starting from scratch

tony crackburn · Post by **tony crackburn** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:40 am

Hi everyone, I am brand new to this forum and an Ableton virgin as well! - This forum looks great and packed full of useful info. I am not a novice to making tunes and for the last 3 or 4 years I have been using Adobe Audition, mainly to do mash-up, but on the recommendation of others I have taken the plunge and bought Ableton. I intend to use Ableton to make my own tracks, albeit by stealing loops here and there to hopefully create something new. DJ'ing isnt really my thing - A lot of the advice I have found has been geared towards DJ'ing rather than creating your own tracks - Can anyone recommend where I can find an "idiots guide" to building a track from start to finish?, is there such a thing? - I have kind of cobbled together a couple of tracks but I am not entirely confident I am using it to its full potential

Cheers in advance people

ollyb303 · Post by **ollyb303** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:26 am

Apologies for the "Standard Response" here, but have you tried going through Abelton's built in lessons? If not you really should - they give you a really solid grounding to build on and cover most aspects of the program.

Also, forum regular Tarekith has some good guides on his website for arranging songs and mixing them down, among other things:
http://tarekith.com/misc.htm

There are some great tutorials on Youtube if you need help with something specific - just do a youtibe search on "Ableton" + "Whatever you need help with"

The covert operators have some great tutorials as well...

In fact, check out the sticky at the top of this forum (tips & tricks) - loads of gold-dust stuff in there.

And read the Live manual. Several times.

tony crackburn · Post by **tony crackburn** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:02 pm

Hey, thanks for this mate,any advice and responses are appreciated - I have checked the built in lessons but they didnt really help, they give a good overview but didnt really help with getting me started. Ii tried some of the you tube tutorials but again there is nothing really that shows you how to build a track from scratch - I think the manual is excellent but it doesnt seem to have a logical order of learning things - There should be a section at the end to put all you have read and learnt into practice - Anyway, i think i may be trying to run before i can walk, i have only had it about month,i just need to keep giving it a go and i am sure it will all fall into place eventually. Man, what i would give to just spend an hour with an Ableton guru just to show me the ropes !! I just checked the Covert stuff and there is a useful section on saving clips so thanks for that. I will read the manual for the 40th time as well

ollyb303 · Post by **ollyb303** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:17 pm

Apologies for my glaring omission here, but if you haven't yet, you should really check out Tom Cosm's website: http://www.cosm.co.nz/

There are some fantastic tutorial vids on there.

tony crackburn · Post by **tony crackburn** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 2:22 pm

good stuff, i will have a look after work - thanks for your help

Aequitas123 · Post by **Aequitas123** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:09 pm

I also was using Adobe Audition (Cood Edit PRo) before switching to Ableton and now i love Ableton and only open Audition when i need a .wav converted to .mp3 (goddamn ableton).

tony crackburn · Post by **tony crackburn** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:46 pm

h ha !!, yes i have realised that much, it doesnt render to mp3 !!, still its re-assuring to know that there are people out there who have crossed over from adobe to ableton and found it cool, cheers everyone

thinking about it, it would good if someone could start a "beginners" forum or something on here where all advice for newbies is consolidated onto one section...

Aequitas123 · Post by **Aequitas123** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:00 pm

tony crackburn wrote: thinking about it, it would good if someone could start a "beginners" forum or something on here where all advice for newbies is consolidated onto one section...

This forum is a wealth of information. I've spent about 2-3 years in this forum reading and trying things and i'm very comfortable with it now.

These things take time and practice, there's no other way around it.

Make sure you search in the forum before posting a question or you'll feel the wrath of the Ableton forumites!

ollyb303 · Post by **ollyb303** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:21 am

Aequitas123 wrote: Make sure you search in the forum before posting a question or you'll feel the wrath of the Ableton forumites!

Likewise if you post a question which is covered in the manual! Though as you're on your 40th read, that shouldn't be a problem!