, which sounds something like this.
| | 00:37 | (music playing)
| | 00:41 | Cool. Let's map the On/Off button
of this device to my MIDI keyboard.
| | 00:48 | I am going to go into MIDI mapping mode,
Command+M or Ctrl+M, click on the ON/Off button,
| | 00:54 | and click one of the keys on my MIDI keyboard.
| | 00:57 | Exit MIDI Map mode, play the music, and to
turn on the effect I will have to press the key.
| | 01:03 | To turn off the effect, I would
have to press the key again.
| | 01:08 | Momentary Effects, allows us to press the
key to turn on the effect and to turn off
| | 01:13 | the effect by just letting go.
| | 01:17 | So we can achieve that with Clip Envelopes
and changing the Launch mode of the clip.
| | 01:21 | First, let's stop all clips, then let's arm
the Bus track so we can record an empty dummy clip.
| | 01:27 | Just going to record it, and that's it.
| | 01:31 | Next, let's double-click on the clip to go
into the Clip View, choosing the right parameter
| | 01:38 | in the drop box menu, we want to Device On,
let's go into Draw mode by hitting B and just
| | 01:45 | turn it on for the first 16 of the Bus.
Turn off Draw mode by hitting B again.
| | 01:52 | And now if we go back to the Track View and
hit Play on the clip, we can see the effect
| | 01:59 | turning on for a very short time just at the
beginning of the bar for the first 16th, because
| | 02:05 | that's how we set up the Clip Envelope.
| | 02:08 | Let's go back to the Clip View,
and now let's change the Launch mode.
| | 02:13 | The launch mode is what happens when we launch a clip.
Right now it's on Trigger, so every time we launch
| | 02:19 | a clip, it will restart from its
beginning, and we can change that to Repeat.
| | 02:24 | So at anytime we are holding on the Play
button of the clip, it will repeat according to the
| | 02:29 | quantization, which right now is set to Global.
| | 02:32 | I wanted to repeat very fast, so I am
going to set the Quantization to 132.
| | 02:38 | Now if I click on the Play button to
launch the clip and keep holding, we can see the
| | 02:42 | playhead repeats and only on the segment of
the Clip Envelope that turns on the effect.
| | 02:47 | If I let go, it continues to the rest of the
Clip Envelope, which there, the effect is turned off.
| | 02:54 | We only need to turn the loop of the clip off,
| | 02:57 | because we don't want it to repeat, we
only want it to repeat when we launch it.
| | 03:01 | Map the clip to a MIDI keyboard,
let's go Command+M or Ctrl+M, nice.
| | 03:08 | Let's Exit MIDI Map mode, let's go to the
Track View just to see how Ableton works,
| | 03:14 | and I am going to launch the scene.
| | 03:16 | (music playing)
| | 03:19 | Now every time I am going to hit the key,
we are going to hear the effect and every
| | 03:23 | time I am going to let go off the key,
the effect is going to be turned off.
| | 03:30 | (music playing)
| | 03:37 | That's exactly that we
wanted, momentary effects.
| | 03:40 | In the next video, we'll start using time based effects
in our live performance, such as Reverb and Delay.
| | 03:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using return tracks for time-based effects| 00:00 | Time-based Effects like Delay and Reverb
are different from the effects we used so far,
| | 00:05 | such as Filters, EQ, and Beat Repeat
in that they have what's known as a Tail.
| | 00:10 | A tail is the sound that occurs
while the effect is decaying to silence.
| | 00:15 | Let me play you a quick example.
| | 00:18 | I am going to throw a Delay on to my Bus track
by going to my browser > Audio Effects, scrolling
| | 00:24 | down and drag in the Simple Delay.
| | 00:28 | I am going to set up, I want to turn up
the Feedback, and set the Delaying Time to 2.
| | 00:37 | Let's turn it off and listen without the Delay.
| | 00:41 | And let's listen with the Delay.
| | 00:44 | (music playing)
| | 00:47 | What we want to avoid in this case is a situation
where the tail of the delay is stopped abruptly.
| | 00:52 | Listen to what that would sound like.
| | 00:54 | (music playing)
| | 00:56 | Now what if we want to have a very short
section of a song trigger the Delay and then stop
| | 01:00 | triggering the Delay, but not
the abruptly cut off the tail.
| | 01:03 | This is easy to do in
Live using the Return Tracks.
| | 01:07 | If we do not see the return tracks, you
need to click on the View Selector to the right
| | 01:10 | mark with R, and to see the
Send knobs, click on the S.
| | 01:15 | By default, we have a Reverb on Return
Track A and a Delay on a Return Track B.
| | 01:21 | With the Send knob we can determine how much
we want to send the audio to the return track.
| | 01:27 | I want to send only my music track to the
return track, let's see how that sounds.
| | 01:32 | (music playing)
| | 01:35 | We can add up to 12 return tracks.
| | 01:38 | To add a return track, go to
Create and Insert Return Track.
| | 01:43 | You can see there's another Send knob added.
Let's delete that because we don't need it right now.
| | 01:48 | It's important to note that we are sending
the audio to another track, not routing it.
| | 01:53 | Which means that we will get the original
output of the track in addition to the sound
| | 01:56 | from the return track or the delays.
| | 01:59 | As a general rule, we should always keep the
effect and the return track set to 100% wet,
| | 02:05 | because we already have the dry sound
coming from the original track, and we only want
| | 02:09 | to hear the effect outputting from the return.
| | 02:12 | In this chapter we have seen how to control
effects in a more creative way and how
| | 02:17 | to use Ableton as our own sound person.
| | 02:19 | We have also discussed dummy clips and
achieving momentary effects functionality using
| | 02:24 | Clip Envelopes and changing the Launch mode of clips.
| | 02:27 | In the next chapter I will show you how to
collaborate with other musicians by synchronizing
| | 02:31 | two or more computers, and I will also
give you some tips for collaborating with
| | 02:36 | instrumental musicians, like guitarists,
drummers, and vocalists.
| | 02:41 |
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|
|
7. Advanced Live PerformanceSyncing via MIDI to perform with other musicians| 00:00 | As computer musicians, it can sometimes get
lonely on stage. Live allows us to perform
| | 00:05 | with other musicians using computers or hardware by
sending and receiving MIDI clock for synchronization.
| | 00:12 | First, we need to decide which
computer will be the master.
| | 00:15 | The master will have the control
over the transport and global BPM.
| | 00:20 | Then we can connect as many computers or
hardware devices capable of sending and receiving MIDI
| | 00:26 | clock as we like, as long as
our interface can support it.
| | 00:30 | Usually the MIDI inputs and outputs on the
interface are on the back, mine are here.
| | 00:36 | To sync between two computers, we will have
to connect a MIDI cable between interfaces
| | 00:40 | where the master computer sends a signal, MIDI out,
and the slave computer receives the signal, MIDI in.
| | 00:47 | Let's check it in Live.
| | 00:50 | Let's go under Preferences, if you are on
Windows, the Preferences is under Options.
| | 00:57 | And we will go to MIDI Sync tab, up until now
we only used the track and remote communications.
| | 01:03 | Now let's use the sync.
| | 01:05 | If you want a computer to be a master, we
need to turn on the output. I am going to turn
| | 01:09 | on the Output on my
interface, which is Fireface 400.
| | 01:14 | We can also see once I turn it on, we have
two small indicators next to the Tap Tempo
| | 01:19 | button that just indicates that
we send and receive MIDI clock.
| | 01:24 | If you want the computer to be a slave, we
need to turn on the input on our interface,
| | 01:29 | which is right here, and that will also add
another button next to the tab marked with
| | 01:34 | EXT for external, and we have to turn it on
in order to put Ableton Live in slave mode.
| | 01:41 | Collaborating with other musicians
doesn't always mean they will have a computer.
| | 01:45 | In the next video I will show you how to send a Click Track
or Metronome to other musicians like drummers and guitarists.
| | 01:52 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and routing a click track| 00:00 | In the last video we saw how to
synchronize between two or more computers.
| | 00:04 | In this video I'll show you how to
send a metronome to other musicians.
| | 00:08 | You can send as many Click Tracks
as your audio interface allows.
| | 00:11 | So you can see my audio
interface has 6 mono outputs.
| | 00:15 | I'm using two of them to output to the speakers.
| | 00:18 | So I can send up to four
outputs to different musicians.
| | 00:22 | Let's see how to set it up in Live.
| | 00:25 | In Live I'm going to create a new MIDI
track, Command+Shift+T or Ctrl+Shift+T.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to drag a Drum Rack on to it.
Let's load a couple of sounds.
| | 00:37 | It's really up to you which sound to choose or
the preference of the musician you play with.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to go with Wood, let's try Clave.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to drag it to one
of the pads in the Drum Rack.
| | 00:47 | After we've loaded up the sound to the
Drum Rack, it's time to create a new MIDI clip.
| | 00:53 | Let's double-click or one of the empty
clip slots to create a new MIDI clip.
| | 00:57 | As you can probably tell, the clip view
is quite different from an audio clip.
| | 01:01 | This is the MIDI editor where we
can place notes, delete, and edit them.
| | 01:06 | To create a note, just double-click,
and you can expand it or narrow it down.
| | 01:12 | Let's create few more notes on
every beat or every quarter note.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to stop all clips just to make sure
nothing is playing, and then I'm going to launch
| | 01:21 | the clip of the newly created MIDI clip. Nice.
| | 01:30 | This is a Click Track. We can
change the sound whenever we want.
| | 01:34 | To send it to the musicians we're playing we
have to go to Live > Preferences, under Audio
| | 01:41 | we need to Config the Output, and once again
it's dependent on the audio interface you're using.
| | 01:47 | I want to output through 11 (mono)
& 12 (mono) as well as 13 & 14.
| | 01:53 | Hit OK, close this, open up the Inputs and
Outputs using the View Selector to the right,
| | 02:01 | and sending the Audio To
External Out and choosing number 11.
| | 02:07 | If I want to send the Click Track to more
than one musician, I can simply add another
| | 02:11 | audio track, Command+T or Ctrl+T, receive the audio
from the Drum Rack and send it to External Out number 12.
| | 02:21 | Don't forget to put the Monitor on In, or else
we'll have to remember to on the track every
| | 02:27 | time we want to send it to the musician.
| | 02:30 | Let's rename the track Click Track just for
organization, and that's it, we're ready to go.
| | 02:37 | Collaborating with other musicians
using Ableton Live is easy to set up.
| | 02:41 | You can also sync using other
methods like Wi-Fi and Trumax for Live.
| | 02:46 | Most music softwares can be slaved to Ableton Live,
but if they can't like Logic, Live woks great in slave mode.
| | 02:53 | In the next two videos I'll show you live
sample cutting and live looping, two powerful
| | 02:57 | techniques you can use in a live performance.
| | 03:03 |
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| Using Follow Actions| 00:00 | In this video I'll show you how to use Follow Actions
to create live sample cutting in Ableton Live.
| | 00:05 | Live sample cutting was originated in
the Monome with an application called MLR.
| | 00:11 | This is live sample cutting.
(music playing)
| | 00:13 | I have the loop run, and I can jump
to anywhere in the loop that I want.
| | 00:18 | (music playing)
| | 00:35 | Very cool. Let's see how to
set it up in Ableton Live.
| | 00:41 | Let's Stop all clips and create a new
audio track using Command+T or Ctrl+T.
| | 00:47 | Then I'm going to go to exercise files
in my browser > Samples and load the Break.
| | 00:55 | In the clip view, let's set the ending point to
two bits or two quarter notes, then duplicate
| | 01:03 | the clip using Command+D or Ctrl+D,
drag in the loop bracket to the next two bits and
| | 01:12 | repeating this process
until the end of the clip.
| | 01:16 | Now let's click on the first clip go to
the Launch box, if you don't see the Launch box
| | 01:21 | use the View Selector marked with L, and
let's take a look at the Follow Actions.
| | 01:25 | Follow Actions allows us to give behavior
to the clips and decide what they need to
| | 01:30 | do after a certain time.
| | 01:32 | So, for example, we have bars, beats in sixteenths,
so let's say after one bar play the Next clip.
| | 01:40 | Now if we play the clip...
(music playing)
| | 01:44 | ...it will play for one bar
and move to the next clip.
| | 01:50 | So because each clip is two beats, let's set it
up so after two beats it will play the next clip.
| | 01:56 | So 0 bars, 2 beats, and 0 sixteenths, and play Next.
| | 02:03 | Let's set the sync follow action for all
the rest of the clips by clicking on the first
| | 02:08 | one, holding Shift, and clicking on the last one.
| | 02:12 | Once again change the first to 0, 2,
and 0 and the action will be Next.
| | 02:19 | You can also add a second action and add
a chance between those two actions,
| | 02:25 | so right now it's 1 to 0, only the
first action will happen.
| | 02:28 | We can put it at 50, 50, so one time play
Next and one time play Previous and give it
| | 02:35 | such a random feeling, but that's not we're
doing right now, so I'm going to cancel it.
| | 02:41 | After setting the Follow Actions,
let's play the first clip.
| | 02:47 | We can see using the Follow Actions the clips
automatically go to the Next clip and create
| | 02:53 | in a loop which is great,
that's exactly what we wanted.
| | 02:57 | If you have a button matrix controller, you
can drop to different places in the loop by
| | 03:01 | just clicking in them, but right now each
clip is quantized to the global quantization
| | 03:06 | engine which is set to 1 bar, let's change that.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to select the clip, hold Shift, and
select the last clip change a Global Quantization
| | 03:17 | to 1/16 or whatever you like.
| | 03:21 | And we can jump to whatever place in
the loop we want by just hitting it.
| | 03:27 | (music playing)
| | 03:31 | Very cool. It might be more convenient to
you to flip the controller on this side, so
| | 03:41 | the loop will go from left to right.
| | 03:43 | (music playing)
| | 03:53 | Very cool. In the next video,
I'll show you live looping.
| | 03:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Looper audio effect| 00:00 | One of the most unique effects in
Ableton Live is the Looper Audio Effect.
| | 00:04 | You can use the Looper to
create music in real time.
| | 00:07 | This technique is called Live Looping.
| | 00:09 | Live Looping is creating and then
layering loop in real time, let me show you.
| | 00:17 | (music playing)
| | 01:47 | Nice. Let's take a look at
how to do that in Ableton Live.
| | 01:52 | So in Live, I set up an Instrument
rack just like we did in previous videos.
| | 01:58 | I have added all my instruments into
different chains and set up the different instruments
| | 02:03 | in each chain, and mapped the chain selector
to my MIDI keyboard, so every time I hit
| | 02:08 | the pad, it changed an instrument.
| | 02:11 | I have also mapped the Macro and the Looper,
we'll check it out in a second, but before
| | 02:18 | that, I routed the instrument rack to the
Looper, as you can see here, Audio To > Looper.
| | 02:23 | Let's go check out the Looper.
| | 02:25 | So to use the Looper, you need to create a
new audio track using Command+T or Ctrl+T,
| | 02:31 | go into Audio Effects, and
drag in and drop in the Looper.
| | 02:36 | The Looper device would allow us to do
live looping by the recording, hitting the big
| | 02:41 | record button, and over-dubbing
by hitting the record button again.
| | 02:45 | The Looper can set the tempo or follow the song's
tempo, whatever your most comfortable choice is.
| | 02:52 | You can record a variable amount of bars,
which means the first loop that you will record
| | 02:57 | will set the amount of bars, or you
can set a predetermined amounts of bars.
| | 03:02 | In my case, I'll choose 4 bars.
| | 03:05 | After you record everything, you can speed
it up or slow it down, you can reverse it.
| | 03:09 | If we go back to my Looper which I used,
you can see here all the recording I did.
| | 03:14 | After we finish the recording, we can just
drag it to a new audio track, and we have
| | 03:20 | it as an audio which is amazing,
we have all our performance.
| | 03:24 | Live looping is really easy and inspiring
in a way, not only to perform but also to
| | 03:28 | try out new ideas quickly and easily.
| | 03:30 | Try it out sometimes, you might come
up with something you didn't expect.
| | 03:33 | Of course, I use only MIDI instruments, but
you can use audio as well, by just opening
| | 03:39 | in a new audio track, routing it to the Looper, and
setting the track to record using this button right here.
| | 03:49 | If you want to use MIDI and audio, simply
map the recording buttons of each track by
| | 03:54 | going to the MIDI map, Command+M or Ctrl+M
and mapping those button, you can see all
| | 03:59 | the map one in my performance, we can map
the audio, if you want to also record audio.
| | 04:06 | After setting up your Live set, it's time
for a live performance, it's always a good
| | 04:10 | idea to record your live performance.
| | 04:12 | In Live, it's very easy to record your
performance into the arrangement view, and by doing so,
| | 04:17 | you got to have your entire
performance as an Ableton Live set.
| | 04:20 | Well, later on you can go back and fix
mistakes, mix your song, and then export to audio.
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| Recording your live performance| 00:01 | Throughout this course we have talked about many techniques
that you can apply to your own live performances.
| | 00:06 | I have the project file we have been working on
opened up, and I've added a few more instruments.
| | 00:11 | I also closed the browser because we don't need
it anymore, and it will give us more screen spaces.
| | 00:17 | Before I start my show, I'm going to hit
the Global record button in the transport bar
| | 00:22 | so that everything I play will be
recorded into the arrangement view.
| | 00:25 | This will allow me to go back later and edit,
mix, and export my show as an audio file.
| | 00:32 | There is one controller I haven't shown you.
There is the Power Glove from the original Nintendo,
| | 00:36 | which was the first controller
to have a motion sensor.
| | 00:39 | I have converted it into a MIDI controller
to navigate between scenes, launch clips,
| | 00:44 | and control effects using finger
movements, check it out.
| | 01:04 | (music playing)
| | 05:30 |
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ConclusionWhat's next?| 00:00 | Thanks for watching the course.
I hope you find it inspirational.
| | 00:03 | If you'd like to check out some of my performance
videos, you can search for Side Brain on YouTube.
| | 00:10 | Ableton Live is not only for live performance,
I encourage you to explore it further for
| | 00:15 | other purposes like arranging,
mixing, and sound design.
| | 00:19 | If you're looking to bridge your own MIDI controller,
there are lots of resources available online.
| | 00:24 | The keyword for your searches
is DIY, for Do It Yourself.
| | 00:29 | If you choose the computer as your musical
instrument, just remember that it is an instrument,
| | 00:33 | and you have to practice to get
good at it just as you would a guitar.
| | 00:38 | I hope you enjoyed this course as much as
I did making it, and I'm looking forward
| | 00:42 | to seeing you in your next Live Show.
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