Why You Should Start Using Ableton Now!
Why You Should Start Using Ableton Now! Workflow Heaven The most important aspect of a DAW is its ease of use. The faster and more efficiently a producer can work in their DAW, the better. With its intuitive layout, Ableton offers a streamlined and sleek work experience that keeps producers of all backgrounds and levels in movement. Even beginners can get up and running making music in an extremely short amount of time. Arrangement View and Session View Ableton Live’s interface consists of two main views, Arrangement and Session. Arrangement acts as a traditional view for recording, programming, and editing, while Session view brings a new, clip-oriented take on production. The addition of Session view gives users a drawing board to test out new song ideas, whether that be a new melody, drum pattern, or vocal take. Some producers use Session view to produce entire songs! Get …
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Get Hands On! – 5 Tips for Ableton Push
Get Hands On! – 5 Tips for Ableton Push Push has been out for several years now, but it remains a powerhouse for many producers and performers of all backgrounds. The main reason Push has become such a crowd favorite is its versatility. At Beat Lab, we have grown extremely fond of Push ourselves! So much so that we created our own Push course. In this article, we’ll share several of our favorite tips to help ramp up your Push use and increase your production potential! Easily Assign Choke Groups for Drums Push makes creating drum racks a breeze. One instrumental aspect of creating a drum rack with hits that work together and don’t clash is assigning choke groups to drum hits. For those unfamiliar with choke groups, they are used to keep two drum hits from playing at the same time, to keep a groove from sounding …
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MIDI Tricks – Scaled Clips (Free Ableton Template)
MIDI Tricks – Scaled Clips (Free Ableton Template) The Fold button in Live’s MIDI editor can be used as a reference guide to show notes from a scale. This can help us come up with strong melodies, basslines, chords, and arpeggiators with minimal music theory knowledge. It’s simply a quick technique to make sure you’re in scale. Which notes should I play? First create a MIDI clip. Then draw all the notes of the scale you want to play in. All of them should be placed on the same time in the grid. In the image below I drew the notes of C Minor. If you are not sure which notes fit in each scale check out this cool CHEAT SHEET. Next, select all the notes (CMD/CNTRL+A), duplicate them (CMD/CNTRL+D) and then bring them an octave higher (Shift+Up arrow). Do the same for an octave below so you’ll end up with three …
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Yeuda Ben-Atar On the Beauty of Repetition
Yeuda Ben-Atar On the Beauty of Repetition Founder and head educator at Beat Lab Academy recently went to Loop to give a presentation. What was it about? About the innate beauty of repetition and its role in music. They said the following below, At the most recent Loop summit, we invited participants to give short presentations on an aspect of music making from their own personal perspectives and areas of expertise. This time around, we are happy to feature Yeuda Ben-Atar, the founder and CEO of Beat Lab Academy as well as an Ableton Certified Trainer and producer, under the name of Side-Brain. Watch the video below to see the highlights of his talk and gain some insight while you’re at it. WANT TO TAKE YOUR PRODUCTION TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
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Beat Lab Deconstruction – New Order’s Blue Monday
This week we’ll be starting our step-by-step guides for breaking down famous songs from history. We’re extremely excited to start with this instant hit – Blue Monday by New Order. Blue Monday is the best-selling 12″ single of all time so we figured it would be a good song to start this series with. For this and likely all future constructions we will be using Ableton Live 10 Suite. If you do not have Ableton Live or the same version, do your best to follow along. Drums Blue Monday’s drums are really quite simple, they follow four main drum patterns with the same break inserted multiple times throughout the song. Fortunately for us, they were also sequenced on a drum machine which makes recreating them a breeze. Find your DAW’s version of the Oberheim DMX and place it on your drum track, then get started on the patterns below. The …
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BIP – Bounce In Place Max4Live Device
BIP – Bounce In Place Max4Live Device Valiumdupeuple recently released a device called BIP or Bounce In Place, a Max4Live Device that does exactly what it is titled. The device will bounce your audio or MIDI clips post fx in one simple click. It looks like the device has simply automated the process of resampling as it functions by soloing then creating a new track below the highlighted ones, arming it, switching the input to resample, activating the recording, stop the recording, then disarm and unsolo the tracks. It happens in under a second which makes it a realistic alternative to simply creating a shortcut for freezing and flattening tracks, which doesn’t give you a copy of the track like BIP does anyway. Here’s what the developer said, Everyone’s waiting for a “bounce in place” feature in Ableton Live since ages. Well, if you have M4L, here’s the one-click-only solution device, with easy Push implementation. Place the device …
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R&B Lead Harmonizer Trick + Pitch MIDI Effect Cheat Sheet (Free Download)
R&B Lead Harmonizer Trick + Pitch MIDI Effect Cheat Sheet We continue with our Ableton Effects cheat sheet series. Check out the previous cheat sheets and techniques by CLICKING HERE. The entire collection is available to Beat Lab students and alumni. The Pitch MIDI effect is the most simple effect in Ableton Live that let you traspose your keyboard or block MIDI notes from going to the instruments. Check out the video below for a cool trick with the Pitch and Scale MIDI effect. Scroll down to the bottom to download the free cheat sheet. R&B Lead Harmonizer Pitch Cheat Sheet We made a cheat sheet for you to quickly reference all the functions of the Pitch MIDI effect. More Tips? Have more tips and secret ways you are using Ableton’s Pitch? We would love to hear from you. Please feel free to hit us up here on the website or on …
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5 Advanced Chords + Ableton’s Chord MIDI Effect Cheat Sheet (Free Download)
Ableton’s Chord MIDI Effect Cheat Sheet We continue with our Ableton Effects cheat sheet series. Check out the previous cheat sheets and techniques by CLICKING HERE. The entire collection is available to Beat Lab students and alumni. The chord MIDI effect is a simple yet powerful effect especially if you are looking to play complex chords with only one not. Combining the chord effect with other MIDI effect can result in extremely useful tools like melody generators, complex arpeggios and automatic drum fill makers. Here are 5 different chord formulas for you to test out. Scroll down to the bottom to download the free cheat sheet. Major 9th – Smooth and Lush Major 7th Add 2/6 – Gospel Fullness Minor 9th – Dark and Soulful Minor 11th – Urban Jazz Minor 11th Open Voicing – 5th Stack Chord Cheat Sheet We made a cheat sheet for you to quickly reference …
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