Book Image

The Music Producer's Creative Guide to Ableton Live 11

By : Anna Lakatos
Book Image

The Music Producer's Creative Guide to Ableton Live 11

By: Anna Lakatos

Overview of this book

The Music Producer's Guide to Ableton Live will help you sharpen your production skills and gain a deeper understanding of the Live workflow. If you are a music maker working with other digital audios workstations (DAWs) or experienced in Ableton Live, perhaps earlier versions, you’ll be able to put your newfound knowledge to use right away with this book. You’ll start with some basic features and workflows that are more suitable for producers from another DAW looking to transfer their skills to Ableton Live 11.2. As you explore the Live concept, you’ll learn to create expressive music using Groove and MIDI effects and demystify Live 11’s new workflow improvements, such as Note Chance and Velocity Randomization. The book then introduces the Scale Mode, MIDI Transform tools, and other key features that can make composition and coming up with melodic elements easier than ever before. It will also guide you in implementing Live 11's new and updated effects into your current workflow. By the end of this Ableton Live book, you’ll be able to implement advanced production and workflow techniques and amplify live performance capabilities with what the Live 11 workflow has to offer.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Live Concept and Workflow
7
Part 2: Creative Music Production Techniques with Ableton Live 11
15
Part 3: Deep Dive into Ableton Live

Real-time recording

In this section, we will explore how to record MIDI notes in real time in Session View and Arrangement View.

Recording MIDI notes in real time in Session View

In this practical example, we are going to play a bass line.

First, we are going to use our computer keyboard to record notes, as everyone at all times has access to that. Then, we are going to move on to see how we can work with a MIDI controller. So, let’s get started:

  1. Choose a bass preset from the browser.
  2. Insert it into a new empty MIDI clip.
  3. Enable the computer keyboard to act as a MIDI keyboard (see Figure 4.14) or use the M key command to enable and disable it.

Attention

As long as your keyboard is acting as a MIDI keyboard, some shortcuts will not work – for example, A to toggle Automation on and off – as at this point, Live is expecting to receive MIDI notes from your computer keyboard.

Figure 4.14 – The MIDI computer keyboard enabled

Figure 4.14 – The MIDI...