I'm just about there, but I have a few questions.

[bobrichards]

Over the past couple days, I have learned more and more about ableton and making dubstep. I read a whole book on music theory yesterday and understand that.

Now I want to know how to make the LFOs wobble in my song. If I automate them to a knob, how to I get them to change after I recorded the bassline?

[Wunjo]

Well it depends on the instrument you are using that you want to modulate. I use massive and subboombass for my gritty basses and they each have their own unique methods for modulation automation/sequencing. But from a general standpoint: in the arrangement view you would go to the track that has the dubstep bass and click on the little drop-down menu for that instrument and you will see all kinds of different parameters you can fudge with like velocity, filter resonance, lfo rate, etc.. you would want to select whatever option pertaining to the LFO. This then lets you "draw in" your automation on the track using the draw tool. You can use this method for more precise automation or if you want to look cool you can just right click the midi learn button and assign whatever knob on your midi controller to your instrument's LFO rate and adjust it there while recording.

As a personal note:
Don't just modulate the rate, try and mess it up as much as you can by adjusting the filter settings, veloctiy, transpose, etc.. Nothing is more cheap or lame than a wobbley bass that just wobbles. A good dubstep dubstep tune is known for having filthy ass glitchy basslines and not just "woow-woow-woow-woow-wiw-wiw-wiw-wiw" Get my point?

[bobrichards]

Well it depends on the instrument you are using that you want to modulate. I use massive and subboombass for my gritty basses and they each have their own unique methods for modulation automation/sequencing. But from a general standpoint: in the arrangement view you would go to the track that has the dubstep bass and click on the little drop-down menu for that instrument and you will see all kinds of different parameters you can fudge with like velocity, filter resonance, lfo rate, etc.. you would want to select whatever option pertaining to the LFO. This then lets you "draw in" your automation on the track using the draw tool. You can use this method for more precise automation or if you want to look cool you can just right click the midi learn button and assign whatever knob on your midi controller to your instrument's LFO rate and adjust it there while recording.

As a personal note:
Don't just modulate the rate, try and mess it up as much as you can by adjusting the filter settings, veloctiy, transpose, etc.. Nothing is more cheap or lame than a wobbley bass that just wobbles. A good dubstep dubstep tune is known for having filthy ass glitchy basslines and not just "woow-woow-woow-woow-wiw-wiw-wiw-wiw" Get my point?

yeah, that makes sense.

You say to change it in arrangement mode, I usually use clip mode. (Is that bad). The one time I tried to draw in automation there was nothing because I only know how to use clip mode.

I usually compile clips of every thing onto the APC20 then record and launch and stop clips as I see fit.

That's probably a bad method.

[#1thelark]

This may apply to you so I'll quote myself quoting other people here:

Here's two ableton-sets to get you started:

Hi everyone, OK I finally packaged up the Ableton project file and uploaded it for you all to download and play with...

Experimentations in bass 001 - http://goo.gl/7sxoo <<DOWNLOAD & PLAY!!

Feel free to pass it around to anyone who wants it, all I ask is that you use that goo.gl link I provided so I can see how many downloads there are (just to satisfy my own curiosity!)

I've left my email address and details in the "READ ME" file, so if you have any fun outcomes, feel free to send me your updated versions!

Hope you like it!
Dom.

hej folks...

i've made a little operator rack for creating some dubstep like bass sounds. there are 3 operators with slightly changes in fm mode & envelopes. with the chain selector macro you can switch between the operators / combinations.

download the patch:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7999451/ableton ... k%2002.adg

with synced lfo:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7999451/ableton ... synced.adg

made with live suite 8.1.3.

a track i made with:
http://soundcloud.com/wehkah/wehkah-ft- ... aq-basslab

i hope you have fun

peace&sun
T

[mark303]

Have a look on youtube theres loads of tutorials

[Wunjo]

yeah, that makes sense.

You say to change it in arrangement mode, I usually use clip mode. (Is that bad). The one time I tried to draw in automation there was nothing because I only know how to use clip mode.

I usually compile clips of every thing onto the APC20 then record and launch and stop clips as I see fit.

That's probably a bad method.

Well from what I understand you can't draw in modulation in the session view. (there's a whole mob of very pissed of people who don't understand why you can't do this is Live's Session view but that argument is for another day. So basically you have three options:
1. Modulate it manually live everytime with your controller's knob(probably the most unpreferred method)
2. Copy the clip over into the arrangement view. Draw in your automation there. Then copy it back over into the Session view.
3. Copy it over into the arrangement view. Then create a seperate audio track. Route the Dubstep bass as the incoming audio on that new track then record it as audio instead of midi with automation then copy the audio track back into the session view.