Ableton Forum

Ok pro producers how do you go about this then?

In relation to your beats (however this question is relevant to all parts), what is the best way to cut them up, remix them, turn them into build ups, fills, whilst still have them at optimum quality and sounding identical to the rest of the track?

Let expand a little further, a normal production scenartio, let's say I have 16 separate tracks for my beats and percs, they all being compressed and eq'd then they head off to a drum bus etc, they're sent to reverb etc, and sidechained etc. I have composed the various parts of my track and laid them out in the arrange. Now I want to add phrases where the entire beat repeats or reverses or does some other effect. How should I go about doing this? The problem being that if I want to repeat the beat for instance every part has it's own eq a different compressor and effect etc, do I bounce it down and then have the beat on one track and effect that single track? In which case I must wait until the point where I have eq'd and compressed everything to my final liking - or - do I attempt to cut all the 16 tracks and edit them in the same way? Or is there another way to handle this? This matter really confuses me as how to best approach. I hope I've made myself clear, any advice on the matter would be most enlightening!

My pro license expired in October.

I sooooo wish I could help you here but legally I can't.

beats me wrote:My pro license expired in October.

I sooooo wish I could help you here but legally I can't.

Got to get peoples attention somehow, obviously you haven't got anything relevant to say or don't know the answer yourself, perhaps you should spend more time making music than trying to dis peoples threads. Plus the fact that you read my thread implies something does it not?

good question.

the option where you cut each track up identically- i would never do that. other people might, but that seems horrible to me.

so, the other option is a catch 22- do you eq/mix the drums and bounce them down, in which case you are committing to those eq/compressor settings for the rest of the track? or do you wait until you're near completion, bounce them down, and then add your reverses/glitches/what-have-you, which might mean going back and re-arranging things as you are essentially adding a new element?

i would be curious to know how Edit edited his drums on his "crying over pros for no reason" album. its possible they sound dated now (haven't listened in a while), but those were some of my favorite drum edits a few years ago. however he did it would probably be the way i would try first!

memes_33 wrote:good question.

the option where you cut each track up identically- i would never do that. other people might, but that seems horrible to me.

so, the other option is a catch 22- do you eq/mix the drums and bounce them down, in which case you are committing to those eq/compressor settings for the rest of the track? or do you wait until you're near completion, bounce them down, and then add your reverses/glitches/what-have-you, which might mean going back and re-arranging things as you are essentially adding a new element?

i would be curious to know how Edit edited his drums on his "crying over pros for no reason" album. its possible they sound dated now (haven't listened in a while), but those were some of my favorite drum edits a few years ago. however he did it would probably be the way i would try first!

Catch 22, couldn't have put it better myself, the second option of committing & bouncing down seems the more logical one however it seems to require a massive amount of organisation, unwavering commitment and forethought that seems very daunting to me.

I resample the drum buss.
typically then making the edits to the resampled version.
Also typically then noticing that my drum mix is not all it could have been, some error somewhere, and then having to re-mix the originating drum track.

Then ... I just pretend that the weird difference between the two drum tracks is actually intentional.
I'm not precious about anything, I know that in many "classic tracks" the producer has confessed to some giant error, but either no listener ever picked up on it, or they proclaim it as a moment of idiosyncratic genius.

I make a mistake, repeat it 3 times.
I'm a genius

dominicw78 wrote:

beats me wrote:My pro license expired in October.

I sooooo wish I could help you here but legally I can't.

Got to get peoples attention somehow, obviously you haven't got anything relevant to say or don't know the answer yourself, perhaps you should spend more time making music than trying to dis peoples threads. Plus the fact that you read my thread implies something does it not?

I can't work on music at work so mostly I just waste people's time when I feel a good ribbing is in order.

But your calling me on my shit has been duly noted.

I'm with Anstrom on this one. Duplicate what you have and fiddle with the copy... Chop spaces into your original where the new track(s) will fill in the blanks. Rinse. Repeat.
One note about this method though, and perhaps this is where your getting derailed, I would make the changes in Arrange view, not Session.

Ah yes, I should have mentioned that.
I work a lot in Arrangement, as Session does not have the capabilities to handle complex multi-pattern parts as a 'group-clip' . In arrangement you can at least slice stuff up , twiddle with the shopped parts, and cop/paste them as a collective entity.

I wish Ableton would allow Session to handle grouped clips though.
I may have mentioned this before

Angstrom wrote:I resample the drum buss.
typically then making the edits to the resampled version.
Also typically then noticing that my drum mix is not all it could have been, some error somewhere, and then having to re-mix the originating drum track.

Then ... I just pretend that the weird difference between the two drum tracks is actually intentional.
I'm not precious about anything, I know that in many "classic tracks" the producer has confessed to some giant error, but either no listener ever picked up on it, or they proclaim it as a moment of idiosyncratic genius.

I make a mistake, repeat it 3 times.
I'm a genius

Thanks for the info, I think your method is probably the way forward. The problem for me is that I usually do a fairly traditional method of mixing most of my parts as the last process, not deciding on how to pan all my drums etc until the very end. I guess it's a trade off, but probably best not to scrutinize the difference otherwise you might not get anything done.

I shall through caution to the wind and go for it. I think it's probably best for myself to leave it to towards the end though to eliminate the most amount of possible changes and variables.

dominicw78 wrote:
Catch 22, couldn't have put it better myself, the second option of committing & bouncing down seems the more logical one however it seems to require a massive amount of organisation, unwavering commitment and forethought that seems very daunting to me.

Commit, and move forward. There's always more music to make, the more time you spend second-guessing yourself the less time you have for making new tracks. Think about the "olden days" when people worked with magnetic tape, and you actually had to physically cut stuff up with a razor blade - talk about committing to your process!

If you're really worried about working yourself into a dead end, try using "Save as" as a version control system - every time you open a track to work on it, immediately save it as a new version - that way you can always revert to your last version, and all you'll lose is one session's worth of work.

- sounddevisor
(pro license #135791113)

my question is: how am i going to remix two different music altogether?

(My pro license expired too... )

The answer to this might come down to using sends as alternate submix busses.

For let take some basic stems just for example sake -

Stem 1 - synth rhythm/stabs/arps, leads and pads
Stem 2 - vocals
Stem 3 - bass mix
Stem 4 - rhythm mix
Stem 5 - Kick

You have the main mix going to master or whatever - personally I send this to an internediate mix down track so I can apply global inset effects to the mix and keep the master track for strictly post mix (wht you might call mastering) processing.

Now lets assume you have a heap fo sends used for various things - sends A and B with different reverbs, Send C with a basic delay, send D with a tape/dub delay etc, send E with a reverb/delay was for enhacing the odd snare clap etc or whatever.

Now lets assume that at some point in the track you want to do some kind of mush (fade to grey ie reverby dub and all of sort shit type thing) effect on everything except vocal and kick.
And somewhere else you want to do a filtered beat mash over rhythm, and vocal, but keep the bass and kick clean.

So you create two more return tracks and stick the mush effect on one, the beatmash and filter on another.

I would have my mix tracks as follows:
Stems 1 ro 5 submixes as above, these all mix into an audio track I might label as 'main mix' - you must disabale all sends on this!
The mush return has its audio going to another audio track call 'mush mix' - you must disabale all sends on this!
The beat mash return has its audio going to a track call 'mash mix'. - you must disabale all sends on this!

All of these have their audio to another audio track called 'final mix' - again you must disable all sends on this track else it does wierd thing to Abletons latency compensation.

I might use the cross fader assigned as follows:
Main mix on A, 'mush mix' and 'mash mix' on B so i can use the cross fader to transition between main mix and the effect submixes.
Ill use the mutes of the mush mix and mash mixes to select which one I want at any given moment.

In case it aint obvious - sends and return tracks are actually mixers in their own right - the send level from each track is like the main track level, so when you send from some instruments to a reverb, you are actually create a specific submix for that reverb anyway - this seems to be something that generally only people who have used hardware consoles pick up on - but works the same in software.

The downside fo doing multi-submixes to multi effect bussed is CPU use - you might need a pwerful machine for this - often Ill just bounce submixes to audio and use them for special partial mix fx - which also has the advanantage that you can take a submix, drop it into sampler to create a tape stop type effect with a pitch envelope for eg.

haha that's so easy, how come you don't know that, are you retarded or something ? obvisously you're not a "pro producer" !

All right, sorry.

There is a lot of different ways to do, and they are all right/wrong.

Keep in mind though that some way push you to commit yourself and work faster, and some other open more possibilities, and more adjustment, but then you never go to the next step.

For example, I tend to work with audio every time. If I do something in midi, I'll sample it as soon as I can. Cause once I have the audio, there is no way back, and at the idea of coming back and work on it again is out of my head and I can focus on the next step.

So there is a right balance between committing too fast and keeping to many options.
Find this right balance to suit your workflow.


So to take an example for your problem, I think I will not care of all the EQ/compression. I will program some basic paterns first. Then I bounce them on every track. Then I can work on the EQ/compression. Then I can copy/past this basic patern and edit them manualy by cuting/copy/etc... I can always modify an EQ or compression, but my midi part is gone and I work with audio so the midi programing part is done at least.

Angstrom wrote: I make a mistake, repeat it 3 times.
I'm a genius

awesome!