Presented by: Ski Oakenfull - Ableton Certified Trainer
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00Hi my name is Ski Oakenful and I'm a musician, producer and Ableton certified
00:05trainer. I'd like to welcome you to this short series of videos where I'll show
00:09you how to create a track from start to finish in Ableton Live Lite, helping you
00:13familiarize yourselves with the layout and the functions of the software so you
00:16can start producing your own tracks as quickly as possible. I've been using Live
00:21for over 16 years now and I'm a massive fan so I'm sure you're going to love it
00:24too. In this first video I'm going to take you through the registration and
00:28installation process and then give you a quick walkthrough of the different
00:31areas in Live so you can get ready to make some music. Try to follow along with
00:35all the videos if you can but don't worry if you get lost you can always
00:38watch them back. So let's get started. Okay so the first thing to do is to go to
00:44the Ableton.com website and then click on login or register and then on this
00:52page you'll need to type in your email address, then choose a password, make sure
01:03it's a memorable one and then your first name and your last name. Make sure you're
01:15in the right country and sign up to the newsletter and then click on create
01:19account. So now let's register your serial number. Now that you're logged in
01:24click on account and then register a product and this is where you need to
01:33type in your serial number. This is mine so it can't be used again and click on
01:38submit and this is where you'll see your available licenses. Choose either Mac or
01:44Windows and then click on download and you'll see it downloading here. I've just
01:54sped this up unfortunately I haven't got such a fast internet connection. Then you
02:01need to go to your downloads folder and click on the disk image, click agree to
02:08the license and it will open up the disk image. Then you'll need to drag the
02:17Live Lite application to the applications folder on your computer and
02:20it will install and then finally navigate to your applications folder and
02:30double-click the application to launch Live Lite. It will start loading and
02:38we're in. So if you've already downloaded and installed Live there's another
02:44really easy way to authorize it online. As you've seen I've actually already
02:49authorized my copy but I can still show you the process anyway. So once you've
02:53launched Live go up to the menu item here and select preferences then make
02:58sure you have the licenses maintenance tab open. Click on the authorize at
03:03Ableton.com button and it will open the Ableton site in your browser where
03:07you'll then need to log in with your account details. Once you've logged in
03:14you may get a pop-up message like this so just click open Ableton Live Lite and
03:19it will take you back to the live application and you'll get a success
03:23message. Now in some cases you may need to authorize your copy of Live Lite if
03:28you are offline i.e. you're not connected to the internet. If you have that
03:32situation you can go to preferences here and then go to the licenses maintenance
03:36tab. Now I've actually already authorized this but you'll need to click on the
03:40authorize offline button and then this will give you some instructions. Now the
03:45main thing you'll need to note down is your hardware code which is here and you
03:49can actually save this to your computer. Let's just put it onto the desktop. There
03:56we go and it will create a text file so you can actually copy and paste your
03:59hardware code. Now there's a good web page which takes you through the process
04:04and essentially you'll need to log in on another computer that is connected to
04:09the internet and you'll need to actually type in your hardware code here and it
04:16will save an authorization file. It's a .auz file which you can then transfer to
04:21the computer that is offline. You can double click on that and then it will
04:26authorize your version of Live Lite. And finally a quick note to say that if
04:31you're registering on a Windows computer there's a walkthrough link in the
04:34description of this video. So when you first launch Ableton Live it will show
04:40you the demo set. In Ableton set means your project or your song. So let's have
04:46a listen to what it sounds like.
05:10So I'll let you check out the whole track. You might have seen that I was
05:18flicking between these two different views and we'll talk about those a
05:21little bit later. You'll also see on the right hand side here something called
05:27the help view and you can turn this on and off here. Now this is a really good
05:35starting point as it contains some useful reference information. For example
05:39what's in the latest version of Live 11, how you can record audio, creating beats,
05:44the packs you've installed, how to set up your audio input and output and your
05:49MIDI controllers and there's also some built-in lessons which I thoroughly
05:53recommend checking out. Anyway what we're going to do now is we're going to start
05:57from scratch. So in order to do that we're going to go over to the menu
06:01here and click on new live set. There we go and I'm going to close this help view
06:11here. So the first thing I'm going to do is just set up our preferences. So if you
06:16go over to the live menu here and click on preferences you can see various tabs
06:21here to set up how you want live to work for you. So the first thing we can do is
06:28we can change the zoom display. I've got this 135 you want to make it bigger or
06:32smaller you can just adjust that there. Let's keep it at 135. The next thing
06:40that's really important is to set up your audio input and output. Now I've got
06:45a Universal Audio Apollo but if you can click down here we could just set it to
06:49the built-in output of your computer or whatever you want it to. So I'm going to
06:55keep that there. I'm also going to set the input as my Universal Audio Apollo
07:00as well. The next thing is to set up your MIDI interface. So if you have a MIDI
07:07keyboard or controller that you want to use with Ableton Live you can set it up
07:11here. I've got a Native Instruments complete control so I'm just going to set
07:15that up there and you can refer to the manual of your controller for the exact
07:20settings here. Now before we have a look at the various areas of Live I would
07:25recommend heading over to this web page here which has got some great
07:28information and some videos as well about all the different areas of Live
07:32but I'm going to take you through a few of these now. So first of all on the
07:37left-hand side here this is called the browser section and you can hide it or
07:43show it by clicking this small triangle. Now this is where you're going to access
07:48all your sounds, your samples, your grooves and your plugins and you'll see
07:54that we'll be visiting this section a lot in this series of videos. Now there
07:57are two views in Ableton Live and you may have seen me switching between those
08:01in the demo set. We have this view that we're looking at the moment which is
08:05called Session View and this is where the tracks are displayed vertically. It's
08:09great for building loops and ideas when you're starting your tracks and then if
08:13we click on here we go over to the Arrange View and this is where the
08:18tracks are displayed horizontally and it has a linear timeline so we use this
08:22when we're arranging the final structure of our track or you could start with
08:26this section as well it's up to you. And a really great keyboard shortcut is tab
08:30we can just flick between the two by pressing the tab key. So the main central
08:36area here contains the tracks and these tracks can either be MIDI tracks or
08:41audio tracks. So a MIDI signal is normally generated by a keyboard or a
08:46controller and it contains information about the notes that you play so this is
08:50where you record that information. An audio signal will be recorded onto an
08:54audio track of Ableton Live and this could be a vocal, guitar or a synth. We'll
08:58be recording something later. On the right hand side we have our return
09:02tracks and this is where we can set up effects and we can send the output of
09:06both MIDI and audio tracks to these channels. On the far right we have our
09:10master track and this is where all the tracks are summed together into one
09:13output. Now one really useful view here is the information view and if you
09:19hover over pretty much any feature of Ableton Live it will show you what it
09:22does. For example this is the track activator but we can turn this on and
09:27off with this triangle here. Over on the right hand side we have the routing and
09:32mixing section and this will let you choose what you want to display the
09:36input and the output, the sends and the returns and the mixer as well. We can
09:41actually change the size of some of the sections so for example if you want to
09:45show a little bit more of the mixer section you can just drag it up and down
09:49there to create more space. So whether you're in session view or arrangement
09:55view the top section of the screen stays the same and has global and transport
09:59controls. So this is where you can change things like the tempo, the time
10:04signature, turning the metronome on and off, whether you're playing or overdubbing
10:09or recording and there's also some looping controls here as well. But yeah
10:15we'll see all of these functions and areas of Live used in the following
10:18videos. Okay so now we're up and running with Ableton Live Lite. In the next video
10:24I'm going to show you how to program a beat.