Ableton Live Help

[Obdurate]

just got hold of this erm i will learn my self how to use it eventuly but if anyone has any hints tips on the basics feel free to fire them ahead at me ..

cheers

[g]

there are a lot of good tutorials on the ableton site. and the forum is excellent.

[Mirsha]

Depends on how you want to use it really. What are you going to use it for, making live mixes from loops, making whole mixes from mp3's or sequencing whole tunes?

One of the skills you most definately have to learn though is how to use the beat mesh grid on the sampler, I'll assumeyou start with a loop.

Drag a sample onto whereever you want to use it, click on the sample then click on it in the bottom right to bring up the sample editor. Then click on warp which will bring up the beat mesh grid. The trick here is to zoom down near the first beat and grab the number 1 until it's on the first beat. Make sure it's locked onto that beat (if it is, it'll be in a square box). Now look at your loop, count out four beats and on the fifth one drag the number 2 on it, then lock it down by doubling clcking on the number again.

Now the mesh will be sort of accurate to the sample, 3 should lie on the 9th beat and so on. Up near the top left of the screen there is an icon with two circles, one filled on not, which is the metronone, click that and when you playback you'll hear a click on every beat, accurate to the systems timing. Check your loop lines up with it. Then you are ready to go. With longer loops or dodgy loops you mind find the mesh doesn't line up, in which case just simply sort it where it goes wrong. It's entirely possible using Ableton to take a sample in which the pitch constantly shifts and fix it so it sounds constant.

Once you've done this with several samples you can arrange them in the channels and play with them how you want, make sure to quantizie the beat to something like a bar so when you switch it waits until the end of the current bar before switching over.


If you want to make mp3 mixes the idea is pretty much the same, just use the sequence editor instead. The trick here is the dodgy beat meshing will show up so listen to everything carefully and keep fiddling until it sounds right, it's quite easy to layer three or four tracks on top of each other perfectly beat matched and get it sounding good without too much problems, just you really have to start fiddling with the mesh to get it working proper. Automating the controls on any FX you drop in is easy as whatever control you click on is represented by a line in the channel. Just double click on it to mark a new break that you can then manipulate to your hearts desire.

[Obdurate]

Cheers guys and Mirsha that was big help, my main for using this as i was told is perfect for live mixing as im investing in plenty of hardware soon so this program will do fine for my midi , effect etc . .

cheers again . . :lol:

[Patrick DSP]

www.ableton.com has some great videos to help you learn a lot! plus the demo files provided with ableton are fantastic.

i made this file to help out some friends learn more about automation and follow features...

http://www.patrickdsp.com/learn.als

play with the qwert, asdfg, and zxc key on your keyboard.
i hope that helps show you more.

[Obdurate]

nice one dude :clap: