How To Program A Beat Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar
Tutorial using Ableton Live 11 Lite with Ski Oakenfull - part of the Music Radar series
Transcript
00:00 Hi everyone, welcome back to this video series on getting started with Ableton Live Lite.
00:05 So in the first video I showed you how to set everything up as well as giving you a
00:09 quick tour of the different areas in Live. Now it's time to start making some music.
00:14 In this video we're going to lay down the foundations of a track by programming a drum
00:17 beat and introducing a few tricks and tips along the way. So let's get into it.
00:23 Okay so you can see here in the tracks area we have two MIDI tracks and two audio tracks by default.
00:30 So we're going to look for some drum sounds. So let's go to the browser, click on drums
00:34 and we can actually audition these kits to see what they sound like.
00:41 I quite like that one. That's called Drill A Kit. So how do we actually use that kit
00:51 to program a beat? There's a couple of ways we can do this. We can either double click
00:56 on it and it will load into the track that's selected here. Let's just try that. There
01:02 we go. Or you can actually drag that onto the track as well. There we go. And what we
01:09 can see here is something called a drum rack and we can just click on these sounds here
01:15 to hear what they sound like. So on the tracks you can see these spaces here are called clips
01:23 and this is where we can actually record in some MIDI information and loop it. So we're
01:29 going to record one into this first clip here and I'm just going to create a blank clip
01:33 just by double clicking. And you can see that it shows this clip view here and then all
01:38 the drum sounds are listed on the left hand side. Now if I click on this little button
01:43 here, this is called the MIDI Editor Preview button, and what that will allow us to do
01:50 is just click on the little keyboard there and listen to the sounds. So I'm just going
01:57 to open this up a little bit to make it a little bit bigger. There we go. And we're
02:02 actually going to draw some of these sounds in. So let's start with a kick drum and we're
02:06 going to go for a very simple house pattern. So let's draw in a pattern using the grid
02:11 here. So I'm going to use the pencil tool and we can access this just by pressing B
02:18 and you can see the cursor turns into a pencil. We can also control click and we can turn
02:23 draw mode on there as well. So let's just put in a very simple kick pattern. So that's
02:32 coming on every beat of the bar. And you can now press play on this clip and it will play
02:37 as a one bar loop. So now let's try adding a clap sound. So let's just play that again.
02:47 And I'm going to put that on beat two and four. And now let's try a hi-hat and that's
02:57 going to be on the offbeat. So that's one method of creating a pattern. We can also
03:11 actually use a keyboard or even our QWERTY keyboard to play sounds over the top live.
03:17 So this is currently a one bar loop. I'm going to click on this button here, duplicate, and
03:21 then that's going to turn it into a two bar loop. So you can see it's copied over everything
03:25 I've just programmed in. I'm going to press B again to get out of the draw mode. And this
03:30 button here turns on or off the computer MIDI keyboard. And you can see it's actually turned
03:34 on at the moment. So what I can do is use these keys here to actually play the sounds.
03:39 Now there's nothing coming out at the moment. That's because I need to change the octave.
03:45 If I press the key here, you can see that it's lighting up yellow there. But I need
03:49 to put it down to two octaves so that it actually plays something. And Z and X change the octave.
03:54 There we go. Let's put it down one more. Okay, so let's play the clip and we can jam something
04:08 over the top of it. And note that we can actually switch between the clip view and the device
04:13 view just by clicking here. So I'm going to play along, come up with some ideas, and then
04:19 when I'm ready, I'm going to click on this button here, which is the session record button,
04:23 and this will overdub onto this MIDI clip what I've just played. So let's just press
04:28 play now. I quite like that. So let's just hit this now and we can record it in. So when
04:43 I was drawing in those drum sounds, it was snapping them automatically to the grid, whereas
04:48 just playing it in live, it means it might not be in time. And if we just zoom in with
04:54 our mouse here, you can see that it's not completely lined up to the grid. So there's
05:02 a function in Ableton Live called quantize, and this will actually put anything we've
05:07 played in time for us. So if we go up to the edit menu here and go to quantize settings,
05:14 and this is where we can determine what type of quantize we want. We're going to make this
05:18 to the current grid, click on OK, and you can see that it's actually just quantized
05:24 it for us. And once we've set our quantize settings, we can just go to quantize any time
05:30 and it will quantize it for us, or there's a key command which is command U, and that
05:36 will put it in time. When using keyboard shortcuts with Windows, just use control instead of
05:41 command for example. There's a link in the description for a full comparison of Windows
05:46 and Mac shortcuts. Okay, so let's listen to that now. Okay, now another thing I want to
05:58 do is to give this a bit more of a feel, and I'm going to add some swing to do this. So
06:04 if we go over to the browser menu here and just click on grooves, this is where we can
06:08 choose which groove we want. I'm going to choose this one here which is swing 16th 73,
06:15 and I'm just going to double click on that, and that's going to put that into something
06:19 called the groove pull. Now once this is in the groove pull, I can then apply this swing
06:26 or this groove to any of the clips that I'm working on, and we can just do this from the
06:31 clip groove setting in the clip view here. So there you go, it's appeared, I'm going
06:36 to turn it on. Now let's play it. You can see it's very, very heavily swung, but over
06:43 here we have the global groove amount. So we can actually tone this down so it's not
06:47 swinging quite so much. And the advantage of this is that we can apply this groove to
06:58 any of the clips so they all have the same groove setting. Okay, so we've got our first
07:04 clip, I'm happy with that. So now what I want to do is create some variations of this beat.
07:09 And what I can actually do is to duplicate this clip to the next clip slot. And I can
07:14 just do this by pressing command D, and you can see that it creates an exact copy of that
07:21 clip. So what I'm going to do with this clip, I'm just going to change the hi-hat pattern
07:25 so that it's playing 16th notes. So I'm just going to select all of those previous hi-hats
07:30 I put in, press delete, and then I'm going to press B to bring back the pencil tool.
07:36 And if I hold down option and just drag this across the grid, you can see it's created
07:43 16th notes. Now the reason I pressed option was to make sure that it just stayed on that
07:51 note. If I didn't, then it's going to move around, which is not what we want. So let's
07:58 just delete those, and let's just play the clip and listen to what it sounds like. And
08:06 you can see that because I duplicated that clip, it's also applied that groove to that
08:10 clip as well. Now I can actually switch between these two clips. Now the great thing about
08:19 session view are the horizontal lines, and these are called scenes. And it means we can
08:24 actually build up an arrangement or structure of our track by triggering them. And we can
08:28 do that from the master track just by clicking on play, and then any clips that are in that
08:36 scene will be triggered. Okay, so we're going to create one final variation of this beat.
08:41 So this time I'm going to duplicate the clip in a different way. I'm actually just going
08:45 to hold down option and then drag it onto that third clip slot. Now for this beat, I
08:50 actually want to change the clip back to a one bar loop. So what I can do is just go
08:55 to loop brace, change it back to one bar, and I'm going to press control, and I'm actually
09:02 going to crop the clip, and that's just going to get rid of that second bar and just make
09:06 it one bar again. Okay, so let's just reprogram the hi-hats. I'm just going to select the
09:13 hi-hats and those rims as well. And let's program a bit more of a syncopated rhythm.
09:20 So I'm just going to draw in these notes. And then let's listen to that. Great, and
09:33 let's try putting in an extra snare here. Let's put in this sound. Great, okay, so we've
09:47 got three patterns. Let's just quickly play them through again. Now we're going to look
09:59 at mixing and balancing our sounds in a later video, but I just want to show you how we
10:03 can quickly do that with this drum kit. So if I just click on this triangle here, and
10:08 then again there, this is where we can see the levels of all our drum sounds. Now I want
10:15 to take this snare down a little bit. It's a little bit loud. Maybe this clap as well.
10:28 Now a really important thing to do once we've done some work is to save it. So I'm going
10:32 to go here to save live set, and then that's going to ask me where I want to save it to.
10:44 Let's call it house beat one. Before we move on with the next video, I wanted to mention
10:50 templates as these can be a great way to get inspiration and get up and running quickly.
10:55 So we can go over to the template section in the browser here and try this one, demo
10:59 and sketch. And we have a whole range of different styles. We've got slow rock, straight rock,
11:05 pop, grunge rock, reggaeton, classic disco. And if we click on the master tracks here,
11:12 it's going to choose the appropriate tempo for us. So let's just click on reggaeton for
11:16 example. Go to classic disco. And what's more, if we click on the track, we can actually
11:30 change the drum kit as well that's being played. So let's try an 808 kit, 909. Great. And then
11:42 there are some other tracks set up here, which are some keyboard sounds and some bass sounds.
11:51 And this is where you can record some vocals as well. So I thoroughly recommend checking
11:55 out that to get some inspiration and get you started on a track. Okay, cool. So we've got
12:00 our first part down. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to add a bass line to
12:04 go with the beat along with a few MIDI editing tricks.
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