I was looking at the free MacProVideo Logic Pro 8 video tutorials, including the brand new one just uploaded, about Ultrabeat, my favorite drum machine, even better now.

Anyway, they also have a really good free tutorial about Ableton Live clips, so if you ever want to know inside out about clips looking at a video tutorial, get this one.

The tutorial talks about the basics about launching clips, velocities, saving, and so on, but includes clip envelope handling, clip scrubbing, nudging, clip grooves and much more.

I think instructional videos are the best way to learn complex products such as Live or Logic. Books are also nice, but there’s something about hearing a human explaining something, and you could see how he or she does it, and hear the results, as well.

One of the cool DJ techniques with Ableton Live is to trick multiple clips using keyboard keys. You could in principle ‘play the keyboard’ and constantly trigger various clips, resulting in interesting (or not) combinations.

Now, how to map this with a keyboard, that’s the organizational issue. Some are looking into so called POT USB keyboards — these are matrix-style keyboards with rows and columns of keys, and you could program these to any key values. The problem with these are usually the price, as well as driver availability for MacOSX. But you could then create any kind of triggering system you want.

Now, there’s the lofty standard keyboard… I tried to experiment tonight with this kind of mapping. For the first audio column I mapped the cells as Shift-1, Shift-2, Shift-3, and so on, with Shift-0 being to stop the clip. The new row was Control-1, Control-2 and so on up to 9, and the third, Option-1, Option-2…

Now, I really like four tracks when doing this, but you can’t find another control key, and the Apple (Command Key) is used by Ableton Live, so I used the numeric keyboard, 1, 2, 3 and so on.

Then I also renamed the column headers so I knew what control key controlled what row.

I could get pretty far with this, it was indeed like playing an electronic accordion with material! Note, I didn’t check if a default key binding was overridden, but Ableton Live didn’t complain when I did this…

Now, I don’t mind the mouse, if I use four-bar Global Quantization, I have four bars of time when I could turn on and off various clips. The problem with the number scheme is that you could just have a range of 0 to 9 with number keys, and if you reserve 0 as stopping the clip (good to have) then you are down to just nine rows of clips.

I tried to map the keys using rows of alphanumeric keys, a, s, d and so on, but it just didn’t feel natural.

Maybe a combination of this kind of mapping and the mouse is a good combination. Anyway, with some training you could achieve very complex arrangements, provided you have tracks chopped into clips, or other clip material. Make a test version, save it, and make it read-only as a file, and you could then later just open this template and use it for specific DJ purposes.

Ok, I started to chop the ten tracks for the compilation mix into small clip sections in Ableton Live. Even after a couple of minutes it made sense. This mix, when ready, will be better than a mix with tracks lined up from beginning to end — as I could mix and match clips, even from more than two tracks, to make something new.

It just has to be one of those live takes, or I will do multiple ones, and select the most interesting out.

Basically, what I’m doing is to load in the original 16-bit WAV file, make sure the warping is fine, then hit command-D to duplicate the track and make various loop parts for individual clips, starting from the beginning. When that part is done, I just hit duplicate again, and move the loop point to the next interesting section. This all is saved into a self-contained project, but if I want to I could also export the individual clips per track into separate projects. I might do that later, for Live DJ purposes.

I have my own cryptic way to label the clips, I usually means intro, Part one and Part two is various main parts, and they have sub-labels. The empty parts are marked as a starting E, ends with End. I make sub-labels with more info, such as I - drums only. This way I know that this section has drums only, so it could be used with other clips from other tracks that don’t have drums, for instant mixing purposes.

I also noticed that by using certain sections I could make instance minimalism! Or then using specific other sections it would sound like progressive electro. Nice, less work.

I’m not too strict on the labeling format, as long as the labels make sense.

OK, two done, eight more to go tonight.

This is one of those ‘nice-to-know’ features in Ableton Live. When I start a new project, it’s very common for me to drag the same plugins to multiple tracks, such as AUHighpass filters, with the same starting point cutoff frequencies. Yes, I could use a template, but I always forget about it.

Anyway, instead of always dragging the plug-in from the live devices browser, and select it and define the cutoff frequency, start with one plug-in instance. After that, select it and option-drag it to the next track where you want the same plug-in with the same settings. Continue until you have all the tracks populated with the same plugin settings you wanted. That should save you some time.

Same if you have a nice plug-in setup on one track, option-drag it to another track as a separate copy.

I wanted to write a song about Boltzmann brains – an odd topic — and needed odd sounds. It’s been a while since I last used Absynth, and the natural inclination when making strange sounds is indeed to first use this remarkable software synth.

And yes indeed, it’s not just odd spectral sounds you get, also odd sounding bass lines, as well as even rhytmic patterns that are not from your standard drum machine setup.

The thing I’m usually struggling with Absynth sounds is that they are so right in the high end, so many harmonics — even with taking down some of the track levels, it still cuts through.

As for the track, it didn’t take long to compose and finalize. This was one of those cases where I did the composition in Logic, and exported 24-bit AIFF files out to Ableton Live, and then reassembled it in a mix-like environment in about one hour. I still need to do a proper mastering and final check-down.

The other technique worth mentioning when exporting from Logic to Live is that I then use the re-pitch mode if I key in the exact same BPM as in Logic. This means that the quality is very much the same, no warping artifacts. I also do this with the drum loops exported.

As for the release, I doubt this could be released as an underground dance track, it’s 120bpm, and has too much oddities happening. Anyway, another reason I have the podcast channel in place to release material that can’t be released through normal channels, anyway. Meanwhile, check out about Boltzmann brains and see what the cosmologists are struggling with just now…

Something that I think Ableton Live 6.0 is somewhat weak with just now is exporting of stems for remixing purposes. All you could do just now is to export whole tracks, and with the high resolution, a six minute single track becomes 60-80Mb. If you add this together with 16+ tracks, using yousendit or a similar service is impossible — you need to send a DVD to the remixer.

What I have to do just now is to freeze MIDI tracks, and then from the freeze tracks in the Project Freeze folder yank out the needed smaller parts and in turn export those as stems. In Logic, you could just select a region and export it, very handy.

Now, most of my productions are already smaller AIFF or WAV files exported from Logic, so it should not be a big deal, but if you use MIDI in Ableton Live, then you need to worry about this. I’m also exporting the MIDI for the remixers, as that could be handy for remixing purposes.

Anyway, if someone know of a better trick how to export partial stems, sections of Live, let me know. Meanwhile, let’s hope that Live 7 has export of selected regions…

This is a good thing to know, as it could happen easily to anyone working with audio clips and tracks in Ableton Live, especially for DJ or performance purposes.

There are two levels of quantization in Ableton Live — with quantization here concerning audio loops we mean when there’s a certain time interval when a loop should start, 1/16, 1/2, one bar, four bars, and so on. Four bars is really the easiest way to start loops when DJ:ing, you can’t go wrong with starting a loop, and the system waits until four bars have played, and then the selected loop starts.

Now, there is a global quantization level that you set either via the menu/keyboard shortcuts and/or the player toolbar on the top. And there is also a loop-specific quantization level.

The loop-based one, see image above, overrides the global one. This means that if you deliberately, or by mistake, have this set, then the loop you start will not honor the global values. Most likely, as in the image shown, with a 1/16 bar quantization you could easily go out of sync when starting the loop.

You could change the loop-based quantization level to global, then the global value is always honored. I use this, as I rather specify on the fly what quantization I want when doing DJ work, rather than hard-wire it into each loop. There are exceptions, if you want staggering effects or something similar, you could select loop-based quantization for specific loops. Otherwise, best still to a global value across all loops. Less mistakes this way.

Oh, there’s another interesting twist of using those two audio tracks with crazy beat repeat parameter in the track called Luminary Ubic from the first podcast. The chance parameter was set to 100%! What that means that every time there’s randomness to the way the patterns were shuffled around.

In real life, each time I did a render of all the material, I didn’t know exactly how those tracks would sound. And also, even if I didn’t like the outcome, and I did another render, I would not know how this new rendered material would sound like.

Pretty interesting, or what? It’s one of those things, if you dare, go for it. Same in a DJ session — it will not be a dull moment as not even you know how it will really sound.

In the latest Podcast SE-001 I used two tracks across the whole 27 minutes with very wacko beat repeat settings using the Ableton Live Beat Repeat plugin.

You could hear it in the beginning on the Luminary Ubic track, the modem-like odd sounds, as well as here and there, where you have strange sounding wobbly melodies.

Usually beat-repeat is used for variations in drum loops, or to get that glitchy-IDM sound (I think too much used by now). But in this case I just wanted to use it to make odd melodies sounding choppy and unexpected.

Then, during working on this longer track, I sometimes dragged in loops into either one of these highly choppy plugin tracks, and if it sounded interesting — hey, it stayed there. Towards the end I became more and more conservative. It’s like using chocolate for everything, first it taste good, but after a while too much is just too much.

Anyway, this is another creative trick of the in-the-moment studio work — create a couple of odd special effect plugin tracks, drag material into it, and keep it or leave it out, but it certainly sounds different.

Here’s another video showing extreme Ableton Live warp point techniques in loops, as well as how to work with sample offset envelopes. This last one is sometimes a technique that is not that well understood, or used.

Here’s a video showing basic techniques with loops and loop envelopes in Ableton Live.There’s a part two arriving soon, showing more esoteric ways to manipulate the loops, too.

In case things happen too fast in the video, I’m using command-B to switch between paint mode and linear editing mode in the envelope window.

PS: The reverb in the voice track was an experiment. Alas, I will not use that in future :-).

Here’s a video I uploaded to YouTube showing how I usually warp dance tracks in Ableton Live. There are many ways how to do basic warping, but this is how I usually do it with tracks that have a fixed and easy-to-warp beat.And remember, the arrow keys are your friends when moving around with a loop point in Live.

Something that I use from time to time in mixes, and also in live DJ cases with Ableton Live, is to put in a very fat house dance loop on top of material that really does not have any strong beats, let’s say world music.

I really like the Kaskade Sound Library Volume 1 that is available from various places, and I saw that Volume 2 is now also available. The only drawback I have with those loops is that they are 16-bit, but they still sound brilliant.

Anyway, with those loops, the drum ones, you could get anything to swing really well, even when doing DJ work.

Yes, I could build my own drum programming, but it takes a while, and it’s not always that interesting to do yet another classical house drum loop. Doing odd drum loops is another story.

Now, if you still want variation, use various settings in Ableton Live with these loops using Beat Repeat, especially with the variation parameter (use small values, though). Or the chop it using envelopes and other effects, to make them sound unique.

OK, here’s another technique I tried out yesterday when composing possible tracks with Ableton Live. I had a section where I wanted pad-like melodies, but not the same one to avoid sounding boring.

So instead I took four different pad loops, and had each one playing just one bar, but all together it was four bars. This way it sounded really intriguing, like four different sections each playing their own part.

I think in orchestral music this is also used to emphasize parts, let’s say violins play a part, then the horns. But with loops and editing it’s really easy to do something similar.

Ok, just finished DNA tones, Part three, there’s a sample of the track over here. This third one was a very interesting project, it had acid lines, electro bass lines, strange techno-like loops, and heavy-metal like constructs. Phew, took a while to tame the whole beast. Maybe it’s worth writing a little bit about some of the problems.

One big problem with massive tracks is that there’s so much, and it’s easy to overload the mastering section so that for example Izotope Ozone and similar stages to build the final compressed product sounds far too mushy. I ended up going through all the tracks and decreasing each level with one dB to tame it. Also, unlike Logic, in Ableton Live you cant’ just select all volume levels, and drag one down and the rest comes along. You need to do each one separately. Also, if there’s automation concerning mixing levels, you need to go in and edit those by hand, again. Sigh. But it was worth it.

I also encountered interesting MIDI clip bugs that I should report to Ableton. If I edited one clip that I had copied from another part, both clips changed, very annoying. Anyway, it’s done and sent out to the promo sites, and so on.

Next, I will take a vacation, sorry if there are not so many postings during the next 19 days. I will spend time at a small cottage by the sea with my MacBookPro and a MIDI controller, and have audio fun. There’s a lot of work when I get back, we just switched to a new aggregator for our label, and I need to redesign the label web site, and send out more music…