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.