Using a Range of Ableton instruments

Using a range of Ableton Instruments

Live is bundled with built-in Instruments if you purchase Live suite. However Analog, Impulse and drumracks are included with Live 7. Ableton also offers Suite with other Plug-Ins such as operator Sampler et al:-Ableton products

I made of use of these plugins in my project :-

The instruments on offer provide hum free sound

Basically each instrument is set up by dragging and dropping the desired instrument from the effects folder to the session view then the desired instrument is selected by left clicking the name of the said instrument at the top of the session view. Then instrument may be played from the keyboard!

See Screen grab of 2 different instruments

operator

Drum racks

Impulse

No link on webbsite for last 2 and the Screengra

bs are from my project!

Arrangement of Scenes

A scene is an arrangement of clips in Ableton Live. Scenes are visualised horizontally and an arragement of scenes make up a Live ‘Set’.

The screenshot clearly shows the Master to see further screenshot click the bar above.

There was 47 scenes in my performance. Scenes in modern dance music normally last for 8 bars (House Music) and 4 bars (Hip Hop).

An example of a transition between of parts is shown below

Click the bar for further graphics!

The way you move between scenes is by clicking the master

Warping

Warping

Warping is the term applied to changing the speed without altering the pitch of an audio sample. A process outside of Ableton known as time-stretching.

I used warping for the main loop of my performance. The main loop needed slowing down by about 15 BPMs to 115 BPM

Therefore the sample needed warping as shown!

The aim of Warping is to make a sample fit a given time, for this we use warp markers at regular and sequential points in the sample as shown below

Once Live has markers it can work how to add or subtract information for the loop and a sound can be warped and sound accurate. This is the sample that I warped. Once Live has markers it can work how to add or subtract information for the loop and a sound can be warped and sound accurate. It is a Nelly Furtado loop of around 130 BPM which I slowed down to 115 BPM.

Area of Expertise

My area of expertise is on Kore 2 Native Instruments’ “Super Instrument”

Kore player is free to download from the native Instruments website ( which gives you access to NIs’ diverse audio pallete).

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=koreplayer

Kore integrates all native instruments plug-ins by copying of the said Instruments folders into Kores’ folder and thus sounds from Individual Plug-Ins appear next to a logo in the sound browser next to the said sound. It is a host for plug-ins as well as a plug-in and looks as below:-

The benefits of using it are it’s sound and usability you can narrow down the sound you want by using the sound browser kind of like a zoom on an image!

I have used the Kore extensivley in my project as one can see from the image above.

To insert an instance of Kore

1) Firstly select the plug-in section from the file browser as above.

2) Drag and drop the instance of Kore to the session view and you should see Kore as below.

Unfortunaly when using Kore with its hardware controller it is rather CPU hungry therefore when using Kore player try not to use this.

Evaluation of Performance

Last night we did the performance at the Lawrence Batley theatre and now my area of expertise will be the Native Kore2 as I used the free Kore 2 player in the third part of my presentation and use it at home quite often.index.php?id=koreplayer

Back to my review, more I would have done more preperation! however Graham said that a live performance is never the same twice! Many people on the day said it needs to be as simple as possible. I was terrified of triggering a blank scene so I went for a simple approach merely triggering scenes until the tech-house part of my performance where I used my keyboards rottory pots to control two instances’ of filter cut-off on the Arpeggio and a synth lead from the Kore player. I think the Kore player is brilliant bit of freeware and when used in conjunction with Live makes for an expressive opportunity. Most problematic to me was timing I looked at the pies but there was no numbers of Elapsed bars that I use, Back to my review, had I had the time I would have done more preperation! however Graham said that a live performance will never be the same as rehersal!

Other than that it was OK, had some nerves but that goes with live performances which Ableton helps the electronic musician achieve. I think what kept the audience attentive was the wide range of musical styles and the duration of the perfomances.

I have bought a copy of Live and currently use it on my Imac so to anwer the Question will I use it again the anwer is yes and maybe I will rewire it into Logic! As for morphing into the dance element of my performance I felt what with the tempo changes it worked.

With regards new skills I have learnt a new DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and WordPress with image and URL (Universal Resouce Locator) editting and placment respectively.

For me personally my favourite set was Augustines’, however they were all good. Dom put my keyboard to good use using the sliders as a crossfade for his beats. I also like his bassline of which he told me was created by his 13 year old nephew. Leon also used my keyboard.

Operator

Operator

v I have used Operator extensively in my project and below is a screen capture of its use in my project. As you can see from the capture, I have used three instances of Operator for Bass, Pads and synth effects, when I have Morphed into a house track with a tempo of 124 bpm. The other section is 115 bpm!

.

Click the above bar to see Operator in use in my project!

What is Operator

Operator is a plug-in add on synth in Ableton Live

It is essentially a four Operator FM synth.

An operator can be likened to an oscillator and Operator being as flexible as it is each operator may be a range of raw waveforms, not just Sine as were the DX range.The beauty of Operator is that it is also similar to Subtractive synthesisers of old in that it features fully resonant filters (-12 or -24 db per octave) These may be Low pass, High pass, Band pass and Notch. Just like Live itself, Operator really comes into its own when controlled in real-time.

For instance Coarse filter frequency may be controlled by note velocity. (Meaning that as we trigger notes at high Velocities the effect of the filter is great and likewise when the Velocity is low the effectiveness of the filter is greatly reduced).

Operator is comparable to Native Instruments FM 8.

Link to FM 8 pageindex.php?id=fm8

Operator may look simple but it is a deep plug-in, deep in the sense that its look belies its’ capability. Having called Operator an FM synth with with Subtractive capabilities sells it short, under closer inspection it is a hybrid (a mix) of the two technologies, making for a unique and powerful instrument.

It has eight algorithms (arrangements of Operators into carriers and modulators).

A modulator is an operator which modulates a carriers frequency.

The sum of both is what you can attack with Operators Filters.

The arrangements of Carriers and Modulators are what we call Algorithms

. !

Ableton Videoableton_operator_part_1.mov

Using plug-in Instruments

There are lots Ableton instruments such as Analog, Operator Sampler,Simpler and Drum Racks. Live can be host to many plug-ins. Impulse (a drum machine) is the device we shall be using and that I have used a lot in my project.

1) For simplicities sake we will create a new project.

2) go to the Live devices part of Ableton and choose Impulse fom the options!

3) drag and drop the instance of Impulse to the session view which looks like this:-

4) Now you have dragged and dropped Impulse to the session part of Live it should look like this!

Impulse is now ready for loading drum samples!

5) to load a drum sound into Impulse you merely drag and drop a wav file to Impulses’ pads and things should be sounding nice!

This concludes this entry,

most plug-ins in Live follow the drag and drop way of working, even external plug-ins such as the Native Instruments collection.

Native Instruments Kore

For my area of expertise I would like to do plug-ins. Specifically the Kore! (pictured)

I realise that plug-ins is a big subject but I am sure it can be narrowed down in time!

Native instruments is a company which specialise in software instruments!

To Find out more click the  link!

index.php?id=home&L=1

Editing clips in Live

There are many ways to edit audio in Live, one way is to edit clips. This is preferable to editing scenes because it allows you to add variations to scenes. One way to edit is to reverse a clip as shown.

You may want to edit a loop in Live this is accomplished by using the arrows at left and right top of the waveform as shown

But by far the most effective way I have seen of editing audio is unlinking the audio and adding a change in the audio by controlling the Envelope by clicking on the E in the bottom left of Live as shown

Furthermore if you create an envelope it looks like this and lets you create longer variation sections:-

Editing Clips

To add variations and hence keep your sound fluid, clips may be edited to provide variations!

The are many ways to edit clips. Clips can be reversed Filter changed in pitch and a whole host of other processes.

One particular method is using effects as shown in my project!

if you are feeling particulrly adventerous you may use the custom effects @ Smart Electronix

Another example of a variation that I made use of was to change the pitch of the main loop!