Today I’ve been working on a new hour-long Hobotech mix, and I’m getting a lot of mileage out of the Insert Silence command, which can be used to give you a chunk of empty space in your arrangement wherever you need it. First, select a clip, or a section of time in the Arrangement view, […]
SILENCE BY NUMBERS
Something that’s easy to miss about the Insert Silence command is that it has two modes. If, instead of making a selection in the timeline, you simply click in the arrangement to place the blinking playback cursor, the Insert Silence command looks like this: Invoking the command will bring up a window allowing you to […]
PUNCH IT!
For a long time, I was largely uninterested in Live’s punch-in/punch-out controls: That’s because I was thinking of punching in the traditional sense, the way I used it in Pro Tools – namely, to replace bits and pieces of a live recording when working with musicians in the studio. That sort of thing isn’t a […]
LOOPIN’ AND PUNCHIN’
As I mentioned yesterday, when working in the arrangement view the loop brace is used to set the boundaries for both looping and punching. For my money, the easiest way to set these boundaries is using the Loop Selection command. First highlight a clip or region of time: Then, from the Edit menu (you’ll definitely […]
COPY TIME
Sometimes when I’m working in the Arrangement view, I wish there was a Copy Time command. I want to be able to click on a clip, then copy everything in that range of time to the clipboard, along the lines of the Duplicate Time and Cut Time commands. Here’s the workaround. First, highlight a clip […]
GROUP TRACK GOTCHAS
There are two things about group tracks that tend to mess people up. First off, there’s the Arrange view: Notice that when the track Lead1 is unfolded you can see its volume control (as well as pan, sends, etc.), but when the group track LeadGrp is unfolded, you just see the tracks inside of it […]
ARRANGING FOR THE GIG
OK, so where were we? Before I went on that little Group track tangent I was talking about “speed production” or creating music on a short timetable, specifically for live performance. Once I’ve got the basic ideas together, the next step is to create a quick arrangement. The purpose of the arrangement is not to […]
EXTRACT CHAINS
I’m a big fan of Drum Racks. Every track I do has its main beat programmed using one. There are lots of reasons for this, but a big one is the Extract Chains command, which is accessed by right-clicking in the Chain List: In the above example, this command will remove the chain called OB-Hat […]
DRUM EDITING WORKFLOW
In the previous tip I mentioned that I extract the drum rack chains once I’ve got a basic arrangement laid out. There’s another piece to my workflow, though: I usually do one pass of drum editing before extracting the chains. After the arrangement is laid out, I find spots to create additional variations – such […]
PLACE THE CLIP, SWITCH THE SAMPLE
A few months back, I did a little series on creating audio files full of strange sounds, then getting them into your productions via Drum Racks. Today I was reminded of another way to work with glitchy goodness. Above you’ll see a sample placed directly into the timeline in a couple of spots. It’s from […]
