As a guitarist I’ve always loved tremolo pedals, which modulate volume rhythmically.

Ableton’s Auto Pan does this perfectly. You just to set Phase to 0 to affect volume instead of panning. This preset does it for you:
Tremolo.adv

You can change the shape of the modulation from a smooth sine wave to a more abrupt square wave, change the phasing (when volume starts to go up or down) or whatever else really when you start racking with other effects. This is my go to rack for tremolo and chorus for guitar and keyboard:
Tremolo + Chorus [jethroe].adg

Categories: Ableton, Presets
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Here’s a few of the movies I worked on for Push. I’m the hand model and made the music (you can download the Live 9 Set here: Push Demo.alp). That’s the smooth sound of Dennis DeSantis you hear doing the voice over. Sorry, I meant Dr. Dennis DeSantis.

Ableton Push highlights

Making beats with Push

Playing notes and chords on Push

Working with Sounds

Recording and Improvising with Loops

Categories: Ableton, Music, Push, Tutorials, Videos
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There are good articles out there on setting up your external synthesizers with Ableton Live, such as this one from Sound on Sound magazine.

But in this post I wanted to gather info on going a bit further, and show how I use Push with my setup:

The basic idea is to use Ableton’s External Instrument Device, along with Max for Live editors, so I can leave all my synths to the side of my studio, and load and edit presets, and play all my synthesizers directly from Push (though you could do this with any other MIDI keyboard too).

Once you drag the External Instrument onto a MIDI track, you need to set the MIDI output to go to the synthesizer you want to control, and the Audio Input to come from the synthesizers outputs. I use an RME Fireface 400 for both, and an additional MIDIsport 4×4 for more dedicated MIDI channels. If you have a lot of synths, it’s helpful to have a patch bay or mixer too to bring the audio back in. I use a Focusrite Octopre, connected by ADAT to my RME FF400, which gives me 18 ins/Outs, connected to my half-normalled patchbay, so I can route anything to anything. This way, I have all my ins and outs permanently set up — with my setup I save this external instrument as a preset, and call it up from Push’s browser, and I can play notes from Push’s diatonic grid, with all the correct routing already setup.

Some synthesizers, like my Arp Odyssey and Sequential Circuits Pro One only take Control Voltage, not MIDI. So I can convert MIDI to CV with Stretta’s max for Live tools (Stretta has some crazy shit going on).

For MIDI to CV, you’ll need to have a DC coupled audio interface or a MIDI to CV converter. I found my RME FF400 already has a DC output (the headphone jack 7/8 only). MOTU makes DC coupled interfaces too, more info on compatible audio interfaces here.

I ended up buying a hardware midi to CV converter to make things simpler, and I just split the CV from one unit with a Y cable to go to the Pro One and Odyssey. That’s probably not supposed to work but it does just fine.

But I also want to be able to change presets on my synth with Program changes. So now I need a Max for Live device to send Program changes. Here‘s a cool one that lets you store some of your favorite presets too.

Note that many synthesizers need to be set to ‘allow’ external program changes in their setup menu, and many older synths like the Arp and Pro One don’t have a way to save or access presets. So now I can play, and change presets of my external synthesizer. What if I want to edit the parameters of that synth?

Some synths make it easy, and accept CCs. Here‘s a cool Max for Live device that lets me do that. You can write the parameter name and CC number on the device and save presets for each synth.

You need to read your synth manual to see what CCs to send it.

This is about the limits of my knowledge — I can open these types of patches up, change some CCs around enough to make a few editors, so here’s a few I made for my synths:

Studio Electronics SE1X.adv

Fender ChromaPolarisEditor.adv 

These are very hacked together, are not bi-directional and some parts don’t work (like bank switching). I offer no support – but please let me know if you improve them!

Other synths need to be controlled by Sysex. Here‘s a really cool editor for the Roland JX8P, which sends syses to the Roland to control it, and also syncs with your iPad, so you can control parameters with your iPad.

It’s on my list to make these kind of editors for my Oberheim Matrix 6R and Xpander (unless you or Christian Kleine do it for me first).

Jethroe

Categories: Ableton, Presets, Tutorials
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Here’s the fastest way to crop small portions of a longer recording, for instance after recording a bunch of record samples in one long recording session.

- Make sure your recording is in arrangement view.

- Double click on the file to show it in clip view below.

- Make sure warping is off:

- Open the track view:

- Turn off the grid (Command-4)
- Listen for the part you want and select it.

- Command-E to split the file.

- Command-R to rename it (this is important – the new file you will make will have this name.

- Command-J to consolidate the audio file. This creates a new audio file in your “Current project” which you can find in Live’s browser:

Now navigate to the “Consolidate” folder in your set:

You can also right (control) click on the file to show it in your finder:

Another technique is to select the area you want in Live’s clip view, and right click to “Crop” — this has some further advantages, in that it leaves warp markers intact. But the consolidate technique is a bit faster for me.

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
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Here’s a few iPhone photos of Push’s RGB pad color range:

Categories: Uncategorized
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Here’s a way to randomly chop up drum samples (while making them stay in beat) in Live.

From the manual: Follow Actions allow creating chains of clips that can trigger each other in an orderly or random way (or both).

1) Drag a bunch of warped drum samples into Live onto one track, and select them all (Command-A)

2) Down below, in the Clip View (you may have to press Shift-Tab to get there if you are currently looking at Effects/Devices) make sure the Launch settings view is open by pressing the L button.

3) Now let’s set the Follow Action time to 1/16th note (which means something will happen every 16th note)

4) Now we’ll the Follow Action for all clips to “Other” — this means that, after 1/16th note, any other clip on the track will be launched (Note that Follow Actions only work on Clips on a track touching each other).

5) If you triggered a clip above (don’t yet), you’d hear the first 16th of each clip randomly played back. But we don’t want just the first beat, we want each clip to take over the play position from whatever clip was played in that track before. To do this we press the Legato button.

You also want to set the samples to RAM (meaning they are loaded in your computers RAM so you don’t get dropouts).

Here’s a track that uses this technique:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you want to record this into arrangement view, just press the Global Record button up top.

Jethroe

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
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Automatically Add to iTunes

If you’re like most musicians, you probably have duplicate copies of many of your MP3s, because you dragged them from your desktop or downloads folder into iTunes, and iTunes made a copy for you.

The Automatically Add to iTunes folder is the key to eliminating a bunch of duplicates all over your computer. Go to Users/YOU/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes.

Right click on this folder to create an alias that you can keep on your desktop or your downloads folder,

…or just drag the folder up to your finder window header.

You can drag Mp3s into this folder and it will correctly move them to your iTunes library – and iTunes doesn’t need to be open when you do it.

You can set up another alias for the iTunes libraries you keep on your external drive. To have a second library, you’ll need to learn how to make multiple libraries…

Categories: iTunes
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A little known trick for iTunes is to hold Option as you launch iTunes, and you get this dialogue:

This is great for a few uses:

- Keep one library for your external hard drive, with your ‘big’ collection of music (I’ve got a terabyte of music that obviously doesn’t fit on my laptop).

- Keep one library for your laptop of the things you keep on your laptop.

- Keep a separate library for your Serato Scratch Live music (the stuff you DJ with).

Multiple libraries can be tricky when you have an iPhone or iPad that you sync to iTunes. Make sure to either select the correct library with all your apps before syncing.

I got tired of worrying about this, and copied the XML file from my Laptop to my external drive, along with all my Mobile Applications.

It works for me (though I have to make sure the Apps are the same on both libraries manually). But I don’t recommend doing this part, as I have no clue what I’m doing…

Categories: iTunes
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By popular demand. Remember, this is probably too difficult and you’re a busy musician, so you really should just give me the multi-tracks so I can do it for you… ;)

1) In your record/warp/launch preferences, make sure that Auto Warp Long Samples is turned off.

2) In Live’s Browser, navigate to the multitracks you want to warp.

3) Click on the first audio file, hold the shift button and click on the last audio file.

4) Drag them onto an audio track in Live’s arrangement view (don’t let go of the mouse yet!)

5) Press the Command button, so that the audio files will go to parallel tracks, and release the mouse button.

6) At this point, when you press play, the multitrack should sound normal/aligned. You may want to lower the master volume a bit if it’s clipping. If they are not aligned…well you need to align them manually with the grid off, but that’s out of the scope of this lesson.

7) Select all (Command-A). If the files are the same length, you’ll see a message that says ‘X Audio Clips in X tracks Are Selected. Move on to step 8 if this is the case.

If the audio files are not the same length, you’ll see a message saying the clips have different lengths.

If this is the case, press Command-J to consolidate the tracks (and create new audio files the exact same length. Reason: Multitrack warping only works for files of the same length.

8) Press the Warp Button. You’ll see a hatch mark indicating that you will be editing multiple files at once.

9) Now you need to find one of the tracks with a good drum part to work on (it’s easier to warp this way). Once you’ve found that track, move it to the top of the screen.

10) Scroll down to the track on the bottom and click on it to select it (track 26 in this case).

11) Scroll up, hold Shift and click on the drum track you found before at the top of your screen. The last clip you select is the one you will warp, but the warping will apply to all tracks.

12) Now you have to manually warp that track. Unfortunately, “Warp from here” doesn’t work for multitrack warping, so you’ll need to adjust it manually, bar by bar, like back in the Live 4 days ;). You’ll want your metronome on while you do this.

13) It’s a good idea to rename (Command-R) all your tracks, so that once you’ve warped a multitrack file, you can always navigate to that Live Set in Live’s browser, and drag in individual tracks from other projects into the one you’re working on.

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
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Hey yall,

been awhile since a new tip. Here’s a quick one:

If you want a Scene to launch at a specific BPM or time signature, just rename the scene (command-r) and type in what you want, i.e. “100 BPM” or “5/4.” When you launch the scene, the BPM and/or time signature will change upon launch.

More stuff soon…

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
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