How To Add Audio Effects, Mixing And Exporting In Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar
Tutorial using Ableton Live 11 Lite with Ski Oakenfull - part of the Music Radar series
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00:00Hi everyone welcome back to this final part of this video series on getting
00:04started with Ableton Live Lite. So in the last video I showed you how to add a
00:08vocal sample to the track. In this video we're going to finish off the track by
00:12adding some audio effects, building up a quick arrangement in session view and
00:15then recording our track into the arrange view so we can export it. Let's
00:20go. Okay so let's try adding some audio effects to some of the tracks. Now if we
00:25go in the browser to the audio effects section you can see that the audio
00:28effects here are grouped into lots of different categories. So we have delay
00:32and loop, drive and color, dynamics, EQ, pitch and modulation, reverb and
00:39resonance and some utilities as well. So all of these add different characters to
00:44the sound and for example reverb this allows us to create different spaces so
00:49we can make an audio recording sound like it's playing inside a cathedral, a
00:53concert hall or just under a tunnel for example. So let's try doing that for this
00:58vocal sample. So I'm going to click on solo and let's just go into the second
01:02scene and I'm going to just drag over the reverb onto that track there. There
01:12we go so you can already hear that it's having an effect is making it sound like
01:16it's in a bit of a bigger space. We can increase the decay time and we can also
01:22change the balance between the original dry signal and then what we call the wet
01:27signal which is the reverb. And if we listen to that in context with the rest
01:35of the track. Now what we're doing is mixing the track. We're trying to get a
01:48good volume balance between the different channels but as I mentioned in
01:51a previous video we do have to be very careful that we're not going to go into
01:55the red and clip. So I'm selecting all of the channels here while holding down
01:59shift and I'm just going to bring down the level very slightly just to make
02:04sure that on the right hand side we're not clipping and going into the red. Now
02:08another effect I quite like to use on this vocal sample is a delay. When we
02:12added the reverb effect we used what's called an insert so we inserted it
02:17directly onto this track. With these returns it means that we can actually
02:21share effects between different tracks by using these send controls here. So as
02:27part of the template set I used you can see that I already have a reverb and
02:31delay effect on each of these return channels. So I'm just going to use return
02:36B which is this delay. I'm just going to solo this and you'll see that as I
02:41increase the send amount here on this track it's sending more of this vocal
02:48channel to the delay effect on return B.
02:54Let's just turn off the reverb for a minute so we can just hear it better.
03:00There we go. Now we can adjust some of the controls on here so feedback
03:04controls how much it delays and we can also set the timing of the delay. So I'm
03:10going to change the beat division here to quarter notes. I also want to add some
03:18filtering so that it's taking off some of the low-end frequencies great. So
03:32let's put the reverb back on now and take the solo off.
03:38So that's sounding quite lush now that vocal. The next thing I want to do is to
03:52also add some reverb to this mini-log. Now you can see that it's automatically
03:56named these tracks according to the presets that I was using but it hasn't
04:00done that for this track which is the mini-log. So we can do that ourselves.
04:04Good to do some housekeeping. So I'm just selecting that track there and I'm going
04:09to select command R and that's going to allow us to type in the name of this
04:14track. So I'm going to type in mini-log. There we go just so we know what it is.
04:18Great so let's just solo this. We can try adding some of that delay to this sound
04:27as well. Great and let's let's put some reverb on that as well why not. Maybe
04:42slightly less of it there. And this is where we can start adjusting the volume
04:54levels as we go. So I'm feeling now that that riff is a little bit too quiet and
04:58maybe the vocal is a bit loud so I'm just going to adjust those. Now let's go
05:07way back to the drums and I want to make those drums sound a little bit punchier.
05:13So we can go to the audio effects here and utilities and audio effects rack and
05:21there's a section here called mixing and mastering. And this looks like an
05:27appropriate preset it's called drums punchy. So let's drag that over there turn
05:36it off and on so we can compare. Now it sounds to me like it's slightly
05:46increasing the high frequencies there which means that the hi-hat sounds a
05:50little bit louder. So let's try bringing down that hi-hat which is here just very
06:00slightly. Brilliant we can also add some basic mastering and mastering is
06:09normally the final stage of the production where we want to make the
06:13track as loud as possible and sound as good as possible on the radio or in a
06:17club. So we can stay in this mixing and mastering section here and let's choose
06:23master punchy dance and just drag that onto the master channel there.
06:41Okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to do a very rough
06:45arrangement in the session view and then record that arrangement live into
06:51the arrange view. So this is where we can start working with these scenes a little
06:55bit more and duplicating some and taking out some of the clips to create a very
07:01rough arrangement. So I'm going to take this first scene here and I'm going to
07:06duplicate it a couple of times and let's start the song without the beat. So I'm
07:12just going to delete that first clip there and let's take out this pad maybe
07:17as well and also the mini-log. So we're just starting off with the vocal and the
07:23bass. Great and let's go to the second scene now take out the drums and maybe
07:33the mini-log and let's just bring in the pad sound. Okay and then we can bring in
07:46the beat maybe we'll hold off on the mini-log as well. Turn up the vocal
07:56slightly, turn down the beat slightly. Now this is where the drums come in but
08:10we've also got that mini-log so I'm going to duplicate that scene and then
08:14just save that mini-log arpeggio so we just have the additional 16th hi-hats
08:20coming in at that point and then bring it in here.
08:34And I'm going to duplicate it again and this time I'm going to take out the
08:37drums so we just have a little space. So we then go into the piano section.
08:45Here we go. Great so we've got a very rough arrangement and what we can do
08:56now is we can record it into the arrangement view. So just so we can get
09:00all the tracks in view I'm going to press this H button here which is the
09:04optimize arrangement height and let's go back over here and we're going to hit
09:10record and we're going to trigger these scenes and it's going to record them
09:14into the arrange view. Now one final thing that we can do before we actually
09:17record it in is play around with the tempo. So at the moment we're at 120 which
09:23is a very classic kind of house tempo. Let's try increasing it a little bit.
09:33Maybe 125. There we go so that gives it a little bit more energy. So this time I'm
09:41going to press this arrangement record button and we're going to trigger the
09:45first scene. Now I'm going to flick over to the arrange view here and you can see it
09:54recording in.
10:05Let's try the next one.
10:41So if we now go back over to the arrange view you can see that every
11:02action I made has been captured and if we just press the back to the arrangement
11:05button here we can then play the track from this arrange view and this is where
11:17we can really refine our arrangement and we can take things in and out we can
11:22change lengths of the clips we can do all sorts of things. So how do we get
11:26this out to the world? How do we get people to listen to the demo that we've
11:29just done? What we're going to do is we're going to export it. So the first
11:33step for this is to go to the loop brace here so just drag the loop start to the
11:39start of the track and the loop end to the end of the track and then we're
11:44going to go to export audio and there are various settings here we can turn
11:49the analysis file off we can put normalize on that's going to make it as
11:54loud as possible and you can select the file type as well we'll keep that as a
11:59WAV and click on export and you can select where you want that to go so
12:10let's just open this up a little bit this is the project that we were working
12:14on let's select that call it house beat one and then save
12:23and let's look for that file now so let's go to here Ableton projects
12:29house beat and there is our file house beat one and we just press space to audition it
12:52there is our track and we can upload it to soundcloud or send it to a record label
12:56or send it to a vocalist and develop the track further now one final very important thing i
13:01wanted to remind you of is to save your project so go up to the file menu and click on save live set
13:11and that means you can come back to the project and carry on working on it
13:16okay so there we are i hope you enjoyed this series of videos on Ableton Live Lite
13:20and it gave you the confidence to start producing your own tracks
13:23please have fun experimenting with your own ideas and i hope to be back soon
13:53you