How To Program A Beat Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar - video Dailymotion

Music Radar

Tutorial using Ableton Live 11 Lite with Ski Oakenfull - part of the Music Radar series

Transcript

00:00Hi everyone, welcome back to this video series on getting started with Ableton Live Lite.

00:05So in the first video I showed you how to set everything up as well as giving you a quick

00:09tour of the different areas in live. Now it's time to start making some music. In this video

00:14we're going to lay down the foundations of a track by programming a drum beat and introducing a few

00:18tricks and tips along the way. So let's get into it. Okay so you can see here in the tracks area

00:25we have two midi tracks and two audio tracks by default. So we're going to look for some drum

00:31sounds so let's go to the browser click on drums and we can actually audition these kits to see

00:36what they sound like. I quite like that one that's called Driller Kit. So how do we actually use that

00:51kit to program a beat? There's a couple of ways we can do this. We can either double click on it and

00:56it will load into the track that's selected here. Let's just try that. There we go. Or you can actually

01:06drag that onto the track as well. There we go and what we can see here is something called a drum rack

01:12and we can just click on these sounds here

01:15to hear what they sound like. So on the tracks you can see these spaces here are called clips

01:23and this is where we can actually record in some midi information and loop it. So we're going to

01:29record one into this first clip here and I'm just going to create a blank clip just by double clicking

01:35and you can see that it shows this clip view here and then all the drum sounds are listed on the left

01:40hand side. Now if I click on this little button here this is called the midi editor preview button

01:48and what that will allow us to do is just click on the little keyboard there and listen to the sounds.

01:56So I'm just going to open this up a little bit to make it a little bit bigger. There we go.

02:01And we're actually going to draw some of these sounds in. So let's start with the kick drum and we're

02:06going to go for a very simple house pattern. So let's draw in a pattern using the grid here.

02:12So I'm going to use the pencil tool and we can access this just by pressing B and you can see

02:18the cursor turns into a pencil. We can also control click and we can turn draw mode on there as well.

02:26So let's just put in a very simple kick pattern.

02:28So that's coming on every beat of the bar and you can now press play on this clip and it will play as a

02:37one bar loop. So now let's try adding a clap sound. So let's just play that again and I'm going to put

02:48that on beat two and four. And now let's try our hi-hat and that's going to be on the offbeat.

03:08So that's one method of creating a pattern. We can also actually use a keyboard or even our QWERTY

03:14keyboard to play sounds over the top live. So this is currently a one bar loop. I'm going to click

03:19on this button here, duplicate, and then that's going to turn it into a two bar loop. So you can

03:24see it's copied over everything I've just programmed in. I'm going to press B again to get out of the

03:29draw mode. And this button here turns on or off the computer midi keyboard. And you can see it's

03:34actually turned on at the moment. So what I can do is use these keys here to actually play the sounds.

03:39Now there's nothing coming out at the moment. That's because I need to change the octave. If I

03:45press the key here, you can see that it's lighting up yellow there, but I need to put it down to two

03:50octaves so that actually plays something. And Z and X change the octave. There we go. Let's put it down one more.

03:57Ok, so let's play the clip and we can jam something over the top of it. And note that we can actually

04:11switch between the clip view and the device view just by clicking here. So I'm going to play along,

04:17come up with some ideas, and when I'm ready I'm going to click on this button here, which is the

04:22session record button. And this will overdub onto this midi clip, what I've just played. So let's

04:27just press play now. I quite like that. So let's just hit this now and we can record it in.

04:43So when I was drawing in those drum sounds, it was snapping them automatically to the grid,

04:47whereas just playing it in live, it means it might not be in time. And if we just zoom in

04:54with our mouse here, you can see that it's not completely lined up to the grid.

05:01So there's a function in Ableton Live called quantize. And this will actually put anything

05:06we played in time for us. So if we go up to the edit menu here and go to quantize settings,

05:14and this is where we can determine what type of quantize we want.

05:17We're going to make this to the current grid. Click on OK. And you can see that it's actually

05:23just quantized it for us. And once we've set our quantized settings, we can just go to quantize

05:30anytime and it will quantize it for us. Or there's a key command, which is command U. And that will put

05:36it in time. When using keyboard shortcuts with Windows, just use control instead of command,

05:42for example. There's a link in the description for a full comparison of Windows and Mac shortcuts.

05:48OK, so let's listen to that now.

05:57OK, now another thing I want to do is to give this a bit more of a feel. And I'm going to add some

06:02swing to do this. So if we go over to the browser menu here and just click on the grooves,

06:08this is where we can choose which groove we want.

06:12I'm going to choose this one here, which is swing 16th 73. And I'm just going to double click on that.

06:17And that's going to put that into something called the groove pull.

06:20Now, once this is in the groove pull, I can then apply this swing or this groove to any of the clips

06:28that I'm working on. And we can just do this from the clip groove setting in the clip view here.

06:33So there you go, it's appeared. I'm going to turn it on. Now let's play it.

06:38Now you can see it's very, very heavily swung.

06:43But over here we have the global groove amount. So we can actually tone this down,

06:47so it's not swinging quite so much. And the advantage of this is that we can apply this

06:58groove to any of the clips. So they all have the same groove setting.

07:02OK, so we've got our first clip. I'm happy with that. So now what I want to do is to create some

07:07variations of this beat. And what I can actually do is to duplicate this clip to the next clip slot.

07:13And I can just do this by pressing command D and you can see that it creates an exact copy of that clip.

07:22So what I'm going to do with this clip, I'm just going to change the hi-hat pattern

07:25so that it's playing 16th notes. So I'm just going to select all of those previous hi-hats I put in,

07:31press delete, and then I'm going to press B to bring back the pencil tool. And if I hold down option

07:37and just drag this across the grid, you can see it's created 16th notes.

07:47Now the reason I pressed option was to make sure that it just stayed on that note. If I didn't,

07:54then it's going to move around, which is not what we want. So let's just delete those,

07:59and let's just play the clip and listen to what it sounds like. And you can see that because I

08:06duplicated that clip, it's also applied that groove to that clip as well. Now I can actually switch

08:12between these two clips. Now the great thing about Session View are the horizontal lines,

08:21and these are called scenes. And it means we can actually build up an arrangement or structure of

08:26our track by triggering them. And we can do that from the master track just by clicking on play.

08:34And then any clips that are in that scene will be triggered. Okay, so we're going to create one

08:39final variation of this beat. So this time I'm going to duplicate the clip in a different way.

08:44I'm actually just going to hold down option and then drag it onto that third clip slot.

08:50Now for this beat, I actually want to change the clip back to a one bar loop. So what I can do is just

08:55go to loop brace, change it back to one bar, and I'm going to press ctrl, and I'm actually going to

09:03crop the clip. And that's just going to get rid of that second bar and just make it one bar again.

09:08Okay, so let's just reprogram the hi-hats. I'm just going to select the hi-hats and those rims as well.

09:15And let's program a bit more of a syncopated rhythm.

09:17So I'm just going to draw in these notes.

09:26And then let's listen to that.

09:32Great, and let's try putting in an extra snare here. Let's put in this sound.

09:37Great, okay, so we've got three patterns. Let's just quickly play them through again.

09:58Now we're going to look at mixing and balancing our sounds in a later video, but I just want to show

10:03you how we can quickly do that with this drum kit. So if I just click on this triangle here,

10:08and then again there, this is where we can see the levels of all our drum sounds.

10:15Now I want to take this snare down a little bit. It's a little bit loud. Maybe this clap as well.

10:20Now a really important thing to do once we've done some work is to save it. So I'm going to go here to

10:33save live set. And then that's going to ask me where I want to save it to.

10:40Let's call it house beat one. Before we move on with the next video, I wanted to mention templates,

10:51as these can be a great way to get inspiration and get up and running quickly. So we can go over

10:56to the template section in the browser here and try this one, demo and sketch. And we have a whole

11:01range of different styles. We've got slow rock, straight rock, pop, grunge rock, reggaeton,

11:08classic disco. And if we click on the master tracks here, it's going to choose the appropriate

11:13tempo for us. So let's just click on reggaeton for example. Go to classic disco.

11:28And what's more, if we click on the track, we can actually change the drum kit as well that's being

11:32played. So let's try an 808 kit. 909.

11:42Great. And then there are some other tracks set up here, which are some keyboard sounds

11:46and some bass sounds. And this is where you can record some vocals as well. So I thoroughly recommend

11:54checking out that to get some inspiration and get you started on a track. Okay, cool. So we've got our

12:00first part down. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to add a bass line to go with the beat,

12:05along with a few MIDI editing tricks.

How To Program A Beat Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar

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