Area of Expertise

My area of expertise is switch two tracks or mixing two tracks to give that dj mixing feeling. I used my area of expertise in my final project by mixing a two-step garage track into a bassline track and also cut it between the both tracks.

At the bottom of the screen grab you can see the arrow that you can move a cross from left to right to switch from track to track like a dj mixing desk. I used this on the last part of my piece of performance from a two-step garage looped sample to my bassline track.

ARIA OF EXPERTISE

Instrument to be used:

-Midi key board

-Studio microphone

-Mixer and speaker

-Head phones

-Guitar

-Ableton effects, compression and processor.

Computer software and periphery:

-computer

-Monitor

-Keyboard

-USB cables

- Ableton 07 software

Sounds:

-Sampler from CDs and videos

-live recorded guitar

-live recorded vocal

When I planned this project I was expecting a lot to do with personnel creativity in conjunction with good ideas from other artists like wise CDs, videos and record my own guitar to bring more live on my live performance.

Unfortunately time did not allow me to make a combination of the ideas I had in mind for the first time. And also I was struggling to make some rumba, salsa, and reggae beat with Ableton.

So all my area of expertise did not 100% come to what I expected.

Finally I have used Ableton to edit some base drum, bongo drum played on midi keyboard.

All other instruments and vocals were samplers I have collected from different CDs, exported to be edited in Ableton.

I have used all the ideas I have leaned to challenge all these obstacles, and by the end the finale outcome was incredibly marvellous.

1.8 Performance Scenes Update

Below is the Session View from the performance on the 17th of June.

It proved possible to reduce the number of scenes by re- using the same 8 bar (1) Bridges and 4 bar (2) Bridges and Riff 3 (7), although it would have been even better to standardise on single bridge and riff scenes right from the start. Moving to the requisite scenes during a performance would have been more in keeping with Ableton’s way of doing things. The Extension (3) and Riddle (4) sections of four scenes each were reduced to single long scenes and this allowed time during the performance to apply Delay and EQ Three effects live. The three OK V1 (5) and two OK C1 (6) scenes were reduced to single scenes.

It was extremely useful to go through this process and take on board the lessons learned for next time.

CHANGING THE START AND END POINT

From the project planning, I have made it clear to export sampler from different music style.

Using Sony sound forge I have been listening to different tune and crop the piece I like to work with in my project.

This piece will be then exported to my Ableton project to be edited.

By doing this I have to change the start and the end of every exported piece of music to my project to make theme play on time with any other scenes already in.

Final Project, Ableton Live Showcase

Day of live showcase

Today was the final project for the music tech level 3. To prove I did the course to get the qualification  I needed to perform my piece of music infront of a live audience. At first i was very nervous as i have never performed infront of an audience. The first thing we had to do is arrive at BSS(Beaumont street studio) for 12:00pm  to decide on the teams slots for the day; I was the fourth slot for the day.

After deciding on the slots for the day, I decided to go through my performance and tidy up the mistakes I perviously made and also made sure my arrangement was in the right places and then rehearsed through my project a couple of times.

At 12:30pm it was time to take the equipment to the Lawrence Batley Theatre where the ableton live showcase was happening.  We all helped to load the equipment into one of Beaumont street staff’s car, then unloaded it at the theatre. We then set the equipment in the basement where we were going to perform.

Final preparation for showcase

At 6:00pm it was time for each of us to have a quick run throught of our piece to make sure the right keys were assigned to the the right keys. I was one of the last people to have a run through to makesure my timing was right.  We decide I should use Rob’s keyboard as it was the best one there and working , so i had to assign all my keys into his keyboard by going through the midi control, but the keyboard looked a bit  tricky to use as it had a lot of buttons and cross faders in certain places, that made me nervous again but with a quick guildence through from tutor Graham, it calmed my nerves down a touch.

showcase

After the run through of all the sets, it was time to let the audience in and that when the nerves broke back in but before we all performed we had a class quick talk throught, were it boosted abit of my confidence to just go and do my best.

Overall example of project

Overall example of project, is that i want to create a two-step garage and grime track that would mix into a bassline track, to give the audience an underground music feeling.

I did my best, but missed out certain effects to my project,  but the audience never really noticed  as they loved my scarface introduction to my two-step garage  mixed into a bassline beat to give that live dj mixing set feel. I realy liked the turn out and everybody did their best and also thanks to the tutor Graham Booth  for teaching me abbleton live and I really enjoyed the course by learning and listening  to the different types of music we was all into.

Final Review

Final Review

On Tuesday 17^th June, I and the rest of the students prepared ourselves for the performance of our level 3. The session stared at noon and we set about working out a running order. It was decided that the group of 8 would be divided to allow four performances before and after a much needed break.

It was decided that my piece would be performed last as it had if nothing more a strong and fast original beat. Though I have performed in packed clubs and bars as a DJ nerves still kicked in as I was still unhappy with my piece of work and the technical difficulties I have encountered for the last five weeks had once last chance to shake my confidence (and succeeded) I encountered difficulties with the M-audio Radium keyboard for the final time and in the very last moment I had to set my performance control onto Rob’s Akai controller. This was quite a privilege because it is a mean machine and now I know exactly how much I want one. When it came to the actual performance I was still setting up my control and all the practice before hand was for nothing as this was a whole new ball game. An enjoyable one I jumped in hands and feet and just went with it. I did make a mistake or two and they were not really noticed. Saying whoops gave the select crowd a bit of a giggle and I think everyone had a good time my invited guests certainly enjoyed the variety of music that was displayed.

Overall my performance could have been better. I must be a poor workman because I am going to blame the tools provided, as mentioned I have had a character building experience with the transportation of livepacks and even more fun with the performance controls but I am glad of the whole experience it has certainly been a fun learning experience and though I have played with Ableton previously I am much more confident with the programme and find myself losing sleep because of its addictive nature.

Area of Expertise

Area of Expertise

For the final project I have created entirely new material in Ableton. Some of this newly created material is using some ideas I had been working with in preparation for this project using Propellerhead’s popular Reason software. I decided not to use rewire Technology to synchronise the two programs but recorded Reasons’ output as audio.

In the top box which has been highlighted the audio routing has been changed. Standard setting come from ext stereo channels 1& 2, to capture the Reason audio I selected the audio source to come from Reason. The box underneath (un-highlighted), states that audio comes from Reason channels 3 & 4. In the Monitor section the highlighted section relates to monitoring. With the in option selected I am monitoring the Audio from Reason. This means Reasons sounds can be heard in Ableton and also recorded.

To the bottom right of Ableton there are viewing options one of these been the master section.

When I click on the ‘M’ button, the section next to the red arrow opens this allowed me to see the volume levels of the channels used in my project. This option also displays the volume meter for each individual channel and allows me to monitor the level as they come in and avoid audio clipping. Clipping is when the top and bottom of a waveform are chopped and produce distortion.

The above image shows all channels displaying their individual volume meters.

In the image above the arrow shows an extendable part of the screen. Holding the mouse here will change the mouse arrow icon to an up/down arrow and I was able to drag the volume meters up to display a more detailed meter with volume levels as below.

Once I was able to see a good indication of input levels I armed the Ableton audio track to record, as shown below.

There are subtle differences between these two audio tracks. In channel 3 I am pointing out the monitoring section. I selected monitor in to hear the incoming audio from reason which enabled me to record the audio from reason. I had worked on some ideas for this project in reason so this was how I captured them. In channel 4 I have highlighted the record button. Selecting or arming this channel for recording enabled me to record a vocal straight into Ableton. I had originally planned to make a song but even I could not bear my signing voice through the editing process. I made a decision to record just a verse form the lyrics I had written and play around with them to get them to repeat a la house music. This as done by using an envelope to create a skippy loop of my recorded vocal which I thought was much easier on the ear than my singing voice. With careful monitoring I was able to set the levels of the reason audio, my vocal and the other channels trying not exceed 0db at which point clipping would occur as mentioned earlier.

REVERSING

First of all I am going to make a copy of the scene that I have chosen to use a reverse mode on, by holding control button then drug to the next slop.

Clicking on reverse option will change the clip direction.

The first picture shows the clip before clicking on reverse option.

The second one shows the clip playing know in reverse mode.

I have used this mode to bring more variation on my project during performance.

ALTERING VOLUME, PITCH, PANNING OR OTHER ASPECTS OF THE CLIP SETTING USING CLIP ENVELOPES

1. This is the scene that I have selected to apply envelope variation on.

2. Clicking on this “E” will open the envelop window which in this time I am going to use to transpose the volume of this clip

3. There are a number of choices depending on what you want to change, but at this time I have selected transpose.

4. By double clicking on this red line I can drug this line up and down to make variation on my clip.

1.6 Processors in Insert Mode

The Acoustic compressor was inserted into the Vocal Track by double clicking it with the track highlighted, or dragging from Live Devices into the Clip Pane. A number of compressors in the Audio Effects folder were tried but this one gave the best results.

EQ Three was added in the same way to reduce the bass on the Verse 1 Vocal clip and remove a “growl” in that particular recording. This also made sure any similar sound was removed from all the clips. The compressor and EQ Three were also inserted in the Harmony track.

These vocal clips in the project were subsequently replaced by audio clips created in Sonar as part of the Area of Expertise study. The clips shown here were processed by the V-Vocal processor in Sonar to remove any pitch anomolies in the original recordings and “bounced” to new audio tracks. These were dragged from Sonar into Ableton and processed with the compressor and EQ Three.