hip hop on ableton?

[Nick the Zombie]

This is an understandable reaction from a new user to Ableton, especially if they are used to a more traditional DAW format or an MPC-centric approach. Some of these guys are giving you a hard time, but they are also giving you some good advice if you read between the lines. Look at Ableton as essentially all the MPCs you could ever want, as one giant sampler. I hold the opposite opinion of yours: I would NEVER go with another program over Ableton for hip-hop. The slicing feature and drum racks are where it's at if you want to do things traditionally, and the session view is always there if you want to branch out and get more experimental.

At this point it's on you to do some reading online about what you want to do in Ableton, but I promise you that you will be missing out if you ditch Ableton for hip-hop. Sky's the limit.

- Nick

[ollyb303]

You're totally right. Live has no hip-hop features. This has to do with it's German origin. At it's best it can come up with some minimal ambient techno or perhaps some cheesy euro disco. But hip-hop. No way.

.m

still haven't stopped laughing!

Is the OP for real?

[mikey92]

db2 thats exactly wat i meant, im looking for good hip hop percussion i can work with.

[Nick the Zombie]

db2 thats exactly wat i meant, im looking for good hip hop percussion i can work with.

What is hip hop percussion? Isn't one of the great things about hip hop that you can use anything you find on a recording in the real world as percussion? If you're talking about traditional sounds like 808 and stuff like that, then just download or buy a sample pack. I would recommend actually trying to roll your own sounds, though, which is totally possible and fun in Live.

[Lo-Fi Massahkah]

db2 thats exactly wat i meant, im looking for good hip hop percussion i can work with.

The Drum Machines package has some great old school drum machine (no? wow!) samples for your boom-bap pleasure. Otherwise I'm guessing you could download 808-samples just about anywhere.

.m

[djlimbs]

db2 thats exactly wat i meant, im looking for good hip hop percussion i can work with.

dig for breaks!

or if you're on a time crunch: http://www.turntablelab.com/production_ ... 12106.html

then proceed to mix layer compress distort resample repeat

[kpa]

if his name is any indication, he's 16 years old.

fair enough, didnt mean to sound snappy.

if you are looking for percussion and drum sounds, then i agree that the basic live sounds aren't fabulous. i would recommend grabbing some of your cd's (or mp3's), either hip hop ones or some soul ones if you have them and sampling the induvidual drum hits. not sure if there is a lesson in live about sampling like this, but the manual should tell you how.

finding your own sounds is the basis of hip hop (check dr dre's 2001 insert to see how many records he has listened to to get samples), but i would agree that if you are starting out trying to make beats it is adding another step that may cause some frustration when you are starting out.

good luck.

kpa

[kpa]

also, make sure you download the live packs from here to get all the basic presets and sounds that ableton provide. i didnt have them all in my copy, or at least they werent installed by default.

http://www.ableton.com/livepacks

kpa

[silverlulu]

who's down with mpc? every last homie

[kraze]

For one, the chance that the first poster even bought ableton live is about 0%.
Go do some research, decide if its up your alley and either buy it or move on.

And since when has hiphop been about being spoonfed with samples? USE YOUR TURNTABLES AND FIND YOUR OWN...oh wait, there's also about 0% that he has a turntable.

Making music isn't just downloading a program and voila.

[djlimbs]

this is 2008, samples are everywhere...vinyl, cds, mp3s, sound libraries, youtube, found sound from your environment..how it fits in the body of your work is what's important. in my opinion, sticking to just turntables gets a certain sound and is dues well paid but holding progress back if the source stops there.

[infiniteB]

Hip hop can be made with or without samples, turntables, crossfaders, "hits", etc. It can be f straight 8, straight 16, full of triplets, tribal, filtered, non filtered, 80 bpm, 105 bpm, with builds, without builds, with or without brass-upright bass-synths-high hats-snares-piano-choruses-hooks-16 bar verses-80 bar verses-ebonics, have "thin" or "thick" snares, have the bass sounds/lines on or completely off from where the bass kicks are, be quantized or un-quantized, compressed or un-compressed........ Just listen to, for example, the whole libraries of KRS-One, Gangstarr, Eric. B and Rakin, Outkast, A Tribe Called Quest, Talib Kweli, Common, Nas, Kool Keith, Del the Funky Homosapien, Pharcyde, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, Atmosphere, Jay-Z, Q-Bert, DJ Swamp, Z-Trip, The Roots, Wu-Tang, The Fugees, and the list goes on and on and on

... hip hop can be made in so many ways, so many ways, some of which have not even been made yet... If you don't know how any of this can be done, you need to learn a lot more about production, and, frankly, hip hop..

Ableton allows you to put and route any type of source/sound/data anywhere within a specified time line (long or short), clip, frequency range, "space', pan location, etc...
You can sequence and play live (as well as sequence live in a most experimental way), as well as tweak live (FX, mixing controls, pull tracks in and out, stutter, etc) unlike any other software that I know of...
Its open-ended architecture allows for VST and AU instruments and effects, not including its vast internal FX possibilities...
You can waveform edit to a very strong degree, and to the degree that you can not (very little), there are free open-source programs such as Audacity.
You can connect MiDI controllers (fully assignable keyboards, buttons, knobs, sliders, and velocity sensitive pads).
You can MIDI sync.
You can export files, and can record in up to 32-bit.
You have amazing drum racks, with FX and other routing possibilities for each and every of the 128 cells PER RACK.
You can sample.
You can edit samples.
You can time stretch
You can time stretch and change pitch
You can change pitch
You can record vocals
You can edit vocals
You can use internal/external instruments
You can use the computer keyboard to input sounds like a keyboard, mutes, solos, etc.

So, for anyone to say that you can not make hip hop, either/both:

1) That person knows very iittle about music production, and should take the time to honestly learn and understand more about the processes, truths, and possibilities of such, and spend a few thousand hours alone understanding such instead of making judments about a piece of software (like any software) that can be rocked, played, used, enjoyed... It's not about Ableton-- it's about understanding music production itself

2) That person surrounds themselves with a person/people who fall in to category #1 above, and should make a "clean break" (no pun intended) from such people (unless they know more than them and can help them), at the very least in terms of listening to anything they have to say about music production, as (nothing wrong with not knowing, but jumping to conclusions can be dentrimental to oneself and others) they do not know much at all, and I mean AT ALL, about music production.

[silverlulu]

yeah dude download some samples of torrents and maybe buy computer music magazine. it's about £5.99 in uk. it has some decent synths which will help with hiphop bass and about 4 gig of samples as well which should sort you out.

no need to complicate it if you are starting out.

kick, snare, kick, snare repeated.
a bassline of about 4 key presses do get some mood
some zippy higher synth sound
hats and cymbals and then a few other things thrown around.

after you've mastered that basic stuff, you can use samples, get more complex, get the pads, pianos, guitars etc... goin.

[Marx]

You're totally right. Live has no hip-hop features. This has to do with it's German origin. At it's best it can come up with some minimal ambient techno or perhaps some cheesy euro disco. But hip-hop. No way.

.m

what? Deltron makes all his music Live.

Live is a loop based program. MPC's are loop based machines.

What is it about a "Rap beat" that can't be done on ableton?

[Lo-Fi Massahkah]

You're totally right. Live has no hip-hop features. This has to do with it's German origin. At it's best it can come up with some minimal ambient techno or perhaps some cheesy euro disco. But hip-hop. No way.

.m

what? Deltron makes all his music Live.

Live is a loop based program. MPC's are loop based machines.

What is it about a "Rap beat" that can't be done on ableton?

I'm very sorry. I was being sarcastic. Should have put a smiley in there. Or an explaining text.

I beg your pardon.

.m