How To Create Easy Chords With MIDI Effects Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar - video Dailymotion

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How to make a track in Ableton Live 11 Lite: creating easy chords with MIDI effects

Transcript

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

00:05So in the last video I showed you how to add a bass line to the beat.

00:08Now we're going to add some more musical elements and continue building up the layers of the track.

00:13In this video I'll be adding some chords using two different sounds making use of Live's fantastic

00:18MIDI effects and also recording in a melodic part from a hardware synth. Things are getting serious,

00:24let's get into it. So because we want to add some more parts we need to create some more midi tracks

00:29and you can see we've already used up two of our midi tracks already. So what we can do is just

00:33create some more. So we just go up to here create and insert midi track. We can also do that with

00:40shift command t as well. So there we go we've got two new midi tracks. So I want to look for a piano

00:46sound now. So first I'm going to click on the arm recording button on this channel here and we're

00:51going to use this search function. It's a really really useful feature of the browser. So if we're

00:57in the sounds category and we click on here and then type in piano you can see that any presets

01:04that have piano in the title will come up here. So let's go to piano and keys and let's try this

01:11grand piano sound. Double click on it to load it into the track. There we go.

01:16Now the bass line I play went like this.

01:28Okay so the key signature of this track is A minor and it's just all the white notes.

01:35Very very simple. Now I want to play some chords and a chord is defined as when you play more than one

01:41note at the same time. And one of the simplest chords is a triad and this is often called a stack

01:45of thirds where we have the first note, the root note, we go up a third and then a fifth.

01:54So this is A minor.

02:01Now what's brilliant about live is there's actually a midi device that can do that for us

02:05without having to play the notes. So it's really good if you're not that familiar with playing the

02:09keyboard. Let's go over to the midi effects category here and go on to chord and I'm just

02:16going to click on this triangle here to bring up some of the presets. And the one that I'm going

02:21to choose is this one is called house for the go. And all I have to do is just double click on it

02:26and it will load it up for me just before the piano device. So if I now play the keyboard

02:31it's playing those chords for me. Fantastic. And you also might be able to hear that

02:43that the volume of the chords is changing and that's because the keyboard I'm playing is velocity

02:48sensitive. So if I play very softly it's quiet and if I play very hard it's much louder. Kind of what

02:54you'd expect from a real piano. But for this style of music I'd rather it was more of a constant volume.

03:00So again there's another midi effect we can use for that and it's called velocity. It's going to

03:04scroll down and we're going to select this one fix 127. So let's double click on it.

03:12So whatever velocity I play on the keyboard it's always going to be the same volume.

03:16Now I can hear that's already a bit loud so I'm just going to take the volume down.

03:19So let's try jamming something onto this third scene here.

03:38Okay we can use capture again. I quite like that first riff that I played.

03:44It's captured it all but it's just looped that last bar so let's just drag the loop brace

03:48back here and see what that sounds like.

03:57Okay so let's quantize it again going up here quantize. We could just do command U

04:04and let's not forget to apply that groove as well.

04:06Okay great so that's really working for that kind of more funky section there. Now I'd quite like to

04:19find some chords that are maybe a bit more mellow and for that often pad sounds are really good.

04:24So this time I'm going to go up to the first scene.

04:26And let's go over to this midi track and let's look for a pad sound.

04:33So I'm going to go over to the sounds again

04:36and there's actually a sound category for that called pad.

04:40So let's just listen to some of those.

04:47Oh that's really nice and that sounds like it's actually got a chord kind of built into

04:51it maybe a chord device which is really good. So let's drag that over and

04:58again I'm going to bring the volume level a little bit down.

05:01So what we have here on the left hand side of this device are things called macro variations

05:07and you can see these are actually preset chords. That's a major, minor, major seventh, minor seventh

05:16or even no chord at all. So this is one of my favorite chords. It's a minor nine.

05:24So let's just try playing that with the first scene here.

05:31Okay so as you can see that's quite tricky to play but I've actually created my own chord device preset

05:42and I want to quickly show you how I created it. So I'm just going to go to the user library here

05:47and if you just go to presets and midi effect rack you'll see it's here skis minor nine. So let's just

05:54go over here and I'm just going to double click on that. Now you have to make sure that no chord is

05:59selected on the pad device but now if I play this so let's have a quick look at my effects rack. I've

06:10set the chord device here so these are the settings for the semitones. I'm also pitching it down to

06:18semitones so I can just play the appropriate key and I've also added a velocity device here not fixed

06:24at 127 like the other velocity preset but it's got a lower limit of 86. And I'm just going to adjust

06:31the filter cut off on this pad to make it sound a little bit more mellow.

06:41And let's just try recording something in. I'm going to record it in

06:43manually this time so we've still got our counting as one bar.

07:00There we go. You can see it's recorded it in nicely.

07:04Let's quantize it. And one great feature I wanted to show is the fold function as this will focus

07:14the clip by only showing the notes you've recorded or programmed in. So let's supply the groove again to

07:21that. And let's duplicate that down to the second scene. Just playing through the scenes.

07:43Okay so now we've got the chord parts in I want to record a melody and for this I want to use one of

07:48my hardware synths my Korg mini log. So up until now we've just been using midi tracks now we're going

07:54to use an audio track. So I'm going to click on this track here click on arm recording and what we need

08:01to do is to select where we want the audio to come from. So if we go back to the preferences here

08:08this is where you can set which inputs are active depending on which sound card you're using. So click

08:13on input configuration and I'm going to be using these inputs here.

08:21Okay so now I can select input 14 which is where my mini log is coming in and let's just play something

08:28now. And you can see we have an input. So let's record this on the first scene here and we'll just

08:40record it into this clip and then we can kind of jam something down and then edit it afterwards.

08:56Okay I quite like that part so let's just put auto on now and let's just solo it so we can listen back

09:11to it. Now another great thing about Ableton Live is the fact that you can quantize audio in the same

09:25way that you can quantize midi. And you can see in this clip there are these little kind of white marks

09:32and these are called pseudo warp markers and what it's done is identified the transients which mean

09:38the peaks in the peaks in the audio signal and it's added a marker there. Now what we can do is we

09:44select all so do command a and then command u to quantize it's then quantized it all to the setting we

09:56had which was sixteenths. And even better than that we can now apply the groove and let's play it.

10:09Now this is called warping and with warping there are some different settings according to the type

10:13of audio that you're trying to warp. Now the default setting I've got here is beats but this isn't a beat

10:19this is a melodic part so I would suggest selecting the complex mode just to get a better quality.

10:26So let's just play it now.

10:37Great, really happy with that. I'm just going to duplicate that part down there.

10:49Okay great, so the track is really taking shape now. We actually have two distinct sections. In the next

10:56video I'm going to show you how to use a device in live called Simpler to play a vocal sample.

How To Create Easy Chords With MIDI Effects Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar

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