Up until this point, I’ve been presenting what amounts to a step-by-step method for preparing audio to be used in Live. Now we’ve reached a point where there are different paths you can follow depending on the type of material you’re working with, what you’re doing with it, and your own personal preference. As we […]
WARPING 101: THE PLIGHT OF THE ALMOST WARPED
It probably seems like I’m never going to get to the part where we do the actual warping. Well, this tip is no exception. One more piece of background info. It’s all worthwhile. Promise. Once you’ve tapped the tempo, turned on the Warp switch, and placed the one, you’ll probably have something that looks like […]
WARPING 101: SET THE ONE
Once you’ve followed the previous few steps, it’s time to turn on the Warp switch. In most cases, your clip will now look something like this: We could just jump to the step where we focus on tempo and set the grid & warp markers, but that would be jumping ahead. First, we need to […]
WARPING 101: ZOOM RIGHT
OK, this might seem obvious, but if you don’t have mad skills when it comes to zooming in/out of the waveform display (aka the Sample Editor), you’re going to have a hellish time warping audio. I’m making this observation because it’s one of the #1 things I’ve seen slow people down in Intro level classes. We’ve […]
MANY MINI SETS
I just can’t say enough positive about Live’s ability to export sets using drag and drop. My approach to live performance is to continually add material, so my sets have a tendency to get very large over time. The beauty of this is that your sets can get extremely dynamic as the material gets more […]
DJ EQ: TAREKITH’S TAKE
So, today I downloaded Tarekith’s DJ racks. He’s been at this a good long while, and gives out all sorts of good information on the Ableton forums, but I had never checked out his racks. Well, lo and behold there is a DJ EQ in there, conceptually very similar to what I’ve been talking about […]
DJ EQ: LESS BOOSTY, DIFFERENT
OK, I’m gonna do it: show you a different way to do the same thing I did in the last tip. I know it might seem gratuitous, but I think it’s useful from a process perspective – the better you get about thinking through this sort of problem, the cooler stuff you’ll make. Also, this […]
DJ EQ: LESS BOOSTY
So, I’ve got a few more things on my mind about Analog that I want to share, but I’m interrupting that stream of consciousness to bring you the latest update to my DJ EQ. (You’ll definitely want to read those tips and get the basic EQ rack put together before digging into this one.) My […]
BE SQUARE
Analog’s Shape menu offers four choices: sine, sawtooth, rectangle, and noise. Notice that I referred to the waveform highlighted above as “rectangle” rather than “square.” This is because this oscillator has adjustable pulse width. By default, the rectangle waveform is not configured to be a true square wave, instead it’s a wave that looks more […]
VOLUME AUTOMATION: UNSPEAKABLY EVIL
OK, a bit of an exaggeration perhaps. But here’s the thing: sometimes, as you’re producing a track there are spots where it’s important to automate the volume (fading parts in and out for example). The problem is that later on when it comes time to do a final mix, adjusting the level of tracks with […]
