Q's about sound design in Ableton from a novice....

[-andrew-]

So I'm still pretty new to Ableton, and essentially entirely new to sound design.

Experimenting has been fun so far, but the more I learn, the more I know how much I don't know

Here's an example.
I know I want to create a "foundation" in an ambient piece, 2 minutes long, that's a droning bass tone, with a little variation in sound quality, with a nearby muffled harmonic note being struck randomly once in a while. I'll probably also modulate some parameters along the way.

So there are a few categories that I know are personal choices, but I'm not sure how to "sort" them in terms of sound design:

=======================================

-Bass... software instrument? Sample?

-2 minutes long (If not played directly) - stretch MIDI vs. stretching a sample (warp?)

-Variation in sound quality - which effects?

-Random harmonic notes - generative? Random?

-Muffling harmonic notes - which effects?

-Modulation - tonal changes, noise, etc.

=======================================

What I'm thinking is that maybe there's a way to categorize & find things in "drawers & sub-drawers", e.g. when I want to "degrade" the sound of something, I'm not even sure how the drawer would be labeled because I don't know the overall and subcategories that "degradation" belongs in.

Maybe there isn't a thing like this, exactly, but is there something similar sound designers use for categories?

thanks

[dsu]

Two things that I really like about your post. You are just starting out and already you know the value of

1. Starting with a 2 minute project. 2 minutes is more than enough time to create a single evolving gesture.

2. You are already thinking about a framework to organized your tools and material.

Ableton offers a reasonable organization with its basic user interface; Audio Effects, Instruments are the fundamental tools.

The folder Sounds provides another way of organizing the instruments into a more musical categories so that under Ambient you could find both software synths and samplers.

You can create your own categories and save them in your User Library.

With respect to you questions"

-2 minutes long (If not played directly) - stretch MIDI vs. stretching a sample (warp?)

There isn't a right way to do this.

For example a short midi note could trigger a synth that had a very long release time on the envelope control

-Variation in sound quality - which effects?

The Operator synth has many internal controls that let you modulate the sound with in the synth before adding additional effects. For example you can apply a pitch envelop to an oscillator each time a note is played.

Also built into Operator is a very nice filter.

Plus most of the controls within a synth like Operator can be automated for the duration of the composition.
[/list]
-Random harmonic notes - generative? Random?

This is interesting place to experiment. Create a chord based on the harmonic series of the fundamental note of your drone and then use the random function MIDI arpeggiator to create some MIDI notes to play with.

For more fun, try creating a chord based on the Cycle of Fifths and send it to the MIDI arpeggiator.

-Muffling harmonic notes - which effects?

Filters are the obvious choice. A filter and a reverb combined can sound very ambient.


-Modulation - tonal changes, noise, etc.

As mentioned above, precise modulation can be achieved using Ableton's automation features.

To go for a more automatic modulation, some live devices have built in modulators called LFO (low frequency oscillator). These pattern that these LFO create can often be synced so that the effect changes in time with the tempo of the project.

Plus Live has separate LFO devices that can be use to modulate instruments and effects that don't have built in LFO's.

And, you guessed it, you can use automation to control your LFO's


Hope this has been helpful. Enjoy the exploration

dsu

[-andrew-]

Two things that I really like about your post. You are just starting out and already you know the value of

1. Starting with a 2 minute project. 2 minutes is more than enough time to create a single evolving gesture.

2. You are already thinking about a framework to organized your tools and material.

dsu

Wow - Thanks for the really thoughtful response. This is the second time I'm trying to reply as I was typing quite a bit, the forum timed me out, and didn't keep my response queued... grrr..

Anyway:

-2 minutes long (If not played directly) - stretch MIDI vs. stretching a sample (warp?)

There isn't a right way to do this.
For example a short midi note could trigger a synth that had a very long release time on the envelope control

For sure. In fact, this morning I started with a 1-minute ambient piece, 2 tracks (bass and lead), bass limited to 3 notes, lead limited to 4 and their octaves. (Still not sure how to limit notes, will be posting about that separately.)

These limits allowed me to sketch the idea out in about 10 minutes. Now, this was the first of a series of studies, so where to go next... hmmm...

-Random harmonic notes - generative? Random?

This is interesting place to experiment. Create a chord based on the harmonic series of the fundamental note of your drone and then use the random function MIDI arpeggiator to create some MIDI notes to play with.
For more fun, try creating a chord based on the Cycle of Fifths and send it to the MIDI arpeggiator.

This (generative, random, related) is one of the main things I'm looking at currently. My idea is to be able to efficiently fill up time, like roughing in a painting, and refine/iterate after the "foundation" is build.

It's also one of the main reasons I started my own list of tools - not exactly sure how to categorize things yet (especially tools that may fit in to multpile categories. Maybe a list maker with tags of some sort...

"Plus Live has separate LFO devices that can be use to modulate instruments and effects that don't have built in LFO's.
And, you guessed it, you can use automation to control your LFO's"

Yep! Automation is up there with investigating generative & randome content creation, and I think I should look into Follow Actions, too.

Thanks again.