Ableton Live Class 8: 'Master Class'

The last class of Ableton Live Level 1: Remixing is the 'Master Class'. As we sat back and watched everyone's remix play in front of the class on the projection screen, we analyzed each others' songs by discussing their composition, arrangement, and sound design. Adding to the comments, our instructor Jon showed us his recommendations and edits to improve our remixes.

Before I say things," Jon stated, "you say things - what were you going for - what do you want to say about your remix." The responses were as varied as the musical styles, but mostly we gave examples of challenges we had in creating the remix:

Having the volume in the headphones match the sound in the monitors (Jon recommends that the best set up is constantly going between headphones and monitors to give your ears a 'reality check'. Unless you have a professionally built recording studio, most people produce in a small room where bass is going to bounce around. Jon suggest we go to a music store to listen to a variety of monitors before spending a lot of money on a pair that does not work for our specific environment)

The difficulty in getting the sound in our head - out in the song (To get to the level of a synthesizer programmer, where you want to go beyond tweaking factory patches and develop specific sounds all your own, is a five year process. Jon reassured our patience that by taking these classes, especially Ableton Live Level 2: Composing & Sound Design we should we should be able to do it sooner)

DubSpot instructor Jon Margulies

While we went over the songs, I noted a couple of instructive comments Jon suggested:

*When fading in a synth part in a slowly evolving song, let it stay there for a minute, establish it, then duplicated time before you change it with a slow movement in the auto-filter, a very subtle automation that keeps the ear engaged

*Put a little breath in by deleting small sections, it's not so much of what you have, but what you don't have

*It is common for beginners to pull down the master level to avoid 'clipping' (type of distortion unique to music recorded digitally, when the sound is too loud, the waveform of the music peaks, and creates a static like type of distortion). To avoid clipping in the master level, Jon told us to get the volumes under control in the very beginning by lowering the mixer volume levels to increase headroom on the master. For example, mix engineers start with all their faders down, then bring up most important sounds in a track when mastering. In Ableton Live Level 2, and 3 we will go in to deeper detail on mastering volume

*By thinking of music visually from left to right, and front to back, you will understand that the reverb effect has a way of pushing a sound hard to the back (very wet sound) where a delay effect pushes back, but not as much (more dry sound).

The DubSpot Blogger Jass

Personally, making a remix was an encouraging, yet challenging process. By taking classes at DubSpot, I have more confidence than ever in knowing how to create music in Ableton Live, but at this point, I lack confidence in knowing exactly what style of music I want to create. For my remix of "Billy Says Go", I contemplated in turning the song into a warm lush ambient tune, or a dark and dirty after-hours version; after playing around with the clips, I decided to go for energized buzzing sound. Am I happy about what I created? No. However, I am more motivated than ever to create music; by breaking down my own mental walls, I no longer think that musical producers are magicians – that only "they" can mysteriously create these wonderful songs. Heading into next week's DubSpot Ableton Live Level 2: Composing & Sound Design reassures my self-confidence that more mental walls will be coming down.

'Remote Control and Automation' - DubSpot Blog Class #7

By starting to put together a performance like a DJ, I learned how to Remote Control Ableton Live via a midi controller and computer keyboard; and explored how to make my music more dynamic by changing mixer and device parameters over time using Automation. In the future, if I am lucky enough to play my music publically, this lesson will allow me to spend more time performing and less time clicking a mouse or staring at a computer screen.

For the first half of the day, we talked about the two different kinds of remote control in Ableton Live: KEY mapping (assigning the computer keyboard keys to certain parameters and functions in the Live window), and MIDI mapping (allows you to assign a MIDI controller to certain parameters and functions in the Live window). Jon prefers the combination of a computer keyboard along with the Korg nanoKONTROL MIDI control, as he states, “when you arrive to a gig, more options are better in case MIDI is not working”.

KEY mapping

MIDI maping

For the second half of the day, we learned about Automation, which is important because practically all mixer and device controls in Live can be automated, including song tempo. Automation is the movement of a control across the song timeline (volume / pan). To visually represent this, Jon switched the control bar’s record switch to ‘on’ (using global record) to automate a track. After playing a musical track through an auto-filter, and adjusting his MIDI controller's knob, we saw how the auto-filter's frequency automation adjusts the track's volume information. Creating automation is relatively simple but significant, I gained the importance of why you need to have parts change and evolve over time - to not allow a song to get boring - even when music is noticeable repetitive.

Automation

Next week is Jon's favorite lesson; he will take everyone's remixed track, play it for the whole class, then show us his recommended edits. To prepare for the next 'master class' as Jon calls it, I have picked up Ableton Live Suite and will use all my knowledge gained from the previous DubSpot lessons to work on my remix of “Billy Says Go” by Audion on the Spectral Sound record label. I am nervous but excited to start creating some music, having Audion's amazing material to work from is motivating, but i must admit, it's also intimidating.

"Billy Says Go" by Audion

'Recording, Devices and Plug-Ins' - DubSpot Blog Class #5 & 6

Jon Margulies created a 34-page printed packet that was handed out to the class, the packet breaks down the lessons from all the Ableton Live: Level 1 Remixing classes by providing close up screenshots and highlighted notes. I find it very useful during the week for specific reminders on what we learned in each three hour Sunday course.

I missed class 5, but caught up on ‘Recording' by reading the packet, which covered the basics of interactively recording MIDI using a MIDI controller, and audio using a microphone or Direct Injection (DI) box. The 'Devices and Plug-Ins' class covers the fundamentals about effects and instruments with a focus on a couple of heavy hitters in sound design: filters and delays. Ableton Live has many effects to manipulate sound, but if Jon was producing music on a deserted island and could only use two effects, he would pick filters and delays.

Chart of Frequency Changes

To understand both classes, we discussed what is sound. 'Sounds' like an easy question, but when you learn more about it, sound in itself is a science. Covering the basics, we learned that Hertz is a unit of frequency of one cycle per second. In acoustic sound, the range of human hearing is from 0 Hz to roughly 20 kHz, many people lose hearing above 15 kHz. The unit of measure is named after a German physicist Heinrich Hertz, Jon informed us that 60 Hz is the thump in a dance track, where as below 30 Hz you physically feel it rather than hear it. After listening to losing your Hertz, it reminded me to bring a pair of earplugs to the next club I go to - cannot produce music if I cannot hear what I am creating.

Jon told us to start listening to music with our ear focused on the frequency content, for example, an old school track's high hat has a lot more ‘mid range’, compared to a 'high end shimmer' in a current track. By placing a high pass filter on an item (high hat), it eliminates the low-end bleed from other sounds. The high pass filter is essential to today's mixing, producing and recording.

When creating tracks in Ableton Live, equalization (EQ) is best kept to simple. To eliminate muddling up a song, I learned to identify frequencies in my track: high end, mid range, and low end. For a starter like myself, thinking of three different ranges in a track helps me dissect how other producers create their music. Understanding how others created it, builds my confidence for when I am ready to create it.

Dan Giove - DubSpot founder and fellow classmate

We covered a lot of material in class 5 & 6: recording MIDI into Arrange / Session View, record quantization, quantizing after recording, understanding latency, recording audio, rewire, filters, frequency ranges, delays, and effect racks. I agreed with another students comment, “my head is about to explode.” Jon laughed and reassured the class that if we are feeling maxed out, do not worry, many of these things are previews for what we will learn in the intermediate Ableton Live Level 2: Composing & Sound Design class. Our assignment for the week was to differentiate the high, mid and low in our remix, when we apply this lesson, we will hear how much clearer everything becomes.

'Making a Remix' - DubSpot Blog Class #4

Class four was all about starting our own remix, to achieve this we went over the fundamentals of Ableton Live taught in the first three classes. Jon handed out a 'Workflow & Technique checklist' that summarized what we have learned up to this point, the main bullet points in the list are Navigation, Making Variations in the Session View, Programming MIDI, and Arrangement Editing. By understanding all of the techniques in the checklist, we will be able to take sounds, use them as 'raw material', make variations to the sounds, add original parts with MIDI, and then edit the sounds in the arrangement view

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'Live's Session View & MIDI' - DubSpot Blog Class #2 & 3

With our course overlapping the holidays at the end of the year, a few students and I missed the second and or third class. I was vacation in Japan and missed both. The cool thing about taking classes at DubSpot is that if you miss a class, you can catch up during lab time, or at a makeup class. Jon scheduled our makeup class to cover the main points from class one and two (navigating around the interface of Ableton Live)and focus on what we missed in class three, which was all about MIDI.

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