Composing and Producing Electronic Music

Ableton Live Slice by Grid and Audio editing tips

lstearns — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:56:52 +0000

Hey everyone, this is a new video showing how to slice audio in Live 8 repeatedly on a grid. I think it is an awesome procedure and will get you into using the session and arrange windows together, and will set you up for some crazy audio editing later.

After using this process you might like to check out some of my Arrange view editing techniques:

Have Fun. Make Music.

L-Don

Live Soundcloud Uploader

lstearns — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:52:22 +0000

I am a huge fan of Soundcloud, a great way to backup, collaborate, market, and comment on sound. With the recent Ableton Live update when making the final bounce you can choose to upload it directly to Souncloud. A great feature for sure, but still in the starting stages.

Here is how it works:

From the Export Audio/Video window you can now choose to upload to Soundcloud when the render is complete.

Unfortunately the Soundcloud export option is disabled when choosing to render All Tracks. I hope this is changed in the future, would be really handy to upload all the stems in one pass.

Once the render is complete a separate SoundCloud uploader application opens.

Works as expected with standard options including privacy,license, sharing, tags, name, and picture. There are no options to add to a set or group, again hopefully that will come in future updates.

So, I am really pleased with this addition, I think it is a great step forward and in line with all the trends in pervasive computing and social networking.

If you want to check your render before uploading(and you should) you can go into your file system and play it there before completing the Soundcloud upload, I think a simple playback should be part of the SC uploader though, again maybe in a future update.

Oh, and watch out, Live is now installed in a new place. It is now directly in your Applications folder and called “Ableton Live 8″, so any of your dock icons will open the old version till you change them out!

Students become the teacher

lstearns — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:38:43 +0000

Hey everyone, so the first semester of Composing and Producing Electronic music is at an end, it is sad, I will miss all the wonderful students that I worked with this semester. In reviewing the semester I was reminded about how much the students shared their knowledge. It made me realize that one of the most amazing thing about these courses is the community we build; the relationships between students are just as important as the relationships between student and teacher. In fact I often felt that the terms “student” and “teacher” didn’t really apply, it felt like we were all studying together! Here are some youtube videos that my students made during the semester. I think it is pretty remarkable that my students are sharing with the world, giving back to the grand reservoir of knowledge that we all drink from.

This is a pretty crazy Live technique that you need to check out for that Skrillex style quick edited synth sound.

This is an amazing series on creating a DJ mix, I learned so much from watching it.

A big thank you to all my students!

Have Fun. Make Music.

Loudon

When Tracks Interact series

lstearns — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:49:30 +0000

Hey there everyone, I just started my new course Composing and Producing Electronic music, and I am totally excited. In preparing for the course I made a series of videos using Ableton Live, you may have seen them featured on the Ableton site. Well as a present for visiting me here you can download the live set and experiment with the sounds yourself, enjoy!

Tracks Interact Live Set download

And in case you didn’t see them yet, here is the series of videos, I suggest you open them in Youtube for the full HD viewing experience!

Have Fun. Make Music,

L-Don

Speaker Hits live pack, something different

lstearns — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 23:20:06 +0000

Hey everybody, I have been wanting to try this out for a while, and I wish I did it earlier. Took an old car speaker and wired it to a quarter inch jack, plug it into my audio interface, and play on the speaker with drumsticks. Sounds great! Awesome kick drum sounds. I have heard of people doing this and using the speaker to mic a kick drum, but hitting the speaker directly makes pretty darn good kick sounds. You can download my drum rack filled with 49 separate speaker hits: Speakerhits. Use them for whatever you like.

Have Fun. Make Music,

L-Don

Quick Editing tip

lstearns — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:18:56 +0000

Hey everyone, this one is a really quick video on editing audio in the arrange view:

Have Fun, Make Music,

L-Don

Live performance effects

lstearns — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:56:25 +0000

Hello everyone, I have created another YouTube video, this time it is about performing with the Live effects, specifically switching effects on the fly with MIDI mappings. This technique uses effect racks, the chain selector, MIDI mappings, and some non-standard signal flow, but the result is great. Check it out!

Since you are here, download the Live performance effects Project.

Have Fun. Make Music.

L-Don

Adding Visuals to Live

lstearns — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:46:41 +0000

Hello everyone! This post is a little different—it is about pictures not sound. Live can act as a really easy video editor. All you need to do is drop your pictures and video into an audio track! Here is a video explaining some of the specifics.

and since you are here download the Live performance effects Project.

Have fun. Make music.

-L-Don

Bouncing a MIDI clip to audio

lstearns — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:08:23 +0000

I find myself moving to audio earlier in the production process. When you get to the final mix and there are hundreds of clips all with their own envelopes and automation, it becomes impossible to work with. By bouncing clips to audio you commit all the envelopes to audio, much easier and you are more likely to do more interesting modifications.

A similar thing happens with MIDI clips, in the final mixing stage, midi clips are just annoying, so convert them to audio. This also saves considerable CPU resources by playing back audio clips instead of running your soft synths. And, having audio clips future-proofs your project; sometimes soft synths are no longer produced or their sound changes during an upgrade.

There are a couple ways to bounce to audio, but the freeze and copy method is fast and easy, so here it is:

Have fun. Make music.

L-Don

Pad From a Reverb Freeze

lstearns — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:07:19 +0000

Hello everyone, welcome to the new semester! I have a fun video for you this time, more fun with Sampler, but there are a ton of Live techniques in here that I use all the time(using an unlinked envelope to find a good hit is a GREAT technique).

You can download my project files here:

ReverbSynthLite.alp

Have Fun. Make Music.

Loudon