wire to the ear

When I record old analog synthesizers that do not have MIDI or CV control (like my Roland SH3) I often use a Chopper plug-in to make the synth sync rhythmically. An example where I did this is my song Sex Machine. The main driving bassline is actually the SH3 playing a solid note being chopped into 8th notes (audio sample below)

I recorded that song using Cubase SX3 which has a built-in plug-in called “Chopper”. But Ableton Live doesn’t have a dedicated Chopper plug-in. For Chopper duties in Live select the Auto Pan! If you want a triangle wave cutting your audio into 8th notes like in the Sex Machine audio sample below put Auto Pan on the track you want chopped, choose the Chopper preset and input these settings: Amount: 100%, Rate: 1/8, Phase: 0.00°, Shape: 100%

Sex Machine:

Of course there are many free and third party chopper, gate, trance freakout plug-ins you can also use. What’s your method?

Here is an Ableton Live keyboard shortcut most people don’t know or use. Once you learn it you will use it all the time. In either Session or Arrange view hit COMMAND-OPTION-L. This toggles Clip View on and off giving either your mixer or arrangement more space.

Great no?

This morning I had a message on Facebook from a friend of mine George GábriÅ¡. The message said. “Yo I found this to be quiet bizzare.” and there was a link to the video above. Apparently someone figured out you can use the magnetic strip of a drivers license as a mini ribbon controller for Ableton Live.

Using the magnetic strip on the back of my driver’s license to make a ribbon controller which then controls Autofilter in Live 6 via MIDI. - db3l

He has some other cool videos up including an Ableton controller made of Popsicle sticks and pennies and a controller printed on a regular piece of paper.

By the way you can friend me on Facebook too: click here

Here’s a cool Midi feature you may have missed in Ableton Live. It’s called “Stretch Notes” and I’ve been using it lately. Double click a Midi Clip to show it’s contents in the Clip View (the bottom right panel of the Ableton Live interface). Select all or multiple notes and then either Right Click or Apple Click to open the Contextual Menu and choose “Stretch Notes”. Now two handles pop up which you can drag left or right. As you move the handles the notes shrink or lengthen. Cool and easy no?

When multiple notes are selected in the Note Editor, the Stretch Notes command becomes available from the context menu. Note Stretch markers will then appear in the Note Editor, allowing notes to be scaled proportionally in time. The markers are a pair of downward-pointing indicators that snap to the beginning of the first and last notes in the selection. - Ableton Live User Manual

Here’s an example how I used it in a song. In my song “You Are Disturbing” there is a melody that plays over and over as the chorus. At one point in the song after I say the lyrics “What are the things you like sexually” the same melody plays using TC Powercore’s Roland SH-101 emulator Powercore01 but at double speed. I did this using the Stretch Notes feature:

There is an interesting video by Andreas Wetterberg called “Phase music with Ableton Live” where he uses the Stretch Notes feature to create an entire song. Check it out: click here

I hope this tip inspired you. Oh yeah… try it on some drum loops!

Sometimes its good watch someone else work because you can pick up interesting habits they use. About a year ago I was watching Miro Pajic produce a track on his laptop. He was new to Ableton Live but was doing something I never thought of and it’s a killer tip. Here it is:

While in Arrangement view clicking on Mixer or Ableton Device controls brings up their associated automation envelopes.

So what does that mean? Here’s an example: If you working on a song and want to edit the volume envelope of say the third audio track normally you would go to that track, select the The Automation Device chooser drop down menu and pick “Mixer”, then select the The Automation Control chooser and choose “Volume”. Then the pink Automation lane representing the Volume for that song would pop up.

Here’s the easy way: Click on the small orange rectangle with the Volume level number in it one time. Bam! Instantly the automation envelope for volume pops up.

Big deal? Now go and click on anything in any of the Ableton devices. Sample start in Simpler… 1 click on it and you have the automation lane in front of you! No need to dig through menus to find the parameter your looking for. Click the on/off button on an Ableton Reverb. Bam! (eek I sound like Emril) The automation envelope pops up allowing you to control the on/off of the Reverb in the time line.

Often, when working with Live’s mixer and devices, you will want the controls’ movements to become part of the music. The movement of a control across the song timeline is called automation; a control whose value changes in the course of this timeline is automated. Practically all mixer and device controls in Live can be automated, including the song tempo. - Ableton Live User Manual

Unfortunately this only works for Ableton’s stuff. Third party plug-in parameters still need to be hunted down. I really hope Ableton figures out a way to make this feature system wide as it’s a huge time saver. Using the one click method I can work really fast making tons of minor adjustments on timeline automation envelopes.

Here are two tips to help you become an Ableton Live power user. These are simple things I do while making music with Live that cut down the time between inspiration and perspiration. The Ableton Live file browser is very friendly. You can preview audio clips at the same tempo of your project. You can double click or drag and drop effects from and to the browser. In fact, Live has three File Browsers which is a really nice touch. Here are two tips:

Tip 1. Double clicking the icons for the Live Device Browser, Plug-In Device Browser or File Browsers take you to the root of each folder. Here’s an example: Your deep in the middle of a long project and you have been pulling Audio Units and VSTs from the Plug-In Browser for a few hours. You know you want to use the Audio Units version of the TimewArp 2600 (it’s more stable than the VST) but when you glance at the File Browser it shows the inside of your VST Powercore folder. The quickest way to the AU version of the TimewARP is to double click the Plug-In Device Browser Icon and then you will see the Audio Units folder root. This is easier than backing your way out of the VST folder and then back into the AU folder. This may seem trivial but if you doing it 100 times a day…

Tip 2. You can bookmark folders inside the Ableton Live File Browsers. Click on any of the three File Browsers and look at the top bar to the left of the search icon. See a little down facing arrow? Click it and a drop down menu of preselected shortcuts appears. The most important one to me usually is “Current Project”. Why would I use it? Anything I already recorded even if it’s no longer in Session View or in the Arrangement will appear here. I also make a folder inside Current Project called Renders which I then fill with multiple takes of fills or ideas. From there I can drag out and test which one works the best. As far as bookmarks take a look at the screenshot above. I have my song folder and sounds folder bookmarked… cool no?

The Bookmark menu lists a number of preset bookmarks such as Desktop and Library. Selecting the latter will bring you to the Live Library. To bookmark the current Browser root, choose the Bookmark menu’s topmost item, the Bookmark Current Folder command. Note that if the current Browser root is already bookmarked, the topmost option in the Bookmark menu will remove the bookmark. All File Browsers share the same set of bookmarks; a bookmark stored in one Browser can be accessed from another. - Ableton Live User Manual

I find the faster I get to a finished arrangement the better the song usually is. It has to come from a inspired or “live” feeling. Each computer barrier you hit is a thought in your head other than the final piece of music your trying to create. Learning keyboard shortcuts and using tips like these helps avoid a folder of incomplete songs!

In the Nitzer Ebb song Let Your Body Learn one of the lyrics is “The Music of Drums!”. I always liked that line and concept. You can make great songs with just a drum machine and a few effect boxes. I often make songs by creating sounds solely from effects. Ableton Live’s Beat Repeat plug-in can take any audio and spew it into something wild and worthy. Here are three presets I created for Beat Repeat that you may like too:

Lazer Station

Four Four Echo

EBM Sequencer





I like to automate the Mix/Insert/Gate options. Don’t forget to adjust the filter and pitch decay to your liking.

Download the presets: click here

I love the Ableton Live GUI (Graphical User Interface). It’s vector based so you can resize it dynamically in real time. It allows you to stretch and open/close different areas within the workspace. For example show or hide the file browser or stretch the clip view up to view larger waveforms. If you go to the preference panel (command-,) and click the “Look Feel” section you will see in the Colors section you can choose different Skins. In Live 7 you have 25 Skins to choose from. But did you know you can download more off the internet? And did you know there is a Mac and PC editor that allows you to make your own Skins?

To download more Skins head to: http://sonictransfer.com/ableton-live-skins/
For the editor software: http://sonictransfer.com/ableton-live-skin-editor.shtml

You could call me a Skinhead because I downloaded about 20 of these. Ableton gave Sonic Transfer the official “go ahead” so I wouldn’t worry about these mucking up the Live code or anything. My version of Live never crashes. When I play a live show I like to put a nice red Skin up. In the studio I usually use a grey and pink skin.

For Windows users:
The Ableton Live Skins folder is located in Program Files\Ableton\Live\Resources\Skins.

For Mac users:
The Ableton Live Skins folder is inside the Live application. Right-click (or ctrl-click) the Live application and select Show Package Contents to access the Skins.

Adding A New Skin:
After you have found your Ableton Live Skins folder, you can copy any skin file into it. If you are running Live, you will need to restart it before it will see the new skin. Once you start Live, click on the Options menu, then click Preferences. Go to the Misc tab and select your skin under the Appearance section

One feature that I would like to see would be the Skin attached to the song. So for example if I put a really dark purple Skin on a gothic song I am working on the next time I load that song up the Skin loads too. I got stuck on the “Battleship” Skin for a while. Do you have a particular Skin your addicted to?

One of the best things about Ableton Live is its flexible routing structure. People coming from other DAWs or beginners overlook how easy it is to make Groups in Live. I like to have each of my drum sounds (snare, hi hat, toms) on separate channels each with their own relative volume, panning and effects. I then put them into a Group channel to control the overall volume of the drums with just one fader. The Live User Manual calls Groups “submixes”:

Suppose we have the individual drums of a drum kit coming in on separate tracks for multitrack recording. In the mix, we can easily change the volumes of the individual drums, but adjusting the volume of the entire drum kit against the rest of the music is less convenient. Therefore, we add a new audio track to submix the individual drums. The drum tracks are all set to output to the submix track, which outputs to the Master. The submix track gives us a handy volume control for the entire drum kit. - Ableton Live 7.0 User Manual

Take a look at the screenshot above (click it to see it in a larger size). Create your drum channels or any audio or midi channels you want to have Grouped together. Next create an audio channel (Command-T). Name your new audio channel “Group” (Command-R to rename). On each of the channels you want to be part of the Group find the Output Chooser drop down menu and select “Group”. The Output Chooser menu is directly below the label that reads “Audio To”. The last thing you need to do is set the Monitor to “In” on the Group channel. This way you can hear your new drum Group!

Do you use Groups?

I just released a new EP on my label called Diagnosis Terminal with Miro Pajic. One of the songs “IO” has a heavy swing to it. It’s a very easy two step process to implement Swing in Ableton Live. Swing is of course popular in Jazz and is one of the main stylistic points in modern “Minimal” techno.

To hear it work let’s create a test clip. I put and instance of Impulse with a Roland TR-808 kit on a track. I double clicked an empty Clip Slot to create an empty Clip. Then in the Midi Note Editor I laid down a 4/4 kick, Snare on the 2 and 4 and a 16th note closed Hi Hat.

On the top left side of the Ableton interface, to the left of the metronome “dots” you will see a number 0. That number represents the Global Groove Control parameter. Click and drag that number upwards to about 55.

Lastly, back down to the the Clip View and under the Groove drop down menu choose “Swing 16″ which matches the 16th closed Hi Hats you have placed in your clip. Now listen to the loop with the Groove Control parameter at 0 and then at 55:

If your working with a pattern that is mostly 8th notes set the Swing to “Swing 8″. This is the classic rock swing preset you hear on vintage drum machines.

Be sure to check out the swing parameters in plug-ins like D16’s Nepheton or Audiorealism’s ADM as they both Swing in a awesome aggressive nature. For MPC timings and unique Groove Control patterns try out Propellerhead’s Reason 4 ReGroove Mixer.

Do you like to swing?