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Navigation in Live 9

Lesson 2 from: Ableton Live 9 Fast Start

Isaac Cotec

Navigation in Live 9

Lesson 2 from: Ableton Live 9 Fast Start

Isaac Cotec

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Lesson Info

2. Navigation in Live 9

Lesson Info

Navigation in Live 9

First thing we got no is navigating right there's all these little parts and it's a little confusing at first where things are so we're gonna walk through the different aspects of life now if you get the if you get this class and creative life you're gonna be able to download all these examples every example I show you like that last one you can just download it you go ahead and install it you can open up what is able to play around with that and then you can go over to this one which is navigation and then it has little descriptions on the side of what to do just to remind you so you can kind of walk through these examples on your own time you can watch the videos and then play with the examples but I'm just gonna walk through them as we go so let's look at the different parts of a bolton this first one over here is called the browser now we have the little triangles we'll see them throughout the program and those open and close things and here we got the browser and browsers basicall...

y where all of our files are where we can drag in an audio effect by just putting it in there or we can also look at our sample so I can go over to uh let's see original drums come in here and just drag something in right and that's the browser is just kind of file management right then we also have session view so right now we're looking at session view and that's this window here this big window and right here we have these little tabs so we can go between session view an arrangement to you and then we can also down here is what we call the clip of you and if I double clip a click double click a clip then I get to see the information of the way form and what's in the clip that's down here that's the clip view and then we have another little tab called the devices so devices are like effects the instrument stuff like that and then the clip is either the middie or the audio and then we also have some really easy function here well, first of all I'm going to show you how we can shrink that we can shrink that whole of you so if you wanted to like let's say you're performing you don't need to look at anything else but the session view there you go if I got arrangement I do the same thing I can shrink everything except for the arrangement which is really helpful but there's one other thing which is incredible I love that they didn't remember I was learning and able to five or there was no information really and then they put this in here which is called the info view this is brilliant because basically I put my mouse on anything it tells me exactly what it is now that's the track activator you know what is that teo ok, here is the track painting it's like a cheat sheet right there just turn it on and you can look at anything and really quickly help you out. You can even do this with effects any any parameter within able to just put your mouse over it that's enough of you and I'm going to show you this little there's a worksheet called the navigation worksheet which is basically me taking screenshots and asking what it is I highly suggest if you get this course printed out you can write in it's just helpful when you have something in front of you that tells you what these parts are because once you know the language of what these windows are it's going to be a lot of us here, right? So, um I'm gonna ask you guys just these different windows if you could name them what we just went over so what's this blue one here that's the browser rather oh, and maybe introduce yourself too while we're at it I'm just doing cool do you have a musical name? You go by no, just just um just devin right now awesome coleman well, thanks thanks reading thanks so yeah browser exactly and then do you happen to know the pink one ah yeah the pink ones the session view so this one is going from beginning to end see how it's kind of so it's which arrangement exactly yeah and then you want to introduce yourself and say what ah yeah um increases and my musical name is ocean spice nice to have music out already or oh yeah I got stuff on some clothes but you know, just beginning to go great great perfect yeah all right, so I'm just gonna go through for you more for you guys and then what is this green one that we just like that oh, that one session yeah, yeah that session and we could move I didn't show this, but if I'm in session view if I hit tab I go between arrangement in session view and that's why printing out the sheets really helpful, scott like a little things to help you know where things are and then this next one she does remember what that is asleep clip you? Yep. And then the other tab in that scene space is food devices exactly. So we can press shift tab to move between those there's also this little tab on the bottom so I can let's say double click that I like it that tab to move between devices and then I can hit shift tab to just quickly move between them yeah those are the basic windows that we need to know and then from here we can just get more specific so this is also the interview which is really good to know that's that little triangle in the bottom opens up in full view and it's just really easy to know what a specific novel parameter does right now that we know where the parts are let's talk about the very building block of life like what is the thing in live that let's us create our music lets us piece things together and that is clips so clips are the basic musical building blocks of life a clip is a piece of musical material a melody a drum pattern a baseline or a complete song live allows you to record an altar clips and to create larger musical structures from them songs scores remixes dj sets you name it so clips are there like containers and there are wrapping around audio so they're not the actual audio the audio will live somewhere on your computer but when you drag it into a bolton puts it in a container no one is a clip and that is referencing that file and then it can say what it wants to do with it it can warp it it khun well look at envelopes and all these things that we can do with it but this way it's non destructive editing in other words it's not disrupting that audio file that was found on our computer because it's a container, it is just affecting how able tio views that piece of audio is also allows for multiple versions of the same sample, which is really useful. So let's, look at that in life, I'm gonna go over to that projects. What is a clip? All right, so I have this sample here. This is something. I mean, it's gonna believe this. All right? So this is playing, right, it's referencing this original sample that I made at one point and that little orange box is the clinton. Now, if I press control the or commanding it duplicates tonight, two of them now let's. See, when I change this, like I'm gonna do tune this so it's a lot lower on I change the transposition here, I'm gonna also make another version, and then I'm going to raise this one up. Lower volume soon. Now notice that we have to re versions a lower one theory journal and hire one, but the original sample was not destroyed. Anyway. The original one is totally fine. If I actually like this thing, that shows me that sample and I could drag it in, and no change has been done to it that's the nondestructive aspect of life, which means you don't have to worry about adding an audio effect in ruining the sound because you always delete the audio effect you can always delete anything you've done to the sound and the sound is totally fine that saves a lot of headache it's totally great um so these clips will really represent the parts of your song right? A clip might be the drums the clip might be the baseline whatever it is so you can think of these is like samples or elements that will build up to make your music so tracks host clips and also managed the flow of the single as well as the creation of new clips to recording sound synthesis affect processing mixing so right here this thing that we have was the clip that little container but the thing that lives in is a track now we could have multiple tracks so now I have multiple tracks and each one of them have different clips on them right? So trap tracks can hold an unlimited number of clips like I've never reached the limit I don't know I've had I have live sets that are up in like thousands of samples just going down they're huge and I've never run into the limit a track and on lee play one clip out of time though so you could have tons of clips in there but only one can play at a track at a time but you can have unlimited number of tracks so it's totally fine in that way you have all these options both through the clips you're playing and the multiple tracks that you have to play multiple clips so let's look at an example of that so all right now the first thing we want oh, just go over is how do we have a clip? Right? A clip can either be midi or audio. We're gonna play an audio for a while we'll go over many later but all I have to do is have this little folder here and aiken dragging let's say a beat dragged that in just drag and drop just bringing it you could also navigate to your anywhere on your computer and drag it from there you can also dragon in from itunes basically anything you just dragging into able team to play it. So now that I have that there uh that's all on one track, right? So if I play this fight play the next one knows how it took over the last play back and so on. So the idea here is if you played both that would be like all of sudden having two drummers on stage it's goingto the drummer playing the next part of your song so that way the track khun really be viewed as like unstrung mint or element that is happening and then different variations is what makes up your clips well, you can also add new tracks one way of doing that is let's say I grab let's go with this percussion now if I grab this percussion I could drag it in there but if I drag it into an empty place we'll just make a new audio track so I'm going to select all of these dragon in or I can right click insert audio track pretty easy now we have multiple tracks I'm going to do real quick of ad these leads and then I also have a base so I'm just selecting all those dragging it in to make a new one and things sound better when you rename them I swear at least you know what you're doing when you rename them so let's just rename this boots there go base I'm going to rename this melody percussion and this one should be beat cool so now those different clips air in there and if I wanted to I could just come in here now I'm just triggering the different clips but you're different aspects of my music stop that one on then that way I can start building myself right from these different building blocks in different parts other thing within the track that's good to know is right here this's our track right it's going down on we have these different elements of the bottom so if I bring this down it's my volume so it's like your mixer this's, you're panning left right? This button here is like a bypass so it's putting the bypass on the mixer so we're not hearing it's still playing. We're not hearing it's kind of like a mute way solo just hearing that and record which we're gonna go over later another before the thing is we had this little stop so I hit that stops playback so there's a little triangles are to play and wherever we get those little stop I can either stop there or I could stop on the bottom or there's one more which is this stop right here which is stop all just stops all playback. And then we also have this thing called the master track so let me play all that. Yeah, that's one thing is in the master track. Notice how I also have a little play that play means play all the way across and that's called the seat so in this way it starts, it starts looking like an excel sheet and if you start looking at in that way, we'll begin to understand session be a little more so session you originally was what able to was all about and it was just to handle samples. It was on ly audio for a long time and in the world where you had to have analog geared host all your samples and then they started having software that could host all your samples that completely changed people's ability to perform live and that's where this program came from and it was a very german way of looking at organization it's very clean it's like, you know here's your row here's your column if you play your call him everything plays you play your row, you can change what's in the road. That sort of concept, right? And what I can do is if I just press the play master it plays all the way across, so we'll play this one stopped there if I play here there's nothing so it stops, but I also have in the master track same sort of thing I have volume, master volume panning and so, one way we're gonna go over what this is later. Yeah, that's the basics of how we add clips and how he had tracks. Yeah, this is all very basic and, you know, we're just going to build on that and that's something else I forgot to say earlier is as we're going through this, we're building our knowledge of what the program is, where the parts are right and if you have a musician have a goal of using a bolton to make music right, stick with me on all the parts that you might already know or the parts that you feel are like super fundamental just stick with it because it builds on itself and then if you go through this whole thing, you're going to know the basics of the program and you're going to fulfill your goal as a musician because you'll know all the parts and you can keep moving forward but just know I might go a little geeky or nerdy on things but there's a reason because like it will answer a question at some point some of these things I didn't know until like a year later and I stumble positives like oh totally fixes that issue so I'm bringing up everything that is super important to the core of using this program so let's go over a session, an arrangement now this is probably obvious to some people, but it blew my mind when I figured this out the able to logo so at the very bottom you'll see they're able to certify trainer and that's their logo well, the logo is their session view an arrangement you which makes sense because session view is playing the different parts it's not letting your going up and down right where arrangement is from beginning to end its like I totally of course that's their logo that makes sense, so here we go we got session view and we're going to be looking at a lot of that and later on we're going to get more into arrangement but session view is an easy way to record things it's great for play backing loop sections while writing and recording and it has more of a live field so in other words, you can sit there and you can loop a section like I've been doing bringing new samples, bring out samples, start new ones and very live in its field where arrangement is more of a linear approach and that is from the beginning to end. So if this is a better place for music that has modulation like let's say a swelling orchestra that happens all these intricate changes over time that's hard to do in a loop if you have sixteen bar loops you can't really have like you know, in a bar section on one instrument while this other thirty two bar section is coming in and out. So if you're doing something that has lots of movement over time, that isn't as like section off necessarily then you're going to want to play a lot more arranged with you. But for a lot of people coming up with ideas in session view in the moving it to arrangement view is the key and that's why we're going to look at we're just going to review that real quick and then probably stick in session view for a while because that's really the advantage of this program and we'll play there and then we'll bring back arrangement later so let us look at that so this is the same example I think that I had earlier yep ah and what I showed you before is just gonna hit stop on all this now that we know what all these tracks are all the clips that are housed in them if I just come in here and different sections sway faster btm an original so I'm just playing by different parts now way have this thing here which is the arrangement arm like click that it's now recording everything ideo I'm just picking these different clips I'm using this controller justcause it's easy you don't need to control or you could just do this my hands do but I just prefer putting my hands on something and feeling the tactile response so come in here session butte nonlinear right? I can do whatever I want I could play the same song for ever and you guys will get completely bored uh but you know if you're in your studio and your jannings that's super fun like days could go by literally days can go by and you're like, oh yeah, I'm a human going to stop playing music but because I had that record on if I hit tab tabs how I moved between them here's everything that I did now if I press play, we're actually hearing what's in your view because I was playing before. But I have this ability to punch in singley what happening on those tracks, an arrangement or this button here, which basically now we're just listen to a range of you. You can take things over in session arrangement so I could decide no, I'm going to change that. Now you notice that's great out session view is running it for my press play. We're now. So what was an arrangement now? Arrangement is this linear thing, so I played, performed it, and now I can come in here and edit things. We'll get deeper into this, but I can delete things I could say, you know what? I'm just going, tio, right, click, duplicate, duplicate that whole section where is there? And I'm going to bring this over and you can just like to start playing with your song, really start morphing it and building out what you want and it's linear it's from beginning to end and that's the key to arrangement.

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Navigation Worksheet
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Opening and Using Live Packs
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Ratings and Reviews

Malcolm King
 

Hello, Firstly gotta thank you for your great tutorials, and sharing the knowledge of making music; then I wanna say, I bought the Ableton Live 9 tutorial package, but I didn't heard or better say understand some of Mr. Cotec's words; that's why I wonder would you please send me an English subtitle of his excellent teaching? I will be much grateful for this. Best Regards, Malc

Casey Dart
 

Isaac is the man! He is such a great teacher and you can tell has full control over the information. I already feel like I am many steps above friends who have used ableton for years because of this course setting a foundation for me to learn and experiment. Thank you Isaac and crew!

Claudio Martins
 

Great start course! And Isaac is a super-teacher. Many lessons and great tips. This the first time Im really learned how to handle Ableton!

Student Work

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