Rhythmism.com

The DubSpot Blog

"Learning to Make Music with Ableton Live" "



My name is Jass. I'm an aspiring artist living in Williamsburg Brooklyn, and am writing a blog about my experiences of taking a music software production / remix course called Ableton Live Production / Remix at DubSpot in New York City ( 348 West 14th Street). Dubspot is a world class electronic music production and DJ institute that was one of the first Ableton Live Certified Training Centers in the world and currently only one of two Ableton Live Certified Training Centers in the United States.

This is my first time taking a music class. I moved to New York City five years ago from a ski resort town called Park City in Utah. For three and a half years, I helped my friends promote 140 events for a local New York City minimal techno, electro and house electronic dance music party called ROBOTS. I had a lot of fun helping artists and friends build their musical careers, but the time involved did not allow me to create myself. After the ROBOTS party ended, I had the motivation, but not the knowledge to create my own music - that's why I went to DubSpot - to learn the best music production software from some of the best instructors in the business.

My intentions for the blog are to capture the experience of a beginning music student at DubSpot by focusing on the community vibe, documenting the interaction with the instructors, analyzing the process of learning Ableton Live, and recording the evolution of remixing a song. I hope this blog will inspire you to stop thinking about pursuing you musical happiness, and allow DubSpot to help you actually capture it.

One Sunday afternoon, I started my first three hour Ableton Live Level 1: Remixing class at DubSpot. Before entering the classroom on the second floor, I immediately felt the excitement and energy blasting through the door!


One Sunday afternoon, I started my first three hour Ableton Live Level 1:Remixing class at DubSpot. Before entering the classroom on the second floor, I stopped for a drink at the DubCafe, located on the ground floor of DubSpot and noticed a plaque on the wall stating, "Life is Too Short for Bad Coffee". DubCafe serves La Calombe gourmet coffee, and a variety of smoothies, and snacks. Walking upstairs to the classroom, I immediately felt the excitement and energy blasting through the door.

DubSpot students were using the eight DJ/production workstations during the open house / lab time to practice their DJ mixing skills by tapping their foot on the wooden floor, and editing their audio productions on the Apple computers. When the rest of my class arrived, we walked through the central pathway towards the back of the room and sat down to meet one another. DubSpot focuses not only on teaching electronic music production, but also building a community environment through all of our interests in music.



Our class has a wide variety of musical interests and diversity in ages and music production experience. We have a fourteen-year-old student who previously took a DubSpot classtwo years ago, and fifty-year-old beginner student who could not find any music he liked, so he decided to take a DubSpot class to make his own. Another student in my class is Dan Giove, DubSpot's founder who is also taking the Ableton Live class for the first time.

Dan is a DJ himself whose musical style shifted as the years went by and started playing down tempo tracks. He was only getting offers to play at restaurants rather than dance clubs, and at that point, Dan decided to focus on producing music. At the time, the only way to learn music production software was to take private lessons or to learn it yourself. This gave Dan the idea to open DubSpot. DubSpot also teaches other music production software such as Logic Pro 8, and Reason, but primarily focuses on Ableton Live because as Dan puts it, "I've never seen anyone who does not get it."

Ableton Live is a professional loop-based software music sequencer for Mac OS and Windows. Our class at DubSpot teaches the latest major release of Live, Version 7, which was released in November 2007. Unlike other software sequencers, Live is designed around the notion of being as much an instrument for live performances as a tool for composing and arranging. It is also often used for precision mixing of tracks by DJs.




Our main instructor is Jon Margulies, a New York-based producer, guitarist, composer, DJ and author of Ableton Live 7 Power! The Comprehensive Guide Book. I am reading Jon's book in conjuncture with the class, his humor takes the edge off the program's technicalities. Jon has been performing professionally since he was 11 years old, he purchased his first sampler in 1998 and has been passionate about discovering and using music technology every since. Jon's latest gigs and projects are listed on his site: heatercore.net In addition to Jon, we have Mike who is a new instructor at DubSpot and comes from warperparty.com a monthly showcase that provides a venue for producers and artists to break new ground by using Ableton Live to perform. Jon and Mike have great personalities; they understand what a new student goes through while learning Ableton Live and make sure everyone understands each lesson while keeping the pace of the class moving. After all the introductions, we moved to our individual workstations.

Jon set up in front; plugging his laptop into the video projector mounted on the ceiling and pulled down the projection screen. Our custom-built metal table workstations are amazing, they have everything you need to create music. Multiple slideable tabletops hold two Technics SL-1210 MKK5 turntables that push forward and pull back to reveal an M-Audio Axiom 25 key midi keyboard. In the center of the table is a Rane TTM 56 performance mixer, a mounted M-Audio BX5a mounted speaker monitor, a Native Instruments Traktor Scratch and RANE Scratch Live set up, Ultrasone DJ1 Pro S-Logic headphones, and a Apple Mac G5 computer. DubSpot prefers people work on their computers rather than personal laptops to make sure everyone has the same software versions and hardware settings, eliminating the loss of time in configuring everyone's individual computers to the correct preferences.



During our three hour course, Jon emphasized the main points about learning Ableton Live at DubSpot: this class is like studying a musical instrument, you need to continually practice, and become really good at the basics to cut down the time from your creative idea to recording it on your sequencer. Everyone has different ideas and musical styles, but Ableton Live is such a versatile software program, that it can be utilized to create anything you want. We covered a lot of ground to understand exactly how Abelton Live 7 works, learning that it's a laboratory working style program that brought hardware and software together to create music in one window with two different views, an 'arrangement' view and a 'session' view. Understanding the different views was the foundation of the first class and will remain the focus in class two. In classes three and four we will really take off and start producing/remixing music.

Before my first class ended, Jon taught us to create an audio piece and how to save our work. We were asked to bring in a portable USB hard drive (instead of flash drives that do not stream) for the next class in order to save all of our creations. If we were not familiar with navigating an Apple computer, Jon recommended that we go to an Apple store where they provide free classes on the differences from a PC.

Looking back on my first day, I feel very confident that my instructors, fellow students, and DubSpot's welcoming environment will help me achieve my goal of transitioning from being entertained by the music, to being the musical entertainer.

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.



Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is an industry-standard protocol at enables electronic musical instruments such as keyboard controllers, computers, synthesizers, sound cards, samplers, drum machines, and other electronic equipment to communicate, control, and synchronize with each other. Holding up the M-Audio Axiom 25 MIDI keyboard, Jon showed the class that MIDI does not transmit an audio signal or media - it transmits "event messages" such as the velocity of musical notes to play, controlling signals for parameters such as volume, vibrato and panning. As an electronic protocol, MIDI is notable for its widespread adoption throughout the musical industry. Jon emphasized the key to becoming a successful producer in Ableton Live is to become a good MIDI editor, thinking of music not in terms of a classical piano keyboard, but thinking like a mad scientist is the best way to find new ways to create music on software programs.


For the rest of the day we worked in the session view of Ableton Live, it's primarily used to organize and trigger sets of sounds called clips. These clips may be arranged into scenes which may be triggered as a unit. For instance a drum, bass, and guitar track might comprise a single scene. When moving on to another portion of the composition - a new scene - some or all of those parts might differ and could be triggered in parallel. Jon showed us how to program a beat using two MIDI tracks, and explained that customizing our clips would create interesting dynamics, allowing sections in a song to breathe, creating more a groovy sound. The session view is the basis of improvisation. It was at this point that Jon drew our attention to the projection screen to talk about understanding note duration and divisions.



Jon brought up the website: musictheory.net and told us that the position and duration of any given note is essential for western style musical production - excluding abstract / experimental music. While Jon did go through years of music school to learn how to read and write musical compositions, Ableton Live users only need to understand the basics of musical notes and bars. For instance, engaging the metronome to have a tempo reference plays four quarter notes in a bar; the backbeat hits on the two and four of the bar, and 1/8 notes are subdivided beats that are associated with the high hat sound in house and trance electronic dance music. Most importantly, Jon told us to listen while we work, train our ears to really hear what our eyes overlook on the computer screen.




As class wrapped up, we were given our first homework assignment, to create a musical sketch of two or more MIDI tracks that incorporate a melody and beat in the session view. We will use this in class four when we begin to make a remix. Now that I had my first homework assignment, I had to get Ableton Live on my personal MacBook. Being unsure which specific version I should purchase as a beginning student, Jon recommended I download a two week trial version that includes: Ableton Live7, Sampler, Operator, Electric, Analog, Tension, Extensive built-in step-by-step tutorials, Localized software menus, tutorials, and PDF reference manuals.


The download process was very easy and quick, I logged into the Ableton site, clicked the 'Downloads' link, selected the Ableton Live 7 Trial Version, chose my language ENGLISH, my operating system Mac OS X, input my email and clicked 'download'. Immediately I was downloading the trial version and was told to log into my email account to grab the trial serial number to complete my download. Jon mentioned that Ableton Version 8 was coming out this year, and if we purchased Version 7 now, we will be able to upgrade to Version 8 for minimal price. As for the moment, I am now able to get my hands dirty and develop more experience in deciding which specific program to actually purchase in two weeks: Ableton Live LE, Ableton Live 7, or Ableton Suite.

good read i am curious to hear what you write musically now.

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.



The overall goal DubSpot's Ableton Live: Level 1 class is to remix a song. To achieve this, Jon recommended that we work with a song that is suitable to our individual taste. Jon directed us to websites that host online remix contests, such as ACIDplanet or Beatport where they give away / sell loops cut directly from the master tracks of featured songs. Until we pick our track, we will use song samples in DubSpot's library. After plugging our portable hard drives into the Apple Mac G5 computers, we loaded our musical sketches that we worked on over the last week into Ableton Live. We added various components from DubSpots library into the session view, making copies of the clips to create variations of the samples, and renaming each clip to help us identify the remixed loop. Feeling comfortable altering the clips, Jon had us record a sketch into the arrangement view.


Arrangment View

For two minutes, we recorded an improvised jam session, and then Jon had everyone play back his or her sketches to the class. As Jon listened, he mentioned a common rookie mistake: introducing new material too quickly, and having too much material. To keep songs interesting, we should make variations, and use the delete key. Jon talked about two different approaches to remixing a song: either you can experiment, or you can come into a song knowing what you want to do.


Jon Margulies

In the Session View, clip loops are not only fun, they are a great way to establish an understanding of what you want to do in your remix. Jon warned the class that, “you can screw around all day creating various loops and never finish anything.” To get into the habit of completing pieces, we need to start thinking like producers, Jon emphasized, “producing a lot of music - creates great producers.” In order to finish a song in Ableton Live, you should record it into the Arrange View where it makes you think in a new context of adding and subtracting. Arrangement view asks, 'what does your composition mean?' On average, Jon spends 75% of his time in the arrangement view.



As our class concluded, Jon gave us our next assignment for the week: find a track to remix, alter the clips in the Session View, record two minutes into the Arrange View, and edit it down to two minutes. Next week we’ll interactively add new material by recording MIDI with the M-Audio Axiom 25 MIDI keyboard controller into the Arrange View.

Loving this blog. Thinking about taking up a 3 month course myself.

Thanks jass!!!

yeah, nice blog, man! it'd be nice to hear samples of your stuff as you progress through the class as well! and a little more insight into what YOU are going through and thinking, imo.

thanks maria:
i am just as curious to hear what i'll end up creating


you're more than welcome!!!:
i have to thank brian from rhythmism for hosting the blog, betty from plexi for encouraging me to write it, and dan from DubSpot for allowing me. the biggest thing i want to get across in the DubSpot Blog is that by taking this class - it now feels possible to create music, and i personally recommend it


streaming samples are in the works:
we are working on incorporating streaming samples into the blog to allow readers to listen to the evolution of the remix, and thanks for the recommendation, i will remember to provide more insight into what i am feeling as the course goes forward. i just put a post-it note next to my computer monitor that says, 'what are YOU going through?'

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.

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 publicly, 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 mapping

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

why are there no pictures of the jass in class

ya, srsly!

Awesome read, Jass. Will forward this to friends who use Live. Please, post up your remix of Billy Says Go?

i'll ask one of the other students to take a picture of me

thanks rene:
we will make sure to get the remix posted, and more audio content in the future

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.


Audion "Billy Says Go" (.thejass. remix)

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.

After completing 'boot camp' Ableton Live Level 1: Remixing at DubSpot, I graduated to the second level, Ableton Live Level 2: Composing & Sound Design.



At this intermediate level, we will slow down and focus on drum programming, dive deep into the compositional process with an intensive look at the building blocks of good electronic music by getting great bass sounds, and developing techniques for making my music more dynamic.

We welcomed a new student who has read our instructors' Jon Marguiles articles in Music Tech Magazine, he joined our class to add knowledge to his basic understanding of Live. Two students from the Level 1 course did not continue, one moved to Europe and the second student wanted more time to focus by himself on what he learned in Level 1 before moving onto Level 2.





Our first two classes in Ableton Live Level 2 were based on drum programming, drum racks and sound design. In these classes, we learned how to get around Ableton Live's Drum Racks introduced in Live 7 to give users an industrial strength tool to build banks of drum sounds to create an extremely large drum kit. We also covered the basics of shaping drum sounds using envelopes, and by the end of the class nine, we made our first drum kit.


Drum Rack

It was refreshing to learn that there is no right way to program beats, I learned how to play them on drum pads, the keyboard, and draw beats systematically in the MIDI editor. Adding to this, Jon gave us an example of how different musical styles generate their beats:

Hip Hop / Dub = more organic sampled sounds

Techno = making kits from synthesizers, tweak and automation

As Jon was building an elaborate drum kit, everyone laughed at Jon's joke, "see how you could easily lose a couple hundred hours doing this." Kidding aside, Jon showed the class a great thing about layering sounds - by creating a lot of interesting material.

In class ten, we covered the rhythmic concepts and programming techniques of drum programming. In this lesson, we spent time listening to a variety of different drum grooves, discussing their fundamental components and looking a different approaches to programming.


Henrich Zwahlen

Jon was out of town at a gig, and Henrich Zwahlen substituted. Henrich teaches the other Ableton Live course at DubSpot, he is a swiss german synthesist, and had the opportunity to study with the greatest of electronic music such as Yello and DAF before coming to New York where he hit the scene with his project Basscut (ten/virgin). Musically between electro, breakbeat and house Henrich was always on the cutting-edge of technical innovation and working with an eclectic set of dj producers from hiphop to house. After a three year recess in Berlin, he now lives in Brooklyn.


Henrich and Jon are both great teachers, although they have different teaching styles, both get the message across. Jon teaches each lesson by having us create from scratch, where as Henreich loaded up a pre-built drum rack into everyone's computer, starting us all with his material, as Henrich put it, "this is my swiss control of order."



We learned yet another way to program beats that incorporates a sound design element to by 'slicing'. To slice, we took an audio drum loop and recycled it to individual drum 'hits' by slicing one beat in the drum loop into a segment using warp markers. Then we added that sliced segment into our drum rack. Henrich informed the class, "I used to spend hours slicing on MPC's (Music Production Center), now Ableton Live takes seconds."


An AKAI MPC2000 sampler

This was a great lesson in learning how to sample a specific sound, use it as raw material, and shape it to make it my own sound.

At class eleven, we learned about bass, or should I say BASS. This lesson focused on bass lines by using the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the different wave shapes that synthesizers can produce. We also looked at different types of bass lines and some techniques used to create them.


Ghost Note

Jon encouraged us to start 'thinking of notes in between notes', for example, good electric bass guitar players play "ghost notes" (notes of indistinct pitch, short duration and low volume) making a bass groove more effective.

We went over three types of synthesized bass:

sine (simplest bass sound you can synthesize, heard on many drum n' bass tracks)
square (produces incredibly high harmonics and a very usable sound)
saw tooth (know for very funky bass sounds).


Waveforms

We continued to build more complex drum sounds by spending a lot of time on the bass frequencies by changing the envelopes shape through ADSR (attack-decay-sustain-release).

Attack - how long it takes for the sample to reach it's full volume
Release - determines how long it takes for the sample to fade to silence after the Note Off MIDI message is received
Decay / Sustain - work in conjunction with each other.



Decay is how quickly the sound drops to the sustain level after the initial peak. Sustain is the "constant" volume at which the sound remains following the decay until the note is released. This parameter specifies a volume level as well as a time period


Our assignment over the week was to look at the bass parts we program and listen to it in relationship to the kick drum, Jon told us that the bass part does not necessarily have to carry the entire groove on its own, it is more important that the bass locks in with the song in a compelling way - there is no rule - just make sure to listen carefully to the groove.



For class twelve: Keys and Chords (Pads, Stabs and Leads), we focused on some of the essentials of sound design for effective chord parts and leads. We looked at how MIDI devices help with the creation of effective parts. Now that we covered bass and drums, we learned how the chord parts fall into two categories: rhythmic parts (interact with the bass and drums / enhance the groove) and pads (keyboard sound that floats over the groove).



'Geogaddi' by Boards of Canada

To understand how professional artists create their music, we listened and dissected a couple of songs while Jon recreated their distinct sound in Ableton. I am a big fan of the group Boards of Canada, and when Jon played their track "Dawn Chorus" from the 'Geogaddi' album, I was very excited to learn how to use Ableton Live to get that ‘nothing ever completely in tune’ Boards of Canada sound.


Next, we went over the process of creating great pad sounds that sustain the notes over a long period of time while also evolving a kind of motion in it. To achieve this, we used the Analog instrument in Ableton to first look at pad basics. Analog is becoming more popular with Ableton users because it sounds good and emulates the unique circuitry and irresistible tweak ability of vintage analog synthesizers.


Analog in Ableton Live

Lastly, we took advantage of making music with a computer by using MIDI devices - instead of years of classical training to learn how to create great effects on an instrument – Ableton Live can take the MIDI input and transform the MIDI effect before it reaches the instrument to create chord parts. I know that I am not a music theory expert, but with the MIDI Chord effect, I heard some great results by just using my ear.


The overall purpose of Level 2 is to create my own track. One approach to achieving this, as Jon recommends, is to create a foundation to build on. Sketch in parts, create one thing at a time, and get content early. What I start with will inform other decisions, and then I can refine my sound design based on the context. It’s time to start sketching…

In the thirteenth class, I learned a variety of techniques in Ableton Live for randomizing, tweaking and mangling the existing parts in my upcoming song. We covered Noise & Extreme LFP settings, Sample Offset, Grain Delay, and Resampling.


This images displays a finite length, discrete time realization of a white noise process generated from a computer.


I am particularly interested in Noise, and want to use it in my track. Jon taught me that ‘white noise’ is one of the original sound effects (an audio signal that contains all audible frequencies at equal volume). By using Ableton Live's Analog instrument, I will be able to produce noise from either one of the oscillators, or I could use it as a stand-alone noise generator.

Jon comically told the class that what we have done up to this point was ‘mere child’s play’, now we are going to get into some of the tricks that master producers have up their sleeves.



For example, Jon demonstrated how to use the sample offset envelope to reorder the playback of a looped clip to go in either time direction according the envelope’s set grid. What was a normal looped clip, can now sound more like a sound effect by creating a loop that jumps back and forth in time.

My homework was to make at least two sound effects by using the techniques in class and apply them to my track.



Dan Giove - DubSpot Founder

In class fourteen, Jon taught us how to get out of the repetition rut; because Ableton Live is a loop based program, we looked at different techniques to make our song less repetitious through beat repeat, unlinked envelopes, random, and automating send effects.

Electronic dance music seams like constant movement because they use variation to set up the next bar on major cycles, to achieve that you can use beat repeat – a specialized delay unit used to create additional rhythmic interest (think FatBoy Slim). Beat repeat is not just for beats; I will be able use it to add variation to any instrument.

A great tip I learned today was to ‘record as I work’, I can always cut out what I do not like and edit what you do like.


Random device with Impulse

Another great way to generate variations (delicate or aggressive) is with the Random device, it randomizes the pitch of incoming MIDI notes to the parameters of choice, chance, scale, and sign. This very interesting effect can generate a constantly changing rhythm the more times it cycles through the loop.

Before the next class, Jon wants our track to flow for a few minutes in the arrangement view, for the reason that our next class we focus on the use of E.Q, compression, and routing to set up our track for the final mix.

really enjoy reading this blog jass

keep it up!

I really like reading these posts.

Class 15 and 16 concluded DubSpot’s Ableton Live Level 2: Composing & Sound Design. Covering the ins and outs of routing to set our track up for a final mix, we spent plenty of time talking about compression, and routing. Finalley we analyzed each student’s song by discussing composition, arrangement, sound design, and mixing techniques that can be used to improve our track.


Ableton Live Compressor

To further understand compression and mixing in Ableton, Jon told the class that compressors historicaly came from analog recording, where mixing engineers would put a limiter (compressor) on an analog signal when recording to tape to push sound down to eliminate noise. Jon said it took him years to train his ears to fully understand what compressors do, and to really hear what a compressor does, we first listened to it agressively by dropping a compressor onto a drum track.


Another great way to get to know the compressor is to use it as an effect. Our ears are easily fooled when effects make the sound louder – we think it makes it sound better, but on the other hand – to much compression is a great way to ruin a track.


Detail of Ableton Live screen

With mixing, I learned to control the sound levels of the HI, MID, and LOW ends of a track to create a tighter rhythmic feel, to never have too much going on in the same level. For example a bass sound should never competing with a kick drum (a lesson I will have to learn again when making my own track).

When it comes to routing in Ableton Live, we learned how to setup our tracks signal sources and destinations (inputs and outputs) to create submixes. Jon demonstrated the convienence of submixing the individual drums of a drum kit for a multitrack recording. By adding a new audio track, the drum tracks are set to output to the submix track, which outputs to the master. The submix track gives you control for the entire drum kit.


Jass at DubSpot

Befroe the Level 2 Master Class, Jon told us to spend time reviewing our track and gave us some final notes:

*ask yourself, ‘do I want a particular sound more or less defined’
*listen for areas in mix, are they getting in the way of eachother?
*general rule - compress then E.Q.

For the Master Class, we listened to eachothers track, I went first and immediately realized how different my song sounded on DubSpot’s Mackie monitors compared to my headphones at home. At the time I did not own studio monitors at my apartment, and created my song through headphones. The bass in my track was too high, and I asked Jon where my kick went?


DubSpot instructor Jon Margulies in front of screen

Jon answered my quesiton by appling his editing skills, he increasing the contrast within the song with E.Q. My kick had a lot of low end, and human ears don’t have the ability to differentiate subtle differences on the low end (human hearing is optimized to human voice range). Jon created a return track and applied sidechain compression to create space everytime the kick drum hits over my bass. The difference between kick and bass could now be heard, and the layers within my song stood out.

During the rest of the class, I noted comments made while we listened to the rest of the students tracks:

*”use automation panning to with ambient music to keep the listener engaged – long curves with short curves between left and right channels”

*”make sound more unique than ‘right out of the box’ by applying an auto filter to give character, use grain delay, change pitch, and a short spray opens up a song by panning.

In DubSpot's Ableton Live Level 3: Design and Modulate, we were informed that the style of the class will change. In addition to Jon standing up in front of the class by the projection screen and showing everyone the same lesson, Jon will sit down with each student for ten minutes at a time, and provide private lessons. For the eight classes in Level 3, Jon asked us to think about what we really want to get out of Ableton Live, and then Jon will help us individually achieve our Ableton Live goals.

looking forward to hearing some upcoming jassy tracks

yup.

I love it

In the last class of Level 2, we were asked what we wanted to focus on in Ableton Live Level 3 Design and Modulate, and start the last eight classes with questions that our instructor will answer over the course of the next eight weeks with 'one on one' training sessions throughout each day.

I had the following questions / requests:

*how to warp tracks in Live 8 to use Ableton Live in a DJ context

*focus on how to master a track to get it ready for play out a venue, and or send to a record label.

*how to set up Ableton Live to record various instruments / microphone (sound levels, input)


Because Ableton Live version 8 was released while our classes were in session, and our instructor Jon was writing his follow up book Ableton Live 8 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide we touched upon all of the new updates from version 7, and spent time on the AKAI Professional APC40 Ableton Performance Controller.


Jon Margulies pointing out APC40 as a MIDI Device

Ableton Live 8 Power! an all-inclusive guide to making music with Ableton’s revolutionary live performance and studio software, Live 8. Written for all Live users, from digital audio beginners to seasoned pros, this book explores each fundamental feature in Live. The book provides power-user tips and insider tricks for integrating Ableton Live into your home or professional studio). You can pick it up at a Guitar Center or order it at Amazon:http://amzn.com/1598639757



Goes well beyond the Ableton User Manual

AKAI APC40 seamlessly works with Ableton Live because its creation was specifically designed by both companies, and overcomes the problem of having large banks of launch clips that other controllers struggle with. I am planning to purchase the AKAI APC40 later in the year, as Jon recommended, it's not only great for performing Live, but can also work efficiently as a recording studio tool along with your MIDI keyboard.


http://www.akaipro.com/apc40


During the final eight weeks all of my requests and questions answered, I learned how to warp tracks in Ableton Live version 8 to set up songs for a DJ set; focused on the EQ Eight Audio Effects to master the quality of my track; and understood how to set up Ableton Live to record instruments and microphones at studio-quality levels. The one on one teacher to student approach worked out great because every student in my class had a different direction they wanted to go, and this gave each of us the time and attention we needed to get everything out of our instructor. Additionally, when Jon as out of town, it was great to have Henrich Zwahien substitute one of our classes to get a fresh pair of ears on what we were working on.


Jon Margulies focuses on students track

While I have started to produce music, I have added a lot of equipment to my home recording production studio, from a big investment in studio monitors (Mackie HR624mk2) to a inexpensive item called the KB Cover for my Mac keyboard. By simply laying the thin KB cover on top of my keyboard, it visually shows all of the color coded shortcut commands to control Ableton Live – a terrific tool that eliminates the delay of continually opening up Ableton reference manual.


www.kbcovers.com

After I completed my course, DubSpot updated their Ableton Live 8 Certified Training program - now there are two packages: A (levels 1,2,3) and AA (levels 4,5,6). I believe the new class structure improves upon the way I learned; you can choose how fast you want to take the classes: three times a week for 3 months, or twice a week for 6 months, or once a week over a year. Plus you can now receive a DubSpot Producer Certificate in Ableton Live. Here are the details:

Package A teaches you everything you need to know to produce electronic music: how to use one of the best software packages in the business along with all the fundamentals such as Beat Production, Analysis of different styles, Synthesis, Sound design, Live performance strategies and Remixing.

Package AA The new advanced Ableton modules are part of a complete update and expansion of DubSpot's Live curriculum. Covered are advanced performance techniques, rhythmic analysis, complex composition, sound design and generation strategies, detailed examination of instrument and effects racks, and more.

https://www.dubspot.com/pages/ableton.jsp

[
Jass DubSpot testimonial:
"I had an idea of the music I wanted to create, I understood that Ableton Live is one of the best music production tools to use, and I went to DubSpot to learn the tools to build my musical ideas into actual songs - if I had not gone to DubSpot - I would still be thinking about music instead of creating it."

Finally, I would like to thank Betty Kang for creating the idea of having me blog about my experience at DubSpot, Dan Giove of DubSpot for agreeing to the idea, Brian at Rhythmism for hosting The DubSpot Blog, and finally all of you who have read and supported me through this blog. On a personal note, the last year was a tough one, my mother passed after a long slow battle to breast cancer, and I am learning to turn that emotional experience out in musical experimentations rather than vent it out in after-party excursions. Look forward to an upcoming .thejass. mix, and more productions.

you have the soprano or b-flat clarinet with a range up to high G when in fact the instrument is capable up to the C above that.

EDIT: also the alto or e-flat sax can range to the high F-sharp with the added key (professional models only).

and you have to swallow the reed like a cock to hit it.


/gheigh

Well done, Jass.

Now let's hear some music!!

you actually don't need the added key, you can go up many octaves by controlling your embouchure and using fake fingerings.

Only in those homoerotic Kenny G fantasies you have.

And even if it was true, it would be hot if it was a woman, no?

I am particularly interested in Noise, and want to use it in my track. Jon taught me that ‘white noise’ is one of the original sound effects (an audio signal that contains all audible frequencies at equal volume). By using Ableton Live's Analog instrument, I will be able to produce noise from either one of the oscillators, or I could use it as a stand-alone noise generator.