Ableton Live - I don't "get it"

[mr-tiddles]

Hi,

My first post here.


Me and Ableton don't seem to be getting on very well.
The main problem being I don't know how to start making tunes, and adding layers to build the song up.

I bought Ableton on the basis of playing around with the demo, and making some good sounds. However, now I want to start putting something together, i'm stumped.

The session and Arrangment View confuse me... do I ignore the session view if im making tunes? I record a clip of beats to the session view say the first 4 bars. Then I want to add say a bassline to the beats after the 4th bar, so I create a new bassline clip, record to the arrangement, but the bassline comes in at the start rather than after 4 bars. Also how come when I play a clip the arrangement starts playing (and the other clips)? etc etc

I know its supposed to be easy but I just haven't found actually putting songs together very easy at all.

Im frustrated because I have good ideas in my head.

I've read the manual and done the tutorials but there doesn't seem to be any info on actually creating a proper song from scratch. Creating a clip is easy, but how do I start putting it all together?

*goes back to read the manual for the 4th time*

[bod]

Hi,

I record a clip of beats to the session view say the first 4 bars. Then I want to add say a bassline to the beats after the 4th bar, so I create a new bassline clip, record to the arrangement, but the bassline comes in at the start rather than after 4 bars. Also how come when I play a clip the arrangement starts playing (and the other clips)? etc etc

if you stop the recording and it sets the marker back to the begining of the track then it will record from that point.

you can drag the clips from the session view to the arrangement view and build you track that way, or just put the marker to the point on the timeline where you want to start recording.

hope it helps.

bod.

[supster]

try this:

- ignore the arrange view for now

- look at track one of your session view, all the way to the left

- put a drum loop in this track. any loop, audio .. midi .. doesnt matter
copy this loop down in the track ... duplicate it

- now look at track two, right next to track one. get a bass loop ..again, audio .. midi .. doesnt matter.

- place the bass loop in track two ... next to the drum loop you just copied.

now all the way over on the right of the screne, fire scene one with your mouse. the first drum loop will play

after 4 bars, fire scene two. the drum loop you copied AND the bass will play

keep moving down, adding, subtracting, altering clips

this is a basic way to build a song. arrange view is usually used to record and fine tune the results

now that you understand .. RTFM again

[sweetjesus]

hey mate,
i just wanted to ask you are have made music with other programs before? if you haven't then i guess you just have a bit more to get your head around, which is the electronic music making process, and also the software!

break it down into most basic elements. i.e. I'm gonna create a drum loop that goes "boom-tsk-boom-tsk" and a bassling that goes bang-bang-bang-bangbangbang and spend all your time trying to create basic elements... then you can worry about what other elements you need depending on the style you choose to follow and apply the same basic mentality to it and do your research.

www.futureproducers.com is a good place for people to learn basics of music.

[rikhyray]

That kind of frustration is absolutely normal with any new software or hardware ( anything new , even girlfriend)
Manual and tutorials are not enough, except for the very experienced individuals.
Get a book, the best is probably Live Power ( 2 or 4) go through it do evrything along, then while doing start one exercise tune, in few weeks if not days you will be able to really do something.
Live is one of the easiest to learn.

[Michael-SW]

Live is not that easy to learn - not if you come from the Cubase/Logic/etc world! Which I did. I realized Live was brilliant and instantly fell in love - but I really couldn't figure out how work in it. Still learning...

[zeitgeist]

If you haven't already, I *highly* recommend watching the Live 4 videos--they cover similar things as the tutorials, but they do a great job of explaining how the Session and Arrangement views interact. I switched over from Cubase, and doing those things, along with the lessons, had me up to full speed in Live in like 2 hours.

Videos available here: http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=movies

[Sales Dude McBoob]

I would compose in the arrangement view first. It seems more DAW-like.

Learn in simple steps. Don't try and do everything at once.

For instance, the playhead. Have you played with the playhead yet? Find it, drag it around, hit play and drag it, have a good ole' time with it.

[aike]

I've had it a year now and I'm still not very productive with it, yeah I can make hundreds of clips and arrange them but I always seem to come back to the session view and just fuck around rearranging things.

I've come from FL studio and I still go back to it to finnish something I just don't understand it, live should for me be the best software to use.

On a different matter does anyone here think the sound quality on rendering is a bit soft.

easy

[Sales Dude McBoob]

On a different matter does anyone here think the sound quality on rendering is a bit soft.

You don't want to go down that pike, aike.

[mr-tiddles]

I've used Reason before (had version, 1, sold it, now just bought 3 along with Ableton)
I think its just the correlation between Arrangment and session view that confuses me...

howver Im sure you ppls advice will be a great help
I'll check out those videos as well.

[sweetjesus]

I've used Reason before (had version, 1, sold it, now just bought 3 along with Ableton)
I think its just the correlation between Arrangment and session view that confuses me...

howver Im sure you ppls advice will be a great help
I'll check out those videos as well.

basically you can have loops and midi loops in the session view. the session view is good because you can play any clip at any time. if you want to capture the sequence that you play these clips in you can do so by activating record [f9] and the sequence of clips you play will be recorded in the arrangement section.

just remember 2 things. the loops in the arrangement are a copy of the ones in the session view, so you cannot edit the settings of a clip in the arrangement and expect it to reflect tose changes to the clip it came from in session view.

also there is a button next to the OVR button up the top of the scrren which looks like 3 boxes and an arrow pointing to it. this is highlighted when you are playing a mixture of arrangement and session view clips. if you click it, it will play the track exactly as per the arrangement view. it can get a bit confusing as to whats going on sometimes if you dont use this.

[conny]

I had some frustrating times with the session/arrangement for some month.
I just created clips and triggered them in session as if playing a sampler/midi sequencer.
The recording into arrangement did not make sense to me until I started manually drag sesson clips I had prepared into arrangement and got them going that way.
I did not understand recording into arrangement until I had worked a while with this manual clip dragging.
Then I realised the clips in arrangement may be split, dragged, merged, moved from track to track etc.
I still very seldom do a recording into arrangement but the relation between them feels more and more intuitive.

I still have problems with the issue that triggering a clip will trigger the arrangement, though.

// C

[aike]

You don't want to go down that pike, aike.

Why not people moan about the sound quality of FL Studio all the time. I'm no bad workman blaming his tool (oh er missus)

I use the same loops in fruity as live and with fruity they sound a bit sharper than live. It's no big deal but as i like using heavy distortion it makes a little difference, I shall persevere with it.

easy

[rasputin]

I am not embarrassed to admit that Live (started with v2) took me quite a while to figure it out. I had thousands of hours behind regular MIDI sequencers but Live, particularly the Session view, just baffled me.
Somewhere along the line things did click but it did take a few hours.
I start out in the Session view almost all the time now, and basically get a bunch of clips together that work, then start creating Scenes that work, and at a point dump everything over into Arrangement and finish the project that way. I don't go back to Session at this point, usually, except to record new Clips that I feel the piece needs.
The great thing is that there are many workflows that could be used with Live and no one of them is the "correct" one.
SO to Mr Tiddly: stick with it, read the helpful posts from people on this forum, and eventually Live will Borg your mind.