Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8

Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8

Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8 Create, Produce, Perform Keith Robinson AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier

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Contents About the Author Acknowledgments xi xiii Scene 1 Ableton Live 8: Create, Produce, Perform 3 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Approaching Live in three intuitive ways 4 1.3 Immersing yourself in Live 4 1.4 How to use this book! 7 1.5 Taking advantage of Hot Tips 8 Scene 2 Overview: Live 8, Suite 8 13 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 The concept 13 2.3 Important preference tweaks! 14 2.4 The Live Browser 19 Scene 3 The Quick Way to Start Making Music! 31 3.1 Introduction 31 3.2 Starting a project 33 3.3 Audio in Live 34 3.4 MIDI in Live 41 3.5 Essential operations and tasks 48 3.6 Performance to arrangement 54 3.7 Finishing your work 55 Scene 4 Global Record: Capturing Arrangements on the Fly 65 4.1 Introduction 65 4.2 The Global Record concept 65 4.3 Music on the fly 67 4.4 User interfacing: two parallel worlds 67 4.5 The linear approach 74 4.6 The nonlinear approach 80 v

Contents Scene 5 Arrangement View Concepts 85 5.1 Musical timeline 85 5.2 Layout 85 5.3 Navigating 86 5.4 The Arrangement View 92 5.5 Working with automation 101 5.6 Arranging concepts 105 Scene 6 Session View Concepts 109 6.1 Real-time launching base 109 6.2 Layout 110 6.3 Clips 115 6.4 Tracks versus Scenes 120 6.5 Track Status Display 124 6.6 Working in Session View 124 6.7 Sessions into Arrangements 131 6.8 Musical concepts 133 Scene 7 Clips 137 7.1 Musical building blocks 137 7.2 Clip View 138 7.3 Clip Box 142 7.4 Launch Box 143 7.5 Sample Box 146 7.6 Notes Box 154 7.7 MIDI Note Editor 156 7.8 Envelope Box 162 7.9 Envelope Editor 164 7.10 Musical concepts 170 Scene 8 Groove 175 8.1 Introduction to groove 175 8.2 Grooves 176 8.3 Groove Pool 176 8.4 Commit groove 179 vi

Contents 8.5 Extract groove 181 8.6 Musical concepts 182 Scene 9 Recording 185 9.1 Recording MIDI clips 185 9.2 MIDI overdub recording 190 9.3 Freezing and converting MIDI clips into audio clips 196 9.4 Recording audio clips 198 9.5 Exporting and printing 207 9.6 Musical concepts 211 Scene 10 Working with Scenes 215 10.1 Musical foundation and structure 215 10.2 Scene launch preferences 217 10.3 Tempo and time 219 10.4 Capture and Insert Scenes 220 10.5 Musical concepts 222 Scene 11 Grouping Tracks 229 11.1 Group Tracks 229 11.2 Launching Group clips 232 11.3 Mixing concepts 235 11.4 Musical concepts 237 Scene 12 Controlling Your Universe 241 12.1 Remote Control 241 12.2 MIDI Mapping 243 12.3 Key Mapping 247 12.4 The Relative Session Mapping Strip 248 12.5 Mapping Browser 249 12.6 Musical control 251 Scene 13 Warping Your Mind! 255 13.1 Elastic time 255 13.2 Warp Modes 262 13.3 Warping samples 266 13.4 Musical concepts 276 vii

Contents Scene 14 Loops, Slicing, and More Looping 279 14.1 Loops demystified 279 14.2 REX loops 280 14.3 Slice to new MIDI track 282 14.4 Working with loops 288 14.5 Looping in the Arrangement View 289 14.6 Loops with Unlinked Clip Envelopes 290 14.7 Looping concepts 292 Scene 15 Instruments and Effects 297 15.1 Introduction to Live Devices 297 15.2 Working with Live Devices 298 15.3 Live 8 Instrument basics 303 15.4 MIDI effects 311 15.5 Audio effects 313 15.6 Device chains 325 15.7 Plug-in devices 332 15.8 External (MIDI) Instruments 336 15.9 Working with devices 338 Scene 16 Device Racks 345 16.1 Introduction to Racks 345 16.2 Rack interface and layout 346 16.3 Drum Racks 350 16.4 Creating Device Racks 353 16.5 Racks in Session View 365 16.6 Working with Racks 367 Scene 17 Suite 8 373 17.1 Overview of Suite 8 373 Scene 18 Video with Live 8 377 18.1 The possibilities of video with Live 8 377 18.2 Working with video 377 18.3 Video clips 379 viii

Contents 18.4 Synchronizing music with video 382 18.5 Aligning video clips on the track display 385 Index 389 On the Website Suite 8 ReWiring the Digital World Max for Live 101: The New Max User AKAI APC40: The Ableton Performance Controller Share: Collaborative Live Sets Essential Keyboard Shortcuts/Commands ix

About the Author Keith Robinson is a composer, sound designer, and audio engineer living in New York City. He is also part of the adjunct faculty at The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, New York University, where he specializes in the Fundamentals of Audio Workstations (Pro Tools, Digital Audio, MIDI) and Producing Music with Software & MIDI (Live, Logic, Reason). Keith s music has been used in numerous commercials and television shows and he has composed additional music and sound design for multiple feature films. Currently Keith serves as Vice President and co-developer of the sample library company Sample Logic LLC (www.samplelogic.com) and music production company Sample Logic Studios (www.samplelogicstudios.com). His sample company s award winning products A.I.R., The Elements EXP, Synergy, WaterHarp, and Morphestra are heavily used throughout music for Film, TV, and gaming world. xi

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Amy Baer for all her help, support, and encouragement, Jim Anderson, Joe Trupiano/Sample Logic LLC, Jeremy Serkin, Andres Levin, and Mom. Special thanks to Huston Singletary and Justin Hegburg for their contributions. I would like to thank Catherine Steers both for making this book a possibility and for seeing it through with me till the end. xiii